Getting down to the business

By David Nagel
WITH finals season in full swing, colourful Australian historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey joined former Carlton Footballer and founder of Champion Data, Ted Hopkins, as guest speakers at a lunch for business leaders at Casey Fields last Friday.
Blainey described how in his youth he would travel through Cranbourne on his way to Melbourne and has a clear recollection of gypsies occupying the side of the road.
Among his many accomplishments, Prof Blainey is a renowned historian of Australian Rules football and he spoke of the first signs of professionalism entering the game in the 1930s.
“Dick Reynolds was due to play against Hadyn Bunton but had never seen him play before, there was no TV footage in those days,” Blainey said.
“Reynolds went to where Bunton was working and followed him around for some time to get used to his movements, to know what to expect.
“After the game the following week, in which Reynolds outplayed Bunton, Reynolds said he felt like he had played him before, just by watching him at work.
“That was a highly professional approach in those days.”
Blainey caused laughter when he spoke of the ‘outer suburban’ clubs like Coburg, Brunswick and Oakleigh joining the league and the long travel that this required.
Hopkins then took to the microphone and the contrast between Blainey’s experience of yesteryear and the new world of statistical data seemed worlds apart.
Hopkins’ claim to fame was his performance in Carlton’s victory over Collingwood in the 1970 VFL (now AFL) grand final.
Footage of that game was shown prior to his speech and when the commentator of the day finished off with the words, “Hopkins was hardly heard of again”, it brought about raucous laughter.
Hopkins spoke about his ’15 minutes of fame’ and how it had a profound effect on him.
“It was too much for me at the age of 21, the flood of expectations after that game hit me like a tsunami, I didn’t cope very well,”
‘Football is so powerful; it means so much to so many and all of a sudden I was at the centre of that attention.”
Hopkins created Champion Data, a sports-statistics company that focuses on Australian Rules football and it’s through this involvement that he has had a bird’s eye view of the changing face of the game.
“Football has changed more in the last four years than the previous 40 years,” Hopkins said.
“There’s now eight statisticians at every game who compile over 2500 stats, its ridiculous really.”
Hopkins is currently working on a new stats format that will be simpler and more relevant to today’s style.