A mercurial half-forward who won three club goalkicking awards and was a regular Victorian representative, McKenzie died on Wednesday morning at Melbourne's Epworth Hospital after a month-long battle with illness. He was 83.
The following story appeared in the 2009 AFL Grand Final Record
Melbourne's brilliant Bob McKenzie was one of the all-time great half-forward flankers, captivating fans with his weaving runs, booming kicks and miraculous goals. A teenage prodigy, in 1948 he produced one of the best first quarters in League history, in perhaps the most eventful debut season ever. A renowned recluse, he breaks his long-held silence.
BOB McKenzie didn't want this story published. Right up until the time of our interview, the Melbourne great had threatened to cancel. Those once electric feet of his - which first propelled the Demons into attack with such power and precision more than 60 years ago - had become decidedly cold. Indeed, he was as elusive as he ever was in his heyday, when he was widely regarded as the best half-forward flanker in the game.
This, of course, came as no surprise to anyone - not his former teammates, not his family and, least of all, not this correspondent, who had been suitably forewarned by all of the above.
McKenzie, 80, is notoriously reclusive, especially when it comes to opening up about his brilliant football career.
Although McKenzie's Melbourne days were bookended by premierships (in 1948 and 1955), former teammates can recall him attending just one club function since he retired, and that was 11 years ago when he joined them at the 50-year reunion of their 1948 premiership. Even then, McKenzie agreed to go along only after much cajoling.
Former teammates such as Noel McMahen and Ron Barassi have tried at various times to lure McKenzie to past players' events, but he has declined each advance.
There's nothing sinister about his absence from Demonland. He doesn't harbour a grudge. In fact, it doesn't have anything to do with the club or anyone associated with it. It's just him. It's an unusual stance, but then we are talking about a unique individual, and a unique footballer.
Regardless, McKenzie had been difficult to contact for many years, anyway. Until recently, he didn't even have a phone. Never had a car, either - he was renowned for riding a pushbike, particularly to and from his 38-year job maintaining parks and gardens with the then-Prahran Council nearby in Melbourne's inner south-east. But the bike is gone now, after he was last year struck down with serious health problems: a heart fibrillation, compounded by a bout of pneumonia that almost killed him.
Although his family has a comprehensive scrapbook of newspaper clippings detailing his playing days (lovingly collated by one of McKenzie's sisters), they were keen for him to finally, belatedly, tell his story - if not for posterity then for their sake. (McKenzie has two children, five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.) Eventually they convinced him to agree to an interview with the AFL Record.
Mention McKenzie's name to any of his old teammates and a common reaction is a gasp of sheer excitement. "Ahh, Bobby McKenzie!" they exclaim, with such reverence as though they're referring to a childhood hero. To some, like Barassi, he was just that.
Of the man they affectionately refer to as ‘Bobby' or ‘Macca', they paint a portrait of an almost peerless small forward, a champion, who was also a larrikin; popular and happy-go-lucky, with an infectious smile and a hint of mischievousness. I was hoping McKenzie would reveal at least some of this personality when I met him.
I was also wary. "If he doesn't like ya', he'll tell ya'," warned one informant. But I needn't have worried.
From the moment McKenzie opens the fly-wire door to his modest flat in the backstreets of Richmond, he is a welcoming host. Robert jnr, the facilitator of this meeting, is also present to make the introductions and ensure his father tells some of the stories he has been told many times himself.
True to form, McKenzie snr is straight to the point - some would confuse it with abruptness - and often eyeballs his interrogator. But he is no bitter and twisted old man, and certainly doesn't suggest everything in his day was better than now. In fact, in many ways, McKenzie is just too humble for his own good.
Asked to explain his reluctance to relive the past, he taps a gnarled fist on his dining table.
"I don't care what happened 50 years ago," he asserts.
"I'm more worried about whether I'll wake up tomorrow morning!"
He lets out a half-laugh, but is deadly serious.
"I had my day, and it's long gone," he says. "The past is the past, and I try to leave it there."
When he is gently reminded the purpose of this interview is to actually reveal the past, he chuckles again.
"Oh, I suppose you can ask your questions," he says. "I'll try to answer 'em. Don't think you'll get much outta me, though. Dunno who'd be bloody interested anyway."
Ninety minutes later, when informed he will be given the chance to read this story before it goes to print, McKenzie waves a hand dismissively and says: "Write what you like."
Robert jnr later admitted to feeling blown away by his father's openness. "He just kept talking," he marveled. "My dad is a funny man to read."
However, McKenzie snr refused to be photographed, explaining: "I'm not very photogenic; I've got a rough head. Just get a picture out of the scrapbooks."
Such is the enigma that is "the great Bobby McKenzie".
Many football fans, particularly those under the age of 50, would never have heard of Bob McKenzie, but from all accounts, he was one of the most watchable players of his era (1948-55). When considering modern-day equivalents, he would appear to be a combination of the likes of Steve Johnson, Alan Didak and Cyril Rioli. Differing styles, but geniuses all. The three current stars, between them, possess McKenzie's dash, daring, penetration, precision and X-factor.
Like this trio, McKenzie too earned widespread acclaim.
Essendon superstar John Coleman named the dynamic Demon in the best team of his era (1949-54). Coleman selected McKenzie and 'The Geelong Flyer', Bob Davis, on either side of Fred Flanagan, the Cats' great centre half-forward, and declared McKenzie the best half-forward flanker he had seen.
"I have played with McKenzie in Victorian sides and he made the job of kicking goals easy," Coleman admired. "I always found him to be a most unselfish player. He would bend over backwards if he thought he could get it to me better that way."
Even Davis concedes: "I don't like saying this, but I'm willing to admit McKenzie was at least the equal of me, if not better. On his day, he'd beat anybody. He had that spark of ingenuity - he could do things other blokes could only ever imagine, even me." And that's saying something.
Perhaps the loftiest praise of all comes from the loftiest source - Barassi. The AFL Legend, who was an impressionable 19-year-old when McKenzie retired, muses: "I've often wondered if my teammates and I were actually good enough to play alongside the great Bobby McKenzie."
Asked to elaborate, Barassi shares a story that exemplifies McKenzie's spellbinding skills.
In the 1955 Grand Final - McKenzie's last game at League level - he kicked a crucial goal just before three-quarter time to put Melbourne seven points in front. Demons fans erupted after McKenzie took several bounces around the southern side wing and - from about 50 metres out, near the boundary line on the 'wrong' side for a right-footer - launched a prodigious spiral punt that sailed through the Punt Road end goal.
The next day, the triumphant Demons indulged in some 'pleasant Sunday morning' revelry at the MCG. McKenzie soon tired of teammates suggesting his goal had been a fluke, so he told them: "Right, follow me." They went to the same spot on the field, and McKenzie said: "Just watch this."
In casual clothes and dress shoes, without any warm-up, and with his judgment likely clouded by a few drinks, McKenzie repeated the effort, with the same result.
Barassi recalls: "I already knew Bobby was a magician because he could kick goals from anywhere, with any kind of kick you could think of, but I couldn't believe my bloody eyes when I saw that."
Confronted with such descriptions, McKenzie remains unsentimental, and a little embarrassed.
"I dunno about all that," he says. "With a lot of blokes, the older they get, the better they were. Not me. I wasn't as good as they reckon I was.
"They must have been watching different games to the ones I was playing. Maybe they confused me with someone else."
On the contrary - it seems everyone who saw McKenzie in full cry has vivid memories of his deeds.
David Parkin - the four-time premiership coach of Hawthorn and Carlton - was a Melbourne supporter as a boy, and McKenzie was "an absolute hero" of his.
"One day at the MCG, McKenzie produced just about the best piece of play I saw as a young fella," Parkin recalls. "He got the ball from the centre bounce, hit (full-forward) Noel Clarke with a bullet-like stab-pass, which bounced off Clarke's chest, but McKenzie had moved so deftly that he collected the ricochet, dodged the full-back and slammed through a goal. Now, that was really something."
McKenzie's signature was his uncanny ability to turn a game with a quick succession of goals. He could be relatively unsighted for long periods and even appear disinterested (he is adamant this was not the case - "It's just that I couldn't get my hands on the bloody thing"), adding credence to the theory of the half-forward flank being a footballer's graveyard. But then he would bury the opposition. Most opposing teams regarded him as a mere 'five-minute player', but they all feared the damage he could cause in that time.
"I'd get on a roll and everything would just run for me," McKenzie explains. "The ball would bounce my way - it would just follow me. I could do no wrong. You could destroy 'em."
Remarkably, McKenzie did this very thing in his first quarter of League football.
It was the opening round of 1948. Melbourne was taking on the mighty Essendon (the premier of 1946 and runner-up of 1947) at the MCG. McKenzie was 19 - the youngest player on either team by almost two years. He was also one of the lightest at a touch under 70kg, to go with his 177cm. (Just a centimetre taller than St Kilda's Stephen Milne but about 10kg lighter).
McKenzie was opposed to brilliant Aboriginal half-back flanker Norm McDonald, but by quarter-time, he had matched the Bombers on the scoreboard himself, slotting four of Melbourne's five goals.
"If they gave me a yard, they were in trouble," he reflects, in a rare moment of self-indulgence. "And I suppose 'Macca' (McDonald) gave me a yard."
McKenzie recalls little else about that hectic half-hour, other than benefiting from an umpiring mistake.
"I thought I'd just missed an easy shot from 20 yards, but the goal umpire called it a goal," he says.
McKenzie added just one more goal to his tally, but believes he would have kicked more if he had not been hampered by a "horrible" blister on his heel. (It wasn't until after his League career finished that he learned to wear nylon socks underneath his football socks to prevent blisters.)
Although the Demons lost, everyone wanted to know about their precocious youngster in the No. 2 guernsey. At the time, they found out little other than the basics because he shunned the limelight, but we can shed more light on his background now.
His full name is Robert Davis McKenzie III. That's right, "The Third" - of five generations of Robert Davis McKenzies. (The first, our Bob McKenzie's grandfather, was born in 1858 - the first year of Australian Football.)
He admits, "It's a fancy name for a bloke from Prahran," which, in his youth, was a tough working-class suburb in Melbourne's inner south-east.
McKenzie grew up in Bendigo Street with two sisters and an older brother Leslie (named in honour of an 18-year-old uncle who died in action at Gallipoli in August, 1915).
He "wasn't much good at school", but was "mad on football". Although a Carlton fan, in his backyard fantasies, he was "big Jack Mueller" from Melbourne. Little did he know he would actually occupy the same forward line as Mueller in one of the most famous premiership triumphs.
Like many youngsters of his generation and some to follow, McKenzie couldn't afford a leather football, so he contented himself with kicking around a paper one. McKenzie says he and his brother "made real good ones", and demonstrates how they did it - "You'd roll the paper up really hard and shove a cigarette packet inside it to make it really tight, and then you'd tie it up with rubber bands. Like that, see? Nothin' to it."
Using such a 'ball', McKenzie played games with his mates in the street, with narrow gaps between a lamp-post and a gate at either end forming the goals.
"I'd dob 'em from a fair way out," he says.
This background proved crucial to his development into what his coach Norm Smith described as, pound for pound, the best exponent of kicking he ever saw.
At state training in 1949, Victorian captain Ern Henfrey (Carlton's champion centreman) told the 20-year-old McKenzie: "I know why you're such an accurate kick - you virtually kick the ball out of your hands." In other words, he guided the ball directly on to his boot - a key to good kicking technique. McKenzie explains: "Well, you couldn't have a big drop with a paper football."
McKenzie started playing competitively with Prahran Tech before moving to Prahran Imperials. He kicked 17 goals one day while roving. "It was a weak competition," he says.
The VFL thirds (under-19s) competition started in 1946 - perfect timing for McKenzie. He was zoned to Melbourne - another stroke of fortune in light of subsequent successes. He played two seasons in the thirds and was best-afield in the 1947 thirds Grand Final, when he set up victory with four goals in the first term playing in the centre.
Such was the backdrop to perhaps the most eventful debut season in League history.
Although some thought McKenzie's first game was 'a flash in the pan', the untouchable genius of that afternoon was to re-emerge time and again. However, the goals dried up for McKenzie late in his first season of 1948. His 13 games had netted just 19 goals. His spot was on the line, and so was Melbourne's season - it had to win the last three games to make the finals.
That was the cue for McKenzie to produce the best goal-spree of his career - 17 in the last three rounds (four against South Melbourne, seven against Carlton and six against Collingwood) to help the Demons into the final four. "I had a good trot," he says.
None better than at Carlton. The Demons trailed the reigning premier by eight points at the last change, before McKenzie swung the game with five goals in the final term, including three in time-on.
The next week he booted six of Melbourne's 13 goals against the second-placed Magpies. But that didn't make him immune to a spray from coach Frank 'Checker' Hughes.
"I kicked a goal out of my backside," he recalls. "I was on the ground and just got my foot to it and it bounced around about 10 players and went through, so I clapped myself. When I came in at half-time, Checker said: ‘Don't ever do that again!'
"These days, if you don't clap and carry on, they think there's something wrong with you."
McKenzie says that in his first final, the 1948 second semi-final against Essendon, Harold Lambert "did me like a dinner". McKenzie was also found guilty of elbowing Norm McDonald to the face while delivering a late bump. He controversially escaped with a reprimand after his advocate, the charismatic Dan Minogue (a former Collingwood star who captain-coached Richmond to the 1920-21 flags), pleaded for clemency on account of McKenzie's youth, adding he wasn't a "knockdown merchant".
McKenzie's luck changed in the preliminary final against Collingwood when he suffered a badly corked thigh, courtesy of an accidental knee from Bill Twomey. That night, he had to meet his then fiancée (later wife) Betty in Ballarat, so he hitched a ride and was forced to sit in a cramped position, which aggravated his injury.
McKenzie shakes his head at the primitive injury treatment of the day: "In those days, they used heat lamps on your sore spots. The only thing we used ice for was to keep the beer cold!" He was ruled out of the Grand Final.
"Things like that didn't worry me," he insists. "I was only a young bloke - I was more interested in having a good time."
He didn't have to wait long for a good time. His luck changed. The Dees and Dons staged the first drawn Grand Final. What's more, the knot in McKenzie's thigh had loosened up, and he was fit for the replay.
He was immediately into the action. In the opening exchanges, McKenzie passed to Mueller, who handballed back to him, but made him prop and twinge his thigh again.
"I reckon I would've started with a goal if big Jack had given the ball to me properly," McKenzie says. "But Jack very seldom handballed. It was a miracle that he actually did it. But he was out of practice."
Mueller stuck to kicking, bagging six goals. McKenzie barely had another kick, but it mattered nought. The Demons were premiers.
It capped a whirlwind debut season in which he kicked 39 goals (just two behind club leading goalkicker Lance Arnold, who had played three extra games) and also polled 10 votes in the Brownlow Medal (just one behind the Demons' leading vote-getter, Alby Rodda).
McKenzie had another big fortnight in 1949.
On a wild afternoon at Victoria Park, Collingwood fans hurled missiles at umpires and McKenzie was struck in the chest by a bottle. It wasn't enough to stop him from contributing to a Melbourne win.
The next week he married Betty at St Ignatius Church in Richmond. (The couple had two children, Robert and Christine, but were later estranged.)
The week after that, McKenzie played his first state game - against South Australia at the Adelaide Oval. A late addition to the team, McKenzie endured the poorest of preparations, sitting upright all night in a train without sleeping compartments.
The next day, though, he was electrifying. With the scores level and only 30 seconds left, McKenzie marked about 45 metres out. "I bent the rules a bit," he says. "The pass didn't travel far enough but I just walked back to take my kick and bluffed the umpire."
Teammates pleaded with him to kick a point.
"She's right," McKenzie said. "I'll kick a goal."
Ignoring the hooting of the crowd, he launched a torpedo that sailed straight through post-high.
"It was only a bodger, but it went where it was supposed to," he says. ('Bodger' is an uncomplimentary slang term.)
McKenzie represented Victoria every two years - 1949, 1951 and 1953. "I'd tell a selector or an official to stick their state footy, and that never went down too well," he explains. He'd be told: "You'll never play in the state side again, McKenzie!" But he was too good to leave out - he was in Victoria's best players in most of his eight state appearances.
McKenzie also made a habit of starring against Collingwood. "They had three toughies - (Frank) Tuck, (Ron) Kingston and (Peter) Lucas - but they never held on to me," he says. "They tried to beat you fair, and that suited me."
McKenzie produced one of his best efforts at Victoria Park in round 13, 1951. The Pies were third, the Demons bottom. McKenzie kicked seven of Melbourne's 12 goals in a losing side.
"I was having one of them days," he says. "They were dropping in my lap and I just kept going ping, ping."
He kicked five goals on Kingston in the first quarter. When Collingwood skipper Lou Richards moved Lucas on to him, McKenzie got down on one knee and beckoned him: "Come here, Peter, Peter." (It was this cocky, cheeky approach that many believe helped make McKenzie a great player.)
"They kept falling in my lap," McKenzie recalls. "But the trouble was I kicked 2.5 against Lucas."
He laments that people tend to only remember the good things.
"Well, I suppose I kicked a few (goals), but I missed my fair share, too," he says.
He volunteers examples. Like the day he was enjoying a "good trot" at Essendon, but missed an easy set-shot from five metres directly in front. "I put it out of bounds! Ohhh! That was a shocker, but people forget those things."
The very good far outweighed the very bad, to such an extent that in the early 1950s, as the Demons struggled, McKenzie was regarded by some as the only Melbourne forward who mattered. Opponents knew they were well on their way to victory if they curbed what one reporter termed the 'McKenzie menace'.
Those curbing tactics occasionally verged into thuggery. The Sporting Globe bemoaned: "Let's be fair. How many times have you seen Bob McKenzie dropped after a brilliant run has ended in a goal? Hasn't McKenzie any redress?"
Not that they necessarily needed to resort to violence to annoy McKenzie, who admits with a wry grin that simply being held was enough to make him "a bit bad-tempered".
"In my day," he says, "if you got a bit of a name for yourself as a half-forward flanker, the ball would be up the other bloody end and the half-back flanker would be stomping on your toes, pulling your jumper and shoving you around.
"It was a tough era. You had to stand up for yourself. You couldn't let blokes stand over you.
"Now, with three umpires, and trial-by-video, the game is so open and clean. That would've made it easier for a lot of us forwards."
Never more so than in the 1954 first semi-final. The way McKenzie tells the story, he and North Melbourne opponent Percy Johnson must have been lucky to cop only four-week bans for striking each other.
"Percy Johnson did this," McKenzie says, pointing to a scar on his upper lip. It remains a constant reminder of how he missed another Grand Final.
McKenzie blames three parties: himself, Johnson and coach Norm Smith.
Johnson, the first Aboriginal to play for North, was promoted from the seconds specifically to stop McKenzie.
"He sucked me in," McKenzie says. "But it was partly Smithy's fault.
"He told how he'd played against Frank Gill one day at Carlton, and Gill kept hanging on to him, so Smithy started ankle-tapping him with the side of his foot. After a while, Gill told him: ‘Norm, if you stop doing that, I'll stop it too.' Smithy had no problems after that.
"He told me to do the same thing to Johnson when he started holding me. But Johnson declared I was a kicker, even though I wasn't because a kicker uses his toe."
McKenzie can't recall what happened next, other than assuming Johnson "went bang". Later in the rooms, McKenzie boasted: "Well, at least I didn't go down." A trainer corrected him: "You went down all right. But you bounced straight back up."
McKenzie recalls: "The way they told me, I got up kickin' and punchin' and scratchin' and bitin'. Even the rotten goal umpire who reported us said it was the best fight he'd seen."
Although McKenzie's lip bled profusely, it was so swollen that stitches couldn't be inserted. "That's why I've still got the scar," he says, seeming neither proud nor bitter.
Nor is he bitter about spending much of his final season (1955) in the seconds. Of course, it helps that it ended in another senior premiership.
In his first game back from suspension, McKenzie hardly had a touch at Footscray. He was "jack of blokes hanging on" to him, so he told club secretary Jim Cardwell: "You can stick your League football up your backside!"
Under Jack Mueller in the seconds, McKenzie played in the centre and his enjoyment returned. "I could have been a good centreman, but they needed blokes to kick goals," he says.
McKenzie credits his spot in the 1955 premiership side to the generosity of an opponent, North Melbourne hard man Laurie Icke, who he opposed in his senior return in round 15.
"I got on well with Laurie and he gave me a real confidence-booster.
"He let me do my own thing and I managed to kick a few goals. I'll never forget Laurie for that."
Those who saw McKenzie play will never forget him, either.
After leaving Melbourne, he played for VFA club Prahran, Lang Lang, Carrum and Sunday league club Montague. Whereas the Coulter Law ensured he was paid just £3 a game in the VFL, he got £20 in the lower leagues. He earned every penny, kicking centuries of goals as a centre half-forward and occasional centreman.
Asked if he would enjoy playing today, he says: "I'd love it, because then I'd be 60 years younger!
"I really wish I was a young bloke again. But I'm too old now. All I've got are a few memories - and even they are fading!"
Not to worry. They burn brightly for those old enough, and lucky enough, to remember.
'GRAVEYARD' SPECIALIST
Although he played on the half-forward flank, a position long regarded as a 'football graveyard', Melbourne star Bob McKenzie still averaged 2.03 goals a game and kicked a major in 86 per cent of the matches he played.
When compared to the game's greatest goalkickers, McKenzie's numbers are not imposing. But they were for a half-forward flanker - few, if any, flankers of his era kicked as many goals as he did.
McKenzie's record also matches up well against modern-day equivalents such as Geelong's Steve Johnson (averaging 1.94 goals in 129 games, scoring in 82.95 percent of games played), Collingwood's Alan Didak (1.36 goals in 158 games; 72.78 percent) and Hawthorn's Cyril Rioli (1.02 goals in 44 games; 63.64 percent).
BOB McKENZIE
Born: December 19, 1928
Recruited from: Prahran Tech APS
Debut: 1948
Height: 177cm
Weight: 72kg
Games: 125
Goals: 254
Player honours: Club leading goalkicker 1949 (40), 1951 (40), 1953 (38), premierships 1948 and 1955, Victoria (8 games, 9 goals).
Brownlow Medal: 17 career votes
