OVER the 37 seasons I've been involved in covering Bendigo footy, I would have written a swag of stories featuring renowned full-forward Ron Best.
From the late-Seventies through to his final BFL game as Northern United spearhead when he slotted a lazy 11 majors in the 1984 grand final, I was on hand to record Besty's achievements.
His biggest individual day out was 16 snags and his best in a season, 145, even though he did not poll a single Michelsen Medal vote that year: 1980.
And other than one practice match with Geelong in 1974 in which he nailed four goals, Best centred his entire career in Bendigo and the North Central league before becoming the MLC for the State parliament's North West province.
So rather than me re-telling Besty's footy story once again, let's look at how another scribe saw the big spearhead's career in the BFL and the NCFL.
Here's how prolific sports writer and author Ken Piesse encapsulated the Ron Best narrative.
"FEW could take pack marks or kick long-bomb goals with the frequency of boom Bendigo forward Ron Best, bush football's ultimate superboot.
With 13 100-plus tallies, his first as an 18-year-old with Golden Square, and almost 2000 career goals Best was an impossible-to-stop goal-kicking machine who almost had to employ a secretary, so frequent were the phone calls from recruiting scouts in Melbourne.
Other forwards, like the much-travelled Australian goals record-holder Trevor Sutton, produced more spectacular solo efforts, but generally played in lesser competitions.
Pound for pound, Best was the finest of his era ahead of Merbein's Graham 'Tommy' Bland, North Albury's Stan Sergeant and even the Gippsland Goliath, Shane Loveless.
"I wouldn't re-write any part of my career," Best said once. "I remember a phone call from 'Darky' Dunstan, who was chairman of the VCFL when they made me captain of the No. 1 Victorian Country team one year.
"Besty," he said. "You deserve this. You have stayed loyal when few were prepared to stay home."
"That meant a lot to me," Best said.
In the sudden death 1977 preliminary final against Eaglehawk at the QEO, Bendigo football's showpiece, Best's club Sandhurst trailed before the full-forward went into overdrive.
He roosted possibly the most important goal of a long career from 65 metres out. The ball spiralled through, post high.
"It was probably the most important kick of my life and certainly the most important of all the goals that day.
"I was opposite the coach's box and just launched it. Peter Lenaghan's dad was standing behind the goals and put his arms up as if to say: 'kick it to me.' And I did.
"The ball ended up on the bitumen. It gave us some momentum coming into the last quarter. We got up, just, that day and went on to win the grannie too."
Sandhurst won a thrilling 1977 grand final by three points over arch-rivals Golden Square with a last-minute major at the Barnard Street end.
A five-time premiership player, Best was crucial in two flags with the Hurst and singles with each of Golden Square, Boort and Northern United.
HIS all-time favourite premiership came with Sandhurst in 1973 when the famous club, known for its Hawthorn icons Kevin Curran and Graham Arthur and a platoon of Carlton greats, broke a flag hoodoo stretching back a quarter of a century.
"I was only 23 at the time and coaching men a deal older than myself," Best recalled. "They'd had some great sides without quite getting over the line.
"We lost the last two home-and-away games, won the first semi by a point and then the prelim. final by a point --- again --- before winning the flag by seven goals.
"It was very, very special," Best remembered.
Size, strength and durability were Besty's trademarks. He also had a rare competitiveness.
As a youngster growing up in Heidelberg (or 'Toorak North' as the locals like to call it) Best was a jumping jack before maturing as an outstanding body player.
He enjoyed it when opponents tried to rough him up. "I knew straightaway their focus wasn't for the ball. It meant more easy kicks for me."
One Saturday morning he was shopping in Bendigo at Ashman's and was inside a booth trying on some trousers.
Into the shop walked former Geelong premiership player Colin Rice, coaching a rival BFL club at that time.
Rice began talking to the store owner about the coming afternoon clash with Golden Square, for whom Best had booted 14 and 10 goals in the opening two rounds.
"Ken Ashman didn't know who I was and the pair was discussing the game. My name came up and Colin said I'd simply been lucky and had benefitted in the opening rounds from a few relayed free kicks and the like.
"I went out that day and kicked 10 and had 34 by the end of round three."
IRONICALLY, Best's inability to convert set shots was the one early weakness in his game.
"I never kicked 16.2 or 16.3," he said. "I needed a lot of shots. One day at Echuca [it was 1971] I kicked 5.13 and after nine or 10 rounds that season had 51.102 beside my name.
"But I improved. I learned to be able to move the ball from right to left, or left to right, depending where you made contact with it on your boot."
Best enjoyed being a 'big fish' in a small-ish pond and benefited business-wise. "I saw football as being an opportunity to not only complement businesses I went into, but a vehicle to make a success of my life."
Everywhere he played, he involved himself in the local communities, establishing businesses and goodwill which resulted in him entering politics after his playing days were done.
For 14 years he was the MLC for the North Western province. In 2002, Best married Louise Asher, the Liberal MLA for Brighton.
Best said his father always reckoned 'football would never get me anywhere' and impressed on him the need to have regular, well-paying jobs.
"VFL or league footy was not for me," he said. "Staying home in the bush gave me not only financial security, but also a profile which later enabled me to enter politics."
HAD he not just invested in a hotel in Bendigo, Best may have accepted Geelong's 1974 invitation to play.
Eventually he appeared in just the one trial game before heading back home.
"The money being offered in those days was nothing like the money offered to the young players of today. I was hungry to get established.
"Bill McMaster [Geelong's recruiting officer] put in a lot of time on me. It just wasn't to be."
In fact, Best refused a rich $5000 offer from the Cats, substantial money for an untried country kid, albeit one with a boom reputation.
Originally invited by an uncle who was on the committee at Golden Square to play in a practice match in Bendigo, Best booted eight goals and moved here full-time in 1968.
He booted four tons for the Square from 1968-71 inclusive, four more with Sandhurst from 1973-76 (also inclusive), another three for the Square in 1978, '79 and 1980, an even 100 with Boort in 1981 and then 124 for Northern United in 1983.
That was the Swallows' first season in the top tier of the re-badged BFL after two hectic years of the amalgamated Bendigo Golden City Football League: the first season with a two-tiered format.
Ron's years in the North Central League had also proved fruitful. Best played in consecutive grand finals with Boort and topped the 1981 goal-kicking table.
Fourteen of his even 100 majors came during the finals series, although Boort lost to Wycheproof-Narraport in the '81 Big Dance.
Following major knee surgery Best didn't play until round 14 in 1982 and booted nine on grand final day as Boort turned the tables on Wychy.
"That was almost as sweet a flag as the '73 one with Sandhurst," Best recalled.
INDUCTED into the Bendigo Advertiser-WIN TV Sports Star Hall of Fame in recent years, Best said his days in the BFL would always be cherished.
The Ron Best Medal is awarded each September to the league's leading senior goalkicker and Ron is frequently on hand to present it.
From Ken Piesse's Football Legends of the Bush: Local Heroes and Big Leaguers. Penguin Group, Australia (2011).
Richard's tips for Round 17: Strathfieldsaye by 11 points, Gisborne by 23, Golden Square by 41 and South Bendigo by 39.
2013 season tally to date: 47.
Correction: in the Reflections column published over split Round 15 [July 27th—August 3rd] the Christian name of South Bendigo skipper Childs listed in My Top Dozen Players should have read Brady. Not Danny.
By Richard Jones