Gippsland Power 2005 premiership team: Scott Pendlebury, Dale Thomas

Big Brett Dore? They called him “The Bear’’.

“Because he’d get on the bottom of a pack and they’d jump all over him and he’d start to growl like a bear and throw them off,’’ Hudson chuckles.

Dore’s little mate Ricky Delphine? A “loveable larrikin’’ and prankster.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? EVERY 2005 GIPPSLAND POWER PLAYER

“I wouldn’t call him a ratbag. He was a lot of fun. But we had to keep a tight leash on him at times!’’ Hudson says. They succeeded: Delphine won the best and fairest as a bottom-ager.

Twenty years after he coached the Power to a premiership, mention of the 2005 Gippsland Under 18s brings warm memories to the former AFL star.

He speaks about them with the affection that coaches reserve for their premiership players.

Hudson’s team defeated Dandenong Stingrays in the TAC Cup grand final at the MCG to give Gippsland Power its first TAC Cup premiership.

It remains the club’s only flag in the Under 18 competition, now known as the Coates Talent League.

A few hours after the Power’s victory, the Sydney Swans held out West Coast Eagles in a classic AFL grand final to break a long premiership drought.

“Leo Barry, you star!’’ commentator Stephen Quartermain roared as the Swans defender dragged in a pack mark seconds before the final siren.

Hudson and his players watched on from the stands, those over 18 sipping something cold. That night the beer was on the coach when the Power celebrated at the Drouin clubrooms; Hudson had said he would shout Crown Lagers if Gippy won the granny.

They did, by 15 points, in what turned out to be the last TAC Cup decider played at the ‘G as a curtain-raiser to the AFL grand final.

This Saturday, at Dandenong’s Shepley Oval, the players will come together for a 20-year reunion.

The Power team featured three future Collingwood AFL premiership players – Scott Pendelbury, Dale Thomas and Tyson Goldsack – as well as premiership Hawk Xavier Ellis and premiership Cat Trent West.

Lachie Hansen (North Melbourne), Rob Eddy (St Kilda), Ben Ross (North Melbourne) and Jay Neagle (Essendon) also advanced to the AFL.

Others went on to become prominent players in the VFL and local football.

A case can be made that the 2005 Gippsland Power team put together by region manager Peter Francis is the best seen in the TAC Cup/NAB League/ Coates Talent League.

It produced 12 Vic Country representatives and three of the top five players in that year’s national draft: Thomas at No. 2, Ellis at No. 3 and Pendlebury at No.5. Key forwards Jay Neagle (son of Merv) and Ben Fraser both kicked more than 60 goals. The Power finished a game clear on top and won all three of its finals.

Francis, a premiership player with Carlton in 1979, was aware the club had put together a tremendous squad.

When officials were interviewing for a coach, he told the candidates “we’ve got a really, really good group of players – and I don’t want it stuffed up!’’

Much of the team had played together at lower age levels and hadn’t been touched.

“One day they (the players) came to me and said, ‘You realise, Pete, that we haven’t been beaten yet from 15 onwards’. And I said, ‘You’re right, you haven’t’. So they knew too,’’ Francis says. “You do have a good idea of what your group is going to be like from year to year.’’

Brent Macaffer was on the 2005 list but did not play in the grand final.

“He was just finding his way a little bit that year,’’ Francis says.

But in 2010 he joined Pendlebury, Thomas and Goldsack in Collingwood’s grand final team, which also counted Hudson as an assistant coach. That year a Power surge charged the premiership Pies.

Hudson, now coaching Yarra Valley Grammar in the AGS, acknowledges his team had a lot of talent, some of it clear then, some of it still emerging, “but you’ve still got to make it gel’’.

“I’ve got a comparison: this year at Yarra was similar to Power in 2005. We had these really high draft picks. But you just can’t rely on your top six or eight. At Power, we had the top-end talent but also really good balance. And the other thing that stood out for me was the level of commitment.’’

He uses Tom Dowd as example. Dowd had suffered a deep corkie in the preliminary final, could barely walk and was “absolutely devastated’’ at the prospect of missing the grand final. Hudson, valuing his run and left-foot kicking out of defence, told him he would give him “every chance’’ to play.

“Well, he was up every night and did everything he could to get his leg right,’’ Hudson says. “He got there. He played the game out and he played well.’’

Thomas was one of the stars of the grand final, booting four goals to help the Power overcome a Stingrays side that could call on Nathan Jones, Travis Tuck and James Magner.

Jones had 36 possession for the Rays. Delphine had 30 for the Power. Thomas kicked four goals and was judged best-afield.

Pendlebury played on the wing in 2005, impressively, but no one could have predicted such a long and illustrious career was head of him.

Quite a few of his TAC Cup teammates have retired; here he is at age 37 signing new contracts with the Magpies.

Steve O’Bryan, the Power’s captain and centreman in the premiership season, says it’s “quite surreal’’ to think he had Pendlebury at his side.

Hudson recalls that Pendlebury was “really raw’’.

“Scotty was so young and it was really his first year of footy, because he’d stepped away from basketball,’’ he says.

“If you go back to when he started to play AFL footy, he spent a bit of time at Williamstown as well. It took him a little while to get going. When he worked it out, the rest is history.

“It’s nice to say now that we had some talent, after you’ve seen their careers and what they’ve done, but you don’t know at the time. You can’t say, ‘Hey, he’s going to end up playing 200 games’ or ‘He’s going to play 50 games’. You don’t know that.’’

Francis thought Pendlebury had a big future. But more than 400 games?

Francis would never have picked it, “not in a million years’’.

“I knew he was very good, don’t get me wrong. But the career that he’s had. I don’t think you could pick that.’’ He remembers Pendlebury being “so professional’’, perhaps because of his elite-basketball background.

Was there a player who wasn’t drafted but Francis held in high regard?

He names Jeff Ryan, who became a best and fairest-winning suburban player.

“I always rated him highly,’’ Francis says.

“I thought he was a very, very good player. Could play half back, wing, on the ball. He was a really good size, at that 185, 186cm mark. He was really stiff. And even Chris Dunne. They (recruiters) might have thought he was a tad slow. I thought he was stiff.’’

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Paul Hudson says the Power “had a lot fun’’, remembering a prank played on two players after a match in Bendigo, when officials produced a letter purportedly from hotel management accusing the pair of putting something down the shower, blocking the drains and pipes, and causing thousands of dollars of damage.

O’Bryan says there were “no dickheads’’.

“Everyone got along,’’ he says. “Everyone was friendly. Everyone was super-keen. There were pressures, obviously, playing in the TAC Cup. Some were a lot more relaxed than others, but there was a good mix. Credit to ‘Huddo’. He did a lot of work in bringing us together.’’

Like the “Power Chant’’. It was the idea of John Fitzgerald, who at the time was a mentor of Hudson’s and thought it a way of using the “energy’’ of the swide.

“We were all in this room and this guy (Fitzgerald) says, ‘When you’re out on the ground and you feel like you’re down or getting beaten, go ‘Power, Power, Power,’’ O’Bryan recalls.

“The whole room started saying it. We were screaming it at the end. When we ran on to the ground, everyone was so pumped.’’

The chant would sometimes start in a social setting, cracking up the players.

Hudson remembers it breaking out one day at Princes Park. “It reverberated around the ground – people didn’t know what was going on’’.

One of O’Bryan’s other enduring memories of 2005 was the car rides from South Gippsland to Morwell for training.

He and Ben Fraser lived in San Remo, Beau Vernon at Newhaven and Jaymie Youle at Cowes. They would often go together, doing pick-ups along the way.

“Good times. Hour-and-a-half each way,’’ O’Bryan says. “But that was nothing compared to the one of the other boys. Can’t remember who it was but he was from Orbost. Big place, Gippsland. But we had it easy really.’’

Hudson closed his distinguished AFL career in 2002 and coached Gippsland league club Leongatha for two years before taking on the Power.

Francis was by then entrenched as region manager after serving as coach for six years.

Hudson says Francis was an excellent operator and left a “massive imprint’’ on the Power, overseeing the identification and influx of talent for almost 20 years. The club names its best and fairest medal after him.

Hudson left Power at the end of the 2006 season, joining Leigh Matthews at Brisbane.

By then some of his Power premiership players were on their way in the AFL: Pendlebury and Thomas had debuted at Collingwood and Ellis at Hawthorn.

“It was a good group,’’ Hudson says. “Not many didn’t get the best out of themselves, did they? They all got to a pretty good level and obviously some went way beyond that.’’

O’Bryan agrees.

“Everyone went their own way, but everyone had a big impact wherever they went, country footy, state footy, AFL.’’