Paul Brown was in the bowels of the Melbourne Cricket Ground on VFL Grand Final day in 1989 when the stadium shook from the crowd’s roar.
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Brown had just played in the Cats’ losing reserves grand final team and with no television screens in the change rooms he was unaware what had happened.
There were nearly 95,000 people at the ground by the time the reserves’ grand final had finished and Brown recalls the disappointment of losing the match, but also his intrigue with the enormous noise which reverberated into the changerooms.
The crowd’s eruption was in response to Geelong’s Mark Yeats famously charging through Hawthorn enforcer Dermott Brereton at the first bounce of arguably the greater ever VFL/AFL grand final.
As it turns out, he had other things on his mind, having just missed the shot on goal which could have won the game for his team.
Brown took a mark about 20 m from goal, on an acute angle, but hit the post. There was just 40 seconds left on the clock and the Cats were two points behind.
That was the final score, Fitzroy winning the 1989 VFL reserves’ premiership by two points after the Cats had led by four goals at three-quarter-time.
“I remember they went the biff in the last quarter. They had blokes like John Ironmonger, Dean Lupson, Don Wheildon and Mick Conlan.
“They were a good team,” Brown said.
Brown was recruited to Geelong in 1989, having impressed as a teenager with Echuca in his 30 senior Goulburn Valley Football League appearances.
He had injured his ankle midway through the 1988 season and his surgery, prior to joining the Cats, was paid for by the club which would be his home for the next 10 years.
The 1989 season was his first at the Cats, so being part of the whole grand final experience was something he will never forget.
Brown’s kick on goal was the last scoring shot of the match, just shaving the inside of the post. For those of you interested, you can watch the dying moments, or the whole match if you feel inclined, on YouTube.
“I could have won us the game with that shot,” he said.
Brown said he and his reserve grade teammates only got to see half the senior game, where Gary Ablett was awarded the Norm Smith Medal in a losing team for a record-equalling nine goals.
He and Collingwood great Gordon Coventry share that record.
Another Echuca product, David Cameron, was in the senior team for that match.
“David actually kicked what would turn out to be the last goal in VFL football, because in 1990 it became the AFL,” Brown said.
“That’s a fair claim to fame.”
There were 42 goals scored between Hawthorn and Geelong in the 1989 grand final, with the Cats losing by six points in a thrilling final quarter.
“I remember Geelong was coming home like a train,” Brown said.
“I’ve watched it a couple of times over the last year or two, because my son Tom was interested in seeing the game.”
Brown’s son, Tom, is expected to be a high pick at this year’s November draft.
“He just turned 18. He has been in the Bushrangers for a while.
“We are told by those in the know he will probably be going top 20.
“He will be a bit taller than me, quicker than me. His last two seasons have been on and off a bit,” Brown said.
Tom Brown and close friend Josh Rachele — son of former Shepparton Swans man mountain Jason — have come through the same junior footballing pathway.
Paul Brown has a plethora of grand final memories to choose from, not only the famous 1989 season finale.
He was a member of Geelong’s losing grand final teams — to West Coast Eagles in 1994 and then to Carlton 12 months later in 1995’s big dance.
And he was probably unlucky not to be a member of the 1992 grand final team, another loss for the Cats.
“In 1992 I played every game in the seniors, except the preliminary and grand final.
“They brought back some of the old guys, Neville Bruns and Steve Hocking, because of the size and physicality of West Coast,” Brown said.
Brown played on and off as a defender under Gary Ayres in the reserves prior to Malcolm Blight resigning at the end of the 1994 season.
“In Ayres’ first year (1995) I played off the half-back line and a back pocket.”
Brown started on the bench in the 1994 grand final against West Coast, before coming onto the ground in defence.
“West Coast was very big and very strong.
“I used to take the kick-outs, but I got more of the ground than the ball with my first kick in of that 1994 grand final.
“Drew Banfield marked the ball and he kicked straight back over my head. We ended up losing by 80 points,” Brown said.
Recruited as a forward, Brown was playing the best football of his life at that point, as a 25-year-old.
“I got into the senior team for the last 12 or 13 games.
“Getting into that forward line was pretty tough at that time, with Ablett, Brownless and Stoneham.
“I remember Gazza pulled the pin one year (1991) and I played forward a bit. Then he came back halfway through the year,” Brown said.
Brown’s best return of 37 goals came in the 1992 season, but he always remembers the day Gary Ablett played as a “decoy” for him.
“It was against Fitzroy in 1995.
“Gazza was my decoy, I was basically playing full forward and he was out on the half-forward flank. I kicked seven, but he still kicked five,” Brown said.
Brown and close friend Leigh Colbert would often be babysitters for Gary Jr and brother Nathan on the return trip to Geelong on the team bus.
“Gazza would often go missing, so Leigh Colbert took them home and looked after them,” he said.
Brown recalled the rules were very different for Ablett, than they were for the rest of the team under both Blight and Ayres.
“We weren’t allowed to do U-turns or kick the ball across goals, but Gazza could do whatever he liked.”
Geelong went into the 1995 grand final against Carlton confident of a good showing.
“We were always in the game against Carlton, but you can sense the moment when the game is gone.
“On that day it came when Greg Williams took a mark over our ruckman Steve Handley.”
The Cats lost the game by 61 points.
“I barracked for Carlton as a kid. Williams and Kernahan were my heroes, they both kicked five goals in that grand final,” Brown said.
Brown injured his knee in 1996, then played only one senior game in 1997 and another in the 1998 season before calling time on his 84-game, 66-goal career.
As a 17-year-old he played alongside the likes of Tony and John Jones, and Wayne Deledio, at Echuca when they lost the 1987 grand final to Shepparton United.
And he had no luck again in 1999 when he returned to play with Shepparton United in the Goulburn Valley Football League.
Brown was one of the first Player Welfare Officers at Geelong Football Club, offered the role at his exit interview in 1998 by Ayes and Allan McConnell.
“I was an electrician at the time. They came back to me a month or so later and offered me the job, which I spent four years doing.”
Brown said Mark Thompson came along at the same time and he worked closely with the premiership coach during a great era for the Cats.
Brown was chiefly responsible for relocating two of Geelong Football Club’s greatest players, shifting Joel Corey from West Australia and assisting Corey Enright to adapt from life in the middle of South Australia.
“I got them jobs or helped lot of players with courses and general life skills.
“But I knew it was time to look elsewhere when Bomber Thomson ripped into me one day for having some fun with the trainers.
“It was all getting a bit too serious and that signalled time to go,” he said.
Brown and wife Angela married in 1992 and have three children, Tom, Harry and Millie.
Millie has followed in her father’s footsteps through the AFLW and son Tom looks destined to take the same path.
Kyabram Free Press and Campaspe Valley News editor