What is the most controversial event in AFL history?

[Jimthegreat]

how about wen collingwood lost their game against kangeroos because the ump didnt hear the siren. (sorry cant remember date)

1980 Escort cup final. I was there at Waverley that night and I didn't hear the siren either. The noise was unbelievable, almost deafening. Didn't even know anything was controversial until i got home and a mate asked me about it. Then watched the replay and saw the siren actually went BEFORE Blight kicked the ball to Kerry good.

As far as real controversy goes I'd saythe shock sacking of Norm Smith in 1965 was one. Melbourne were on top of the ladder then (about round 10 or 11 of an 18 game season) and it cause a enormous stir. Melbourne, one of the really great powers for years, imploded after that missing the finals and have never been the same since. Another was when St. Kilda's Jim O'Dea kinghit Collingwood's John Greening behind play in 1972, effectively ending Greening's career and causing him brain damage and temporary paralysis down one side of his body for quite a few months. Greening was a real superstar at the time. O'Dea copped 12 weeks for his trouble.

 

[SweetLeftFoot]

Ron Barassi transferring from Melbourne to Carlton.

Marked the beginning of modern game as we know it.

Everything - the mergers, successful and attempted, Morwood and Foschini, salary cap dramas, North and the 10 year rule stems from that.

With that move Barassi single-handedly changed the culture of football from an essentially community-based socialist model (you played not for money, but for the club and the game) to the more modern globalised, capitalist model today (you play for the cash and to boost the market value of your image rights, which you have managed by the same company that does Tiger Woods and Ronaldinho)

I wasn't around in those days but my old man was and while he maintains are healthy hatred of both Melbourne and Carlton, he says that no footy-related incident caused such a ruction in his lifetime.

Suggestions like the outcomes of individuals games - 1979 GF, sirens not being heard etc - are not worthy of consideration ... one offs.

Also, while I wholeheartedly applaud the stance taken by players like Winmar, Magic McLean and Long n standing up to racism (unlike poor Jim Krakouer who copped so much from day one that he fought back there and then) I don't think the changes in attitudes by AFL, players or supporters can be traced to any single incident, no matter how potent that Winmar photo was.

Nah, for me its got to be Barassi. With one action he turned the entire ethos of the competition on its head, literally swung it 180 degrees. Without Brassi, Browny would still be grumbling down at the Western Oval, Sydney playing at South and so on.

You can say 'well, if Barass hadn't have done it' someone else would have', and that probably true, but it needed an icon of the game like Barass, someone so closely identified with Melbourne (don't forget the club helped raise him after his Dad died at Tobruk) to change over to their mortal enemies Carlton (the whole class thing coming into play there too) to make people realise that the game had changed?

What other player at that time would have had the gravitas to equal Barassis?