Ron Barassi

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Template:Infobox afl player Ronald Dale Barassi (born 27 February 1936) is one of the greatest Australian rules football players and coaches of all time. He is best remembered as an explosive player who wore the number 31 guernsey throughout his playing career.

His father, Ron Barassi Senior, was killed in World War II. The young Barassi was brought up by Norm Smith, coach of the Melbourne Football Club.

1 VFL career
2 Coaching career
3 Recent activities
4 Trivia
5 External links

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VFL career

Whilst playing for Melbourne, he helped the club to three consecutive premierships in 1955, 1956, and 1957, winning the club best and fairest in 1957, 1958 and 1959. Barassi also captained the premiership teams of 1959, 1960 and 1964.

Switching clubs to Carlton, in a defection that shocked the football public, he took Carlton to two premierships in 1968 as captain/coach and 1970 as coach . The 1970 victory was particularly famous as the team came from 44 points down at half-time with the use of a radically new style of play based on keeping possession and the use of the handpass.

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Coaching career

He coached North Melbourne to their first premiership in 1975, and again in 1977.

He returned to Melbourne and coached the club through 1981-1985, and helped save the Sydney Swans from extinction while serving them as coach from Round 7, 1993 to 1995.

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Recent activities

Since retiring from football coaching, Barassi remains a prominent Australian Rules Football celebrity and a figure of popular culture.

He has also been involved in grassroots football development and has been an advocate for the development of the game internationally, particularly in South Africa. Reflecting this, Barassi has lent his name to the Barassi International Australian Football Youth Tournament.

Barassi recently celebrated his 70th birthday, which received prominent media coverage.

More recently, he was one of the last runners in the Queen's Baton Relay for the 2006 Commonwealth Games, being held in Melbourne, Australia between March 15 and March 26. His section of the relay, run on March 15, involved taking the Baton from a series of pontoons in the middle of the Yarra River onto shore. This was accomplished by having Barassi walk on a pontoon that was submerged just beneath the surface of the water, giving the impression that Barassi was 'walking on water'.

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