Ian Hayden, Richmond’s 1962 Best First Year player and leading goalkicker of 1963 who, after injury curtailed his career at just 23 years of age, became one of Victoria’s most respected criminal barristers, has died. He was 83.
Hayden died peacefully last Thursday morning, May 2nd.
At 6ft 2, Hayden was recruited from Wangaratta via University Blues and played 30 senior games from 1962-1964 at centre-half back and centre-half forward, as well as three games for the Reserves.
In the courtroom he was front and centre for some of the state’s most famous cases - The Longford Cinema shooting in 1979, The 1988 Walsh Street police shootings, and The Pong Su incident in 2003.
For his Richmond debut against Melbourne in Rd 1 1962 Hayden, wearing No. 20, was photographed leading out strongly and marking in front of Bernie Massey - a defining image of his short career that appeared on the back cover of the Herald-Sun Privilege Book of 1962, and inside an Assumption College locker of a young Francis Bourke.
The two met years later – “I used to have a photo of you in my locker at school” Bourke told Hayden. “Isn’t that funny, some of my kids have got your photo on the wall at our place,” Hayden replied.
In that match Hayden booted 3 goals 4 behinds and “stood out as one forward capable of winning kicks on his own ability…”
But his career was too often hobbled by injuries – persistent Achilles tendon soreness in 1962, and in 1963 a sprained hand (while training on the beach), a niggling groin injury, concussion, and an eye injury during a game of squash. Despite all that, and some wayward kicking, he won the club’s leading goalkicker award with 25 goals.
In Round 1 of 1964 against Footscray he received the praise of the press and of umpire Bob Gaudion who awarded him 3 Brownlow Medal votes in his match up on Frank Johnson and Ted Whitten. The game was to be the first coached by Len Smith, but he suffered a heart attack the day before and was replaced by Dick Harris.
In Round 2 vs Essendon, Hayden damaged his cruciate ligament in the second quarter and was sidelined for the remainder of the season. After surgery he attempted a comeback during the 1965 preseason, fell awkwardly in a Tony Jewell tackle and never played football again. His career was over at the age of 23, just as Richmond were about to enter the golden era under Tom Hafey.
“Graeme Richmond said Hayden was a very good player and they would have liked to have played him at centre half back but his knees packed up,” Bourke recalled.
Ian Hayden (left) the day before his Richmond debut.
Born Ian Michael Hayden on April 14 1941, his formidable years were influenced by Richmond President and prominent solicitor Ray Dunn who was married to his Hayden’s mother’s cousin.
“He was a wonderful tactician and strategist, mentally very agile, very quick to sum up a situation – I don’t think I could ever be as quick as he was,” Hayden told Foley’s List in 2015. “He was very good at finding a weakness and exploiting it, ordering other witnesses out of court so they wouldn’t hear a witness giving evidence.”
(When contacted for this obituary, Michael Dunn (Ray’s son) recalled fondly the holidays the families together spent at Metung.)
In 1958 Hayden started studying law, and shortly after was visited by Dunn along with secretary Maurie Fleming and Jack Dyer at his parents General Store on Tone Road, Wangaratta.
The Richmond hierarchy weren’t the only ones keeping an eye on him. Having won a premiership with Wangaratta and then Uni Blues (where he tied for the Woodrow Medal for Best and Fairest in the Amateurs ‘A’ Grade), Melbourne and Carlton came courting.
He trained and played in early practice matches with Carlton in 1960.
After moving to Newman College at the University of Melbourne, Hayden served an apprenticeship under Ray Dunn on level 8 of 178 Queen Street, and signed the Bar Roll on 19 November 1963.
“He encouraged me to go to the Bar; I was with him 18 months. A lot of people were getting terrible money for doing articles – some did it for no money, but he paid me 20 pounds a week. I was also working in a hotel. Everyone who’d preceded me was with him for only 18 months, but that was the maximum. I couldn’t imagine him with a partner. Even though I was closer to him than a lot of people, I never gave it any thought. He would have let me stay another year or so, and probably given me an increase in salary, but he was a one-man band.”
Hayden was a member of the Victorian Bar for 55 years before retiring in 2018.
Of the Walsh Street police killings, he acted for Anthony Farrell – accused of being on the periphery of the plan, but not present at the crime scene.
“Because it was such a high-profile trial, when I came back to chambers one day, people asked how it was going – we’d reached the stage of doing addresses. And I said I thought there would be acquittals. I was confident my client would be acquitted; I thought they were all going to be acquitted. Nobody could believe it because it was such a monster crime, and the publicity indicated that, but there were complications in the police case.”
Of his short-lived career at Tigerland, Hayden admitted that he “loved it and felt I was coming into good form, and enjoyed my time at Richmond and made friends there.”
Hayden is survived by his wife Joan, children Daniel, Michael, Steven, Tom (who played for Richmond Reserves), Angela, Peter and Catherine. His grandchildren Dante and Vigo Visentini currently playing for Port Adelaide and Essendon respectively.
