The Cult: Tony Lockett

Illustration by Michael Dockery

The first member of the Australian Cult family is the goal-kicking legend who needs just one name to be immediately remembered and revered by all footy fans – Plugger.

There isn't an era in footy where more change occurred than between 1983 and 1999. The game changed from a suburban Melbourne parochial weekend game to a national, professional industry. It isn't a complete coincidence that this was the era of the greatest goal kicker and possibly the game's greatest enigma, Tony 'Plugger' Lockett.

Plugger was a player who in spite of his aversion to the spotlight, became the game's most recognisable figure. A country boy who remained living in regional Ballarat even while playing at St Kilda yet became the high profile savior of the troubled only club based in our largest city, Sydney.

Give me a player who was suspended for a total of 23 matches in his career yet also won a Brownlow Medal in 1987 for being the league's fairest and best player and I will give you the Cult personified.

Plugger was footy in the 80's. All tight shorts, barrel chest and mullet. You could imagine him in acid wash stovepipes and double plugger thongs smoking a Winnie red and downing a Big M at the local milk bar. In fact, you probably wouldn't have to ask too many people to find someone who saw that in the flesh.

And yet, the man could kick a goal. He was your lead-out-chest-mark-kick-a-goal kind of guy. Simple. Opposition players knew not to get in his road because Plugger was locked onto the red Sherrin kicked in his direction. And even then, kicking hundreds of goals on multiple occasions, his Saints were still shit through most of the 80s.

Tony Lockett was a goal-kicking machine. 1360 for his career, the most of any footballer in the VFL/AFL before or since. He won the league goal kicking four times and his club's goal kicking in 14 of the 16 seasons he played.

If you want to talk awards, there's that 1987 Brownlow Medal. Sure, it was an era when even Robert Dippierdomenico won one, but that same year, '87, Lockett also won his first Coleman Medal for goal kicking and kicked 117 goals in the regular season. And his Saints finished towards the bottom of the table – not Wooden Spoon territory, but nowhere near finals contention. So he wasn't handed them on a plate.

11 years later, Plugger won his fourth and final Coleman Medal, with another century tally of goals, in 1998 at the age of 32. This was for the Swans three years after he had acted as the AFL's messiah and almost single handedly saved the 'Sydney experiment' from going under.

There was the Saints match, against the Swans, where he was injured so a Sydney supporter smuggled a piglet into the SCG and let it out on the ground with the number 4 painted on it. There was the tribute song One Tony Lockett to the tune of Guantanamera that peaked on the Australian singles charts at number 38 in 1999. And there was the easily forgettable three-game come back at the age of 38 in 2002. In fact, forget I even mentioned that one.

But most of all, everybody knew Plugger and yet nobody had ever heard him speak more than a few words.

They all seem to involve Sydney, don't they? Just the year before he became Sydney's favourite son, Plugger was it's greatest villain. This game, in his final season with St Kilda, showed the yin and yang of Tony Lockett. In it, he kicked 11 goals, won the game off his own boot after the Saints were behind by 51 points at one stage of the match, yet it is most remembered by the incident where he caved in the face of his opponent Peter Caven and received an eight week suspension.

Tony Lockett being a man of few words, final ones are difficult to find. And then I came across this from four years after he retired (for the second time). For most of us, our sporting prowess generally gets bigger and grander as time fades the memory, but for Plugger, he couldn't give a shit about his legacy, and was sceptical about how good he actually was.

"I was overweight, I was an asthmatic, I was a thug, I was useless."

As someone who was a massive fan of the game when Plugger was at his prime, I feel perfectly placed to rebut this quote. He might have been the first three, but he was never the fourth. Never.

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