Dunstall said he’d struggle in the modern game because he’s not “an athlete”, but that truth hides a lie.
The man who lies second to Tony Lockett on the all-time list of AFL goalkickers and now joins him as an official Legend of the game set out at school on the then far-flung frontier of Brisbane as a rugby breakaway, where he rarely touched the ball, and a soccer goalkeeper.
All footy then was played on Saturday afternoons. “You’d have a good day. You might have kicked seven or eight,” Dunstall said. “You’d come off the ground and think, what was St Kilda’s score? They got beaten by 80 points, and they only scored 70 points themselves. The trouble was, Plugger kicked 10 of their 11 and you’d actually lose ground. He was just too good.”
Six goals against Bruce Doull in the 1986 grand final served as a rude send-off to the Carlton legend in his last game and an announcement of the arrival of the Dunstall era. In the next 10 years, he kicked six centuries and never fewer than 66 in a season. He was metronomic. It’s the sort of truth that hides a lie, and Dunstall knows it. “You kind of think if you’re brought up in a different time, you’re probably physiologically a little bit different and better prepared to come into the game,” he said. “They have such great pathways now that didn’t exist in the 80s.”Greats adapt; it’s part of what makes them great. Don Bradman, asked once if he would make as many runs now as in his heyday, said that he would - but that it would take him longer.
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