The demise of Dennis

Maddington’s Matt Hunt speaks to Cameron Palmer

It is not unusual for a coach’s last game at a club to result in a 104-point loss. It is however unusual, when that 104-point loss is in a Grand Final.

Imagine that Grand Final loss came after the club had won three successive premierships. Surely, it’s a one in a million occurrence. Something so unique, it could only happen to one man - the legendary Dennis Cometti. 

The Maddington Football Club of the 1970’s had been a juggernaut in the South Suburban Murray Football League. They had claimed premierships in 1971, played in the 1973 Grand Final before rolling to three straight premierships in 1974, 1975 and 1976, the latter of those premierships under the watchful eye of a young Dennis Cometti.

As a playing coach, Cometti was a huge reason for the success of the hat-trick of premierships, claiming the Maddington Best and Fairest in consecutive premiership winning seasons in 1975 and 1976.

Yet for all of the success of the 1970’s, for former Maddington Football Club President Matt Hunt, it was the follow up loss in the 1977 Grand Final loss that is still one of the most talked about stories in the club’s history.

“I think the most famous story from the Maddington Football Club was from that Dennis Cometti era,” Hunt said.

“To win three flags in a row and going into the fourth flag, to lose by 104 points, probably goes down as one of the biggest losses ever in a Grand Final.”

As recently as the 2016 premiership reunion, players from this successful era of the Maddington Football Club still reminisce on that Grand Final loss as much as any of the wins.

“Those players still catch up and see each other and it’s still a talking point to this day,” Hunt said.

As for the match and day itself, it was one that started badly and finished worse as Maddington were defeated by rivals Gosnells 20.22.142 to 4.14.38.

“From what you hear, everything went bad right from the start and just continued to go out of control,” Hunt said.

“To lose by 104 points with a team that definitely shouldn’t have lost by 104 points, it was a team that should have been fighting for that flag.”

Despite the loss being the final game that Cometti coached for Maddington, he has to this day still remained in contact with the club.

“Over the years Dennis has come back on various occasions. I’ve heard stories of him coming back to talk to our teams during finals and he has kept an association with the club,” Hunt said.

As for Cometti, maybe the Maddington Football Club is where he gained the experience to coin this classic piece of Cometti commentary.

“So it’s back to the old drawing board. Obviously, a luxury that the guy who invented the drawing board didn’t have.”

Perhaps drawing boards were hard to come by in 1977.