‘I can still fly’: The legend of Saad Saad, Victorian country football’s flying mark machine

Keep off your opponent’s back.

Don’t go jumping into him with knees and possibly causing injury.

Blokes aren’t playing at this age to get barrelled from behind.

Saad Saad jokes he’s got an exemption from the rule.

But anyway, he doesn’t get into backs when he takes his marks. He prefers to stand on shoulders.

He’s not joking about that; there is a vault of video clips and photographs of Saad soaring into the sky for spectacular marks for his country club Seymour.

At one stage, he laughs, he had to stop taking them. Qantas was complaining about him.

“They said I was jumpin’ so high I was getting in the way of their planes,’’ he chortles.

In the Goulburn Valley league they still talk about his grab for Seymour in the 2005 grand final, when he took a running jump and leapt on to a Euroa player’s head.

It’s on YouTube. It’s hard to imagine a better mark being taken in the game.

Yet Saad is adamant he took a better one that same year.

“It was against Tongala, at Tongala,’’ he says. “No one got it on video. I was higher than what I was in the grand final. I was standing on the centre half forward’s head. Right on top of it.’’

Laughing again, he adds: “I had to get a parachute to come down from that one.’’

What’s it like to get that high?

“Mate, it’s like you’re on another … it’s like you’re on another world,’’ he says. “You’re on top and you can see everything from there.’’

A Lebanese Muslim showering his gifts over country Victoria grounds, Saad could do anything, and then a little more.

When he wasn’t taking speccies, he was kicking goals, more than a few of which were described as freakish. He defied angles and distances. He could conjure something out of nothing. He estimates he’s booted more than 1500 in local football, including 900 at Seymour.

At 39, Saad is playing out what’s left of his career with the Diamond Valley ‘Supers’.

He still takes calls from local clubs and believes he could still do well at a good level of local football.

But time is staking its claim on him; he’s happy to train and play once a fortnight.

“Just to have a run,’’ he says. “I play with a few of the boys. Helps keep the weight off too. But mainly the fun. You’ve got to have a bit of fun. That was always my attitude to footy.’’

Last Sunday, he counted former AFL star Brendan Fevola and four other ex-league players – Aaron Edwards, Daniel Harris, David Bourke and Anthony Franchina – as teammates when Diamond Valley took on Williamstown at Shelley Park in Heidelberg.

Four minutes before running out onto the ground, he was still in jeans and thongs.

“Getting changed is my warm-up,’’ he had said when he pulled up in his work van (he is an electrician).

Told he would be playing in the forward line with Fevola and Edwards, he quipped: “Get it right, mate. They’re playing with me.’’

Noting the calibre of players in the team, he joked: “And they all come to me to ask how to play.’’

And the prospect of a hanger? “I dropped one in the first round against Frankston. I was on the guy’s shoulders. Oh mate, I can still fly. Expect the unexpected.’’

His white boots going with the black Diamond Valley jumper, he kicked three goals in the first quarter and five for the match in a handy victory.

Diamond Valley coach Paul ‘Chewy’ Scanlon was Saad’s teammate at the Northern Bullants, Seymour and Northcote Park.

At 44, Scanlon is still playing senior football, with Port Melbourne Colts in the Southern league. He was a much-decorated country player, winning a Mornington Peninsula Nepean best and fairest league medal past the age of 40.

He figured in two flags with Saad at Seymour.

“He’s probably the best local footballer I’ve seen who didn’t play AFL,’’ Scanlon says.

“He was freakish. He used to take all the big hangers – he’d take one just about every game, I reckon – and kick all the miraculous goals. Even here in the Supers he still tries to take the screamers. And don’t worry, he still likes a goal. You walk off the ground with him and ask if he kicked three or four. And it was eight or nine.’’

*****

Saad Saad’s parents came to Australia from Lebanon in the early 1970s.

They had 13 children and brought them up in Carlton and then Brunswick, the suburb where Saad and his wife are now raising their three young daughters.

Saad played under-age football with Coburg juniors and entered senior ranks with Northcote Park, where he quickly made his reputation in strong sides and played in two premierships.

Steve Daniel, an assistant coach with VFL club Northern Bullants in 2002, heard about Saad and went to watch him. He was taken aback at his natural ability and went for another look in the grand final that year at Epping.

He recalls it vividly. Saad had been playing in the midfield for Northcote Park.

“The coach said, ‘Right, we’re putting Saad forward, he’s inside 50 pretty much on his own and we know he can win us the game’,’’ Daniel says.

“And that he did. And I walked away thinking, ‘This guy is a superstar, we’ve got to get him to the Northern Bullants’.’’

They did, in 2003.

That was the Bullants’ first year of the alignment with Carlton, when senior positions were scarce.

Saad played in the reserves grand final against Williamstown, flew for a mark and knocked himself out when he hit the ground.

He did show up at senior level, catching the attention of noted Tasmanian football writer David Stockdale when the Bullants played the Tassie Devils.

“A man with the unusual name of Saad Saad showed a commitment to winning the hard ball few of his better-known aligned teammates could match,’’ Stockdale wrote in the Hobart Mercury.

Saad played in the VFL again in 2004.

Daniel had by that time been appointed at Seymour, and set his sights on recruiting the forward who had grabbed his eye two years earlier.

Saad remembers the day he committed to the Lions.

“I had a great relationship with Steve. We had that mutual respect for one another,’’ he says. “Halfway through ’04 I wasn’t enjoying it there (the VFL) and someone told him about it. He rang me and said, ‘Come up’.

“Anyways I met him at his house. We were talking about Seymour, talking about football. We went for a drive to the ground. I signed on the spot. I said, ‘Keep this dark until the end of the year’. He said, ‘Done’. That was it. I was going to Seymour.’’

Seymour hadn’t seen anything like him, and premiership success came quickly: in 2005 and ’06 under Daniel and again in 2007 under Bernie Haberman.

“He’s one of the most exciting players I’ve been lucky enough to coach,’’ Daniel, now coaching VFL club Southport, says.

“People would come to the footy just to watch Saad Saad. They would ring up and say, ‘Where are you playing and will Saad Saad be playing?’ They’d even come up from Melbourne just to see him do his stuff. Our boys loved him. Everyone loved him.’’

In a strong competition, Saad was “a class above’’, he says. He was about 180cm “but he played like he was seven foot’’.

Saad’s exploits for the Lions brought him attention not only in the Goulburn Valley, but Victorian country football.

Scanlon says “everyone knows Saad Saad’’, recalling photos and write-ups in the local newspapers and regular mentions in The Weekly Times sports pages.

Saad says it was his lucky day when he linked with the Lions. He thinks about the club often.

“I always said it was a great move for me,’’ he says.

“Back then, the league was strong. Goulburn Valley was in the top two or three leagues in Victoria. I went up there and to kick 100 goals when it was peaking, that must have been something.’’

Saad says there was a “buzz’’ to playing with Seymour and it would start at 5pm on a Thursday, as he steered his car onto the Hume Freeway.

He would count down the days to it, when he could hit the road and head to training.

Two days later, he would be playing – and invariably starring.

“Can’t describe to you how good it was, the games, the functions, everything. The talk around the town was amazing,’’ he says. “Whenever I was driving home, I felt like turning around and going back.’’

Of course, he was well-looked after to play with the Lions.

And with high match payments came high expectations.

When Saad kicked five or six goals, he was said to have had an average game. If another player had kicked five or six he would have won the award in the clubrooms after the match.

Saad knew he was measured differently to others.

“They expected a lot of me,’’ he says. “It didn’t worry me. I always met the expectations.’’

While many spectators recall the 2005 grand final for Saad’s mark, Daniel remembers it more for his player’s promise at three-quarter time.

Saad grabbed Daniel by the arm and said, “We are going to win this, Steve. Because I am going to win this for us’’.

He dominated the final quarter as Seymour grabbed an 11-point upset win.

*****

Saad played with Seymour until the end of 2009, returned to Northcote Park for the 2010 and ’11 seasons, and then went back to Seymour.

His second stay with the Lions extended to the end of 2015 and took in centuries of goals in 2012 (117, his biggest haul) and 2013.

Last week, The Weekly Times listed him at No.14 in its top 100 country footballers since 2000.

Could or should this man who soared so high have played at the highest level?

Saad trained with two AFL clubs, Melbourne in 2001 and Essendon in 2005.

He was convinced the Bombers would draft him.

“I was that confident,’’ he says. “No one said anything but I just sensed it. The players training at that time, I was like two or three steps ahead of them in everything.

“That was the biggest pre-season I’ve ever had. I got super-fit. Was I disappointed? Yes and no. Back then I was, but over time you think, ‘You know what, it is what it is, there’s more to life than footy’. I never took footy seriously. If I did take it seriously back when I was younger I probably would have got drafted. But no regrets.’’

He enjoys watching his nephew, Adam Saad, ping off the half back line for Carlton.

*****

In the autumn of his career, Saad Saad became a journeyman.

In 2016, he joined Coburg Districts in the Essendon District league, kicking 61 goals from a dozen games.

In 2017, he committed to a third stint with Seymour. His best days were behind him, but he still slotted 43 goals from nine outings.

The 2018 season brought another move, to the Mallee Eagles in the Central Murray league, to play with his nephews Zak and Walid.

Forty-seven goals from 15 games was a decent return for a player who had seen his 35th birthday.

Last year, he popped up at Sunbury Kangaroos for two games, kicking eight goals.

Then came reports he would be joining the Avenel Swans in the Kyabram and District league. Being Saad Saad, it was big news. He never signed and had no intention of going bush again.

But he had started to have a run for the Diamond Valley over-35s before Covid kicked in.

“I can’t believe he’s still playing!’’ Steve Daniel laughs. “He’s had an outstanding career, he truly has.’’

And Saad Saad is keeping them busy in the Supers at Diamond Valley, where he’s found a happy home to fly for his marks and go for his goals.