RED & WHITE ARCHIVES: BRAD HARDIE, THE MEDAL DETECTOR

There is one common denominator that runs rampant through Brad Hardie’s extraordinary football journey from Hilton Park juniors in the early 1970s to South Fremantle in 1984, his final season in his first stint with the Bulldogs before he went on to even greater glory in the Eastern States.

It’s medals. Medal after medal after medal stitched like sequins into the fabric of his fabulous career. It is an embarrassment of riches that has followed the flame-haired chunky utility from his days as a nipper in the Hilton Park Primary School’s red and gold tee-shirts to the famous red and white of South Fremantle, the black and gold of WA teams and ultimately to the football mecca of the VFL-AFL. His resilience was forged at a young age when he would play impromptu footy games in the backyard or on the street outside his Hilton Park home with brother Wayne and neighbours Dwayne and Graeme Wood, also a handy footballer who eventually took the cricket path and go on to play 59 Test matches for Australia.

Hardie didn’t make the final 20 for the 1979 grand final but his astonishing year as a 16-year-old showed that he could more than handle the big league, and over the next five years he would firmly establish himself as one of the best in the game before he inevitably headed east to join Footscray in 1985. At the ripe old age of 17, Hardie became a premiership player when Souths dismantled Swan Districts in the 1980 grand final.

Starting on the bench alongside Simon Outhwaite, he came on in the second part of the second quarter and promptly kicked two goals. He booted another in the third and came from the ground after rolling his ankle in the final term. Of all the accolades that were showered on him, Hardie believes his Walker Medal as Souths best and fairest in 1982 as a 19-year-old rates as highly as any of them.

After 118 games with the Bulldogs, Hardie moved to the VFL Bulldogs, and became only the second man since Haydn Bunton Snr to win the Brownlow Medal in his first year, becoming a household name in Victoria. There was no stopping the red-haired juggernaut, and he then became the only player to win two Tassie Medals – he also won another Simpson Medal – when he was voted best player at the 1986 State-of-origin series in Perth.

At Footscray – where he had a famous falling out with coach Mick Malthouse – he claimed the best and fairest, the Charles Sutton Medal in 1986, before moving to Brisbane where he was the Bears leading goal-kicker in 1989-90.

Brad Hardie is an all-time great of the South Fremantle Football Club who overcame adversity to become a local legend before etching his name into VFL and interstate.