![\"Hawthorn](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/edabe580cd74afde73b095ebd05cabedacb7fb01.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nRunners are eyewitnesses to the game, not participants. And they have plenty of stories to tell.<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s the best song\u2019<\/p>\n
Noel Duncan ran to the Collingwood bench at the MCG and picked up the phone to the coaches\u2019 box.<\/p>\n
It was 1998 and his first game as an AFL runner. He was warned that the most important thing to worry about was the comms to the box. No comms and you\u2019re stuffed.<\/p>\n
So as the Magpies players finished their warm-up, Duncan headed to the bench and grabbed the phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I could hear were some male voices singing the Richmond theme song really loudly,\u201d Duncan recalled.<\/p>\n
He thought there must be a problem. He had the phone to the Richmond box. But being his first game, he just shut up and listened.<\/p>\n
\u201cYellow and black …\u201d<\/p>\n
Loud and proud.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh we\u2019re from Tiiiigerlaaaaand.\u201d<\/p>\n
The song ended. Silence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I heard this voice say, \u2018It\u2019s the best song\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, \u2018That\u2019s Spud\u2019. Then another voice said, \u2018Yeah, I reckon it is\u2019. And it was Shawry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tony Shaw and Danny Frawley were coaching Collingwood that day. As the game was about to start, the two Collingwood coaches were singing the opposition\u2019s theme song. To be fair, it is the best club song and hard not to join in with (also, Collingwood kicked seven goals to none in the first quarter and won the game by 45 points, so maybe the singing had a calming effect in the box).<\/p>\n
![\"Collingwood](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/5965e7afb732d944d489798b13be92edbbce3f60.jpeg\")
Collingwood coach Tony Shaw in the 1998 clash against Richmond.Age ArchiveThe runners\u2019 mantra<\/p>\n
Cameron Schwab, who worked at Melbourne in various roles but eventually as CEO, enjoyed re-hearing a story that reaches back to one of the game\u2019s most famous coaches, Norm Smith.<\/p>\n
Sam Allica, one of the game\u2019s first runners, was the runner for Smith.<\/p>\n
One day, Smith sent a message out to Ron Barassi to do better (ponder that idea quietly for a moment). Barassi, who lived with Smith and his family, was incensed. \u201cYou go back and tell Norm he can get stuffed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allica looked at him without breaking stride.<\/p>\n
\u201cI only bring the messages out, I don\u2019t take them back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It became the runners\u2019 mantra.<\/p>\n
One day at Subiaco, when top-level football was still played at the ground, Leigh Walker was sent out by Dockers coach Chris Connolly to take off the original \u201cWizard\u201d, Jeff Farmer. Walker duly relayed the message.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can tell Connolly to get f—ed. I\u2019m staying here,\u201d Farmer said.<\/p>\n
Walker ran back to the bench.<\/p>\n
\u201cChris was on the phone asking what happened,\u201d Walker recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just laughed, took a deep breath and said, \u2018He thinks the world of you Chris, and will be off shortly\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
On another occasion, Connolly and the coaches were less forgiving.<\/p>\n
In round 19, 2003, at the MCG, the Dockers were playing North. At the time, clubs could have two runners. With the game tight, Connolly had them both running four and five messages at a time. The key message in those last minutes was to get full-forward Luke McPharlin loose behind the ball to protect a lead.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Walker ran out and delivered every message he could remember. The other runner, his good mate Justin O\u2019Dwyer, did the same. Walker got back to the bench. Connolly\u2019s face was turning an unhealthy shade of plum as he demanded to know why McPharlin was still at full-forward.<\/p>\n
Walker and O\u2019Dwyer looked at each other. Did you tell him? No. Did you? No.<\/p>\n
Fremantle had just kicked another goal and the scores were level. Steven Icke, the football manager, was in the background screaming at Walker that if they lost this it was all his fault. Connolly was apoplectic.<\/p>\n
Walker got to McPharlin with less than two minutes to go and got him back behind the ball. The rest was a blur as Walker ran off. North got a clearance and the ball went forward. McPharlin, freshly arrived, delivered a thumping spoil. The ball went the other way and Freo scrambled a behind from Des Headland. The siren went. Freo won by a point.<\/p>\n
\u201cI simply looked at Chris Connolly after the game and smiled,\u201d Walker said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said to him, \u2018We had it under control mate, just ran out of paper to write all your bloody messages on and we missed that one\u2019. We delivered it when it was needed, it was timed to perfection, our message got us over the line.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018A life-saving decision\u2019<\/p>\n
David Arnfield was Port Adelaide\u2019s runner\/provocateur from 1997 to 2007. He arrived in the AFL with the Power from the SANFL, where rules were a little more relaxed. More than once, the coach, the legendary John \u201cJack\u201d Cahill, sent him out to the umpires with a performance review.<\/p>\n
\u201cJack thinks you\u2019re a cheat,\u201d he told one umpire during a SANFL game.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can tell Jack to get f—ed,\u201d came the response. \u201cNow get off the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Message sent, by coach and umpire. No more action taken.<\/p>\n
In their first year in the AFL, Port Adelaide knew that sort of stuff wouldn\u2019t be tolerated, and they had to tone things down. Cahill, still coach, agreed.<\/p>\n
That lasted until the third quarter of their first game, when Cahill dispatched Arnfield with another umpire appraisal.<\/p>\n
![\"Inaugural](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1c17f5b7ff19f8e717006057e2b1ddfd8a69d2da.jpeg\")
Inaugural Port Adelaide coach John Cahill always had plenty for his runners to pass on to players \u2026 and umpires.Bryan Charlton<\/p>\n
Arnfield ran out to veteran umpire (not author) Peter Carey. \u201cJack thinks you\u2019re cheating,\u201d Arnfield said.<\/p>\n
Carey looked at him perplexed, shook his head and ignored him.<\/p>\n
Arnfield recalls another time, when Cahill got on the phone as the Power played the Swans.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know where Lockett leads, don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes. Everyone knew where Tony Lockett led: out of the goal square, on a 45-degree angle to space about 40 metres from goal. Like a Shane Warne leg-break, everyone knew where the ball would land. Hitting it was another matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, go out and stand there,\u201d Cahill told Arnfield.<\/p>\n
At the time there were no restrictions on how long runners could spend on the ground and little control of what they said and did. So Arnfield went and stood in the hole.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard this voice behind me yelling out. Steve Paxman was on \u2018Plugger\u2019 and I knew it wasn\u2019t him. I turned around, and it was Plugger yelling at me,\u201d Arnfield recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t stand there,\u201d Lockett barked.<\/p>\n
![\"St](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/35e61a0c6be86902ef119f317f2a61ec8bdf4de0.jpeg\")
St Kilda’s Tony Lockett tries to break clear of Geelong defender Ken Hinkley in 1991.Stuart Hannagan<\/p>\n
Arnfield kept standing there.<\/p>\n
Another yell.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to get reported, and you don\u2019t want to get killed. So don\u2019t f—ing stand there.\u201d<\/p>\n
This time, Arnfield decamped.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got back to the bench and Jack said \u2018What are you doing?\u2019 I said the umpires told me to get off.\u201d<\/p>\n
It might have genuinely saved his life.<\/p>\n
![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/18673b7a9a95f9a37ae3185943e72e10ac6fea42.jpeg\")
George Stone had a sense of self-preservation when he was runner at Hawthorn.Paul Harris<\/p>\n
George Stone could relate. He has told the story often of the match when Dermott Brereton was having a dirty day and Hawthorn coach Allan Jeans told Stone to get the blond-haired expletive off the ground. Stone did as he was told … up to a point.<\/p>\n
As he neared the combustible Brereton, Stone could see him glaring and fuming, pawing at the ground and pacing. Stone ran straight past him to the also blond Russell Morris, who had kicked several goals to that stage, and told him to come off. Bewildered, Morris ran off with him. They got to the bench and Jeans asked what had happened. <\/p>\n
\u201cI made a life-saving decision,\u201d Stone said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Never change a message\u2019<\/p>\n
When Tony Shaw took over as Collingwood coach, he was keen to embrace technology. So the Magpies began experimenting with McKeon wearing an earpiece, meaning Shaw was able to speak to him from the coach\u2019s box while he was on the ground. The problem was: the earpiece acted like a speaker. With the volume up, everyone close by \u2013 umpires, opposition players \u2013 could hear when Shaw was speaking.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell Shawry to shut up. And get that thing out of your ear,\u201d an umpire told McKeon as he dispatched him from the field.<\/p>\n
Other times it was not the coach who used him to deliver messages to players.<\/p>\n
\u201cDarren Millane used to call me over after a goal. He would be on the wing, and he would get me to come over and stand the other side of his opponent and he would be bent over and just start talking to me loudly across the player,\u201d McKeon recalled.<\/p>\n
![\"Collingwood\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/b4d7fe41bb0bccc55ff10ad5c8ce4a58bb227ed4.jpeg\")
Collingwood\u2019s Darren Millane liked to chat to his team\u2019s runners as a means of getting inside his opponents\u2019 heads.Julian Kingma<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Can you believe what I am doing to this bloke? His parents would be so embarrassed watching this. Have you ever seen a humiliation like it? You\u2019d take yourself off the ground and never come back if you were this bloke. He hasn\u2019t had one kick.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Millane was such an intimidating character, players wouldn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
Arnfield used to do something similar \u2013 as well as talk to the opposition to sledge his own player to get an edge. He did that with the opponents of the then Port player and now coach Josh Carr. He knew it would send the feisty Carr\u2019s eyes spinning.<\/p>\n
Frawley was fond of using the runner to heckle and intimidate opposition players. Often it was in fun, more often it was the old full-back\u2019s red mist that still clouded his coaching eyes. On one occasion when he was coach of the Collingwood VFL team, he sent the runner out with a message for a veteran player who was being especially physical in the reserves with a very young emerging Collingwood forward, Chris Tarrant.<\/p>\n
He was to be told if he went anywhere near Tarrant again, Spud would find him in the car park after the match, and he\u2019d be leaving in an ambulance. He was serious. Suffice to say, the message got lost on the way out to the field.<\/p>\n
Unlike other runners, Arnfield delivered his messages verbatim after an incident in one of his first games. He was sent out to give a player a spray. The team was winning easily, so he got to the player, gave him a pat on the bum and told him to keep going.<\/p>\n
He arrived back on the bench to Cahill on the phone. \u201cDo you want to do this job?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, never change a message. I am the coach, not you.\u201d<\/p>\n
It came at a cost. One game, he had to run out to (now commentator but then Port player) Dwayne Russell after an unfortunate bit of play. The siren had gone for half-time, but Arnfield ran up and passed on the message. Russell turned and punched him hard in the chest.<\/p>\n
Come back next Sunday for our in-depth chat with Brendan Riseley, who ran for nine clubs over 24 years and more than 400 matches for some of the biggest-name coaches in the history of the game.<\/p>\n
Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Bourke kicked the Swans player first. When the field umpire saw the incident, he ran in, drawing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-764690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Collingwood\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/bb601de77db48e899a2c6ab7ccafb13bc1d5be2b.jpeg\")
Collingwood\u2019s John Bourke confronts the umpire in 1985.Age Archive<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782604476_625_13d97aa3ce63cd2f7f0977242e1ed9bb088ad9322570e58d26a1e94e00272880.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n