FEW players in the history of Australian Rules football can boast of more nicknames than Kyneton and Gisborne goal-kicking ace, Steven Reaper.
Five-time winner of the Ron Best Medal as the BFNL's leading sharpshooter, Reaps carried more nicknames than anyone else.
And he wasn't shy about mentioning a few of them to whoever was within hearing range.
They weren't just the normal ones – Choco or Sylva or Spika or Tigga or Harry.
Consider these: 'Bundy' as in King Kong Bundy the wrestler, not as many followers might have thought: the abbreviated moniker for a potent alcoholic beverage; 'Action Attraction'; 'Excitement Machine'; 'Big Show' and perhaps the cleverest of all: 'Revenue'.
Reaps reckoned just by him sitting in the goal square people would pay at the gate to see him play. And thereby boost the takings – the club revenue -- at whichever ground was lucky enough to have him playing there that weekend!
Hence the nickname: Revenue.
In his final, chubbier years opponents would be less diplomatic occasionally dubbing him 'Fatso'.
Reaps had a quick rejoinder to these sort of jibes. "You'd be fat, too, mate if you'd eaten all the medals I've won!"
In 2002-2003 under Collingwood's 1990 premiership hero Mick McGuane, Gisborne won consecutive flags.
The Graveyard Dogs lost just the one match in both seasons on their way to snaffling the Bendigo Advertiser Cups.
At the Gizzy 2003 premiership presentation night, Reaper told McGuane that he'd win everything bar 'runner-up' -– and he did, taking home the gongs for best finals player, club best and fairest for the season and leading goalkicker.
"Mick had a pet saying. If you don't pump up your own tyres no-one else ever will.
"So I always tried to live by that," Reaper said as his rationale for his big, brave talk.
HAVING started a Melbourne-based job Reaper was struggling to train normal hours.
So McGuane instituted 6 a.m. sessions twice a week for his big-framed matchwinner.
"He was always there before me," McGuane recalls. "He worked hard so he could have his fun."
So sure was Reaps when taking a set shot, even from a tight angle, that just like South Melbourne star Laurie Nash of the 1930s and 1940s he'd tell his opponent to 'mark it down'. Words guaranteed to infuriate.
Nash would take a mark 50 out (50 yards in Nash's era) and ask the bloke on the mark which foot he'd like him to kick with --- his left or his right.
Invariably Nash's shot would soar through, post-high, using whichever leg he felt like kicking with.
Big Bundy Reapy was of the same mould.
McGuane reckons Reaper had the dead-eye habits of Tony Lockett. "He was right up there with Plugger as the most accurate shot at goal I've ever seen," the coach said.
"He was a strong build for a country footballer and was lightning fast off the mark. But he had no endurance. He was a one-trick pony. Full-forward was his only spot."
During one of his early years with the Kyneton Tigers, Reaps lost the Michelsen Medal by two votes. Years later he still reckons he was robbed.
"I kicked 14 snags one day and the umpires didn't give me a vote," he recalls.
Those were the days when, just like on Brownlow Medal night in the old VFL years, the captains (or senior players) would man the boards. They would register each vote by hand with little number cards.
Reaper made a strategic error that night as he went pot-for-pot, jug for jug, with Castlemaine skipper Steven Oliver who had a rare thirst.
By the time it came for Reaps to be awarded his BFNL goalkicking trophy, discretion and diplomacy had long been forgotten.
Having been pipped virtually on the final vote, Bundy told the Michelsen Medallist --- in front of more than 400 people --- not to get too excited as it was only the umpires' opinions.
And just how can a bloke roost 14 in a game and not get best-on!
Oliver confessed a few years later he had no idea Reaper was a non-drinker and apologized for going beer-for-beer with his sharpshooting rival.
EMBARRASSED administrators of the BFNL soon switched to PowerPoint presentations on medal night and man mountain Steve carried on regardless, kicking centuries most seasons.
But he was never again in contention for the competition's prized fairest and best medal.
In 2003 at Gisborne he formed a deadly combination with the equally confident Damian Houlihan who dominated at centre half-forward.
"Damo had promised all year that he'd turn it on on grand final day and we all fed off his confidence," Reapy said.
"He'd tell everyone from the full-back down to just kick it on the top of his head and he'd do the rest.
"And he did. I got my hundredth for the year in the third quarter of the grannie after "Damo" took a speckie and snapped it over his head to the space he knew I'd be leading into.
"It was pure gold," Reaper recalls.
He needed a neat half-dozen that September day to notch his 'ton' for the 2003 season and, as he pointed out, got it with a quarter-and-a-half left to play.
Reapy figured in four premiership teams --- two at Kyneton and two at Gisborne.
Other than a season with the Carlton reserves and a few games at Collingwood 'playing with the matinee boys' (as he liked to call the Magoos) Reaper never did realize his ambitions and play in the big time, but few had as much fun along the journey.
He did play in a major match on the MCG, though, with the Blue and Gold representative team from Bendigo in the early 2000s.
That was in a semi-final against the Geelong league and Reaps booted the lion's share of Bendigo's goals in a losing side. The Bendigo-Geelong match was a Queen's Birthday weekend curtain-raiser to the Melbourne-Collingwood clash.
LONG before Reaper's time Golden Square had a free-running wingman, star Peter Moroni.
He had just the one nickname. Actually it was more of a phrase than a nickname, bestowed on him by Bulldog-loving broadcaster, Dick Turner.
Whenever Moroni burst down the wing at the BFL ground where Turner was broadcasting -- and he'd do it very frequently -- the match caller would say: "Here comes the fleet-footed market gardener from Epsom, Peter Moroni."
Quite a mouthful, especially to get it all out before the next passage of play happened.
Goal-kicking wingmen are quite a rarity even in the open flow of today's footy and Moroni says he would have loved the opportunity to run just like the AFL outriders of today.
"It's all run and bounce. It would have suited me down to the ground.
"They're not allowed to whack you, certainly not king-hit you, or anything like that. When we played against clubs such as Rochester they'd come at you hard.
"They were big blokes and only too willing to knock your block off. Luckily I could run fast. Footy is still hard and tough now, but you're pretty safe from the rough stuff," Moroni said.
He notched up a club record 368 senior games, with his tally for the Square well past 400 considering he reckons he played about 50 Reserves games and 40 or so in the under-18s.
Moroni's love affair with footy saw him continue in super-rules at Swan Hill until he was almost 50.
Now he's a bike rider and when I caught up with him in Bath Lane's Green Olive café recently Moroni had just ridden from Bendigo to Melbourne with his cycling mates.
OTHER than a couple of games with Geelong's reserves at the start of the 1967 season, the fleet-of-foot wingman played all his footy at the Square.
He'd joined from Marist Brothers where he'd first played in the under-15s.
His longevity was remarkable. Moroni missed just a month's football on the way to 300 senior BFL games.
He says he was glad to make Geelong's list "as a young kid" in 1966-67, but far preferred living in the bush and doesn't regret leaving.
"I got seven letters from Melbourne clubs in all. I went to Hawthorn first and then to Geelong. I far preferred it at the Cats as Peter Pianto, an ex-Eaglehawk boy, was coach.
"It didn't work out, but that's life. I was able to play through until I was 41-and-a-half. I wouldn't change too much."
As the Advertiser sports editor of the time, I was fortunate enough to see Moroni boot six match-winning goals against Sandhurst in the 1979 BFL grand final. He blew the Maroons away that day, and it remains one of my most indelible impressions in 30-odd years of covering local footy.
Excerpts from -- Football Legends of the Bush: Local Heroes and Big Leaguers by Ken Piesse. Published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2011.
Richard's selections for Round 12: Gisborne by 35, Strathfieldsaye by 29, Kangaroo Flat by 20 and Sandhurst by 13.
Season tally for 2013: 34.
By Richard Jones
