It’s the memorable play from the 2009 Grand Final between Geelong and St Kilda.
A hard-charging Saints defender Zac Dawson executes a spoil on Gary Ablett Jnr, tries to run onto the spilled ball in the centre square but Matthew Scarlett beats him to it and ingeniously executes a toe poke in mid air, flipping the ball back over Dawson’s head to Ablett.
Ablett pumps the ball forward, Paul Chapman crumbs and gives the Cats the go-ahead goal that decides an epic Grand Final.
Champion defender to freshly crowned Brownlow Medallist to Chapman. Goal.
Here is another way to put it: Father-son draft pick to father son draft pick to Chapman. Goal.
The AFL Draft in two weeks is set to feature two father-sons high in the order. Both are set to get to Brisbane and good luck to the Lions on that.
Will Ashcroft is the son of Marcus, a Lions premiership player and a club stalwart who was with the club through the thin before the thick came at the tail-end of his 318-game career. He was a Bear before he was a Lion and his flags were hard earned.
Jaspa Fletcher is the son of Adrian Fletcher who is familiar to many in the west.
Fletch, as we knew him in four seasons at Fremantle at the end of his career, played 231 games across four clubs but played most of them - 107 - at Brisbane and probably played the best of them for Brisbane too, although he was still a damn good player for the Dockers in 79 games that produced a Doig Medal in 1999.
Fletcher, like Ashcroft, played for both the Bears and Lions and saw some thin and some thick.
If the draft form guides run true there will be a matched bid for Will Ashcroft well inside the top five and possibly at the very top. The bid for Jaspa Fletcher, also tipped to be matched, will come at some point either late in the first round or early in the second round.
There is a lot that is good to be said about a player getting to play for the club his father played for, so good luck to both boys.
So this is an observation more than a call for the AFL to scrap a rule it clearly loves the romance of: Despite significant tightening via bidding processes the father-son rule is arguably the most inequitable of all AFL rules in a competition that lives and dies by its equalization policies.
There is no real counter-balance measure to it and it has almost certainly decided Grand Finals.
Go back to that 2009 decider, Geelong had three father-sons on the field that day, all of whom have undisputed status as champions. Ablett, Scarlett and Tom Hawkins.
Since the VFL expanded to include West Coast and Brisbane before others joined later, St Kilda has had one – David Sierakowski, son of 1966 premiership player Brian.
David Sierakowski was an honest, modestly talented big man who played 93 games for the Saints between 1994 and 2000 before a further 10, interrupted by knee injury at West Coast between 2001 and 2003.
Under the father-son rules in place at the time, the Cats were able to take Scarlett with a third-round draft pick, 45th overall in 1997. Players taken in the top 10 that year included Travis Johnstone at pick one, Trent Croad at three, Mark Bolton at four, James Walker at six, Kris Massie at seven and Shane O’Bree at 10.
They were all viable AFL players with careers not to be sneezed at. None came close to being as good as Scarlett.
Ablett was taken at pick 40 in the 2001 super draft. With the benefit of hindsight he sits alongside Chris Judd as the best player taken out of that draft. The Cats were also able to take Jimmy Bartel at pick eight, effectively giving them two Brownlow Medalists for the price of one.
As all good telemarketing ads scream: But wait there is more. Hawkins was most people’s choice as the best player in the 2006 draft in the lead up and was still unique and influential in the 2022 decider. His draft price was a steal at pick 41 overall.
Again the Cats were able to take Joel Selwood in the top 10 of that draft. Again, two guns for the price of one.
If you are a Saints fan and you love torturing yourself, you might wonder how different Geelong’s team in 2009 would have looked without the father-son rule and who might have won as a result.
If you really want to torture yourself Saints fans you might also wonder about 2010, when the first Grand Final against Collingwood was drawn with father-son Travis Cloke kicking two goals after being taken at pick 39 in 2004 and fellow father-son Heath Shaw gathering 24 disposals and being named in his team’s best after being taken with pick 48 in 2003.
Aahh the romance – although the romance can be a bit vague, even flirtatious at times.
Take Brisbane’s gun father-son Jonathan Brown who played TAC Cup for Geelong, barracked for Fitzroy and whose father Brian played 51 games for the Lions who were later forcibly merged with Brisbane.
Take Cloke, whose father David did play 114 games for the Magpies, qualifying his three sons to be father-son picks, but also played 219 games for Richmond, played in two flags for the Tigers and started and finished his career at Punt Road.
And even current day father-son Magpie Darcy Moore. Father Peter played 172 of his 249 games for Collingwood and won the first of his Brownlow Medals there in 1979. But he also played the last 77 of his games for Melbourne and won the second of his Brownlow Medals there.
Aahh yes, that romantic unbroken bond between club, player and the player’s family.
We know that the AFL has tightened the father-son rule significantly to allow other clubs to bid the draft price up, but if possession is nine tenths of the law in other walks of life, it is closer to 10 tenths of it in footy.
No club is going to let a gun father-son slip through their fingers. The Bulldogs, who incidentally had father-sons Tom Liberatore, Lachie Hunter and Zaine Cordy on the field when they beat Sydney in 2016, were happy to match the bid at pick two for Sam Darcy last year, just as Collingwood matched at four to get Nick Daicos.
Just as Brisbane are expected to match bids for both Will Ashcroft and Jaspa Fletcher this year.
How have the WA clubs fared under the father-son rule?
West Coast did have a couple of big wins in the 1990s. They got Ashley McIntosh and Ben Cousins under fabricated father-son rules. McIntosh was integral to the 1992 and 1994 flags. More torture for Saints fans. Father John finished fourth in a Brownlow Medal playing for the Saints in 1971. Cousins of course was critical in the 2006 thriller against Sydney after the narrow loss the previous year when he won his Brownlow.
Since then Mitch Morton, Jacob Brennan and Alec and Jake Waterman have been picked for modest return. Jake Waterman is still there hoping to nail down a position in the club’s best 22 in 2023.
Fremantle, like the Saints, have had just one in the club’s history – Brett Peake qualified via father Brian’s games for East Fremantle in the WAFL. Brett played 75 games for the Dockers before leaving, ironically to join the Saints where he played in the 2010 Grand Final and the replay.
Peake’s 75 games for the Dockers were five more than Callum Brown managed for Collingwood. Brown was delisted with brother Tyler at the end of '22 which effectively made them the fifth and sixth-ranked father-son players at the Magpies this year alone, behind Moore, Nick and Josh Daicos and the talented but so far injury-prone Will Kelly.
Further at Fremantle, this year they will be unable to take Ed Allan - the son of Ben - who nearly qualified for father-son status at Hawthorn with 98 games. Because a knee injury finished him at Fremantle, he played only 47 games before he was forced out of the game at the age of 28 at the end of the 1997 season.
Ben Allan has a 27-year unbroken affinity with the Fremantle Football Club. He played for them, he captained them, he coached them in a time of need, he has been a board member there, and his son Ed grew up barracking for them.
Ed will probably be somewhere towards the end of the first round or early in the second round but he will be in the open draft, not taken as a father-son pick.
There are some vagaries here.