Dan Eddy is the author of King Richard: The Story of Dick Reynolds, as well as Skills of Australian Football. He is the co-author of Champions: Conversations with Great Players & Coaches of Australian Football, and The Will to Fly. Eddy is a current PhD scholarship recipient (Federation University), whose project will examine the career of AFL Legend Alex Jesaulenko, and this article is an extract from his upcoming book, 'Always Striving': The Moments That Have Made the Essendon Football Club.

Richmond captain-coach, Jack Dyer, had been waiting 12 months for this opportunity. It had burned in his gut every day. He was still filthy about it, those events of 19 September 1942 – Grand Final day – when his side was humbled to the tune of 53 points. But as Grand Final day approached once more, he was finally going to enact out his plan of revenge. No, his mission. And his target would be the biggest name in the game: Essendon captain-coach, Dick Reynolds.

What Reynolds orchestrated in the 1942 Grand Final, when the Bombers kicked 12 goals to three in the space of an hour to blow the Tigers off Princes Park (the MCG was being used by American troops stationed in Melbourne during World War II, so the VFL Grand Final was moved to Carlton’s home ground) will remain one of his finest accomplishments. Indeed, by changing the culture of a club which had become accustomed to failure during the 1930s, and teaching it what it took to be successful – all the while leading from the front on the field – Reynolds had brought pride back to everybody associated with the Red & Black. In his best-on-ground display that day against Dyer’s men, Reynolds had ended an 18-year premiership drought for the club – the longest in its history up until that point.

In 1942, Dyer had introduced a teenager from Maryborough who, it was said, would “run through a brick wall for his team.” William ‘Max’ Oppy went on to play 185 games for Richmond, along the way becoming one of Dyer’s favourite players for his hard and uncompromising approach to the game. The 1943 Grand Final was just his 24^th match and he was only 18 years old, but it would be his defining performance. Oppy’s task was to stop Dick Reynolds – his cousin.

“Being a distant relative of Dick’s I’d heard nothing but ‘Dick Reynolds’ every time my mother’s people were around,” Oppy said. “It had got under my skin so much that I was determined to do the job well.” Dyer later said, “My big worry was Reynolds … if he cut loose for even a couple of minutes it could cost us the flag.” When the Tiger coach approached Oppy that week, his instructions were: “You’ve got to stop Reynolds. Keep him down to a normal game and we’ll win … I don’t care how you do it – but do it.” After Oppy made his way to Reynolds at the beginning of the game, his cousins on the Reynolds side were shocked with the treatment he proceeded to dish out to their brother over the proceeding two hours.

Richmond got the early jump, kicking four of the first six goals to lead by 10 points at quarter-time, but when Keith Rawle and Tom Reynolds (Dick’s younger brother) both goaled early in the second quarter, Essendon was in front and playing with “much more confidence,” and the players’ pace around the middle and on the wings was proving telling. Under the Oppy shadow, Reynolds managed to provide some drive for his side in the opening half, and Essendon trailed by just eight points.

Early in the third term, Hugh Torney goaled, followed by two quick majors from Tom, and Dick was beginning to look dangerous. Essendon held a slight lead, and it was make or break for the Tigers, who had seen the premiership slip from their grasp in the third quarter a year earlier. However, moments later came an incident that stalled the Bomber captain and changed the game.

Fighting for the ball, Reynolds was seen emerging from the pack with blood streaming from above his eye. With the coach visibly dazed, the trainers rushed to his aid. But with the match in the balance, Reynolds brushed them aside and played on. From this moment onwards, Dick Reynolds is rarely mentioned in play-by-play descriptions of the 1943 Grand Final. Having earlier had shots on goal and set up a number of goals for his teammates, his influence on the match diminished after he received the blow to his head. On the flip side, following the incident Oppy had a far greater influence on the game, suggesting he was able to play wider of Reynolds than he had in the first half. In 2016 there are tests for concussion and a cautious approach is taken to any serious head knock, but in the 1940s it was par for the course that if you took a head knock and could still run, you played on.

While no mention was made of who had dished out the blow that stalled the Bomber champion, Oppy later said: “That was my job, to blanket him and keep him out of the game. Dick got about six stitches in his eyes but that was alright, he snuck into my fist. I did what I was supposed to do, put him out of the game and still play a bit of football.” On another occasion he added: “There was a collision and Dickie had to get four or five stitches in a cut on his forehead. If that sounds brutal, it wasn’t. It was football and there were never any hard feelings between Dickie and me.”

It was not until days after the game that the full effects of Oppy’s blow to Reynolds’ head became public knowledge, when the Essendon Gazette reported: “It is generally not known that he (Reynolds) received a rather bad knock in the Grand Final.” Reynolds was still feeling the effects two weeks later.

With Dick largely ineffective, attention turned to Tom, who was single-handedly steering his team towards an unlikely premiership. Tom would kick seven goals, and late in the game Dyer moved himself onto the damaging forward in an attempt to stop Essendon scoring. The final quarter was as tight as any Grand Final in VFL history, and when the siren sounded Richmond were five points ahead: 12.14 (86) to 11.15 (81). In his crowning moment, Dyer was named best man on the ground, although he knew full well how integral the role of Oppy was in the outcome, saying Oppy was “like a shadow and never let Reynolds break clear all day.”

The Essendon Gazette declared: “‘Stop Reynolds and you’ll win’ has often been quoted, and apparently it was proved in the most important game of the season, for Dick scarcely knew where he was for half the game – and apparently that meant the difference between winning and losing a premiership.”

Over the next few weeks essendonfc.com.au will be publishing more extracts from Dan Eddy's upcoming book, 'Always Striving': The Moments That Have Made the Essendon Football Club.