The Phoenix Rises

Through the 1980s, football was in a sad and sorry state in its Victorian heartland.

Clubs were on the edge of oblivion, crippled by debt, and without any sense that tomorrow might come.

In 1984, the clubs agreed to the appointment of an independent commission to oversee the game-a decision made, as events would show, in the nick of time.

At the end of the 1986 season, after the retirement of the long-serving VFL chief Jack Hamilton, Ross Oakley, a former St Kilda player, was dragged from the world of insurance to run the game.

The Phoenix Rises is his story, created with the assistance of the many who were part of those crazy times and enhanced by never-before-seen extracts from the minutes of the VFL and the Commission. It’s the many-sided story of how Oakley and the evolving Commission took the game from the edge of the precipice to become the envy of Australian sport.