The night Hawthorn refused to die

I like former Hawthorn great and part-time troublemaker Don Scott, and I suspect he likes me.

As with all legitimate eccentrics, he doesn’t see himself as eccentric at all. I have found him warm and generous. Others find him contrary and stubborn. Scott is one of those guys who occasionally lacks a filter between the brain box and the voice box, meaning he tends to speak his mind.

The last time I saw him, he was sitting at an outside table at an eastern suburban coffee shop, he greeted me with, “John Silvester, you look three-quarters dead.”

This was surprising as I was feeling quite sprightly after my skinny latte and toasted mushroom sandwich.

Scotty played 302 games for Hawthorn, and held the premiership cup three times, twice as captain. Yet, his greatest contribution was off the field where his tendency to swim against the tide made him Hawthorn’s Winston Churchill, turning the club’s darkest hour into its defining moment.

It is 30 years since a merger between Hawthorn and Melbourne was announced, including a new jumper, and the added bribe of a playing list guaranteed to succeed. The AFL wanted to reduce Melbourne clubs in pursuit of a national competition with the struggling Fitzroy already swallowed by the Brisbane Bears.

On the field Hawthorn was a mega-power. Over the previous 25 years, it had won eight premierships and made finals 20 times.

This had not turned into revenue with the financial members stuck at about 11,000. Truth was, the club was broke. If it didn’t merge, it would have been trading while insolvent leading to board members being prosecuted. The AFL had a $6 million merger carrot dangling in front of them.

The league bosses thought the Demons/Hawks merger would quietly succeed because their supporters were seen as “reasonable”, with the joke that Demons supporters cheer their team while listening to the games on the car radio travelling to the snow. While Hawthorn supporters, spoiled by success, would accept the merger if it meant more silverware.

If you took the emotion out of it the merger made sense. Melbourne, with MCC backing, had money but hadn’t won a flag for more than 30 years; Hawthorn won football games but was debt ridden. But this was football, and you can’t take the emotion out of it. That was the AFL’s biggest mistake.

Enter Scott, first with quiet steps that became a thunderous march joined by thousands. Estranged from the club for years, he became its saviour.

Good friend and fellow Hawthorn tragic Channel Ten journalist Stephen Quartermain invited me to the Hawthorn past players’ room at Glenferrie Oval for a discussion with a group of former players and media types. It began as a question – was the merger the only choice, or should supporters have the chance to put their money where their cheering mouths had been?

There were about 10 former players from the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, including premiership heroes, Scott, Leon Rice, Ian Bremner, Mick Porter and Dermott Brereton.

On the media side were reporters, including Ashley Browne. Keen on a yarn, Browne suggested this embryonic group be given a name.