Chris Connolly
A lone figure ran laps of Princess Park - home of the Shepparton Runners Club - early on a winter Sunday morning in 1988.
While most country footballers were laying in bed still suffering the effects of a hectic Saturday night, Chris Connolly was working on his fitness.
He was trying to restart a VFL career with Melbourne Football Club that had already reaped 72 games and talk of captaincy.
In round six of the 1987 season he had badly damaged his left knee, his precious kicking leg, against Brisbane Bears at Carrara.
Until then he had finished fourth in club best and fairests three times and was tipped to become the next leader of Melbourne - a great honour at a club steeped in tradition.
He churned out lap after lap on the Princess Park oval saying hello to those who wandered by but keeping up his lonely task.
Although a major set-back, Connolly spent hour rehabilitating his leg and through almost two years dedication and hard work, two traits that had already dominated his league career, he returned to the field in 1989.
He played 12 more senior games and a number in t he reserves when fate dealt him another cruel blow at the beginning of the 1990 season - his right knee, his good knee, gave way at training.
After five operations on each knee, Connolly sat down with his family and made one of the toughest decisions of his life - to retire from football.
His mother, Monica, said it was a bitter blow.
"He could not even go back to the country and play football because he felt he would do his knee wherever he would go," she said.
"He felt he would be an old man before his time."
At this time, Connolly was to display character which outshone his football ability - loyalty and personality.
Instead of turning his back on football, Connolly continued to inject time and effort into Melbourne Football Club.
He was runner for the reserves side in 1990 and at a send-off function in 1991, compared by Lou Richards at the MCC Long Room, he was awarded life membership of Melbourne Football Club - perhaps a greater honour than the captaincy.
"He loved Melbourne and would not have gone anywhere else," his father Barry said.
"It was tremendous of them to do it. Money would not have bought him, he loved that club."
Connolly was also to keep ties with Shepparton United, where he played in the 1979 thirds premiership, under his father Barry, and in the 1980 senior premiership under Des Campbell.
In 1980 United defeated arch-enemy Shepparton, coach by Roland Crosby, for the flag. Connolly retained that feeling of rivalry.
When close friend Xavier Tanner moved to Shepparton to coach the Bears in the late 1980s, he asked Connolly to give a motivational talk to his charges. Connolly refused simply because Shepparton was the opposition.
"The Shepparton United Football Club has always been a second home for my family and I," Connolly said.
"Most of our life-long friends have come through United at one time or another.
"It was a great place to grow up in."
Connolly made his senior GVL debut in a premiership year.
Tom Carey wrote of Connolly after the grand final win: "On the opposite wing Chris Connolly was almost as damaging with his superb disposal and his ability to spin out of precarious situations.
"Connolly, only 17, was under immense pressure throughout the match but early was rivalling teammate Lindsay Beck (ruck roving) for best afield.
"And later he was the man responsible with Mick Mulligan (five goals) in the last quarter in proving that on the day - and throughout the season - the Demons were invincible."
That same year he was vice captain of the Victorian Teal Cup Team - the cream of junior football.
If Connolly thought he had served his apprenticeship under Des Campbell, he was in for a rude shock the following year in with Melbourne Football Club under 19s.
Greeting him in the change rooms was a small grey-haired man with an attitude - Ray "Slug" Jordan.
And if you made it past Jordan, legendary coach Ron Barassi was next in line. Two of the VFL's hardest men of the 1980s.
Jordan admitted he was a tough task-master and recalled Connolly as a determined youngest from Shepparton United.
"He was one of the better country players to come to Melbourne," Jordan said.
"His father was a strong influence on him and he taught him to do things properly and do them right.
"He really had the right background to be a league player, it was a matter of adapting what ability he had."
Jordan said Connolly impressed as a the sort of player who had a good coaching future.
He mentioned him in the same breath as Tom Hafey and David Parkin - two AFL greats.
And Connolly took a number of strides down the coaching path in 1992, when he was appointed the inaugural coach of the Eastern Ranges in the now TAC Cup.
He has combined the coaching position with Physical Education teaching at Penelbury Secondary College, where he is charge of six staff members.
"Chris was just one of those guys who got the best out of the ability he was given," Jordan said.
"He was not lightening fast, and was tall; he needed to do everything at the maximum to make it as a league footballer."
"He has been a wise young fellow all the way through, that is why he comes across as a guy who could make a top coach."
Too slow and too small; it is a familiar sounding story - and one that has been told about Greg Williams and Tony Shaw.
The fact remains that they are champions.
Connolly fits into that mound.
- DANNY RUSSELL, 1993
Ed's note: Chris Connolly went on to become assistant coach of Hawthorn and coach the team in is own right in 2001 after Peter Schwab suffered a heart complaint. He was appointed coach of Fremantle FC in 2002 and led the club to its first finals series in 2003 and to a preliminary final in 2006