I bought the shirt after reading this Peter Lalor article:

Imran Khan has been detained in solitary confinement for 22 months, and as a Greg Chappell led campaign has highlighted, his health is now failing and he is not receiving adequate treatment. He hasn’t seen his sons. He’s had inadequate access to his legal team. He has received multiple bail adjudications for the charges against him, but is never released, as the regime relies on other charges for which he hasn’t received bail.

The corruption charges appear to be trumped up and politically motivated. Imran is the last democratically elected leader of Pakistan, and his popularity is a threat to current PM Shehbaz Sharif, who succeeded him after a non confidence motion in 2022.

Imran’s wife, Bushra Bibi has also been imprisoned, and has a 31 year sentence to serve. His former wife, Jemima Goldsmith has been vocal in her support for Imran and Bushra, and has alleged that Elon Musk era Twitter is muting her tweets advocating for his release and for the right of their sons to visit their father. This is all covered in the Peter Lalor article above.

I love Imran the cricketer, and statistically, he’s in the conversation for best all rounder of all time. I also think he was a courageous and well meaning president, whose conservative religious convictions don’t match my own, but I think he fought corruption, advocated for the poor, and in a difficult COVID ravaged era, did his very best for the people of Pakistan.

He doesn’t deserve this human rights abuse. Nobody does.

Things you can do:

Contact Pakistan’s High Commissioner in Australia, Mr Irfan Shaukat counsellor@pakistan.org.au

Contact Penny Wong - this is her contact us page www.foreignminister.gov.au/contact-foreign-minister

Buy a Cricket et Al ‘Free Imran Khan’ tee

Share this post, or the Cricket et al post that got me going. (thanks Gerard Dowling)

Treat him with Dignity - Fourteen captains come out in support of Imran Khan - ESPN Feb18, 2026

I interviewed Imran just before he became PM, and ghosted a chapter for Austin Robertson’s ‘Cricket Outlaws: Inside Kerry Packer’s Revolution’. I’ll post that in the next couple of days.

Good one, Wilson! is a newsletter about sport, music, parenting, disability, funny s**t that happens, and unfunny s**t that happens too. If you’ve been a long term reader, I’d love a year or two of A$5 per month support.

A post from some time ago about another Pakistani great.

Apply to be part of 2026 Race Around the World. You have to be 18yo.

I had a little run on media street when they made the announcement. The above interview is with my old Triple R Breakfasters buddy, Jess McGuire now of ABC NSW.

The below chat was with Richelle Hunt of The Conversation Hour, ABC Melbourne.

Finally it’s back!

My 28 year reign as the title holder for Race Around the World is slated to expire. In case they want the trophy back, the plastic globe detached from its even-more-plastic base in 2002 and unlike a gold-glitter sprayed table tennis bat Tam and I won at the Down Street mixed doubles in 1999, it’s not on our cluttered mantelpieces.

For years I’ve said how fortunate I was that Race existed at the exact moment I needed it to.

It didn’t exist before. It hasn’t existed since. In 1997-98, the ABC plucked sixteen lucky twentysomethings and put us on national television, with a filmmaking task that was simultaneously so breathtaking exciting and gobsmackingly difficult that I’m not sure I have a reliable memory of it.

But now, it exists again. And even in a media environment where there are many more avenues to get noticed or ‘go viral’, the 2026 version will change lives. Television’s power might be diminished, but there is a dream element to Race. Ten countries. One hundred days. Travelling alone. The romance of landing in a place on day one and leaving ten days with a story in the can. The idea that eight young people are out there living this wild adventure in different places at the same time. In 1998 we carried a 3-chip Panasonic handy cam and 3 x 30m miniDV tapes per story. We’d make a paper edit in four columns (VISION, AUDIO, AUDIO 2, SUBTITLES) and send the tapes and script back to an editor at the ABC in a DHL bag. In 2026, I’m guessing the Racers will shoot on phones and edit on laptops. I hope they still have to travel alone. Perhaps the great lie of the show was that it was a fun adventure. It was such hard work. So much of our time was spent in hotels or motels, shot listing or watching footage on a tiny camera screen. For each of my ten stories, I allocated three days to doing the paper edit. I remember having a bit of a cry to my parents at Milan airport on Day 30, because I was exhausted and stressed and there were still seven stories to go. It was such a marathon. I actually have no idea how I completed it. Having said that, the highs were so high. I’ll never forget the first day of the Race, my taxi winding into the moonscape that is La Paz from its bonkers altitude airport. The sun was rising and I was thinking the world was so big and beautiful, and that my life had truly been transformed. Four days later I was in San Pedro prison, interviewing a drug trafficker whose three kids shared a cell with him, because there was not enough foster care or state housing for the children of inmates. I reckon I was given access because I gifted the prison official a kangaroo pin. I’ll also never forget the last day, Day 100, running through the traffic in Shanghai with a DHL bag above my head, punching the air to celebrate the end. Of course it was all for the camera. I wonder who I got to hold it? They were on an overpass up above the traffic. I would have been worried that they’d run off with it.

So much of the trip was for the camera. F**k it was an amazing time.

I said it in the radio interviews, but people should apply. In 1997, it was a taxing application process. We had to make a four minute story in our area, as well as deliver pieces to camera introducing ourselves. There was also a six page question and answer type thing, that felt like a written job interview. It won’t be quite the same this time, I think there’s an assumption that leading candidates might already have a body or work, but they might select genuine first timers like I was. I wonder what the balance will look like? Will it be content creators, who bring established social media audiences to the show? Or will it be film school kids? There’s actually no upper age stipulated on the press release. Maybe I should try and defend my title. 😉

The due date for applications is 22nd December. For a few years, I’ve intended to bring a little Race Around the World focus to this newsletter, but I get distracted by things that have happened more recently than 1998! But given a new generation will be turning their cinematic gaze towards this opportunity, I thought I might share a few tips. S**t, I think I’ve still got handouts from Mike Rubbo, the creator of the show and its executive director, on what makes a good doco. “What’s at stake!” He was always banging on about “what’s at stake”.

My plan is to write a weekly piece that will help people with their applications, starting next Tuesday.

I’m so pleased that this is happening.

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It’s weird, I was just writing about the days before left on Race Around the World in this birthday post. I found out about the reboot as I pressed send!

* An SBS free to air launch nest year

* A Hungarian free to air premiere next week

* Participation in the Greek and Hungarian film festivals of Canada - Cam went to those

* Selection in the World Championship final of FICTS FEST, the Sports Movies and TV contest run by the Federation Internationale Cinema Television Sportifs. There are 100 finalist that have funneled through smaller FICTS events around the world. Our qualification was in Brazil.

We screen in Milan today! (Wednesday, 3.30 Italian time). I’m off to the cinema now!

Too tall for the sponsorship backing

Too tall for the Airbnb

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To get there, we need votes, and to get votes we need you to be in ‘the industry’. Are you a current member of AACTA? Do you know somebody who is? Are you an actor, director, producer, cameraperson, screenwriter, script editor, publicist or animator? Is your partner or friend working in film or TV? If so, we’d love some votes in the noble furtherance of THE CHICKEN AND/ OR BEEF FOR CAM AND /OR TONY.

Here is the voting form.

It looks a lit like this, and you have to select five films

I’m a big fan of Lorin Clarke’s ‘Not Only Fred Dagg But Also John Clarke’, (vote for it and see it during its current cinema season) as well as Constantine Costa’s ‘The Golden Spurtle’. Lorin got my four voter. We are unsure how many 5-voters we’ll need for our dream of chicken or beef, but we think it might be surprisingly close to f**k all. Hence this post, the video above, and ‘Oscars campaign’ that included texts to every vaguely filmy person whose number is in my phone. If that was you — sorry, and please vote. Cam and I promise to post some kickass selfies with Cate Blanchett in the background, as well as bandy the word ‘AACTA nominated’ in all future correspondence.

Send this post to your ‘industry’ mates and tell them Ange & The Boss is the best Hungarian-Greek-Australian film you’ve seen this decade, .

Other bits of exciting Ange & The Boss news

* We signed with Madman and they’ll be distributing the film in Australia from here in;

* It will screen free to air on MTVA Hungarian national broadcaster next month

* We are part of Hungarian Film Festival of Canada and Greek International Film Festival of Toronto this weekend. Cam is over there and will send updates.

* We are in the FICTS festival in Milan, which is a sports film festival leaning into Olympic themes. Puskas won a gold medal in Helsinki 1952 with the Magical Magyars. I’m going over to that one. We screen Wednesday 8th October at Centrale Cinema

* Ange & The Boss is streaming on DocPlay and available to rent on Prime and Apple.

And most excitingly of all:

Next year, we will have our free to air premiere in Australia on SBS!

More on that soon.

Good luck in Canada, Cam!

The idea of starting a speeches site had been buzzing around for a while, particularly following the death of my best man Chris Daffey in 2013 and the experience writing his eulogy. The Obama years were ending, and whatever dissatisfaction people had with how much hope there’d been and how much change had been delivered, it’s difficult to argue with the quality of the speeches. It was also the moment when video started to dominate social media, and I thought that if my site was home to the majority of the world’s great speeches, they would be shared around the globe and there’d be millions of hits, and the thing might even be a money earner!

What I didn’t know was that the social media sites were also training their algorithms to spit in the face of third party links, and that the glory days of aggregation were over. As it’s eventuated, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have been relatively unimportant to Speakola. It didn’t matter that some guy called Garima Verma with zero tweets and 35 followers has had the @speakola handle, and I was pushed towards @spekaola_ with an underscore. What has been crucial to Speakola is Google. In 2015, there really wasn’t a speeches site that did this speech library job well (American Rhetoric is good, but all US speeches) and as a result, many of the great speeches in history found a strong searchable home on Speakola.

At some point in that indoor soccer dinner, somebody gave a speech about the glory of Showtime United and Ned jokingly asked if it was good enough to put on this famous speeches site I was going to create. It was then that a second penny dropped. I wouldn’t just do famous speeches. I’d put up any type of speech users wanted to preserve, or that I liked. If I added ‘everyday’ speeches, then everyday people would visit the site, if only to assist in writing their eulogies, wedding speeches, birthday speeches, retirement speeches etc etc.

‘This is going to be massive,’ I said to Ned. I was a bit drunk, so I told him to remind me the next day that I was going to make a smash hit website that elevated the spoken word, preserved great moments in history, strengthened oral storytelling amongst communities and families, and transformed me into what we now think of as a tech bro, with a mahogany yacht and my shirt off and my guns out and those trillions of hits — as the world sobbed together over the power of speeches like the pre execution statements of Sacco and Vanzetti, ‘I am never be guilty, never!’

What, you’re not into Sacco and Vanzetti? Look it's possible I’m not amazing at assessing global pop trends. The person who has assisted me most with Speakola design and tech issues is a friend by the name of Mike Fink (brother of ‘Ange & The Boss’ collaborator Cam Fink), and despite being a media and words junkie, Mike has on a few occasions said something like, ‘I’m not sure everyone likes speeches as much as you, Tone — I know I don’t’.

He’s usually attempting to dampen my expectations, which is good, because they started off unrealistically high. In 2015, I visited web designers to see if they’d create a platform for me where popular speeches rose to the top, and there’d be feature speeches on the homepage, and my own speechly algorithm would suggest speeches people might like because they’d viewed a related speech and it’d be an app you’d find as #14 and rising in the App Store. I remember meeting with a hip well dressed team in a conference room in Collingwood, and they seemed to get what I was after, and the décor was really trendy and appealing, and the coffee they’d offered me was excellent, and it was only going to cost me $35,000 for them to build a prototype.

So I did what Mike told me to do — ‘Make a B version’ he said. ‘Just load speeches into Squarespace and set it up with very few bells and whistles. I’ll help you pick a template that sorts the categories for you. It’ll just cost you your own time and A$200 a year. Then you can work out if anyone wants to watch or listen to speeches. I know I don’t.’

In June of 2015, I started loading famous speeches. My strategy was to look for lists already in existence – ‘The 25 best speeches of the 20th Century’ and that sort of thing. I decided that for each speech I would include speaker name, title, date, location, embed video (or photograph if no embed) and most importantly, transcript. I figured that the only thing really separating what was to become Speakola from YouTube, which also houses great speeches, was discoverability and transcript. So every time I added a speech, I either searched up text or made my own transcript, often using Rev.com.

For a while I was going to call it ‘Speakeasy’ or ‘Speakezy’ and I had a go at registering domains related to that. Then I hit on Speakola, which sounded speechy and neat and I think Mike or my wife Tamsin liked it more than Speakeasy.

These were the first political speeches I added. They probably all came from the same list.

I contacted media friends and relatives and regular folk I knew had delivered a good speech and asked them if they had one I could add to the library. When I launched the site on August 5th 2015, I figured that an ‘ordinary person’ eulogy would kick start the project more than just another facebook outing for ‘I Have a Dream’ or the Gettysburg Address. So the first speech I ever promoted on Speakola, was Damian Callinan’s eulogy for his mother Kathleen. It was good choice because it’s a beautiful and funny speech, and there is a delicate pull between the most unbearable of tragedies and quite exhilarating moments of humour. When I looked a week ago, Damian’s eulogy for his Mum has had over 10,000 views, not quite keeping pace with Eric Idle’s eulogy for George Harrison (#6 ranked speech overall with 100,039 views) but still the number one non celebrity eulogy. Damian was also the frist guest on the Speakola podcast when that began in 2020. I’ve made sixty episodes since those lockdown beginnings, and only today was knocked back for an interview by Reese Witherspoon. Still, with a staff of one, it’s had over 200,000 downloads, and I’ve had guests such as Andrew Denton, Neil Kinnock, Anna Quindlen, Hong Kong’s Unmasked Portestor, Rana Hussein, Peter Malinauskas, Adam Elliot, Ram Guha and Ted Baillieu. I'‘ve learned how to use a high definition zoom H6 recorder, and the Audacity editor. I’ve had an avocados sponsorship, and received a box of three dozen green skin and purple skin avocados as podcast contra. I’ve failed to press record, I’ve failed to upload, I’ve failed to adjust levels, I’ve failed to hit the charts. But I have succeeded in recording 60 hours of interviews with speakers about their speecehes. I am the Song Exploder of the speech world. Every time, I’m stunned that we don’t rocket to number one in ‘Culture’. I’m reminded again of Mike’s words: ‘‘I’m not sure everyone likes speeches as much as you, Tone — I know I don’t’.

But here’s the thing. People do like speeches, Mike. Or at the very least, their teachers and university professors force them to look them up. As of today, there are 7382 subscribers to the Speakola newsletter, and only about 300 of those are people who tried to subscribe to Cricket et al and accidentally subscribed to me to on their recommendation prompt. The rest like speeches Mike! Even in the last ten minutes, a shitload of people have visited Speakola, and here is what they are looking at:

Is that too small to see? Good. Take it from me that e Malcolm X, Bob Dylan, Jacqui Lambie and Pope John Paul II are playing on computers around the world. If you’re an Indian or American and don’t know who Jacqui Lambie is, if you’ve never heard ‘Dream a little cheaper’, have a listen to this. The glory of Speakola is that that speech gets remembered, or at least noted down in a little corner of the internet. What a voice Jacqui Lambie has. She’s knocked me back for the podcast too.

The numbers of visitors to Speakola these last ten years are extrordinary — maybe not beyond my wildest dreams, becasue my dreams were pretty wild in 2015, but something to be proud of nonetheless. Speakola has had 6.529 million visits, and 8.4 million pageviews. Yesterday, 2,344 people opened a Speakola page. The most traffic I ever had in a single night was 102,000 visits, when Eric Idle tweeted out his eulogy for George Harrison and it was picked up on the front page of Reddit.

Forty seven percent of Speakola traffic originates in the USA, 10 percent in my home country of Australia. I’ve had 250 visits from Zimbabwe, 383 from Lebanon. It’s truly a worldwide resource. I’m proud of that too. I always intended to house at least one speech from every country of the world. That’s going to be a project for the next couple of years.

If you’ve been a reader these last ten years, thanks for being a part of the journey. If you’ve been a speech contributor or podcast guest or sharer or commenter, thanks for your time and enthusiasm. If you’re a paid subscriber or Patreon supporter, I’m incredibly grateful.

My jobs over the next few months include my Speakola ‘gardening’, pulling out the weeds of broken links, adding new speeches, answering emails, adding new speeches. Suggestions are always welcome.

Have you got a favourite 2025 speech? Have you spotted a mistake or broken link on Speakola? Should I keep the whole enterprise going? (it’s very time consuming and not really a proper paying job. It currently makes less than US$7000 a year)? Is there a grant or something it would qualify for? Should I embark upon Speakola Live salons in 2026, where people deliver speeches, both famous and otherwise to audience? And finally, should I go to Vegas with Ned’s indoor soccer team. I did only fill in once.

Feel free to share a Speakola memory in the comments. I hope it’s offered you something, and contributed a little bit to the world.

Best wishes

Tony Wilson

Some Speakola things:

The podcast https://podfollow.com/1510533157

The newsletter

I say at in the introduction to this interview that Simon Hill was my ringtone for a time. ‘Tim Cahill has done it again! What a goal by Tim Cahill! Oh it’s a wonderful moment in Kaiserslautern!’. It was a perfect articulation of maybe the most exciting sports watching moment of my life, when the Socceroos went 2-1 up against Japan.

This entire interview is pretty great, so I’ve lifted it from the archives of the Speakola podcast to have a run over here at Good one, Wilson.

I’m also sharing it with our ‘Ange & The Boss’ list. The episode ends with 3AW audio of the Uruguay penalty shootout from 2005, and if you’ve never heard that, it’s guaranteed to make you smile. And over the outro music, there’s 2021 me panhandling for Ange & The Boss, back when it was called (working title) ‘Ferenc Puskas and the South Melbourne Hellas’. Well thanks to nearly 150 donors, we did get to the line and, unbelievably, it’s had a three month run at Cinema Nova, as well as in every other state of Australia. What a year it’s been.

Simon Hill has been a true friend of the documentary. He hosted the Q&A at the film’s very first Australian screening, at Palace Norton Street in Sydney as part of the Australian Greek Film Festival. He lent shout quotes to our poster, he tweeted and shared and promoted ‘Ange & The Boss’.

Quite apart from that he’s been a football friend and a famous face on a couple of Green & Gold Army world cup tours we’ve shared, and just a great person to chat to about music, politics and, of course, the world game.

It really is sad we’re losing him.

Thnaks, Simon, for all you’ve done for the game in this country.

And we’ll miss your death metal drumming too.

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And you feel the buried fury in Ange. He’s balled up, unsure of whether to spring out of the press conference tuck and go on the attack. But the reporter keeps on coming, needling, conjuring up spectres of distant silverware, and you see Ange make a decision. The eyes come up, he’s furious, she’s got him, she’s got her headline:

‘If I can answer the question, or are you going to keep asking me, I think .. and I’ll correct myself I don’t ususally win things I always win things in my second year. Nothing’s changed.’

She gives him wiggle room, ‘so you’re seeing enough? … Ange doesn’t want wiggle room. ‘Well I just sort of said it now. I don’t say things if I don’t believe it.’

It’s such an outlandish thing to say. As the injuries mounted and the losses accumulated and Spurs tumbled down the table, it became attached to the Postecoglou name as a punchline — Big Ange — ‘I Always Win Things in My Second Year’. Ha Ha.

The days of Robbie Williams viral videos and terrace anthems were long ago.

But Ange had a plan, as he always does. Once Spurs had avoided relegation, he shifted his steely gaze to the last trophy on the possibles list, the Europa League. It was a good year to be in the running. The competition had been restructured so that the non-quatlifying Champions League teams didn’t spill back into the knockout rounds. And his team, which had played so much of the season without its first choice back six, started to benefit from returning players. Ange rested them up for the fixtures that mattered, which weren’t the Premier League matches. The players absorbed defeat after humiliating defeat, but unlike the Spurs supporters, they never turned on Ange. Daniel Levy, to his credit, didn’t either. From as far out as the round of sixteen, the last trophy on the possibles list, did indeed look possible.

I remember waking up the morning of the first leg of the Round of Sixteen tie. Spurs nil, AZ Alkmaar 1. Who the hell were AZ Alkmaar? Ah no. Ange the punchline — I always win things in my second year. Ange the punching bag.

But then it was a revitalised Spurs in the second leg. A resolute Spurs at home and away against Eintracht Frankfurt, the best opponent Ange faced in the knock out stages. An accomplished Spurs, even up beyond the Arctic Circle against FK Bodø/Glimt. And a determined courageous Spurs in Bilbao on Wednesday, defending as Ange said he wouldn’t, winning. Having played so much of the season without defenders, Ange played the final without his attacking midfield. James Madisson has some claims to being Spurs’ best player, Dejan Kulusevski is a contender for that honour too, and 19 year old Lucas Bergvall will end up being better than both of them. Throw in the fact that Son Heung-min was underdone, and there was some cause for pre game doubt.

Not from me, incidentally. Having made our doco about the Ange origin story under Ferenc Puskas (Ange & The Boss, it’s still on at Nova!), having cut what we call our ‘Ange glory montage’ that captures the back to back championships at South Melbourne (1997-8), Brisbane Roar (2010-11) the Asian Cup with the Socceroos (2015), Yokohama F. Marinos (2019) and Celtic (2022-23), having read Vince Rugari’s Angeball that tells the ridiculous story of how you go from being a 12 year old self appointed coach of a Melbourne primary school without a soccer team to the first Australian to coach in the Premier League — I never wavered. There are twenty seconds in ‘Ange & the Boss’ in which he walks across a changing room and says to the Marinos players, ‘Today is for our supporters. Next week is for us. We fix them up them up too’. The squad erupts as he leaves the room, and it’s the most exhilarating twenty seconds in the film. He’s now won nine out of ten championship deciders. He’s either extrordinarily lucky of extrordinarily good.

During our Australian film release tour, I asked Paul Trimboli, one of Ange’s best mates and a long term assistant about the ‘I always win things in my second year’ comment. ‘I reckon it was calculated,’ Trimmers said. 'He would have thought about it, and then said it, becasue if you’re a player and you hear him saying something like that publicly, you kind of sit up and go, s**t, he actually thinks we’re going to win something! He believes it Maybe I should believe it. That’s the sort of thing Ange does.’

So maybe ignore everything I wrote above about it being a flash of anger, or a rush of blood. However the comment came to be, now that the silverware has come to be, it’s utterly brilliant. It will enter folklore, be etched on a professional tombstone that will be as glittering and as glorious as any in the history of Australian coaching. How thrilled we are to be on the outskirts of Ange’s story. What a man he is.

The video above was edited by my friends at the Football Untold Podcast (I was on episode 11, Kangaroo Goulash, talking about Ange & The Boss). It’s an instagram edit to Frank Sinatra’s My Way, which is a song that my dad has told me he never wants to hear again, because it’s a chest thumping ego trip of song, that puts self above community. Dad is so passionate about this that he’s threatened to haunt us if we ever play it at his funeral.

But NOBODY is a bigger fan of Ange than Dad. We made him an Ange T-shirt for his birthday. He’s adopted Tottenham, like so many Australians who were celebrating on Thursday morning. We’re not Spurs fans. We’re Postecoglou People. We’re Ange Acolytes.

It’ll be interesting to see if Dad likes the edit. Ange did kinda do it his way.

I cried.

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Here is co director Cam’s video in the aftermath of the win. It’s going very well on @angeandtheboss Instagram.

Good afternoon

I’m Ned Wilson, the third of Margaret’s four children, and I’ll be the emcee for today’s Celebration of Margaret’s Life.

I’d like to start with thanking you for coming in such numbers, and also express thanks to the hundreds of you who have sent comforting messages expressing your own sense of loss, and your admiration for and your memories of Margaret.

Mum was a beautiful, talented, intelligent and resourceful woman. I’m beyond lucky that she was so committed to making my life better. She could solve problems I didn’t know I even had!

At age 24 I was departing to the UK for an extended working stay. Mum seemed stressed. Its a huge world out there with so many risks for a naieve kid to navigate. Why she ended up choosing to mitigate the twin problems of mad cow disease and exorbitant pricing of dubious quality meat I don’t know, but she lovingly stowed a kilo of kryovacced, frozen eye fillet in my bag. Best steak I ever had… How the sniffer dogs let me through I will never know.

Lesley Nisbet

To begin at the start, mum’s sister Lesley Nisbet

Pippa Wilson

Pippa is the forth and most stridently independent of Margaret’s children. Pippa has been in Darwin for close to 20 years, and mum treasured her regular July trips to stay with the Wood family. There is a beautiful photo of mum in the red earth that you will see later on. It was only yesterday that I heard that this was taken on a mother-daughter 4 wheel drive trip. Who let these two head into the wilderness alone? Neither have even head of a diff-lock, Pip can’t see anything, and mum, when driving, was known to shoot a protective arm across any passenger when tackling a speed hump!

But into the beautiful, bumpy, wilderness they travelled, one of many treasured memories, welcome Pippa Wilson.

Deidre Pope

Deidre Pope and mum became instant friends at Melbourne University, and were each other’s bridesmaids. They have not lived in the same city since they were in their twenties, yet their wonderful friendship endured throughout. I invite Deidre to speak of her dear friend.

Samantha Wilson

It’s no secret our sister Samantha has been a source of pride for mum. She was also her greatest support in recent years as mum’s physical health deteriorated. Thank you Sam from your siblings for your incredible care.

(The conclave finished last night… The three of us sent the white smoke and you have been elected our new matriarch….. I’m bringing over my mending next week.)

Paddy Rath and the 13 grandkids

Jack to introduce kids by family

Mary Besley

With four kids in tow, Mum and dad moved to Balwyn in the early Eighties. Four was tiring work, more so as one was Tony. Luckily for mum (and for me) Mary and Rod Besley moved in a street away with their 3 boys. Mum had found a special friend and I snagged a second mum…. Plus a household that had a VHS recorder with a remote control that had an actual cord back to the machine. Bloody dad had got us a Beta.

Mary knows all the extremes of Margaret’s personality, which included her passion for recycling, reusing , remaking, repurposing. I still remember the stunned look on Mary’s face when mum whipping out a bag of second-hand clothes and said “Ned’s grown out of these undies… does Dan want them?”

Please welcome Mary Besley

Ray Wilson

Next to speak is Margaret’s husband, Ray.

Photographs

One of the worst compliments I ever received was from my friend Chris Williams, who declared that I am ‘surprisingly good looking in photos”

We are now going to watch a photo montage of Margaret, whose beauty will not be a surprise to anyone here.

Tony Wilson

We will finish today with a eulogy from Tony.

When Tony was young Mum took him to speech therapy… and it really seemed to work, Tone! Mum was immensely proud of Tony, of all the kids he most shares Mum’s passion for literature, art and creative endeavours. She did give up on his piano lessons when the teacher reported he ‘played by numbers’ but took comfort in his enthusiastic participating in the school choir. Twice he was thrown out of it, twice his devoted mother went to the school and gained his re-admission. When tearful Tony came home a third time proclaiming that all of them were playing up, but Mr Henley swung around theatrically and said ‘out Wilson! And don’t come back!’ Mum accepted what most of us now know…. There was a quality control issue. The fact that he has come without his guitar is probably a good sign for us here today.

My big brother Tony

Ned Wilson close

Please stay and have a bite and a drink and share your own stories of a beautiful woman, Margaret Wilson. And if you have a garden please take a packet of seeds to have a little of the garden-loving Margaret with you in the months and years ahead.

It was a shock to lose Mum, and a shame for many of us that we didn’t get to say a final goodbye. When I look back at her final text it was so mundane… ‘I’ve forgotten my Netflix login, what is it?’ The answer by the way is capital Mw1006!.... She would have wanted you to have it.

Until yesterday I was also worried that my last phone call was similarly mundane. I was stressed moving house, chatted for two minutes and then finished. It was only after the shock of her passing that I reflected on the call.

Her final question to me was “Is there anything I can do to help you?” to which I answered, ‘no Mum, I’ll be ok’.

And I will be ok, thanks to my brilliant Mum.

The full service has been uploaded to YouTube. You can either share this page or the link below.

Thanks to everyone who has sent us lovely messages of condolence, and memories of Mum. Thanks especially to my three siblings and Dad, who shouldered the organisational burden of Mum’s celebration and funeral while I was in Hungary. She really was a beautiful Mum. I’ll miss her so much.

Good one, Wilson! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

If you’re interested in what makes good eulogies, I’ve chatted about it a lot on my podcast, Speakola and in the Speakola newsletter. My eulogy for Mum is the latest episode, but some good eulogy episodes include:

Damian Callinan on eulogies for his parents, and the use of humour

Lahra Carey on her eulogy for her husband Ben Cowan, ‘My husband had a magical cape’

John Safran on his eulogy for Father Bob Maguire, ‘Bob, you’re dead! Do you want a state funeral?’

Andrew Rule’s eulogy for his father Keith Rule, ‘Solomon in a singlet’

I love the Yarra Jets victory song. I’ve listened to it since 2015, when my daughter Polly first started playing as an eight year old, and it always makes me smile for the fact that it COMPLETELY OVERSTEPS THE MARK when it comes to what the modern world expects from well brought up juniors revelling in victory. The lyrics are:

Turn up the radio What do you hear?J-E-T-S give us a cheerWe’re gonna beat themBust themThat’s our custom, Goooooo Jets!

What’s not to love about that? In a predictable underage world of three-cheers-for-everyone and no ladders-or-finals-because blah blah blah it’s-not-about-winning-or-losing blah blah blah, our eight year olds throw themselves into a victory maul and bust out the bust ‘ems.

I’m not saying it’s right. I am saying it’s funny.

It’s that familial connection that has me attending the Yarra Jets Senior Men’s film night at Nova last night, where coach Johnny Negassi and the boys (🎵”J-J-J Johnny and the Jets” 🎵) are applying a balm to a somewhat frayed early season (results are 0-2-2) with some mood lifting ‘Ange & The Boss’.

It isn’t a scheduled Q&A, and so I didn’t think I’d have access to the cinema stage post credits to chat with the team. But when I arrive, the staff at the candy bar who have been slipping me Boysenberry chocolate tops and putting them through the register as ‘broken’ tell me I could have ten minutes after the film. ‘You have to be out by 8.12’ they tell me.

The talk goes well, and I start to think about making a social media video. The ‘bring the whole team to a screening’ marketing angle is one Cam and I have pursued with football clubs, especially those with Greek and Hungarian connections, and Cinema 14 was looking so pretty in purple with every seat filled and so many faces smiling.

An idea crystallysed. I could do the Yarra Jets chant! It’d be energetic, it would send a message to clubland that this was a fun and team-centred film night activity. For weeks I’ve witnessed the social clip king, Cam Fink, at close quarters. What did he always say? Be bold, don’t be embarrassed. If you have to, walk around the supermarket with bananas on your head. Even if you don’t have to, walk around the supermarket with bananas on your head. Nobody cares. I’m all in. This will be my moment to shine.

I start the selfie video and the Jets are cheering.

This is going well.

‘Can you give me a ‘Turn up the radio’! I shout, and then I’m leading them: ‘Turn up the radio what do you hear!’’

Silence.

They don’t do it. They have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m flying solo, enthusiasm waning as realisation dawns. Johnny and the Jets laugh good naturedly and tell me their song is ‘Sweet Caroline’, with all that sugary melodic joy about spring and summer, and reaching out and touching people, touching me, touching you, and not necessarily with a busting slide tackle to the mid shin that’s sometimes called for in the cut and thrust of a Div 4 classic at Clifton Hill in the middle of winter.

We reconvene in the foyer for a longer chat about how we made Ange & The Boss (slowly) and whether we’re about to embark upon another project (maybe, ask Cam). Then we pose for a photo, because the Puskas magic is infectious and this will be the moment Yarra Jets Senior Mens turn their season around.

Their actual song will be ringing across Fairfield Park next week!

Good times never seemed so good.

Good one, Wilson! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Ange & The Boss Sessions

Melbourne

Wednesday 16th April

2.25 Nova

Thursday 17th April

10:50am Nova1:05pm Nova

Friday 18th April

10:15am Nova1:05pm Nova

Saturday 19th April

10:15am Nova6:00pm Nova

Sunday 20th April

10:15am Nova6:00pm Nova

Monday 21st April

10:15am Nova6:00pm Nova

Tuesday 22nd April

10:15am Nova1:05pm Nova6:15pm Thornbury Pic House

Wednesday 23rd April

10:15am Nova12:45pm Nova

Adelaide

Tuesday 15 April

11.30 Palace Nova

Wednesday 16 April

11.30 Palace Nova

Saturday 19 April

4.30 Piccadilly

There are new Speakola podcast episodes with John Safran and Sammy J up.

This weekend we are in Brisbane and Adelaide, and there are Melbourne screenings at Balwyn, Westgarth, Nova, and Thornbury Picture House. Sydney has Saturday and Sunday afternoon screenings at Norton Street Leichardt. Adelaide has our big night at the Picadilly on Saturday, and also daily sessions at Palace Nova Prospect. And Hobart has twice daily sessions at the State Cinema.

All sessions and ticket links are up at angeandtheboss.com

I asked daughter Polly what her favourite Cam produced promo reel for this season was and she said she liked my botched handshake with Daniel Garb at Ritz Randwick.

That’s another thing Cam does well. Spotting a small moment that is quirky and funny, rather than just constantly retelling the bigger story (which is that the Puskas film is funny, nostalgic and life affirming!)

Come and see it this weekend! If you’re in Brisbane, come along in 90 minutes time!

Melbourne

Thursday 27 March

10.55 Nova3.00 Nova7.00 Nova

Saturday 29 March

12.20 Palace Westgarth12.50 Thornbury Pic House3.20 Nova4.10 Palace Balwyn7.00 Nova

Friday 28 March

3.20 Nova7.00 Nova

Sunday 30 March

12.20 Palace Westgarth3.20 Nova4.10 Palace Balwyn6.15 Thornbury Pic House Q&A with directorTony Wilson7.00 Nova

SOLD OUT

Tuesday 1 April

3.20 Nova7.00 Nova

Monday 31 March

3.20 Nova7.00 Nova

Wednesday 2 April

1.00 Thornbury Pic House3.20 Nova7.00 Nova

Wednesday 9 April

6.45 NovaQ&A with Tony Wilson

Friday 4 April

6.15 Thornbury Pic House

Sunday 6 April

4.45 Thornbury Pic House Q&A with Tony Wilson

Sydney

Saturday 29 March

1.15 Palace Norton St

Sunday 30 March

1.30 Palace Norton St

Hobart

Monday 24 March - Wednesday 2 April

1:30pm State Cinema3:45pm State Cinema6:00pm State Cinema

Brisbane

Thursday 27 March

6.30 The Barracks Q&A pre-film with Tony Wilson & Cam Fink

6.30 Five Star New Farm Q&A with Tony Wilson & Cam Fink plus 1991 Hellas star Daniel Wright and Socceroos legend John Kosmina.

Adelaide

Wednesday 26 March - Wed 2 April

12.45 Palace Prospect daily

Sun 30 Mar: 11:00, 17:30

Saturday 29 March

7.00 Picadilly,North Adelaide Q&A with Tony Wilson & Cam Fink

Mildura

Saturday 29 March

2.00 Wallis Cinema

New Zealand - Wellington

Thursday 3 April

6:00pm Roxy Cinema, Miramar, Wellington Q&A with director Cam Fink

I eventually found a person, and when I returned my co director Cam was at the front of the cinema, getting laughs from the crowd because he could exactly quote what the interviewees in the Grand Final section were saying. Well played Cam. We replayed the last twenty minutes at the end of the Q&A, but I was so impressed by his performance in a crisis.

We are the 28th most successful film in the country and I’ve never been prouder to come in 28th. Self directed, produced, funded, distributed, publicised — it’s like we’re a third division club who have snuck into the main draw of the FA Cup. And it’s happened because the film is beautiful, it absolutely deserves to be in the main draw as this review in The Australian evidences. We had another wonderful week of laughs and tears and messages from audience members explaining what this film meant to them.

The film now goes into it’s second week. We have anther blockbuster set of Q&As at Hobart tonight (Thurs 20th), Nova tomorrow (Fri 21st with guest Alan Davidson), Cameo and Thornbury Saturday, Geelong and Thornbury Sunday, Thornbury Tuesday and then Brisbane (Thurs 27th, Danny Wright and John Kosmina at the Five Star New Farm), and the Picadilly in Adelaide on the 29th. Can we hang onto 28th place? It’s unlikely, but we do feel a groundswell of word of mouth. Tell friends to go. All sessions are up at angeandtheboss.com.

It’s also worth mentioning that there are non Q&A sessions in every state. They are mainly through the Palace independent cinema network, but again, they are all up on our website. We were the fourth most popular film at the Nova last week, and we’ve been programmed three sessions a day for this week two.

I’ll list them below.

Thanks for all your help and encouragement. It’s been a long journey, and I’ve felt a lot of love this week. Thanks also to Speakola and Good one, Wilson readers who are being patient with a film barrage in this important period.

Best wishes

Tony

Melbourne

Thursday 20 March

10.55 Nova3.00 Nova7.00 Nova

Friday 21 March

10.55 Nova3.00 Nova6.40 Nova Q&A with Tony Wilson & Cam Fink and Socceroos legend and 1991 GF player Alan Davidson

Saturday 22 March

10.55 Nova12.50 Brighton Church St 3.00 Cameo Belgrave Q&A with Tony Wilson & Cam Fink3.00 Nova3.30 Palace Westgarth4.15 Palace Pentridge5.00 Palace Balwyn6.00 Thornbury Pic House Q&A with Tony Wilson & Cam Fink7.00 Nova

SOLD OUT

Sunday 23 March

10.55 Nova12.00 Brighton Church St 2.20 Palace Balwyn3.00 Nova3.30 Palace Westgarth4.00 Palace Pentridge5.50 Thornbury Pic House Q&A with directors Tony Wilson & Cam Fink, with DAVID BRIDIE7.00 Nova

SOLD OUT

Monday 24 March

10.55 Nova3.00 Nova7.00 Nova

Tuesday 25 March

10.55 Nova3.00 Nova6.10 Thornbury Pic House Q&A with directors Tony Wilson & Cam Fink7.00 Nova8.20 Thornbury Pic House Q&A with Tony Wilson & Cam Fink

SOLD OUT

Wednesday 26 March

10.55 Nova3.00 Nova7.00 Nova

Thursday 27 March

10.55 Nova3.00 Nova7.00 Nova

Sunday 30 March

10.55 Nova3.00 Nova5.30 Thornbury Pic House Q&A with directorsTony Wilson & Cam Fink7.00 Nova

SOLD OUT

Sunday 6 April

4.45 Thornbury Pic House Q&A with Tony Wilson

Hobart

Thursday 20 March

1:30pm State Cinema

3:45pm State Cinema

6:00pm State Cinema Q&A with PETER GEE and director Cam Fink

Canberra

Thursday 20 March

11.00 Palace Electric

Friday 21 March

11.00 Palace Electric

Saturday 22 March

10.00 Palace Electric

Sunday 23 March

10.00 Palace Electric

Tuesday 25 March

11.00 Palace Electric

Wednesday 26 March

11.00 Palace Electric

Sydney

Saturday 22 March

3.00 Norton Street

Sunday 23 March

3.00 Norton Street

Geelong

Sunday 23 March

1.00 The Pivotonian Q&A with STEVE HORVAT (96 NSL appearances, 32 Socceroos caps), and directors Tony Wilson & Cam Fink

SOLD OUT

Tuesday 25 March

7.15 The Pivotonian

Perth

Thursday 20 March

11.00 Palace Raine Square1.30 Palace Raine Square

Friday 21 March

11.20 Palace Raine Square1.50 Palace Raine Square

Saturday 22 March

10.45 Palace Raine Square

Sunday 23 March

10.15 Palace Raine Square5.30 Palace Raine Square

Monday 24 March

11.00 Palace Raine Square1.30 Palace Raine Square

Tuesday 25 March

11.00 Palace Raine Square1.30 Palace Raine Square

Wednesday 26 March

10.15 Palace Raine Square1.00 Palace Raine Square

Brisbane

Thursday 27 March

6.30 The Barracks Q&A pre-film with Tony Wilson & Cam Fink

6.30 Five Star New Farm Q&A with Tony Wilson & Cam Fink plus 1991 Hellas star Daniel Wright and Socceroos legend John Kosmina.

Adelaide

Thursday 20 March

3.00 Palace Prospect

Friday 21 March

3.00 Palace Prospect

Saturday 22 March

3.00 Palace Prospect

Sunday 23 March

12.45 Palace Prospect

Monday 24 March

3.00 Palace Prospect

Tuesday 25 March

3.00 Palace Prospect

Wednesday 26 March

3.00 Palace Prospect

Saturday 29 March

7.00 Picadilly,North Adelaide Q&A with Tony Wilson & Cam Fink

Mildura

Saturday 29 March

TBC Wallis Cinema

New Zealand - Wellington

Thursday 3 April

6:00pm Roxy Cinema, Miramar, Wellington Q&A with director Cam Fink

One of my most cherished moments of this film release experience came after the film’s premiere at the Greek Film Festival last year. I was having a post screening drink with Cam and some friends, and my then seventeen year old daughter Polly sent me a late night text message:

But the funnier review came from my 15 year old son, Harry, the next day, who said, ‘well I gave you a review too, Dad, but I did mine publicly’.

Harry is a bit of a film buff, and is a regular on the Letterboxd site. He said ‘good documentary, I really liked it’ and then gave me THREE AND A HALF STARS! I said ‘Harry, couldn’t you have just just lied and given it five stars, even if you thought it was a three and a half star film! I’m your dad!’ He was defensive, and said that the integrity of his Letterboxd account had to be maintained, and that five stars was for movies like Shaun of the Dead and The Fall. Eventually Harry buckled and bumped us up to four and a half stars.

Anyway, this week we got some reviews in the mainstream press. The Herald Sun gave us four stars, and called it ‘an endearing or lively affair’.

Stephen Romei of the The Australian was also half a star more enthusiastic than pre intervention Harry.

Beautiful game doco a sheer delight

Ange & The Boss: Puskas in Australia (PG)77 minutesIn cinemas (screening details: angeandtheboss.com)⭐⭐⭐⭐

The charming, heartwarming, inspirational documentary Ange & The Boss is about a brief moment when a sports star shoots into Australia’s orbit and does something that is simple, beautiful and unforgettable.

The Boss is Hungarian football legend Ferenc Puskas (1927-2006), widely considered one of the greats of the game, comparable with Brazil’s Pele and Argentina’s Maradona.

The moment is him landing in Victoria in the late 1980s to coach the South Melbourne Hellas club in the National Soccer League. “It was out of the blue, like a miracle,’’ remembers former club president George Vasilopoulos.

What follows is one of the little-told stories of Australian sport.

The Boss nickname comes from the black Hugo Boss sweatshirt Puskas wears to training. No one pretends the size is anything but extra large, as he is more well-rounded than in his 1950s playing days. “He was literally larger than life,’’ notes former player Pete “Gus” Tsolakis.

His skill level, though, remains on the ball. This film, written and directed by an Australian forward line – journalist Tony Wilson, filmmaker Cam Fink, who is also the cinematographer, and barrister Rob Heath – makes excellent use of archival footage.

The shots of the overweight, sixty-something Puskas playing in Australian friendly matches is a sight to behold. He nails every pass. And when he scores, which he of course does, the opposition players race over to shake his hand. It’s a perfect snapshot of the awe in which he is held.

Ange is one of Puskas’s charges at South Melbourne Hellas: Ange Postecoglou, who would go on to be a Socceroo, as a player then as coach, and who has managed the English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur since 2023.

Ange and The Boss become close, not least as the defender drives the non-driving coach around in his Datsun 200B. Wait for the story he tells about having to change a flat tyre with The Boss on board.

This documentary is about far more than sport. It explores the Australian migrant experience. Greek-born Ange speaks lovingly of the reasons his father decided to move the family to Australia.

There are two “homes” in this strange land: the church and the Greek football club. Ange’s early interest in the game is a bridge to his hardworking father. And it is wonderful to see the footage of male fans at the match, still in the suits and ties they wore to church in the morning.

The filmmakers talk to the players Puskas coached, several of whom became Socceroos. They also speak to the friends Puskas and his wife Erzsebet made during their time in ­Australia.

The coach speaks five languages but English is not one of them, which, as Ange recalls, means instructions are sometimes lost in translation. What is clear, however, is that The Boss put “the boys” first and the scoreboard second. He was Ted Lasso before Ted Lasso.

“I go to the boys first and last. That is my job,’’ he says in an archival interview. The players loved him for it, with one describing him as “the Santa Claus of football’’.

Strategically, he was all-attack, which is no surprise as he scored 84 goals in 85 international matches for Hungary. “Shoot the ball, boys. Ball alone can not make goal.’’

He does have the scoreboard in mind when he tells Kimon Taliadoros that his left foot is “only for standing”. The moment when Taliadoros ignores The Boss and takes a long-range shot with his left boot is another wonderful, and humorous, dive into the visual archives.

The sporting climax is the 1991 NSL grand final between South Melbourne Hellas, with Ange as team captain, and Melbourne Croatia. I will not spoil it for viewers who don’t know the result, but I’ll note it involves what the referee, interviewed for this film, describes as “the strangest penalty shootout I have been involved in”.

You don’t have to know anything about football to enjoy Ange & The Boss. As Tsolakis remarks at the start, “We all knew the footballer but we didn’t know the man.” From that point we are on a marvellous adventure during which we come to know the man who lived for, but not only for, the beautiful game.

All tickets and session times angeandtheboss.com

Presumably this is Harry giving his three and a half star thoughts live on camera! And then all our weekend sessions below:

Melbourne

Saturday 15 March

11.30 Brighton Church St 12.00 Nova1.30 Pennylane1.30 Westgarth1.40 Balwyn2.30 Sun Theatre2.30 Pentridge3.00 Classic Q&A 6.00 Nova6.15 Pentridge

Sunday 16 March

11.30 Brighton Church St 1.00 Nova1.30 Pennylane1.40 Balwyn3.00 Westgarth Q&A (pre) 3.00 Lido Q&A (post)4.30 Sun Theatre9.00 Nova

Monday 17 March

12.45 Brighton Church St 12.50 Nova6.50 Nova

Saturday 22 March

3.00 Cameo Belgrave Q&A

6.00 Thornbury Picture House Q&A

Tuesday 18 March

12.45 Brighton Church St12.50 Nova7.15 Nova

Sunday 23 March

5.50 Thornbury Picture House Q&A

Wednesday 19 March

10.30 Nova12.45 Brighton Church St8.40 Nova

Tuesday 25 March

6.10 Thornbury Picture House Q&A

Friday 21 March

6.40 Nova Q&A

Sunday 30 March

5.30 Thornbury Picture House Q&A

Regional Victoria

Geelong

Sunday 23 March

1.00 The Pivotonian Q&A

Mildura

Saturday 29 March

TBC Wallis Cinema

Sydney

Saturday 15 March

1:00 Norton Street

Sunday 16 March

1.45 Norton Street

Monday 17 March

6.30 Norton St Q&A (pre) SELLING FAST

7.00 Ritz Randwick Q&A post film

Brisbane

Saturday 15 March

1.40 James Street

Sunday 16 March

2.20 James Street

Thursday 27 March

6.30 The Barracks Q&A pre film

6.30 Five Star New Farm Q&A post film

Adelaide

Saturday 15 March

4.00 Nova Prospect

Sunday 16 March

3.00 Nova Prospect

Saturday 29 March

7.00 Picadilly,North Adelaide Q&A

Perth

Saturday 15 March

2.00 Raine Square

Sunday 16 March

2.00 Raine Square

Canberra

Saturday 15 March

1.10 Electric Cinema

Sunday 16 March

1.20 Electric Cinema

Hobart

Thursday 20 March

1.10 State Cinema Q&A

I met Max Rushden through our mutual friend, Francis Leach (who is MCing our Nova screenings this coming Friday). We all shared a drink in Richmond many years ago because Max was out here spending time with his girlfriend Jaime’s family. Eventually Jaime became ‘Mrs Rushden’, who provides amusingly distracted and remarkably accurate football tips for Max and his social media audience at all major tournaments, and has coaxed him here permanently to Australia. One trick Max has when it comes to goading his mainly British audience is to post pictures of, say, the Sydney Opera House on a perfect blue skied day with a comment like ‘lousy day as always here in Dover’. He also has the greatest pub dance on the internet.

As the 23,000th most important person in his life, I encouraged him to come and see ‘Ange & The Boss’, which he obligingly did. And then he doubly obligingly allowed himself to be filmed saying this:

His Guardian Football Weekly (with co-host Barry Glendinning) is absolutely huge — it has tens of thousands of listeners in Australia and hundreds of thousands worldwide. Cam and I have both received emails from across the world as a result of Max’s kind words. And yes we are looking for UK distribution!

We’ve also had the honour this week of being on The Final World podcast, which is a favourite of Cam’s and mine. Cam’s actually done some Ashes tour filming for Geoff Lemon and Adam Collins.

Tomorrow is the day! We have our season opener at Palace Pentridge in Coburg, which then sets us up for a big Q&A weekend across Melbourne and Sydney. But the cinemas have now (finally) announced timings for all screenings in all capital cities (edit: we are coming to Hobart on 20th March). They’re up in day order on our website angeandtheboss.com and the links are live there.

Hope to see you out there!

Best wishes

Tony

They are also listed below:

Melbourne

Thursday 13 March

12.45 Brighton Church St12.50 Nova6.30 Pentridge Q&A 6.50 Nova

Friday 14 March

12.45 Brighton Church St12.50 Nova2.40 Nova6.30 Sun Theatre6.30 Nova Q&A7.00 Nova Q&A

Saturday 15 March

11.30 Brighton Church St 12.00 Nova1.30 Pennylane1.30 Westgarth1.40 Balwyn2.30 Sun Theatre2.30 Pentridge3.00 Classic Q&A 6.00 Nova6.15 Pentridge

Sunday 16 March

11.30 Brighton Church St 1.00 Nova1.30 Pennylane1.40 Balwyn3.00 Westgarth Q&A (pre) 3.00 Lido Q&A (post)4.30 Sun Theatre9.00 Nova

Monday 17 March

12.45 Brighton Church St 12.50 Nova6.50 Nova

Saturday 22 March

3.00 Cameo Belgrave Q&A

6.00 Thornbury Picture House Q&A

Tuesday 18 March

12.45 Brighton Church St12.50 Nova7.15 Nova

Sunday 23 March

5.50 Thornbury Picture House Q&A

Wednesday 19 March

10.30 Nova12.45 Brighton Church St8.40 Nova

Tuesday 25 March

6.10 Thornbury Picture House Q&A

Friday 21 March

6.40 Nova Q&A

Sunday 30 March

5.30 Thornbury Picture House Q&A

Sydney

Saturday 15 March

1:00 Norton Street

Sunday 16 March

1.45 Norton Street

Monday 17 March

6.30 Norton St Q&A (pre) SELLING FAST

7.00 Ritz Randwick Q&A post film

Brisbane

Saturday 15 March

1.40 James Street

Sunday 16 March

2.20 James Street

Thursday 27 March

6.30 The Barracks Q&A pre film

6.30 Five Star New Farm Q&A post film

Adelaide

Saturday 15 March

4.00 Nova Prospect

Sunday 16 March

3.00 Nova Prospect

Saturday 29 March

7.00 Picadilly,North Adelaide Q&A

Perth

Saturday 15 March

2.00 Raine Square

Sunday 16 March

2.00 Raine Square

Canberra

Saturday 15 March

1.10 Electric Cinema

Sunday 16 March

1.20 Electric Cinema

MelbourneThurs 13/3 - Palace Pentridge Coburg, 6.30pm, guests Gus Tsolakis and Peter Khalil (3/4 sold)Fri 14/3 - Nova Carlton, 6.30pm, guests Paul Trimboli and Francis Leach (first screening sold out, second screening 50 seats left)Fri 14, Sat 15 & Sun 16/3 - Sun Theatre, Yarraville Sat 15 & Sun 16/3 - Palace Westgarth, Brighton Church St, Pennylane, Balwyn (check Palace site - times and tickets not released yet) Sat 15/3 - Classic Elsternwick, 3pm, co-director Rob Heath joins us;Sun 16/3 - Palace Westgarth, 3pm, guest Kimon Taliadoris (pre film) (less than 50 seats) Sun 16/3 - Lido Hawthorn, 3pm, guest Kimon Taliadoris and Libbi Gorr;Sat 22/3 - Cameo Belgrave, 3pm, Hungarian community specialSat 22, Sun 23, Tues 25/3 & Sun 30/3 - Thornbury Picture House, 6pm, (Sunday 23rd and Tuesday 25th sold out)

GeelongSun 22/3 - The Pivotonian, 1pm, with guest Steve Horvat

SydneySat 15 & 16/3 - Norton Street, Leichardt (times and tickets TBA)Mon 17/3 - Norton Street Leichardt, 6.30pm (film maker introduction to film)Mon 17/3 - Ritz Randwick, 7pm, guest Daniel Garb (Q&A post film)

BrisbaneSat 15 & 16/3 - Palace James St (times and tickets TBA) Thurs 27/3 - Palace Barracks, 6.30, (film maker introduction to film)Thurs 27/3 - Five Star cinema, New Farm, 6.30pm (guest Daniel Wright)

AdelaideSat 15 &16/3 - Palace Nova Prospect (times and tickets TBA) Sat 29/3 - The Picadilly North Adelaide, 7pm, guest John Thompson-Mills

Perth Sat 15 & 16/3 - Palace Raine Square (times and tickets TBA)

CanberraSat 15 & 16/3 - Palace Electric Cinema (times and tickets TBA)

Six days to go! Ash Maikousis is a regular MC at South Melbourne FC events, and she’s introduced us a few times now. She was also a Μεγαλοπρεπής (magnificent!) post screening interviewee and she had this exchange with her dad, SMFC president Nick:

Nick: This is the second time I've watched the movie and I cried both times.

Ash: And that would be twice in 30 years. I've seen him cry and it's at this film.

It's a beautiful story about migrants coming over from another country and finding their home at South Melbourne, at soccer in general. And I just think it brings up so many emotions for people watching it. It reminds you of your own family coming over here.

All film information at angeandtheboss.com

Forgive us a bit of a barrage of Ange & The Boss stuff as we near the line. Cam and I have been at it for over seven years, and this is THE week. Please glance away if it’s not really your thing. I’ll be back with parenting, footy, disability stuff, music, politics and Melbourne life shortly!

Here is my excellent chat with Gerard Whateley on SEN on Tuesday. I did a Speakola segment for him on sports speeches during lockdown. It was great to catch up.

Thanks,

Tony

Our Ange & The Boss film is more Hungarian and Greek than it is Italian, but it’s partly the story of post war immigration to Australia, and the sporting organizations migrants established to strengthen community. We’ve had a lot of Italians come out and say, ‘when I was seeing those Greeks walking down the gangplank at Station pier, I felt like I was seeing my parents’.

Cam and I met Tony Tardio when we were speaking to Tony Moclair on 3AW last week, and Tony said I could come on his show to talk to Italians. He asked me if I’d be more comfortable doing the interview in Italian or English, and as a Year 12 Latin student at Camberwell Grammar, I of course answered, ‘etiam ego loquor anglicus’.

We ended up plumping for English, which was a big help to me. It was such a fun interview. At some point we were playing the Godfather outro music and I was telling Tony about dressing up as the blonde bombshell applying sunscreen at the beginning of The White Lotus.

We are trying to drag specific ethnic communities to Ange & The Boss. I’m going to run a few ads on Greek radio 3XY, as well as pitch to SBS radio and their Greek and Hungarian shows.

Ange himself has kept a distant eye on our film — I’m unsure if he’s seen it yet … he does seem to be quite busy — but he did record some lovely Greek langauge snippets for us at the time of shooting about what Hellas means to him, and Ferenc Puskas too.

Our national cinema season for Ange & The Boss begins March 13th at Palace Pentridge in Coburg. The following night 14th March at the Nova is almost sold out, with Francis Leach and Paul Trimboli as special guests. And then over the weekend, it’s on around Australia! Some of the Palace sessions aren’t live yet, (WA, SA, Qld) but all the Q & A sessoons are. Check our website for sessions and tickets

We’re distributing and publicising the film ourselves. Plesae pass on the word to friends and family, and give us a shot at a decent national run.

We head to Hungary in April! Horray.

Best wishes

Tony

Here is seat map at the Nova for the 14th March. Nearly sold out, three weeks before screening!

Here is a tile to pop on social media or send to friends!

The lightness and the fun of that time. The going out. The sleeping in. The sense of doors opening and roads firing off in so many directions, of being free, of being an adult, of not feeling like one or knowing if I’d ever feel like one, but actually being an adult, who’d be called ‘a man aged 18’ if I ever did anything that made the news, of having a freshly minted drivers license, ready to take off down one or some of those roads. That sense of life about to start.

Our daughter Polly is in her own sun dappled grove right now, radiant with end of school relief; beautiful and funny because she’s always beautiful and funny. She wanted to have her 18th birthday at Barwon Heads — she’s had her last ten birthdays here in the run up to the long weekend. My wife Tamsin’s special place has become her special place too.

I thought that being the actual 18th birthday, we might be sending her off to the allure of Fluffy Ducks at the Barwon Heads Hotel (does anyone drink Fluffy Ducks anymore? another golden corner of 1990 memory 😊) but Polly’s day was a rolling cavalcade of activity and indulgence — salmon on sourdough breakfast, present opening attended by all, an iced chocolate on Main Street, body surfing at the 13th Beach, dog walking at Ocean Grove, a beach tent party with donuts and paddle boarding at the heads, and jetty jumping as the tide swept in and the sun sank low.

Youngest daughter Alice completed her first jetty jump. I went from reluctant jumper to enthusiastic back flipper, which pretty much sums up the glory of Polly Marie-Louise Wilson. She is a ball of positivity, a person who lifts people’s moods, who talks to everyone and makes everything better, especially me.

I thought after the beach she and her best friend Zoe Hargreaves (drafted to Richmond with pick 20 in December, a story for another post) might flex their newly legal IDs and go across the road to the Barwon Heads Hotel. But given I’d had a few drinks, and the beach wheelchair was hard to fit in the van, I walked it back to the Airbnb while recently licensed Zoe drove soon to be licensed Polly and her three Wilson siblings and two Brooks cousins slowly around Barwon Heads, pumping tunes and whooping with the glory of life. Two eighteens, a fifteen, a thirteen in a wheelchair, a nine, an eight and a seven. Our Green Party bus’s finest and youngest hour. They cheered themselves into the house when they finally arrived, having apparently cruised half the streets in Barwon Heads.

We finished the day with a conga line to Voulez-Vous by ABBA, and can I say that if you’re not the keenest conga-liner, and I would put myself in that category, Voulez-Vous has an astonishingly long fade out. It was a strikingly wholesome 18th birthday, now that I’m seeing it set down in words. It’s not the whole story, there are adjacent birthday plans in the works that involve hundreds of eighteen year olds and threaten the very foundations of our house, but it’s lovely that she can do these sorts of days too — a day that filled the hearts of family aged seven to eighty.

Happy birthday, Polly. I love you so much! You are better at back flips than me. I can’t wait to see what twists lie in store, and by that I mean literal twists you might add to your pier jumping. Now if only I had a photo that was a cheap metaphor for you stepping into the next phase of life ….

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Ange & The Boss screenings update:

We are going to have a cinema season from 14th March. Melbourne, Geelong and Adelaide confirmed so far. These are the Q&A sessions::

14/3 Nova, Carlton 6.30pm (with Francis Leach and Paul Trimboli and us)

15/3 Classic, Brighton 3pm (guests TBC)

16/3 Lido, Hawthorn 3pm (with Libbi Gorr & us)

22/3 Cameo, Belgrave 3pm (guests TBC)

23/3 Pivotonian, Geelong (time & guests TBC)

23/3 Thornbury 5.30pm ((cam and me)

29/3 Piccadilly (Adelaide) evening session

Please like ❤️ and comment on posts to give them a push along! My dad also turned 80 this week. Happy birthday Dad! I’ll write a tribute for him in the next days.

It’s my sometimes reticent 15 year old son Harry being bailed up by the video promo guy we hired to enthuse about his Dad’s film. Harry didn’t make the first cut of the video above, he’ll be pleased to know.

I never thought I’d contribute an ‘excited people raving outside cinema’ piece to the world, but we’ve done it! All we really had to do was surf the energy at any of our sold out screenings piece some lovely reviews together.

We have two encore screenings as part of the Greek Film Festival. They could show the film a maximum of eight times, and they are doing just that:

Sessions times are:

Sydney - Norton Street cinema, Leichardt, Sunday 3rd November, 4pm Tickets

Melbourne - Como Cinema, South Yarra, Sunday 10th November, 7pm Tickets (fewer than 100 left)

We’ve had so many good reviews, like this one in Neos Kosmos, or this one on letterboxd.

Review by nickaa2 ★★★★½

There are three possibilities in the football: can be the winning; can be the losing; or can make it the draw – Ferenc Puskás

As a Greek-Australian football fan from Melbourne I might be a little biased, but I absolutely fell in love with the story of how one of the greatest footballers of all time came to call Middle Park home. 

Some of the anecdotes are all time, in the humour they add to the story and in evidencing how far ahead of his time Puskás was both in the football he played and his style of man management. Loved this from Kimon Taliadoris in the post-film Q&A: “He was most interested in making each individual feel positive about themselves and in the football they played, playing it the beautiful way.”

Fingers crossed this film can get the funding it needs so that this wonderful story can be more well known, both across Australia and the footballing world. 

[Puskás and Ange] serve to celebrate football as managers - they make the game the hero, and not themselves – Miki Petersen

When he says, ‘get the funding it needs’, we have long been chasing the funds required for a commercial release ($30,000 more for Australia wide, $80,000 more for worldwide). At the moment we have archive license clearances for film festivals only.

But people are loving it! It’s going to come out widely, hopefully world-widely.

And my favourite review so far? This lovely one that bipped into my phone as we had some drinks at the Railway Hotel, after the Astor screeening.

Sessions times are:

Sydney - Norton Street cinema, Leichardt, Sunday 3rd November, 4pm Tickets

Melbourne - Como Cinema, South Yarra, Sunday 10th November, 7pm Tickets (fewer than 100 left)

Good one, Wilson! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

It really is such a fun and funny night. Five stellar comics will be bringing the house down, and last year we raised over $10,000.

Ticket sales are in front of where we were in 2023.

You can rell from the above video that my son, Jack, is VERY keen on comedy, and especially keen on Nath Valvo. We actually bootlegged his show at the comedy festival, a secret low res phone recording for Jack’s ears only, and he’s listened to it on repeat for five months. He also loves Lizzy Hoo (who you can follow on Substack at Hoo've Got Mail ) and has watched her special on Prime Video multiple times. Lizzy is the sister of an NHS staff member, so we had an inside run to booking one of Australia’s best comedians — a comedy festival favourite who hosted the Gala this year.

The other comedians on the bill are the brilliant Sashi Perera, the only Australian comedian featured as ‘One to Watch’ at the UK 2021 Funny Women Awards, Have You Been Paying Attention regular Alex Ward and Janty Blair who won the Deadly Funny Grand Final 2022.

All funds raised will go to the Northcote High School Thrive fund.

Seating is either at tables of 10 or unreserved concert style seating available on the night.

The Theatre will have a limited menu from The Thornbury Taphouse available to order at the bar. All drinks must be bought onsite at The Thornbury Theatre. Drinks at bar prices.

Hope to see you there! Come and say hello. I’ll the one standing next to a 13 year old in a wheelchair wearing a fake moustache.

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Sam herself hadn’t seen the market, because she’d visited TeamLab on a Wednesday when the market was closed. So I didn’t have a first hand account to work with. But deep in the recesses of my media saturated mind, I had an image of huge sumo sized Japanese men hauling tuna onto their shoulders, and perhaps lopping the odd fish head off with a samurai sword before the bloodied carcasses were loaded into the arms of the restauranteurs of Tokyo, while everyone shouted prices and expletives and prayers to the gods of overfishing.

‘Harry, do you want to go to the best fish market in the world?’ I asked him. “Before TeamLab? But we’d have to get up early.’

‘Not really’ he said. ‘I don’t love markets. I think I want to sleep in.’

I told him he was really missing out. I told him about the yelling and the blood and the tunas as big as small cars. I told him about the fat men drenched in fish guts and how this was a market he’d never forget. I set three alarms, one in the sixes and two in the sevens.

As we caught early trains the next morning, Google told us that the fish market near Team Labs was the Tsukiji Fish Market, also known as the Outer Fish Market. Had I done a little bit more research, I’d have realised that Tsukiji has about as much wholesale fish action going on as the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne. It has stalls, that’s the long and the short of it. Some very nice stalls, and we had some lovely sashimi, but I probably would have eased up on that 6.45am alarm for the fourteen year old if I’d known what we were in for.

‘Any big fish?’ I asked one stall holder, as we steered through the retail labyrinth. Then we expanded into a bit of Google Translate led chat about how the fish come into Tokyo.

‘Ten minute taxi’ she told me. I’ve since worked out that she meant the Toyosu Market and tuna auction, the new location for the old Inner Fish market at Tsukiji, which a handful of lucky tourists can watch at 5.45 each morning. Indeed the Viator tour for that one meets at 5am, and it’s basically sitting in a viewing gallery watching business people walk clinically around the carcasses of big fish. No sumo sized men cutting off fish heads with samurai swords. No yelling. No blood. And it would have meant a 3.30am alarm.

Luckily,. Harry was happy being in a market with ‘just food’. I explained that these errors will happen when travelling, because people do make mistakes.

Just like this Tsukiji stall holder who spelled Beef with an upside down F.

Not that I’m throwing shade. My Japanese is not coming along.

Good one, Wilson! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I’ve written more than 20 books, but some of them can now be acquired at higher author discounts, so they are the available titles for this offer.

If you’re a current paid subscriber, or if you become a paid subscriber with the special offer above, email me your physical address and your book choice and I’ll post over the next week. If you want the book signed to someone, let me know in the email.

The books you can choose from for your selection are:

* My satirical sports /media novels for adults, Players and Making News;

* Picture book Harry Highpants, illustrated by Tom Jellett (Bologna White Raven selection)

* Middle grade sports novel, The Selwood Boys: The Miracle Goal

You can also reply to this email.

To keep postage costs down, I’ll limit it to one book each.

If you want to purchase any of books, separate to this offer, they are available on my author page. When you subscribe to either this newsletter, or Speakola newsletter, you get a 20% off discount code for all my books contained in the welcome email.

The Wilson artwork I held up in the video above was made by Paul McGrath. His business is French Cuts and he works with recycled leather. The piece he gave to me is made from old baseballs, hecnce the Wilson flavour. He also made a lovely Victor Trumper piece out of cricket ball leather which Gideon Haigh profiled on Cricket et al

In terms of popular posts over the two years, most popular is still Jack rolling through the Hawthorn banner in June 2022, an eleventh birthday present from his grandpa. A sneaky gem that I don’t think has been enjoyed by enough people is former Carlton coach David Parkin talking about stealing Bruce Doull’s jumper on a whim in the 80s, and then attempting to return it to Bruce, twenty five years later.

To all readers of this newsletter, thanks for encouragement and support over two years.

Best wishes

Tony

Good one, Wilson! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Two year poll to help with publishing decisions:

The speeches were all exellent, but Shane Crawford’s introduction for present day coach, Mitchell, was an absolute standout. Funny, fluent, and steeped in lovely little anecdotal insights. It did everything a Hall of Fame induction speech wants to do.

This is the story of a ‘Dad’s day’ at Park Orchards kinder in the late 80s. Paul Salmon found himself playing the Big Bad Wolf in the 3 Little Pigs. Kevin Sheedy, his legendary coach was cast as Little Piggy #2.

I conducted this interview while doing research for my ‘Yabby’ biography, which has been delayed while I finish a sports documentary, but will be finished this year. To receive updates, sign up for the newsletter.

Thanks to the 17 new paid subscribers in 2024: ⭐Paul ‘Beepster’ ⭐ Belinda Burke ⭐Chris Deakin ⭐ Caroline Molesworth (my mother in law! thanks Caroline) ⭐ Rob Paterson ⭐ Daniel O’Regan ⭐ Fran McCabe ⭐ Libby Chow ⭐ Wally Kempton ⭐Mick Duyvestyn ⭐ HCM HMould ⭐ David Latham ⭐ Rachel de Costa ⭐ Cromestyle1 ⭐ beekay9716 ⭐ Toby Hutton ⭐ Robyn Archer

There are a lot of Hawks Insiders people who receive this Substack, and tbh we prefer Salmon to appear like this:

Paul Salmon:

So yeah, as fate would have it, Sheeds has a beautiful daughter named Jessica, the same age as my daughter, Leah. He lives in Park Orchards, I lived in Donvale, and we both sent our daughters to kindergarten in Park Orchards, at the Park Orchards kindergarten.

So I'm about, what am I? … 25 at the time, still a bit spooked by Kevin to be honest. And we played Richmond on a Saturday and on the Sunday it was the annual Father’s or Dad's Day at kindergarten. And it was a bit surreal for me, because rocking up to kindergarten with my daughter, Leah, and getting an insight to what she does on a day-to-day basis — it's meant to be a good day. It's always a great day.

And then Sheeds rocks up, and here's my coach, and again, the relationship isn't like warm and fuzzy. It's like, he's my coach, I'm his player.

And he said, 'Big fella, how are you?' And I said, 'Going alright, Kev. It was a solid win yesterday…’

We beat Richmond the day before, so it was a good result on the Saturday. And I'd done, okay. And so it was all good.

And the whistle blows, and the kindergarten teacher calls us inside, and we all sit around with our daughters in our laps, and the teacher goes, 'Well, what we're going to do today is we're going to experience what your kids experience at kindergarten. So you'll see that there are stations around the perimeter of the classroom. So your child will take you to a station and they'll show you what to do, and how to do it.’

So my daughter, Leah knows I love building blocks. So she took me to the building blocks, and we started building this amazing tower with our building blocks. I'm looking over the other side of the kindergarten room, and I see Sheeds in a smock, and he's fingerpainting with Jessica. And this is like, if only my teammates could see me now! This is fantastic. And he's fingerpainting —he's taking it really seriously. I think he was only — he's just drawing a picture of a tree. I mean, seriously!

And then the whistle blows. We change stations, I go to a jigsaw puzzle. He goes to the plaster of Paris. He keeps his smock on. Jessica and him are having a great time. The whistle goes for a third time, and the teacher says, 'We're going to go downstairs and play a game.’

So we all rush downstairs, we sit on the beanbags, we've got our kids in our laps, and she goes, 'We're going to play the game of the Big Bad Wolf.’

So this is the crescendo, this is what we've all been waiting for. And there's about twenty-five dads in the room with their kids on their laps. And there's three chairs up the front. And each of them have a seat, of course, with a gap between the back rest and the seat. And they're turned around facing the opposite way.

And the teacher says, 'We're going to play the game of The Big Bad Wolf —you know, The Three Little Pigs. We need some volunteers and we need a first little pig?’

And all the kids put their hands up and she chose little Billy. Little Billy got up to go to the House of Straw, behind a chair, and puts his head between the backrest and the seat —looks fantastic!

'We're going to need one of the dads to play the second little pig.'

And none of the dads wanted a bar of it, they're looking around. And Sheeds ended up volunteering, God bless him, and he swaggered up to the second chair, the House of Sticks, and he put his head between the backrest and the seat. And when you isolate Kevin's head, it's not a pretty sight on a Sunday morning, I'll be honest.

And then she got another volunteer for the House of Bricks. And little Sally got the gig for the House of Bricks.

Now she needed a Big Bad Wolf.

And I swear, Tony, none of the dads were engaging. No one wanted to be the Big Bad Wolf. And I made the critical mistake of catching Kevin's eye, and he's still got his head between that — it's a very visual story — because he's still got his head planted between the backrest and the seat on this chair. And he looks at me like … it's that three quarter time, pull-your-finger out kind of face I used to get a lot. And so I reluctantly said to the teacher, I put my hand up, I said, 'I'll be the Big Bad Wolf.’

And she goes, 'Do you know the words Paul?’ I said, 'I'll do my best. I think I'm familiar with it.'

So I went to the first, I went to the House of Straw, and I said, 'Little piggy, little piggy, let me in!' And little Billy said, 'Not by the hair, of my chinny chinny chin!' and I'm thinking to myself, this is going ok. And I said, 'Well, little Billy, I'll have to huff and puff and blow your house in!' And little Billy just gets up and he scampers about two metres away where Kevin's sitting and jumps on his back.

And the dads seemed to be getting into it, so I kind of knocked the chair over, just put the House of Straw out of business.

And I go to the House of Sticks, and there's Kevin looking up at me. He's had sixty-eight chardonnays the night before, and the nose is glowing. And here I am, I'm talking to my coach. I just couldn't believe I'm about to say this.

And I said, 'Little piggy, little piggy, let me in!’ And he looks at me, he goes, 'Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!' And so I started to ad-lib a little bit. I said, 'Well you know the consequences little pig, I'm going to have to huff and puff and blow your house in!' And he looked up at me, and he paused. And because Kevin's mantra is about never giving in, and always staying positive no matter what the circumstances. He looks at me and he goes, 'Just try it, son.’

And all the dads started pissing themselves. And I said, 'No little pig, the story, you have to go!' He goes, 'I'm not going anywhere.' And I said, I looked at the teacher and she shrugs her shoulders. And I go, 'I think it's over?' And she goes... and Sally's sitting there behind the bricks going, 'What about me?' And I said, 'Sorry, Sally. It's a wrap. It's a wrap.'

So Kevin just lives and breathes … no situation is irretrievable. He didn't have to —just because the story said he had to say, ‘I'm out of here'. He refused to accept it. So that was the story of The Three Little Pigs, and Kevin, just ruining what is a great nursery rhyme.

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We’ve become festival focused in order to reduce what has been the prohibitive cost of copyright clearances. The plan now is to get it in front of audiences and hope that cinema seasons, distributors and streaming services follow from there.

We are still short of our targets, and are shaking the tin for the last $50k. If you know that big hearted Hellas-loving billionaire who rates the 1991 Grand Final at Olympic Park as the greatest day of his life, there is an executive producer credit lurking around. Every helper, no matter how small, gets a mention in the credits. Corporate supporters will be offered logos and signage and private screening events for clients. Because the film is registered with the Documentary Australia Foundation as an eligible project, all donations are tax deductible (DAF has DGR status, which means something to people it means something to)

Here is the trailer for those who haven’t seen it.

You can share the trailer with your favourite Hungarian billionaire using this link.

The Ange part of our story is really significant. We have a legacy section, a montage to the Robbie Williams inspired ‘I’m Loving Big Ange instead’ that shows his triumphs at South Melbourne, Brisbane Roar, the Socceroos, Yokohama Marinos, Celtic and Spurs.

There’s been some terrific articles written in the UK about our film, from journos who saw the advanced rough cut. This piece in The Times is an absolute gem, and The Guardian’s leading football columnist Jonathan Wilson also wrote 1500 words (although barely seemed to remember where he was sourcing his quotes!).

Our interview with Ange (at the top of the page) was way back in 2017 — two days after he exited the Socceroos job. So that gives a sense of how long we’ve been at it. I thought at the time to ask him to speak in Greek about his love for Hellas, and his feelings for the great Ferenc Puskas. One of our most consistent helpers on the project, Paul Mavroudis, translated this for us. If I’ve slightly misplaced the subtitles in the video above, that’s because it was all Greek to me.

This is what Ange says in Greek.

On Hellas:

Hellas for me wasn't just a team, it was a club where the community, especially on Sundays, could get away from their problems. For my parents, who had a very difficult life, they would enter the ground, and they would be surrounded by people who had the same problems, in a place where they could express themselves through their team. The team would bring them joy and sorrow, but for two hours a week we would feel alive, and we would remember that we were Greeks. 

On Puskas:

When Puskas arrived, for us it was something unbelievable. One of the greatest footballers we'd ever seen, but also a person who, both in Greece with Panathinaikos and throughout his career, had left his mark, and it was a great honour for us to have him as a coach. It's something that has stayed with me for my whole life.

If you’re excited about seeing the film, but aren’t really in a position to donate, sign up here and we’ll make sure you know when it’s screening. I’ll also have periodic news about the film in this newsletter. You can sign up to Good one, Wilson for free.

It’s been an exciting day for the film. I’m so grateful to today’s super donor, and to all 80 of you who have contributed so far, and that includes Parkmore (Keysborough District) Football Club and the Pirchan family who have been so generous with footage and photos. Cam, Rob and I can see the end after seven long years!

I’m hoping this is my last ‘ask’. My next post about Puskas in Australia will be news about where to see it!

We’re going to make it.

We are focused on the target, like the Ange disciples we aspire to be.

Go us! Go Hellas! Play the Lefteri trumpet.

We’re going to make it.

Tell your Greek, Hungarian and sports history loving friends about this film by sharing this post.

It ended in tears. I guess that was always a possibility. After a weekend in which Jack’s successive bedtimes were 12.10am. 11.45pm, and 11.35pm, he was always a chance to fall apart. I thought that it was a bit rough that the catalyst was ‘going home early’ on Sunday. ‘You promised!’ he said. ‘You said I could stay to the end!’ It was 10.20pm and she had five songs to go. And Midnights isn’t her best era, is it? And what I’d promised was that he definitely wouldn’t be staying to the end. After all, he’d been there for 130 of the 130 songs she’d sung up to that point. When I say, ‘been there’, I mean in the stadium on Friday for night one, and then Taylorgating outside Gate 4 for Saturday and Sunday. I’d done 90 songs myself.

The whole weekend was so much fun. From the kids’ hair and makeup on Friday, to Very Swift Train rides, to walking Alice into her very first concert, to settling Jack down and watching sensory anxiety dissolve into pure delight.

Friday, Night 1

We were in the accessible row at the back of level 3. It’s fortunate Taylor was wearing the only cowboy boots able to be seen from the moon or she would have been just a speck. But she filled the stadium in the way a true star can, and Alice and I held hands, and danced, and marvelled at the joy and volume of it all. Jack, for his part, kept his head down and listened. People were dancing in the seats in front, blocking his view, and a thoughtful attendant wanted to move him to a clear unobstructed space in front of an aisle. ‘No!’ he said, somewhat frantically. He was in his zone. In a noise sense, he was at his upper limit. He didn’t want a single thing to change, in case it became intolerable. Besides, he has cortical visual impairment, and it’s really about the audio anyway.

It went pretty much perfectly. There was some crying beforehand as Jack panicked about possible noise levels, and some ‘I’m tireds’ from both kids during the more contemplative back roads of ‘Folklore’, but ‘1989’ arrived, and it was the best 1989 grand finale since the — no, I will not commit heresy here, however well I well I thought she strutted the sacred turf.

Saturday, Night 2

‘Can’t we just sneak in?’ Jack asked, as he processed the idea that Taylor would be playing, but we wouldn’t be going. It went back and forth, and I explained the impossibility of attending without a ticket, but appeased him when I told him his uncle Ned wanted to go and sit outside the MCG with him. ‘We’ll have a picnic,’ I said. I didn’t say that uncle Ned had once sneaked into a Liverpool game by wandering in with the catering staff and then hiding in the Anfield toilets for three and a half hours. He didn’t need any ideas.

Good one, Wilson! is a reader-supported publication. Pieces take a while to create. Go paid to make this a viable enterprise.

I received a new Australia tracksuit top from the kids for Christmas, a signal that the family is on board with a 2026 trip to the USA/Canada/Mexico FIFA World Cup. I’ve got a feeling the football playing half of the cohort are fishing for an invite.

When I’m writing at World Cups future, it would be lovely if this was the financially viable place to publish those pieces, and the video and audio from the streets of the tournament.

I’ve long believed the publishing model is broken for authors. Who was the first author who agreed to the 10% royalty standard? Was it you, Jonathan Swift? I blame Jonathan Swift and his Lilliputian negotiation skills. The standard deal means that out of a purchase price of $30, the person who created the work gets $3. It ends up averaging less than a $1.50 when discounted bulk sales to predatory superstores are taken into account. It’s a 5% standard author royalty for picture books. Laura Wood and I sold 50,000 copies of The Cow Tripped Over the Moon, but we didn’t make $50,000 each.

Anyway, the idea behind this newsletter model is that we give you something fun or interesting or compelling or newsworthy in your inbox, and it’s all better than scrolling through the weight loss ads on instagram (I made the mistake of watching one. My feed is now endless line diagrams of reducing stomachs combined with crunch sit ups performed with a chair by old people, a demographic I’m still alarmed to find myself a part of)

And in return, readers take up a membership, which is $5 a month, or $4 if you latch onto this wild New Year’s Eve offer.

Happy New Year everyone.

Here is a New Year’s illustration drawn by my collaborator on four picture books, Laura Wood.

Can you make a serious point wearing a silly outfit - Cup Fever transcript

Edited and co-conceived by Cameron Fink, above video owned by Working Dog

I love Brownlow counts. I love the rhythm of them, I love the ascending nature of the ‘1 vote … 2 vote …. 3 vote’ tricolon, I love the murmurs and beer sculls and arm punches from teammates on the table, I love the dangling first initial, that can be manipulated in times of tension to maximise drama ‘W ……. Schwass’ instead of ‘W. Carey’ is a famous one.

In the end, I sent a panicked email to Emily, feeling like Rob out of High Fidelity, saying I was unable to make any sort of decision, because one song is too hard, and here are five songs that have stories, and would she mind picking one.

Emily picked ‘From St Kilda to Kings Cross’ by Paul Kelly, because she wanted our whole of creative life chat to start with a Race Around the World story.

Other songs that began segments were The Killers ‘All the Things That I’ve Done’, for the birth of child number one, and ‘American Land’ for the first concert for child number three.

We finished with a snippet from Casey Bennetto’s sublime Christmas (New Year!) song ‘Swing Around the Sun’ which is a favourite of mine at this time of year.

Happy Christmas everyone! And to non Christmas folks, happy end of year and seasonal festivities. Thanks for reading or listening or watching my stuff this year.

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My previous book is ‘1989 The Great Grand Final’ and I did high definition audio interviews with Hawthorn and Geelong players. I’ve thought of making a podcast series with the audio, along the lines of this documentary I made for the Speakola podcast back in 2020.

Interviewees included Dermott Brereton, Gary Ayres, Robert DiPierdomenico, Dean Anderson, Peter Schwab, Chris Wittman, John Kennedy Jr and Chris Langford.

Paid subscribers can read transcript below.

I had my first mindblowing AI moment this week when I put this audio through the transcript maker (Rev.com), which does a reasonable job, but then it asked me if I wanted a summary, and this was just mind blowing. I haven’t changed a letter:

In the second episode of the Speak Ola Podcast, host Tony Wilson discusses the famous "pay the price" speech given by Australian Football Hall of Fame inducted coach, Alan Jeans, during halftime in the 1989 Grand Final. Jeans, who had a successful coaching career spanning 31 years, was known for his charismatic and powerful speeches. The "pay the price" speech, which used the metaphor of a boy buying a pair of shoes, was remembered by many players for its motivational impact. Despite the physical challenges the team faced during the game, Jeans' speech helped them regain their focus and determination. The episode also includes reflections from players who worked with Jeans, highlighting his influence and the respect he commanded.

Thank you AI overlord. I look forward to my enslavement down the track.

1989: The Great Grand Final is out of stock, despite it being Fathers Day and finals time, which is quite depressing. There will be copies available soon(ish), whether I print them myself or whether it’s Hardie Grant. If you think you’d like to buy a copy for $35 plus postage, email me your name. If you’d pay $45 for one signed by Dermott, let me know.

Tony (00:00):

Hello, that is me, Tony Wilson, and welcome to the second episode of the Speakola podcast. Here in Australia, at least some of the restrictions relating to Covid 19 are easing somewhat, and we're about to have a return to AFL football on June the 11th. So I thought to whet the appetite, I might feature a famous AFL speech this week. It's Allan Jeans and his Pay the Price speech, which relates to a pair of shoes, and he gave the speech at halftime in the 1989 Grand Final. And it's a speech that's very dear to my heart in the sense that I've just spent six months writing about the 1989 Grand final for a book called '1989: the Great Grand Final'. To give you some context on Allan Jeans. He's an Australian football Hall of Fame inducted coach who lived between 1933 and 2011.

He actually became a coach at a very young age of just 27, and that was at the St Kilda Football Club where he spent 16 years and he had immediate success in his first season of 1961. He took the Saints to their first final series since 1939, and then just a few years later in 1965, he takes them to a grand final, their first since 1913. And in '66, I mean, that's just a very famous day in St Kilda history. The only day where the Saints got home and won a VFL or AFL premiership.

In 1980, he was appointed at Hawthorn. He'd been out of the game for a couple of years at that point and replaced David Parkin. He was not favoured to get the job -- it looked like Peter Hudson was going to get it, but apparently Jeans was only paid, less than $20,000. And one of the great investments because he went on a winning spree.

The Hawks made the finals in 1982 and then won the the premiership in '83 and played in Grand Finals from 1983 to 1989, seven consecutive grand finals of which they won four and lost three. Jeans himself missed out on the 1988 premiership because he suffered a brain aneurysm at the end of 1987.

And so Alan Joyce coached that flag, and it was in 1989 that Jeans was making his return. He was a man on a mission. He'd twice missed out on back-to-back flags earlier in the decade and was hellbent on making amends in 1989.

It's an incredible record. He coached over a 31 year span with a winning percentage of 62%, coach of the team of the century at St Kilda and six grand finals for three premierships at Hawthorn. And his winning percentage at Hawthorn stands at a staggering 71%. So that's Allan Jeans and his incredible record, but he was an equally incredible person. He spent his working life as a policeman at the Cheltenham Police Station, and he just had such natural skills as a speaker. I had the privilege of hearing Allan Jeans on many occasions, never as a senior player, unfortunately. And he filled the room with his voice and his charisma and his personality. I never got to hear him under the blow torch of a senior match day address, but some of his performances became the stuff of folklore, including the most famous of all the Pay the Price speech in the 1989 Grand final. There's no transcript or audio recording. But in writing the 1989 grand final book, all of the Hawthorn players I spoke to mentioned the speech. And so this is going to be a little audio documentary about a boy, a pair of shoes, and paying the price.

The first voice you'll hear is that of Robert Dipierdomenico, Brownlow medalist, the big Dipper, his own legend reigns large over grand final day 1989, and he shares his memories of Jeans as a speaker:

Robert DiPierdomenico (04:07):

Don't believe that b******t in the public on a Sunday morning. 'Oh y'know, the boys played well yesterday. It's not my team. Y'know, I can't do anything. I'm just the coach, and 'y'know we were disappointed' and whatever. He never used to throw mud at anyone. But Behind closed doors, f*****g s**t yourself! He raised his voice at the time. The beauty about Jeansy, and I thought he learned himself as well. He just knew how to handle people. Y'know. He might say to Gary, Buckenara, one of our greats, 'now listen son, we can't win without ya!' Right? Or he might say, with Dermott and I, 'you two pull your bloody finger out!' and he'll get us going in a different way. He'll tell Bucky, he'll say, 'we can't win without you', the cotton wool type, whereas with us, he'd be f*****g hitting with a stick and yeah, 'we'll, fucken prove you and wrong!' and that sort of stuff.

Tony (05:03):

Next, it's Dean Anderson, just a kid out of Caulfield Grammar in the late eighties and impressed by the power and presence of his coach.

Dean Anderson (05:12):

Oh, he's a great orator. His range was very broad. I remember once going to Russell Greene's, he had a party for his 300th game and Yabby gave the speech and we were having a few cans, carrying on and stuff, and then he just sort of started speaking softly as a speech for Greenie, and then all of a sudden he started roaring. He certainly captured your attention. So very captivating, very influential. And as I said earlier, he's very likeable. So he was certainly a coach that you ... he's a coach that you wanted to play for.

Tony (05:49):

There was no bigger name in eighties footy than Dermott Brereton. Hawthorn's star centre half forward, the hero of 89, and his relationship with Allan Jeans began way back in 1980 as they were both getting started at the club, and he listened to him speak practically every day of the decade that followed.

Dermott Brereton (06:07):

If he had you in the gun and he was yelling at you, he was terrifying. I knew he wasn't going to physically do anything to me, but I was scared of him.

Tony (06:16):

Can you give an example of how he'd do it?

Dermott Brereton (06:18):

He could be cutting in some ways with humour. He could be straight out terrifying ... For a bloke with big ears and no hair on his head, he was a charismatic man. Yeah, you could just picture him in the amphitheatre of the coliseum 2000 years ago, he would've been the bloke standing in the middle of the amphitheatre saying 'the next bout,' and you would've heard a pin drop.

Tony (06:46):

John Kennedy isn't just a famous name in speeches, it's a famous name at Hawthorn, perhaps the most famous name. And John Kennedy Snr's son is John Kennedy Jr, who played in that fateful game. He also delivered Alan Jean's eulogy in 2011.

John Kennedy Jr. (07:02):

He was able to just lower his voice when he had to, and raise it when he needed to, and then move from player to player without saying much. He could just look at you and you'd understand what he's saying or what he's thinking. So he was very good at that. No doubt about it. And he had some difficult individuals to deal with, not necessarily that day, but as a general rule. Some footy clubs, they have very flamboyant individuals, some conservative type players. So he had a whole mix of these individuals that he had to work with and the ones that were out there and pushing the boundaries, I'd almost describe it as a boxing ring. He'd let them push the ropes of the ring out to a certain degree, and if they went over the edge of those rings or fell out the side, he'd certainly pull 'em back into line pretty quickly. But he did allow a bit of flair amongst those players that had that in them.

Tony (07:56):

Defender Peter Schwab missed the 1989 grand final, suspended for the first time in nearly 150 games, a huge disappointment, but he was a Jeans favourite, and he eventually became a senior coach at Hawthorn himself.

Peter Schwab (08:09):

Allan is a great storyteller, but that was one of his great qualities to use metaphor and stories to get a point across, and he had a great way of telling a story. Now, people look at that nowadays and go, oh, that has nothing to do with strategy or systems and all that. Well, no, but it had a lot to do with his ability to inspire and get to the group who he'd had for a long time.

Tony (08:33):

Do you remember any of the stories that he told?

Peter Schwab (08:36):

Oh, he told a lot. He told the boy, just little anecdote, the boy on the mountain, if you see the boy on top of the mountain, he didn't get flown there, he had to climb there. And he'd tell the one of sausages, about footy, the basics of footy. You can fry them, bake them, scramble 'em, curry them, whatever you do. They're still sausages. So he had a little saying for just about everything.

Tony (09:00):

Dual Norm Smith medalist and back pocket Gary Ayres remembers the sausages analogies too.

Gary Ayres (09:06):

Allan had a lot of stories that related to some very fundamentally based philosophies or principles, and the time where he used to say, 'they're just like sausages'. And he could be talking about the presentation, 'and of course you can carry 'em, you can fry 'em, you can boil 'em, but they're still just sausages'. And again, the day he did confuse us was when he said, 'you can also scramble em'. So we just [laughs] but out of respect, you'd never really say too much because you just didn't want to disappoint him. And I think that was a big thing with the way I played with Allan was I just didn't want to disappoint him with a bad performance.

Tony (09:45):

Dermott explained some of the rationale for this.

Dermott Brereton (09:48):

Jeansy had these little fable he used to talk about, he'd say, 'every week, I've got to say the same thing. The difficulty for me is to package up the comment differently so that I keep your attention and you absorb what I'm saying'. Each and every week, it's the same message!

Tony (10:06):

Chris Langford was the team's legendary full back, a 300 game Team of the Century defender, who was tasked with stopping a rampaging Gary Ablett on Grand final day, 1989.

Chris Langford (10:17):

There were three or four of us over the years who would be in the rooms and you'd be looking at the whiteboard, or the chalkboard, or whatever, and then you'd quickly glance to the right, the left, whatever. You'd see them, they're looking at you, and yes, you quickly look away, otherwise you're going to break out laughing. He would butcher metaphors, and the English language would be in tatters, and he'd come along with all sorts of ideas. 'I was watching the tennis last night, and Wimbledon and the tennis players do this ... You can't do that in football!' So he'd always come up with a little story about tennis or dinosaurs or the crossroads and the sign, whether it was the shoes or whatever it was, but some blokes, they'd be eyes on stalks, they'd just be loving it, they'd love that rah rah sort of pep talk and so on. And some of us would be slightly tongue in cheek with a bit of a wry smile. Try not to break out laughing. But either which way, it was all good and he was a good motivator. And at the end of it, he'd go round the block with this funny storytelling metaphor, and then he'd come back to footy. And the punchline was always a ripper.

Tony (11:18):

Here's John Kennedy again.

John Kennedy Jr. (11:20):

It's sometimes hard, even in the most serious situations, to keep a straight face when Al made a mistake, when Jeansy made a bit of a blue -- but it was a wet day and we weren't going so well. And he sort of made the comment that if you don't change your ways in the wet, it's like an animal. You become distinct. And he meant to say extinct. You wouldn't want to look sideways because someone, ... we've all picked it up, but no one says anything, they all keep their heads down.

Tony (11:51):

This is Peter Schwab again, on his rare ability to balance criticism and humour.

Peter Schwab (11:57):

So Yabby had that great ability to sort of tell you stuff and it'd get out because you actually deep down thought it was funny. One is a second semi, playing North Melbourne in 83, when I'm hoping that if I play well and we win, I'm in a grand final, first grand final. So that's a great moment in your life. So I'm a bit nervous and I'm thinking,' oh, just got to play well, got to play well'. So just before we go down the race to get on the ground, he goes to me, calls me over, and I think, 'oh, here's going to be a last minute word of wisdom'. And he looks at me and he goes, [Jeans voice] 'listen, get it into your head. You're not a real good player.' [laughs]

But it's good psychology because my attitude was, 'I'll prove you wrong, I'll show you'. But you'd have the phone calls every Friday night and one night it was North Melbourne again, rings me up, talking away, and then he goes, 'I've got a job for you.' I said, 'oh yeah,' [Jeans impression] 'I don't think you can do it.' [laughs] So I go, 'yeah, what is it?' 'I need you to play on Wayne Schimmelbush. He's a real good player. You're not that good. [laugh] I don't care if you don't get a kick as long as he doesn't get a kick'. So we play North and they beat us and Schimmelbush cuts me up, he could play. So I think he kicked three and had about 30. And Yabby goes, 'oh, son'. He said, 'you couldn't do the job.' I said, 'well, you said it'd be a hard job.' 'I know! I didn't think it'd be that hard!' And then I was a bit smart, and I said, 'oh, listen, I kept one end of the bargain up Yab.' And he goes, 'what's that?' And I said, 'you know how you said it didn't matter if I didn't get a kick?' He goes, 'eeeerrrr yeah!'

Tony (13:29):

Which brings us to the 1989 Grand Final itself. I've immersed myself in this game for six months writing the book, and it's an absolute classic. It has brutality, brilliance, a constant flow of goals, controversy, elegance, skill, violence, passion. But here we're focusing on one speech. At halftime. Hawthorn had a comfortable lead, 36 points. But all was not well. Many of its star players were hurt. It had been a brutal and tiring contest as John Kennedy explains:

John Kennedy Jr. (14:01):

Certainly in halftime when a lot of the heads were down, because we were in a bit of strife in terms of the injuries. We're thinking, 'well, how are we going to keep going with this?' Because we were pretty exhausted. We'd run pretty hard, and we got to halftime and we were up, I think with a good lead, but we had a few injuries and the concern was whether we can get these blokes through, for the rest of the game. And so the shoes one was just something that, I dunno, Yabby just pulled it out of that period of time, and it was the way he presented more than anything else. The way he presented it and his ability to raise and lower his voice, which made the difference in the speech. It doesn't sound like much when you just talk about it as a pair of shoes, and the lady didn't want to pay the price, y'know? But when he told it, it was told with the crescendo when it needed to be, and in his quiet tones when alternatively. So it had an impact because we went out and we were sort of raring to go again. It was almost like we were going out in the first quarter again. He got us back to where we should have been, and that was that we've, we can win this game!

Tony (15:05):

Dipper liked to sit at the front for a Yabby address, just so that the coach knew that he was there, keen and ready to go. But on this occasion he was in trouble. An Ablett collision meant that he'd broken a rib and punctured a lung, a pneumothorax it's called. And adding to his medical woes was the fact that air was leaking from his lung called a subcutaneous emphysema, which meant that Dipper was a long way from feeling a hundred percent. He hid at the back of the room not wanting his coach to know that he was feeling weak.

Robert DiPierdomenico (15:32):

What I remember about the speech was the fact that the way that Yabby said about it, because I wasn't all there, but I still remember thinking, 'what's he f*****g going on about here?' Because I've never heard of it before. A boy goes to buy a pair of shoes for a wedding and I'm going, 'does he f*****g know where we are at? Is his brain haemorrhage coming out?

Tony (15:52):

Gary Ayres, was on a similar wavelength,

Gary Ayres (15:54):

And we're all thinking maybe he's got his brain aneurysm back. He's telling us on grand final day, we're going to go out and hopefully win back to back premierships. That this kid who goes in who's going to buy a pair of shoes.

Tony (16:05):

Dermott's famous for his Jeans impressions, and he explains the Pay the Price story as well as any. Dermott says it was an allegory born of the coach's own childhood in the small country town of Finley, New South Wales, around the time of World War II. [Jeans is actually from Tocumwal in Victoria]

Dermott Brereton (16:19):

Out came the story of the boy, himself, who saved up his money to get the best pair of shoes for a young boy that he was living in the country. And when he got to the shop, he decided to go for the cheaper pair of shoes and pocket some of the rest of the money he'd saved. And he said several months later, the shoes, the soles started falling off and he said he wished he had have paid the right price. He said, 'you've got to pay the price today'. As I said, he was very charismatic and the way he was able to forcefully deliver that, I mean, we were looking at him and the veins are bulging in his neck and the projection of the voice. And you think of this bloke had an aneurysm twelve months ago almost to the day, but you were looking at him thinking, 'God, this is everything to him, this is serious'.

Tony (17:10):

But the wonderful thing about the parable, is that normally, I mean, the point is magnificent, but really who cares if your shoes ran out a little bit earlier.

Dermott Brereton (17:19):

This is where you are the product of a different era. So you and I just go and buy a new pair, whereas Jeansy living in Finley, that pair of shoes he wore every day, there was no other pair of shoes in the closet. That was the only shoes he had for the entire day.

Tony (17:35):

But John Kennedy Jr. Isn't so sure that Jeans with the little boy in the story.

John Kennedy Jr. (17:39):

No, no, no. It was a lady who had a young boy. He wanted the expensive pair, y'know, the really nice pair, but she didn't want to pay that. She wanted to give him the s**t pair. It would only last a year and she'd be going to buy another pair the year after . Whereas if she had've got the really good pair the kid had wanted, would've probably lasted five years. So if she 'd paid the price, he would've got the nice pair and everyone would've been happy, except .... It's a ridiculous story when you think about it, but it's just the way he ... it's silly, isn't it when you think about it. But the way he presented it, y'know that we had to pay the price today, because there was no tomorrow.

Tony (18:10):

But whatever the merits of the shoe story, what everyone agrees on is that it was Jeans's manner that was his genius -- that he had projection, volume, variation, the rule of threes, amplification, crescendo, so many of the attributes of what makes a good and compelling speaker, that he just had it when it came to presence and delivery. This is spare parts small man, Chris Wittman, who had to step up in the absence of John Platten and play an important midfield role:

Chris Wittman (18:40):

Powerful story, but it's also the way Jeansy with his baritoned and his voice. Jeansy was trying to change it up to get us motivated. So he was always looking for new ways, new stories, and it wasn't so much the story for me that resonated. It was his voice, it was his baritones that were so vivid and so powerful.

Tony (18:58):

Here's Gary Ayres.

Gary Ayres (19:00):

To me, the way Yab could get us really motivated. I remember that day I was crying tears streaming down my eyes as I'm walking down the race because it was just such a motivating factor. And footy is emotional, and here you are, you're a grown man, and of course you've got tears streaming down your eyes because Yab could just fire you up with this amazing voice and he could bring you up to a level and then he would just trail off with his voice and it was just like you wanted more and more and more. And I remember the first night that he spoke at the social club back in Glenferrie, and I then knew that I wanted to play for this guy. I wanted to play as much footy under him as I could. And that for me as a young boy was so motivating to have someone like him there.

Dermott Brereton (19:51):

You've got a chance right now to pay the price at the right time. Don't go through the rest of your life wishing that you had have paid the right price here today.

Chris Langford (20:02):

Halftime. Pay the price, the shoes. Yeah, it was a good one. It was a good one, but the way he told it, his passion, he fair dinkum blew a foofer valve. He just went nuts. He went nuts. As I said, the start of the game, he was absolutely obsessed 'back to back. This is it. Third time, lucky, you've got to do it.' It had been going on all year and it just basically reached its crescendo before the game. This is it, right? We're ready to go. And on the other hand, most of the time we're told before the game, don't get over the top. Just keep your emotions in check. Don't get excited. Your performance will decline if you get too excited and too hyped. So we're telling ourselves, 'keep it calm, keep it calm' and Yabby is out there, and he went nuts at halftime. And I remember I was standing not far from, I think next to Peter Curran, and it was literally just as we're about to go out and, 'pay the price, pay the price' and he said it six times and then he said it another six times and then he's still going. And every time he says that he's getting more and more elevated with his emotions and his noise and his veins are bulging out of his neck and his forehead. And I'm thinking 'seriously, Pete get ready to catch him. He's about to have a stroke, he's about to cark it.' I've never seen anyone that animated that emotional, that angry, that loud, anywhere, anytime. And it just kept going up and up and up and up. The dial was beyond the red. It was just unbelievable. So you sort of think, 'okay, well, you've said it. That's enough. That's enough. Calm down.' It was like he was going to go. So it wasn't just like a good rev up talk. It wasn't just like a big halftime tirade. It was not even next level. It was several levels above next level. It was ... memorable. And I'm sure everyone would say the same thing.

Tony (21:55):

So do you reckon he overcooked it? It was slightly counterproductive.

Chris Langford (21:59):

No, I don't think he overcooked it. We needed it ... physically it wasn't going to make any difference. It was about us just absolutely going to war for that last bit.

Tony (22:09):

Here's half forward Dean Anderson, again. The man who kicked Hawthorn's 21st and last goal in the 1989 grand final.

Dean Anderson (22:17):

30 years ago, so much is blurry. But the halftime speech is not blurry. There are so many coaches addresses you just don't remember. But there were quite a few of Yabby's I do remember. And it's just the way he delivered them. It is the Vince Lombardi stuff, that sort of 'pay the price, make sure you get the right pair of shoes,' and this sort of stuff. 'Don't choose the cheap ones that are going to be uncomfortable and make sure'. ... and then he sort of converted that into 'pay the price for the ultimate success. We got to really have to dig in here'. It was probably in my time, the best half time address.

Gary Ayres (22:54):

There's a DVD that came out quite a few years ago and it's actually got all the great coaches looking down the barrel of a camera as if they're going out on grand final day. And obviously I hadn't heard Allan talk for a fair while, of course. And there was Ron Barassi and John Kennedy senior and of course Allan Jeans and Tommy Hafey. And even him looking down the barrel of the camera and saying the things that he said, the hairs on the back of my neck certainly stood up that time when I first saw it. And he hadn't been coaching since 1992, I think, when he finished at Richmond.

Allan Jeans [Crossroads speech] (23:31):

What you're gotta do is you're gonna win this game today. Not only are you going to play it moment by moment, contest by contest, quarter by quarter, and regardless of what the scores is, do not accept what's going on. When the occasions come, lead by example, lift yourself and win the contest, that will win the game. In every game there is going to be a crossroad, and when you get to that crossroad, you either step up, or step you down. It is entirely all up to you. You make the decision, not me.

Tony (24:07):

What was the reaction from Jeans to you after the game?

Dermott Brereton (24:12):

Yeah he talked to me after that game. He talked to the team and obviously he said, 'what you've done here today is such a great thing. You have this for the rest of your life.' All those things which signpost the victory. He spoke to me just briefly, and it would've been, when did he pass away three, four years ago, probably 25 to 30 years later, he said it to me again, just he put his arm around me and he actually put his forehead onto my shoulder and he put his arm around the back of my neck and he said to me, 'I just want to thank you, son. I want to thank you for what you did today.' And that meant the world to me.

Gary Ayres (24:55):

I had a phone call with him two days before he died because I wanted to go out and see him. And, anyway, I rang him just to make sure that everything was alright for me to go out and see him. But he said, the doctors had said 'no, ', that he wasn't having any visitors as such, it was only family. And we chatted for probably 15 minutes and it got really, really tough because he knew and I knew that I would never speak to him again, and more than likely not see him again. And it got to a point where the words, and I remember as clear as yesterday, and I said to him, 'look for everything that I've ever achieved in footy coaching and playing, I just owe it all pretty much to you'. And his comments back to me was, 'no, I owe everything to you'. And that was the mark of Allan Jeans. And I got off the phone after I said goodbye, and I knew it was the last time I'd say goodbye to him. And I started crying because I knew then that was ... it would only be whatever period of time. And just how when you're in that position that he still was mentally alert and switched on and could say something like that when he knew he didn't have that much more time to go.

Tony (26:38):

John Kennedy remembers his last chat with Alan Jeans too. It was in June, 2011, a couple of weeks before Jeans died. Jeans requested that Kennedy deliver his eulogy, which Kennedy thinks was a political decision because he was president of the Hawthorn Past Players Association, so Jeans wouldn't be seen to be playing favourites. The speech is a beauty, it's got humour, anecdotes, love and respect for this great old man of the St, Kilda, and Hawthorn football clubs. There's no audio recording of the actual eulogy. So I asked John Kennedy to read out the last few paragraphs of the eulogy.

John Kennedy Jr. (27:17):

[Reading from eulogy] Yab always used to say that myths and images are built up about people, people that some people and some things are not always as they seem. There was no myth about Allan. Certainly an image has been created of him publicly. But for those of us that were lucky enough to have known him well, he was the real deal, a man of great character, integrity and honesty. A man who did things the way he wanted. He was not influenced by stereotypes that were often portrayed in the media. He did not fall into that trap, but dealt with us all -- players, club and media in his own way. I suspect that as time passes and the AFL football and the Hawthorn Football Club continues to evolve, my generation will be talking of this man in similar tones to how my father's generation talk of Norm Smith in revered terms. Arguably, this is already occurring with Allan. It's difficult to put into words the varying degrees of influence that Yab had on our lives. But in reflecting over the years, it would be fair to say that for most of my teammates and I, he, outside of our parents had the biggest influence on the way we operate today. Men such as Allan Jeans are a rarity, and we will be forever grateful that we were in the right place at the right time to enjoy one of the greatest characters that we will probably ever meet. He leaves us all with wonderful memories and achievements. [ends reading]

So that pretty much sums him up, I reckon as a person and a coach, a father, grandfather, and a friend.

Good one, Wilson! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This week, the news was the Matildas, so the theme was great speeches by female footballers.

I’ll copy over the text I wrote on the Speakola newsletter which some of you subscribe to. Apologies for the double up, if you’ve already got this.

Tomorrow I’m recording the 50th episode for the Speakola newsletter with Lehmo and Brendan Nelson. Basically, Lehmo said to me, ‘I saw the best speech I’ve ever seen. You should do an episode about it,’ and I said, ‘Let’s both do it.’ I’ve never had a co-host. Going to be interesting.

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It’s been an incredible few weeks for women’s sport here in Australia, as the Matildas set television viewing and attendance records around the country at the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Australians and New Zealanders turned out for the tournament in force, most non-host country matches were sell-outs too, and it felt like a transformative moment for the country and for sport.

In actual fact, the momentum has swelled from a trickle to a torrent over two decades, with so many great athletes and spokespeople doing their bit to build the women’s game.

The two champions I featured in the segment were the USA’s Abby Wambach, who is the all time highest goal scorer for the US nation team, and Brazil’s Marta (no second name required) who is six time FIFA World Player of the Year and the greatest female player of all time.

Here are snippets of the two speeches I featured in the segment:

Abby Wambach’s ‘We are the wolves’ is a famous Barnard College commencement. Barnard is an all-women’s liberal arts college in New York, and so Wambach was addressing an audience of women. ‘Welcome to the wolf pack’ has become a successful book for Wambach, drawing on the metaphor in this speech. It’s strong on metaphor, anecdote and delivery. Highly recommended.

Like all little girls, I was taught to be grateful. I was taught to keep my head down, stay on the path, and get my job done. I was freaking Little Red Riding Hood.

You know the fairy tale: It’s just one iteration of the warning stories girls are told the world over. Little Red Riding Hood heads off through the woods and is given strict instructions: Stay on the path. Don’t talk to anybody. Keep your head down hidden underneath your Handmaid’s Tale cape.

And she does… at first. But then she dares to get a little curious and she ventures off the path. That’s of course when she encounters the Big Bad Wolf and all hell breaks loose. The message is clear: Don’t be curious, don’t make trouble, don’t say too much or BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN.

I stayed on the path out of fear, not of being eaten by a wolf, but of being cut, being benched, losing my paycheck.

If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing it would be this:

“Abby, you were never Little Red Riding Hood; you were always the wolf.”

So when I was entrusted with the honor of speaking here today, I decided that the most important thing for me to say to you is this:

BARNARD WOMEN—CLASS OF 2018—WE. ARE. THE. WOLVES.

The whole speech is great. The bit we cut out for ABC was an incredible anecdote about watching Michelle Akers, the great US footballer of the generation preceding Wambach, compete. Hopefully, one day, I get Wambach on the podcast.

Marta’s wonderful and famous barreling of the camera in a post match interview at FIFA World Cup 2019 in France is surely a contender for the best post match interview in sport. The way she goes from speaking to the reporter, to speaking to all the girls and women of the world is spine-tingling, and you’ve got to be the best footballer of all time to so effortlessly drop your own one word name in the third person. And what about that last line? ‘Cry in the beginning, so you can smile at the end.’ Beautiful.

Translation from Portuguese:

It’s wanting more, it’s training more, it’s taking care of yourself moreIt’s being ready to play 90 plus thirty minutesThis is what I ask of the girlsThere’s not going to be a Formiga foreverThere’s not going to be a Marta forever, not going to be a CristianiThe women’s game depends on you to survive[pointing directly down barrel of camera)So think about thatValue it more. Cry in the beginning so you can smile in the end.

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The speechwriter in me, however, was drawn to episode 9, written by series creator Jesse Armstrong, which contained (spoiler alert) three amazing eulogies for family patriarch Logan Roy. They were all brilliant. Brother Ewan Roy spoke of a traumatic event, a life defining event, in Logan’s childhood.

Kendall’s speech was impromptu, as the result of Roman’s meltdown at the lectern, and it’s maybe the character’s finest moment in the show. Certainly the actor, Jeremy Strong, nails that intensity, the grandiloquence, the complicated expression of a complicated love. I loved how he delivered, ‘my father was a … brute’. What a word! And this towards the end:

And now people might want to tend and prune the memory of him. To denigrate that force, that magnificent, awful force of him. But my God, I hope it's in me. Because if we can't match his vim, then God knows the future will be sluggish and grey.

But the eulogy that actually drew a tear from me was Sarah Snook’s speech as Shiv. Again, the character is fumbling for words on the fly, she wasn’t scheduled to speak, and she starts with a ramble about how terrifying her father was when he’d fly out of his office to yell at them, and then finishes with this perfectly written screen paragraph:

He kept us outside. But he kept everyone outside. Yeah. When he let you in, when the sun shine, it was warm. Yeah, it was really warm in the light. But it was hard to be, his daughter. I can't not, y'know, he was, it was, oh, he was hard on women. He couldn't fit a whole woman in his head. But he did, okay. You did, okay dad. We're all here and we're doing okay. We're doing okay.

So goodbye my dear dear world of a father.

In my Thursday morning Sammy J segment, we focused on Shiv’s eulogy. And to make it something other than a Succession recap, we also played snippets from Matthew’s (John Hannah’s) eulogy for Gareth in Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Jack Donaghy’s (Alec Baldwin) eulogy for his mother in 30 Rock.

Farewell Succession. I’m having some succession problems of my own as I try to decide which series to move onto next. I’m bereft!

My segment with Sammy is 6.15am every third Thursday. Yep, my nickname in there is ‘prime time’.

cheers

Tony

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Covid Roulette was made with Leanne Coughlin for the Alphington Community Centre,

The story of this episode is contained in the post "Because a little boy went ka-choo!'