Melbourne and Tasmanian football great Stuart Spencer - once regarded as the finest rover in Australia - died on Tuesday at the age of 79. 

A member of the Australian Football Hall of Fame, Spencer played 122 games and won the Demons' best and fairest award in the premiership years of 1955-56, before relocating to Tasmania where he played a further 236 games for Clarence.

AFL Record writer Ben Collins shares the story of a remarkable football career and character

(Much of the following was sourced from The Red Fox: The Biography of Norm Smith, Legendary Melbourne Coach.)

BORN in Digby in Victoria's western district, Stuart Spencer was a star rover for Portland in the Western Border League and first came to the attention of the Demons via former club great Fred Fanning, who was coaching Hamilton.

Awarded the No.12 guernsey when he arrived at the club for the 1950 season, he took time to mature and grasp what was required to become a top-level player.

He always credited coach Norm Smith with his transformation in 1952 from a plodding, albeit solid, back pocket player into a high quality rover. It was a transformation that required Spencer to reprogram his mind and body to satisfy Smith's need for him to think fast and move fast.

Spencer made his debut for Melbourne in 1950. Then coach Allan La Fontaine shifted him to a half-forward flank, and then to a wing. John Beckwith, who signed with the Demons that season, recalled attending a Melbourne-Collingwood match at the MCG that year and watching Spencer struggle on the wing.

"'Stuey' didn't have the fitness to run up and down the ground," Beckwith said.

"At one point, he gave away a free kick to his opponent, Thorold Merrett, and he was lying on the ground and he gave the ball to Thorold, who just ran off!"

La Fontaine finally settled Spencer in a back pocket.

"As they say,' Spencer later recalled, "the next move is usually out of the side."

When Smith took over as Melbourne coach in 1952, he continued to play Spencer on the resting rovers, but it wasn't long before Smith realised the 20-year-old was being under-utilised on the last line of defence. Spencer explained it like this:

"By mid-season 1952, Norm decided that I was to become Melbourne's No.1 rover.

"He said: 'Stuey, there will be time for you to return to the back pocket when you are 35.' (Spencer was actually 37 when, as playing coach of Tasmanian side Clarence, he moved himself to the back pocket.)

"Usually such a development would be met with excitement from the player concerned, but I was actually disappointed because Norm dragged me out of the back pocket at a time when I was receiving praise for my efforts in that position.

"I was getting votes from Alf Brown in The Herald, and there was some discussion that 'this Melbourne back pocket might actually challenge the great Bill Stephen (from Fitzroy) for the back pocket position in the state side'.

"But the coach had decided, so I had to do as he said.

"From that point on, I became a subject of Norm's close scrutiny. He continually pressed me on the training track, screaming: 'Stuey, why didn't you do this?! Stuey, you should have done that!'

"I'd think to myself: 'Why is he picking on me?'

"This happened all the time.

"He wanted me to get the ball and take off, which I didn't naturally do.

"I've seen modern footballers train and they never seem to be under the pressure that Norm applied to us.

"It got to the point where I felt so victimised that I was about to give up, pack my bags and go home to Portland.

"I continually came home from training and complained to Fay: 'Why does he keep picking on me?'"

After one such self-pitying lament, Fay Spencer decided she had tired of both her husband's complaining and the coach's chastisements. She recalled: "We'd go to the club dances and Norm would come over to Stuart and say: 'You didn't do this, you didn't do that', and Stuart was so keen on doing well with his football that he'd be like a pricked balloon for the rest of the night.

"I'd be thinking: 'Gee, Norm, why did you do that? It's spoiling our Saturday night.'

"So when Stuart complained to me after training that night, I was fed up with both of them."

Fay told her husband that in many ways she agreed with Smith. Spencer couldn't believe his ears.

"Fay, you're supposed to be on my side,' he complained.

Fay explained to him: "Maybe Norm is at you so much because he thinks you can be so much better than you're showing."

She went on to describe her husband as "a bit of a jogger; a plodder" - an assessment that initially mortified Stuart, as he explained:

"The definition of a jogger in football terms is that you can run all day but you rarely catch up with the play, and you are unable to initiate team play. I didn't want to hear it but that's basically what I was at the time - a jogger, a plodder.

"But from that point, I made up my mind to change my whole approach to develop acceleration and, as Norm would term it, 'quickness'.

"That was all Norm had been trying to do with me. He could see I was working hard, but I wasn't quick.

"As soon as I realised what Norm had been trying to achieve to make me a better player, the ensuing results were outstanding.

"It was such a moment of clarity, such a brilliant realisation.

"It was like walking from the dark shadows into bright sunshine.

"From that moment on, every time I got the ball I dashed.

"Norm had baited me, whereas I hadn't seen it myself. I think I always had pace but I never knew how to extract it and use it to its full potential. Thankfully Norm did.

"He not only saved my career, but he built a foundation for something that could be respected."

Smith often said: "Respect isn't automatically given; it's earned." After a shaky beginning, Spencer had certainly earned Smith's respect.

Fay Spencer recalled her husband being best afield shortly after he had changed his outlook and Smith approaching her at the club dance and saying: "The boy did well today." It was a turning point in both Spencer's football career and his relationship with his coach.

In seasons to come, Spencer's transition from plodder to tireless dasher became so complete that Smith would advise young players: "If you want to learn how to train, watch Ron Barassi, Donny Williams and Stuey Spencer."

Beckwith later marvelled at the positive changes in Spencer's approach.

"Stuey Spencer proved you could improve by simply getting more out of yourself at training, which Norm drove him to do," he said.

"Once Stuey started training properly, he developed tremendous stamina and he was a different player, and we were a much better team for it because he'd win the ball as a rover and he'd kick goals.

"Stuey was already a good player, but he became a freak - one of the best - and a lot of it can be attributed to Norm's influence on his training, and Stuey's decision to take up Norm's challenge and train harder.

"If Stuey continued on the way he was going, he still would have been a good player, but he would never have elevated himself to greatness like he did."

Spencer always believed the intensity and workload at Melbourne training was one of the keys to the Demons' sustained success.

"When you trained with the state side, it was very easy to make a comparison between how hard other teams trained and how hard we trained," said Spencer, who played five games for Victoria.

"It was quite evident that we were by far the best-prepared side.

"The only ones who could compete with us in that regard were Jack Clarke and Billy Hutchison from Essendon. The rest were hopeless.

"You never loped around at a training session run by Norm Smith. You had to dash, flat out, and that's what made the difference between me being a success or failure … and I was almost a failure.

"I used to board out at Thornbury (in Melbourne's northern suburbs) and on the odd occasion I'd stop at Victoria Park to watch Collingwood train under Phonse Kyne. They didn't train; they just walked around. They weren't conditioned to the same level as we were."

The premiership years
Think great ruck divisions and most people imagine the Hawthorn triumvirate of Don Scott, Michael Tuck and Leigh Matthews. No less dominant in the mid-1950s was the Melbourne trio of Denis Cordner, Ron Barassi and Stuart Spencer.

And Spencer didn't suffer in comparison to his two esteemed onball colleagues.

In 1954, he and the Demons came alight. He averaged 23 kicks a game and kicked 37 goals in a young side that made the Grand Final. It was the perfect launching pad for both player and club to assert their authority on the competition. Spencer's next two seasons - his last two at VFL level would propel him to superstardom.

Spencer produced one of his finest performances in the 1955 second semi-final against Collingwood.

In a tight clash on an MCG quagmire worsened by persistent rain, Spencer had kicked five of Melbourne's seven goals to three-quarter time. The Pies managed just six goals themselves and the Demons won by 11 points on their way to the flag.

One of the funnier stories about Spencer's playing days actually involves his terrible inability to kick a goal in similarly inclement weather early the following season.

The Demons were hosting Geelong for a top-of-the-table clash at the MCG. Terrible conditions, worsened by recent regrading of the MCG playing surface, contributed to a meagre, wayward scoreline: Melbourne 6.20 (56) to the Cats' 6.12 (48).

Surprisingly, the Demons' major culprit was Spencer, who recorded what remains the equal worst scoring analysis in AFL history. Spencer kicked 0.11. In total, he kicked 18 straight behinds over three matches!

"They had allowed the grass to grow to quite a long length to consolidate a good, lush finish for the Olympics," he later explained.

"And, of course, it absolutely poured rain on the Friday night and Saturday. The ground was like a lake, and the ball was like a slippery eel.

"A lot of the behinds I kicked would have been soccered off the ground because extraordinary circumstances weather-wise made it impractical on many occasions to pick the ball up and do anything with any level of accuracy.

"Because of that, there weren't any major recriminations from Norm.

"But while he was telling me I'd wasted all these opportunities my teammates had set up for me, I reminded him that I'd kicked a winning score, because we'd won by eight points!

"And as Norm used to say: 'A win is a win is a win'."

That night, team runner Hugh McPherson (a close mate of Smith's) tried to lift Spencer's spirits by informing him about a day when even Smith, the former great full-forward, had been similarly inaccurate.

McPherson said: "At the after-match dinner, Norm had another go at Stuey, but Stuey replied: 'Is it true, Norm, that you once kicked 11 points in a match?' Norm looked straight at me and said: 'Oh, you bugger. You told him, didn't you?'"

There was more Spencer-related humour at the most unlikely time.

Noel McMahen, another Demon great and skipper of the 1955-56 premiership sides, recently told the AFL Record of his kind-gesture-gone-wrong before the '56 playoff.

"Stuey Spencer was always about third out and he'd never captained Melbourne, so I grabbed him by the shoulder and said, 'C'mon Stuey, you lead us out', and pushed him forward," McMahen said.

"And as he went through the streamers he tripped over all these people; to this day he reckons I set him up!

"I didn't know the people were inside the fence, I was trying to do an honour for the boy."

The boy became a colossal man that day against the Pies. Spencer was best afield, amassing 32 disposals (25 kicks, seven handballs) and 5.4.

At the end of the 1956 season, the Demons farewelled six premiership stars - McMahen, Cordner, Spencer, Geoff McGivern, Ken Melville and Ralph Lane. Among them were two captains, a vice-captain, 697 games' experience, numerous Victorian guernseys, and five best and fairest winners (all but Lane) who had, between them, claimed the previous seven club awards.

The Demons' greatest loss was undoubtedly Spencer, the logical successor to McMahen's captaincy, who relocated to Tasmania to help provide for his family.

Some believed that if he stayed he could have become Melbourne's greatest player of all time.

Spencer later lamented the move.

"Norm, (former coach) Checker Hughes and (secretary) Jimmy Cardwell said: 'Give us another year, Stuey', and said if I changed my mind they could pretty well guarantee me the captaincy," he said.

"Although it didn't seem like such a big deal that I was going to Tassie, I would never have even contemplated it now. It's an enormous regret in our lives."

It was also a significant regret of Smith's, with Fay Spencer revealing that at functions in the years that followed, Smith would tell her: "If it wasn't for you, we would have won our four premierships in a row."

Fay added: "(Norm) wouldn't say it in a nasty way - it was a compliment to Stuey. Norm told me that so many times. That's how much Norm missed him."

And now the football world will forever miss Spencer - a great and always dignified figure in our game.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs