To football fans of his generation he was ‘Big Emmy’; to his team-mates he was simply ‘Faz’…….to clients at the Benalla Health Studio over the past 45 years he’s Emilio Malcolm De Fazio, Remedial Massage Therapist………..
The middle name came about as a compromise, he points out……….His dad was keen on Miguel, but his mum wanted to introduce an Australian slant to his ‘handle’……So, Emilio Malcolm he became………
He’s a plain-speaking, big-hearted giant with a thousand sporting stories……..Acknowledged as one of the area’s greatest-ever ruckmen, he concedes that he had an obvious deficiency in his game – an unreliable boot……..
“A good mate of mine, Richie Castles, said to me a few years ago: ‘You’d have to have been the worst friggin kick I ever saw’……. I said: ‘Mate, I wouldn’t be bragging if I was you……You’re the bastard that taught me’…..”
Emmy says he helped Greg ‘Ab’ O’Brien win a goalkicking award one year:
“Every time I took a mark within 50 metres of goal ‘Ab’ would run past and scream for the handball. I reckon I deserved half his award……”
“The supporters in front of the Benalla Clubrooms used to take bets when I’d line up for goal……I cost one bloke a dozen long-necks one day when I popped it through………..
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His introduction to Aussie Rules came about quite by accident……
The De Fazio’s had moved from Myrtleford in 1959, to a farm roughly 10 miles from Benalla, on the Tatong Road…….Emmy says he left school at 15 and was working his butt off, helping his parents grow tobacco and milk cows, as well as assisting his uncles to grow and pick tobacco in the Alpine Valley.
“The Benalla coach, Graeme ‘Bronco’ Johnson came out to sell us a Ferguson tractor (“my brother Laurie’s still got it, actually”) and asked if I played footy……I said ‘Nah’….. None of my 40-odd cousins had ever played the game; it hadn’t even been a consideration,” he recalls.
“Well, he invited me in to training……The first night, I turned up in a pair of shorts, singlet, and barefooted……The fellahs must have wondered who this bush-whacker was……”
“ ‘Bronco’ was a big influence on me . He looked after all the young guys and was a handy-enough player….nice and tough…… I remember him at Myrtleford one day. Someone split him right across the nose…..He was giving his speech at half-time. Blood was seeping down his face, and old Doc Reid was trying to patch him up……I’m pretty sure he evened-up with the bloke that smacked him….”
Emmy served a lengthy apprenticeship, as he went about learning the tricks of the ruck trade….
He was handed his senior debut in 1968, which he grasped with both hands….. It was not before time, though…..He had played 55 Reserves games and won two Best and Fairests before his big opportunity arrived.
251 Senior games followed – 134 of them in succession…..
It was an era of quality big-men in the O & M, and he was pitted against the likes of Mick Nolan, Jack Danckert, Rod Page, Joe Ambrose, Jeff Hemphill, Trevor Steer, Mark Mills and Robert Tait……..He was soon matching it with the best of them……
“We had a really good set-up at Benalla…..good quality rovers….and we worked in well together……The coaches used to just leave it to me…..”
Except, that is, for the time the Demons were playing a crucial game at the Showgrounds:
“We came out after half-time this day, and I’m in the centre with Jimmy Hooper and a couple of other small blokes…..Our first-year coach came up and said: ‘Now look, I want you to do this…and this, against this bloke….”
“I said: ‘Mate, I’ll tell you something……I know you’re the coach, but see this circle….I’m the boss here…. I know how to handle these bastards….You don’t……Piss off……And he did….”
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Emmy was working at the property of his uncle, Mick Ivone, at Whorouly South, around 1970, when an unexpected visitor lobbed:
“The tobacco paddock was way down to buggery……Up comes this bloke, dressed in a suit….I said: ‘Who the hell’s this dickhead, have a look at him’…..Turns out it was North Melbourne secretary, Ron Joseph.”
“He said he’d been driving around all day looking for me……..Wanted me to go down and have a run at North.”
“So he drove me back to training at Benalla on the Thursday night, (I had to change a tyre for him on the way) and arranged for me to play a Reserves game against Richmond, on the MCG that week-end….”
“We’d been so busy I’d hardly done any pre-season that year and I was nursing a torn thigh muscle…….Played alright until half-time, then blew up……Anyway, that was my only taste of League footy…..I hadn’t really been that fussed about going down……Could have made it, maybe……But I was quite happy to stay at Benalla…..”
Emmy’s pre-match routine was out of left-field…..He’d rise at 5 o’clock, have brekky, milk the cows, do a few other jobs around the farm, have another meal, come into Benalla and eat a substantial lunch…….He says the last thing he wanted to do was carry his 6’3”, 16 stone frame around on an empty stomach…..
It didn’t seem to affect him.
His rise to stardom coincided with the arrival of a new coach, Vern Drake.
“He didn’t think much of me at first……He suggested I should go out to play a few games at Tatong, to see if I could pick up a bit of form…I said: ‘That’s alright….You don’t mind if I keep coming to training, then ? “
“Anyway, they were running short in a practice match and he asked me to fill in…..I must have played alright because he suggested I hang around.”
“When I won my first Best & Fairest in 1971 I said to him: ‘Shit, you were a good judge of a footballer !”
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The Wang Rovers knocked Benalla off in the Preliminary Final that year (1971j…..
“We had a really good side, but there were a heap of blokes crook with the flu…..Actually ‘Drakey’ had to come and get me out of bed to play……I was buggered……All I could do was to try and nullify Old Mick (Nolan).”
“He was the best I ever played on. Once he got hold of you, you couldn’t move…..I learnt to keep away from him, then try to jump over him…..You couldn’t try to wrestle him….”
Emmy won six senior Benalla Best & Fairests ( 71,’72, ‘73, ‘75, ‘76 and ‘77), but says the most memorable came in the premiership year of 1973.
Vern Drake had departed the Demons after the 1972 season for a coaching job with Tasmanian club Cooee…….”I was disappointed they didn’t keep him on. He was a ‘gun’ goal-kicker and a good coach. Apparently he wanted a bit too much coin,” he says.
Drake’s replacement, Ken Roberts, inherited a ready-made side, which lost just three matches en-route to the finals. They pipped North Albury by nine points in the Second Semi-Final, and the stage was set for the decider, against the Hoppers a fortnight later, in front of just on 15,000 fans, at the Wangaratta Showgrounds.
“We played with 19 men on the ground that day,” Emmy quips…..”The North ruckman, was pretty aggressive and gave away a heap of free kicks….North seemed to be intent on knocking us off our game….”
It was certainly a match chock-full of sensations, as the Hoppers used their physical strength to try and offset the Demons’ pace and teamwork. North’s Joe Ambrose and brilliant mid-fielder John Smith were both reported in the first half.
They came home with a wet sail in the final term, but Benalla hung on to win a nail-biter by just seven points.
Emmy starred in the triumph, which provided him with his greatest football thrill.
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Myrtleford approached him during the following summer, with a tempting offer……….
“I had four uncles on the committee up there, and thought long and hard about it…….I told Benalla, and they said: ‘We’ll look after you….we’ll do this, and that…..”
“I hadn’t been to training for a while because we’d bought a farm at Warrenbayne and I was growing 10 acres of spuds, running beef cows, and working for a builder…..”
“The week before the season started they appointed me coach of the Seconds…..Ike Kulbars offered to give me a hand ( He’d take over at three-quarter-time, so I could get ready for the senior game )……I tell you what; you learn a lot about people when you start coaching….I enjoyed it but, geez, it was different……”
A few games in, he suffered a broken hand, which was subsequently plastered…..His run of consecutive games was in danger…….Alas, that Thursday he cut the plaster off and lined up for the following match.
He also continued playing under considerable difficulty with another injury, unbeknowns to anyone….
“Jimmy Hooper was roving, and I said to him: ‘I’m trying a new style today; using my left hand’….He had a crack at me a short while later: ‘Go back to using your bloody right hand’….I said: ‘Look Jimmy , that’s as far as I can lift my arm; I’ve got a fractured rib….”
He made his first – and only – appearance in the Black and Gold guernsey in 1975, when the O & M defeated a highly-touted VFA side at Wangaratta.
“The fellah on World of Sport was previewing the game that Sunday, and commented that: ‘The VFA are heading up to play on a cow paddock at Wangaratta, and should have few problems’ ……We gave ‘em cow paddock alright….’ “
The O & M won 24.23 to 17.9 in a boilover.
“I think the only reason I got a game was that my great mate Billy Sammon (who was at the helm of Yarrawonga at the time) was coaching….Nevertheless, it was a fantastic experience….
“I really rated ‘Trouty’ as a coach. When he took over at Benalla he had us flying…..”
Sure enough……The Demons won 15 games on end to storm into the 1978 Grand Final. They were hot favourites against a Wangaratta Rovers side that had reached the ‘Big One’ after enduring three energy-sapping finals.
The Hawks, however, controlled the game from the opening bounce and went on to win by 54 points.
“They were too good,” says Emmy. “I certainly didn’t have my greatest day….Gave away a heap of free kicks….Every time I got near their ruckman Trevor Bell, the umpie Glenn James seemed to blow the whistle…..”
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Emmy hung up the boots at the end of the 1980 season, aged 34…….
He could have played on, he says, but he and his wife Jenny, a Naturopath, were flat out in the business – Benalla Health Studio – that had kicked off two years earlier.
He’d long held a keen interest in remedial massage from his experience in footy, and things developed from there. The pair complemented each other, and they still operate for three days a week.
But the big fellah has maintained his involvement with the Benalla Football Club, which stretches back to 1965.
He’s had stints on the Committee, as Chairman of Selectors and on the Recruiting Committee, and has spent countless years as a Trainer, rubbing-down and treating players on match-day…….Nowadays he confines his efforts to home games.
And in whatever spare-time he has he focuses on Woodwork ( using timber obtained solely from his own property ), and making Salami.
He escorts me out to the back shed, to his assortment of hand-crafted Tables and other furniture, the fridge full of Calabrian-style Salami and the pride of the garage – a superbly- restored 1952 Hudson Wasp sedan.
There’s nothing better, he says, than wandering around the farm at Warrenbyne…….
Well, there is one thing that might equal it; if his beloved Demons returned to the Ovens and Murray League……
“But it ain’t gonna happen,” says the O & M Hall of Famer……..”Too much water has gone under the bridge…..”
ON REFLECTION 