Dennis Cometti left mark on AFL legend Malcolm Blight and 1989 VFL grand final between Geelong and Hawthorn

It was a friendship forged in the commentary box. And the lead-up to the State memorial service for WA broadcasting doyen Dennis Cometti on Monday has AFL legend Malcolm Blight reflecting on their close connection over calling football together. Also not lost on Blight has been Cometti’s age when he died in March. He was 76, the same age as Blight, who played in two premiership teams with North Melbourne and coached Geelong to three grand finals and Adelaide to two flags. “I was part of the Channel 7 group with Dennis in the early days (1988 and later in 1995-’96 and 2000), flying around the country with him,” Blight said. “I did a lot of games with him and he was passionate about sport. “He loved his American sport and he was actually a genius. “I know he played in Perth (for West Perth) and had a run with Footscray but he also coached. “As you know I was a bit of a sucker for coaching, so we had many conversations about the game. “I reckon he understood the game as good as anybody, as both a player, coach and then of course, calling — he became a genius at it.” It was one of those conversations between the two that Cometti recalled to this writer in the Joondalup Weekend newspaper in the lead-up to the 1995 AFL finals. Cometti said that a few days before the 1989 grand final between Geelong and Hawthorn, he told Cats coach Blight about a successful ploy devised when he was coaching at West Perth to protect his small brigade from a particular opposition player. From studying videos of the offending player, Cometti and his team noticed that when the player was lining up an opponent, he had no idea of what was around him. So some West Perth players were given the job of running through him while he was concentrating on a victim. On grand final day in 1989, Cometti, sitting in the commentary box, sees Geelong’s Mark Yeates crunch Hawthorn tough man Dermot Brereton as the Hawk runs into the centre square after the opening bounce. “It was the funniest feeling I’ve ever had in broadcasting,” Cometti told this writer. “To see it delivered was an eerie feeling; a most disconcerting thing with still a whole game to go.” When recently asked about Cometti’s view of the incident, Blight quipped: “He didn’t claim that, did he.” “Don’t forget, in those days, sadly… you did it (line up someone like Brereton who “was probably as good as anyone at it”) and then you got on with it,” Blight, the 1978 Brownlow medalist, said. “And I know it’s different now, and I’m glad it’s different. I think we’re all glad it’s different. But I can remember talking to Dennis about that too. I mean when you were playing in those days, let’s just say there was an element in the opposition that sometimes you knew you had to cover.” Blight said he had been doing radio in Adelaide for the past eight years and one of the ways he kept up with Cometti was by having him on the show. He had always enjoyed Cometti’s company. “I stayed with him once when we did a game over there in Perth, and played golf with him,” Blight said. “I had dinners with him, of course, and on planes had conversations with him. I just really enjoyed his company . “I love telling this story. Ironically, we’re doing a game at Football Park, obviously Adelaide Crows. “And I forget who they were playing. But, anyhow, Bruce McAvaney and Dennis Cometti were calling and I was doing the special comments. So there’s three of us up in the grandstand. “Each time, Dennis was prepared. So was Bruce. And I like to think I was prepared. Some blokes do it by the seat of their pants but we’d get some notes and have some stats… “I can’t remember if it was the second or third quarter, and Dennis had his usual 10 lines on a sheet of paper in front of him, handwritten, just like Bruce did in those days. And we all did. “And every now and again, Den would throw one of these lines in from the 10 or 12 written down. “And we all know what some of the fun ones were. He did a lot of off-the-cuff lines too. “Anyhow this particular night the game wasn’t going all that well and a player did something. “I pinched his line, the fifth line of the 10. “And because I was sitting alongside him, he’s belted me in the arm and said something like ‘you can’t do that, that’s my line’. “It was so funny, and he cut up really, really rough. But that was the relationship I had with him, and he was quite comedic in a lot of ways, serious but comedic. So he sort of got it. And, I’d known him for a long time, and it was just one of those lines. “But his research was unbelievable. I remember going and staying with him at his place in Perth. “And he had a study that had every tape of every American gridiron, basketball game, and that was his passion. “He wanted to get better at what he was doing. So he was seeing what some other people were doing around the world, and then putting his own slant on it. “It was so impressive. I was pretty new to commentary but geez it woke me up. “And how great he became because of it. He did his homework really well.” Blight said Cometti had a “beautiful voice” and the respect he had for him “was enormous”. “We used to listen to him on cricket with Alan McGilvray,” Blight said. “He was only young too; he was very good, very early.” The State memorial service for Dennis Cometti is at Optus Stadium on May 4.

Dennis Cometti left mark on AFL legend Malcolm Blight and 1989 VFL grand final between Geelong and Hawthorn

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