Rest In Peace, Bernie Jones
There were more fashionable premiership players at Hawthorn than Bernie Jones, who recently passed away, but few better clubmen.
Every premiership team has its low-profile, unglamorous foot soldiers and in the Hawthorn 1976 premiership side, one of those was Bernie Jones.
He was tall, ungainly and to the naked eye, a bit unco-ordinated.
He was not just a graduate, but an honours student of what the The Coodabeen Champions used to call the “Rod Austin School of Kicking”.
Yet he was a key part of Hawthorn for much of the 1970s.
He was recruited from De La Salle College and made his debut in 1973 when he played three games. He came in at 197cm and by 1975, when he played a career-high 17 games, he made the second ruck position his own.
Nobody was going to budge Don Scott from the no.1 ruck position even though he was seven centimetres shorter. Alan Martello was tall, but he was a better centre half-forward. Bruce Stevenson was coming to the end of his career, while Wayne Bevan, Charlie Grummisch and Len Petch were more forwards than rucks.
Jones was an old-fashioned second ruck, really there to give Scott a chop-out and provide a tall presence in the forward line when there. It was the days before the interchange bench, so the Hawks had nowhere else to hide him. These days he would come on and off the bench. But in the 1970s, he was smart enough to just make it work.
He played in the losing 1975 Grand Final team and was there at Glenferrie Oval the following morning when coach John Kennedy read the team the riot act and suggested that there was a feeling among many Hawthorn people that the players had just given up the previous day against North Melbourne.
He was also first-hand witness to the dramas surrounding the non-selection of Peter Crimmins for the 1975 Grand Final and in a 2016 interview I did with him for the AFL Record, he spoke at length of his recollections of the time.
“I would have played him,” he said. “It didn’t matter what happened to him and he wouldn’t have cared either what condition he was in when he left the field.
“He would have made a big difference him coming on the ground. It would have lifted the crowd and the team.”
Twelve months later, Jones was part of the team that comprehensively avenged that result, beating North by 30 points. Statistics show that he was relatively quiet – eight touches and two marks. Hit-outs weren’t published in the papers the following Monday. He was a role player and he, well, played his role.
His greatest contribution to the 1976 flag came in the hours afterwards. He was one of six players who, on a whim, decided to take the premiership cup out to Crimmins, who was gravely ill with cancer. For close mates Peter Knights, Brian Douge, John Hendrie, Barry Rowlings and Martello it was a no-brainer. But Jones did have to think about it.
“I was 22 years old, the party was just getting started and I said I needed a minute. I decided to go, but I did have to think about it!
“I was very fortunate to get to see him,” he continued. “If you didn’t see him on the Sunday, you probably wouldn’t have seen him at all. I think he stayed alive for the Grand Final. I totally believe that. I’m so glad I made the decision to go and see him.”
Jones played seven games for the Hawks in 1977, but was then cleared to Essendon, as part of the deal that saw the Hawks obtain Norm Goss in what was a three-way deal with South Melbourne.
He played 13 games and kicked 11 goals for the Bombers. He made the blooper reel for that season when he missed an unmissable goal in the goal square in a game against St Kilda at Moorabbin. Percy Jones did the same thing in a reserves game the following year.
Jones was playing for Essendon at Windy Hill against Hawthorn the day Paul Vander Haar and Peter Knights staged one of the best, high-flying duels in League history.
According to former Essendon player Robert Shaw, Jones’ stay at Windy Hill might have been relatively brief, but he was an enormously popular player, and really well liked while he was there.
He did pre-season training with the Bombers ahead of the following season and ended up being the centrepiece of an unusual piece of football trivia. The VFL fixtured a standalone Essendon-Carlton game to start the season a week early, bringing it forward from round three.
Jones played for the Bombers reserves that day but was cleared back to the Hawks a fortnight later. He then played for the Hawks reserves in round three, making him a rare player to have played for two different clubs in the same round of the season, albeit not at senior level.
He played his last of his 86 senior games for Hawthorn in round three, 1980 against Collingwood. But he was a great figure around the club and he hung around through 1981.
As superbly recounted by Tony Wilson in his tribute piece, Don Scott played his final year for the club that year and spoke to virtually nobody. But Jones unfailingly asked him how he was going before every training session and when Scott held a dinner to mark his 300th game that year, Jones was the only existing teammate he invited.
“You’re one of the nicest and friendliest blokes in the world. And you always have been. And that’s why you’re here,” Scott told him.
I fell in love with the Hawks in the mid 1970s. Superstars abounded across every line, so Bernie Jones wasn’t anyone’s favourite player. Indeed, he was probably my least favourite player. There were no ‘Bernie 31 Jones’ duffel coats to be found when the Hawks played at Princes Park.
But when I approached him to be interviewed for my AFL Record piece to mark the 40th anniversary of Crimmins’ passing, he couldn’t agree quickly enough and suggested we meet halfway between my place and his.
The interview took place at the café that overlooks the beach at Seaford. The Crimmins part of the chat lasted 30 minutes. And then we spoke about footy, and life for another hour and it was clear that post his football career, things were not always that easy for him. And everything Don Scott said about him was right. He was a lovely man.
But as I drove home that day, one thing had changed. Bernie Jones had become one of my favourite players from the 1976 premiership team and I was sad to learn, through Tony’s excellent tribute, that he had recently passed away after a long illness. Crimmins and David O’Halloran are the other members of that team who are no longer with us.
Vale, Bernie.
What a beautiful tribute Ashley, well done 🙏🙏