";s:4:"text";s:3119:"Hawthorn countered his by putting Ian Paton in the ruck and moving Michael Byrneto full forward. Bombers captain James Hird won the Norm Smith Medal for his Grand Final performance. It will be an unforgettable night for Essendon fans as they spend an evening with the players that made the back-to-back premierships happen. ... We're getting congratulate the Premier team of 1984 the Essen football Club. It was really sad. It could be a crucial bump in the opening minute, a team-lifting skyscraper just before half-time or a goal from a player with the poise of a ballet dancer in the crucial opening minute of the final quarter.For Baker it was just a matter of time before the scoreboard pressure would build: “We weren’t going as badly as the scoreboard said and that year we had come back a lot of times and even though Hawthorn had beaten us three times that year, we knew we could get them,” Baker said.“We had booked flights for our trip and had to leave before the end of September otherwise we would have been travelling in peak time and it would have cost an extra couple of thousand. 31 Dean Bailey who has passed away. He wasn’t quick, but had this knack of taking a step backwards when someone came to tackle him. A very different bloke to ‘Nobby’ was Merv, a real wanderer who travelled around Australia playing and coaching. I thought, ‘I wonder how this is going to go?’ Sheedy put us on each other early in but we ended up getting on great. He worked at Vic Roads where I worked. So in 1985 when the brawl happened I didn’t get involved. We could have been scarred by it. I think Leon and I both had just two kicks for the quarter, but if people remember us as having more, then that’s nice.”For Bill Duckworth, Clarke’s death was never something many considered as only a select few were allowed inside his troubled world: “We just didn’t know there was a problem because he never seemed down and always had that great smile on his face. 8 ‘Nobby’ Clarke, passed away; No. 25 Roger Merrett, who has had a stroke; No.