Every Boy’s Dream

By DION HAYMAN

People still approach Kym Dillon to tell him they saw him kick the winning goal against Glenelg in 1985.

“You’d swear there were 100,000 people who said they were there that day and saw that,” Dillon laughed.

The reality is there were 6626 but it sounded like the MCG on grand final day when Dillon’s expertly executed checkside punt curved around the left goalpost at the northern end of Thebarton Oval to sink the visitors by a single point.

The reality is, Dillon shouldn’t have even been playing, defying medicos and delighting his coach to stretch the limits of his body beyond its intended capacity.

“I had splits in the top of my tibia and the base of my femur,” Dillon revealed. “Greg Keene the surgeon said, ‘you’re trying to run around with a broken leg’. I’d actually retired and then I came back. (Coach) Glenn Elliott was using me as an ‘assistant coach’. He’s a clever rooster, he knew if I was hanging around the group I’d try to play.

“I wasn’t even training at that stage. I’d get my knee drained on a Sunday because it would be full of fluid. Then I’d swim Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, have a kick Thursday and then go through the same routine. That game was the second-last game I ever played.”

The Round 12 fixture was a clash between fourth (Glenelg) and fifth with both sides 6-5. “It was a really tight game, it was goal for goal,” Dillon recalled.

The Eagles led by six points at quarter-time, trailed by nine at the half and took an eight-point lead into the final break. But the pendulum swung back Glenelg’s way in the final term and Dillon was almost the villain of his team’s defeat.

With 20 minutes of the last quarter expired and Torrens trailing by three points, Dillon took off to intercept a mark intended for Stephen Kernahan.

“I ran to the boundary and there was a (Torrens) player just in front of me and he got there just a split-second before me, so I stopped and Kernahan ran into the back of me and they (umpire Geoff Bowles) said it was shepherding or blocking. Well it was within five metres anyway, so what was I supposed to do, compete against my own team-mate for the mark?”

Dillon threw his mouthguard at Bowles’ feet in disgust, costing his side a 15m penalty and ultimately a goal that took Glenelg nine points clear. “It’s the only time I ever threw my mouthguard. I can remember Daryl Hicks’ commentary of that because he said I was ‘petulant’ and I didn’t know what the word meant!”

But Torrens recovered the goal and as fate would have it, Dillon was again in the thick of it. “I took possession in the left forward pocket, northern end, about five metres away from the point post. As soon as I picked it up, Gavan Walsh tackled me. The ball was knocked out before I even really had possession but he didn’t let me go.”

It was Bowles who paid a free kick for holding the man, according to Dillon and Michelangelo Rucci in his report in The Advertiser. “I bumped into Walsh a few times after that. He used to have the cleaning contract at Austereo when I was at Triple M and he’d say to me: ‘It wasn’t a free kick’.”

Not surprisingly, Walsh’s recollection of the incident is quite different, most notably his memory of exactly why the free kick was paid.

“Good old ‘Diver’ Dillon,” Walsh laughed. “He wasn’t actually my direct opponent. The ball had gone over the back and who was sucking out the back for an easy one? Old Kymmy. ‘Snout’ MacFarlane, who may have or may not have been his direct opponent, was after him with me. He’s fumbling the thing all the way into the pocket to the point we’ve both caught up with him.

“Snout was directly behind him and I was just off to the side, both with our hands up, and he got to the boundary line and he’s just done the biggest ‘Swan Lake’ onto the ball, arms out, and next thing the whistle’s gone for ‘in the back’. Now Snout’s done the clever thing and just walked straight off and left me holding the baby.

”I’m telling you and (Kym) readily admits this, neither of us touched him. I’ve looked at the angle (at the goals) at Thebarton Oval and you could have driven a bus through it. If you were a right-footer, you could have just about kicked a drop punt. So I’ve thought, he’s gonna kick this and he’s gonna love it because he’s gonna cover himself in glory.”

The hopes of the home fans were riding on the prodigious talents of the left-footed Dillon, jammed in Thebarton Oval’s left forward pocket.

“That old saying about every boy’s dream to kick the winning goal, I just reckon the footy gods thought, ‘well, he’s had a rough trot, we might give him his farewell present’. I remember Jeff Sarau yelling at me to pass it to him but he was that bloody slow and he led from about 15 metres away. I thought, ‘just breathe, this is our only chance’. I know I thought I’d kick it. It was a genuine checkside, it had to bend a hell of a lot and it went through.”

But the game was still not won. “I ran back to the centre with a bit of adrenaline and my arms out telling everyone, ‘it’s not over, get back, get back (behind the ball)’. I know Glenelg went into attack one more time after I kicked the winning goal and Tom Hank took a mark in the back pocket (to save the game).
 The siren went a couple of seconds after that.”

Rucci reported the win proved “Torrens can now handle pressure”, describing Dillon as “Thebarton’s new mayor”. He also observed Dillon had saluted Bowles for “granting him the right to steal the game”, an act which completely escape’s Dillon’s memory. But he does remember club president Lindsay Head being one of the first to congratulate him straight after the game. “It was a great day and it was a huge night. We were all starting to believe we could play finals.”

The win, with speedy, skilful wingman Steven Stretch rated best-afield, lifted Torrens to third but finals were not to be. The Eagles won just one more game for the season, plummeting to ninth. Dillon didn’t front the following week because of his knee. He played only one more league match, three weeks later, in a 116-point loss to Woodville.

The Bays were beaten only twice more that season before ending a 12-year premiership drought. But Walsh, who counts himself fortunate to have played in the era, injured a medial ligament at training just before finals and missed the premiership. He ruptured his ACL the following season and was sidelined for the 1986 flag as well.

TORRENS      3.2     5.10    10.17    15.18     (108)

GLENELG      1.8     6.13      9.15    14.23      (107)

BEST – West Torrens: Stretch, Hank, Roberts, Payze, Dillon, Lindsay, Sarau. Glenelg: Copping, McGuinness, S. Kernahan, West, D. Kernahan, Walsh.

SCORERS – West Torrens: Johnston 4.0, Roberts 2.4, Stretch 2.3, Hill 2.1, Dillon 2.0, Collier 1.1, Querzoli 1.0, Sarau 1.0, Hank 0.1, Smith 0.1, rushed 0.7. Glenelg: McGuinness 4.1, Seebohm 3.2, Copping 2.2, S. Kernahan 1.3, Carey 1.2, Maynard 1.1, Gibbs 1.1, A. Stringer 1.0, Symonds 0.2, McDermott 0.1, West 0.1, rushed 0.7.

UMPIRES – Geoff Bowles, Steve Ardill.

CROWD – 6626 at Thebarton Oval.