Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Morecambe and Wise, Dyer and Richards . . .

Jack Dyer and Lou Richards may not have been a professional comedic combination in the mould of the other aforementioned humorous duos, but they were every bit as funny to an entire generation of league football fans fortunate enough to have witnessed their constant verbal sparring and ribbing for so many years on ‘World of Sport’ and ‘League Teams’.

The first encounter between Dyer and Richards took place in Round 12 of the 1941 season, when arch-rivals Richmond and Collingwood clashed at Punt Road.

Dyer was Richmond’s inspirational, 27-year-old captain-coach at the time and a veteran of 163 league games.

Richards was an 18-year-old in his debut season of VFL football, with just six games experience.

Little Lou kicked one goal for the Magpies that day, while big Jack booted two for the Tigers, but it was the visitors who prevailed by 18 points.

Over the course of the next eight years, until 1949 when Dyer’s playing career finished, they became fierce on-field foes, epitomising the intense rivalry that existed between the neighbouring VFL clubs Richmond and Collingwood.

But Richards’ retirement from league football in 1955 paved the way for the pair’s relationship to take a distinctly different direction.

Jack and Lou, along with Doug Elliott (Uncle Doug of World of Sport fame) teamed up as VFL football commentators on Melbourne radio station 3XY for the 1956 season.

That was the start of what was to be a wonderfully entertaining ‘love/hate’ media relationship, which Dyer and Richards were to share for three decades.

Heaven’s now become a whole lot funnier with Lou’s arrival, to join Jack, and ‘fair dinkum’ Bobby Davis, the other mirthful member of Channel Seven’s cult, long-running, late (very late) Thursday night football preview show, ‘League Teams’.

I caught up with an old League Teams special episode earlier this week and couldn’t stop laughing.

Jack was on one end of the panel table, muttering to himself, Lou was at the other end, cracking corny gags in trademark style, while Bob was in the middle, supposedly as the mediator, but more often than not winding the other two up to get stuck into each other, which they duly obliged.

To this day, League Teams remains undoubtedly the funniest football show I’ve ever seen . . . and right up there with the best-ever Australian comedy on TV.

Jack and Lou were an unlikely pairing (to say the least) as media entertainers, but there was a unique chemistry between them, which provided football fans, regardless of who they barracked for, with enormous enjoyment.

Below is a snapshot of Jack’s thoughts on Lou and vice-versa.

Jack on Lou

“He's been like a rat in a famine, and he still has those characteristics of native cunning. He'd survive where a lot of people would turn it up. He's resourceful. If he went to the moon, he'd find five cents there for sure . . .

“Lou wasn’t a gentleman on the football field, there’s many a bruised ankle to say that, and he is the one and only player I have seen stir ‘Gentleman’ Dick Reynolds (champion Essendon triple Brownlow Medallist) into throwing a punch . . .

“The Richmond players called Lou the thoughtful kicker. He was the only little man at Collingwood who had the decency to put iodine on his boots before going out to kick somebody.

“Still, I’d love to have had him in a Richmond guernsey. He’s one of the few Magpies I finished up liking.”

Lou on Jack

“The name “Captain Blood” has been synonymous with football for as long as it has been going.

“He put football on the map as far as making it a great game. He was a great personality . . .

“There would have been few more terrifying sights in sport than that of Jack Dyer bearing down on you at full speed, hell-bent on destruction . . .

“For the best part of 20 years, Jack was the biggest and most fearsome name in Australian Football.

“By the time I’d arrived on the scene, Jack was a godlike figure, the captain-coach of Richmond and football’s meanest big man.

“At about 1.85 metres, he was no giant by today’s standards, but he was amazingly fast, a superb kick and a skilled protector down at the old Punt Road Oval.”