Perspective
It is often stated that the style of play displayed by Carlton in the second half, featuring frequent hand ball and open fast running play, was a precursor to the modern style of play. However, Barassi himself credits the idea to former Richmond and Fitzroy coach Len Smith. Up until then, Australian rules in Victoria had primarily been a stop-start game with players kicking forward to team mates who took a mark, stopped and kicked again, with the handball used mainly as a defensive option. In the second half of the Grand Final, Carlton played on and used more handball, moving the ball quickly and catching Collingwood players off guard, not giving them time to settle.
Although the match is justly famous for the contributions of many now-legendary players of that era, Brent Crosswell (Carlton) was contemporaneously generally regarded as the best player of the day for his four quarter contribution, especially in the first half when many Carlton players were not playing well.
Interestingly Hopkins played only one further game for Carlton, soon quitting football to pursue other interests.
The 44-point half-time deficit overcome by Carlton was then the second-largest half-time deficit ever overcome in VFL history. The only larger deficit overcome before this was 52 points, by Collingwood against St Kilda in Round 10 of the same year (which remains the record today).
Read more about this topic: 1970 VFL Grand Final
Famous quotes containing the word perspective:
“No one thinks anything silly is suitable when they are an adolescent. Such an enormous share of their own behavior is silly that they lose all proper perspective on silliness, like a baker who is nauseated by the sight of his own eclairs. This provides another good argument for the emerging theory that the best use of cryogenics is to freeze all human beings when they are between the ages of twelve and nineteen.”
—Anna Quindlen (20th century)
“All things being equal, I would choose a woman over a man in order to even the balance of power, to insinuate a different perspective into the process, to give young women something to shoot for and someone to look up to. But all things are rarely equal.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)