Mark "Jacko" Jackson - Football Career

Football Career

As a football player, "Jacko" was a full forward of great potential. He started his senior career in the West Australian Football League with South Fremantle in 1979. Mal Brown, who was coaching South Fremantle at the time, employed Jackson as a tough forward to protect Ray Bauskis, a skillful but lightweight full-forward. It worked well, with Jackson kicking 53 goals from 22 games and Bauskis 66 from 17 games. South Fremantle finished 2nd that year, but the night before the second semi-final, Jackson returned to Melbourne, after being told that the other players had voted him out of the team.

Upon returning to Melbourne, Jackson rejoined Richmond, who had lent him to South Fremantle. However, with Michael Roach and Brian Taylor at the club, there was no room for a third full forward. Jackson spent the year in the reserves and kicked 131 goals. Seeing that there would be little opportunity at Richmond, Jackson moved to Melbourne for the 1981 season.

Here, despite having one of the strictest taskmasters and legends of the game in Ron Barassi as coach, Jackson released his bag of tricks on the Melbourne fans. One of the most famous was the handstand in front of the Hawks full back, Kelvin Moore. Moore told Jackson that he "wouldn't be a full forward while his arse pointed to the floor", so Jackson did a handstand to point it to the sky. He was also famous for twirling the ball on his fingers like a basketball. Jackson kicked 76 goals in each of his two years with the Demons, leading the goal kicking in 1981 and falling one goal behind Gerard Healy in 1982. He felt that he didn't have the support of the coaches or players so he put himself on the market and waited for interest from other clubs.

St Kilda was the only club interested for the 1983 season and Jackson started very well for the Saints kicking 41 goals from 10 matches, including 10 in a game against Sydney Swans. But half way through the season Jacko was sacked from the club for disciplinary reasons. He spent the remainder of the year playing for the Harlequin F.C. Rugby side. However, his 41 goals was still enough to be the Saints' leading goal kicker.

1984 saw Jacko return to the VFL with Geelong. He would stay with the Cats for three seasons, leading the goal kicking in 1984 with 74. Gary Ablett would take over as Geelong's leading goalkicker from 1985, but Jacko still managed 115 goals from 31 games.

After kicking six goals in the first round of 1986 and two in the second round, he retired after his omission from the Geelong senior side in the following round. Later in 1986 he played a few games for Brunswick Football Club in the VFA First Division, the first of which against Sandringham drew a crowd of nearly 15,000 to the Brunswick oval.

He ended his career with 308 goals from 82 games, leading his club's goalkicking on 3 occasions. He holds the record for the most consecutive games from debut with at least one goal, with 79 games. His first and only goalless game in his career was in his third last game in Round 21 1985 against Richmond at Waverley Park.

His controversial reputation was also due to being reported twice at Melbourne and four times at Geelong, including an eight match suspension following a fight against Hawthorn. An autobiography of his football career was written with the assistance of Melbourne journalist Jon Anderson in 1986 titled Jacko, Dumb Like a Fox.