If anyone was well qualified to assess toughness in a league player, it would have been Jack Dyer.

The great ‘Captain Blood’ was renowned for being as tough as they come throughout a magnificent 312-game playing career with Richmond.

There was, however, a teammate and player he coached who Dyer rated the toughest Tiger of them all.

That player was George Smeaton, who represented Richmond in 149 games from 1935-42 and then again from 1944-46 after serving Australia with distinction during World War 2.

Dyer was a huge admirer of Smeaton for his toughness, as well as the other fine attributes he possessed.

Here’s what Dyer had to say about Smeaton in the book ‘Tigerland’, which was published in 1989 . . .

“George Smeaton isn’t a name that springs instantly to the mind when they talk Tigerland, but he springs straight into mine . . . he was one of those fellows who kept the club going.

“The ‘Brown Bomber’ (named after boxing’s mighty World Heavyweight champion at the time Joe Louis) was a man we should all be proud of, either on or off the field. A loveable character with a quaint vocabulary, but tough as old boots.

“He played a semi-final with a broken toe and it was bad, it had gone ebony black.

“He’d been warned against playing but declared the worst that could happen would be for it to drop off.

“To his credit it was on his kicking foot and he never pulled a kick and played a great game . . .

“He loved everything about the game. He had a saying, ‘Love and music make the world go around, just remember that’. He would say it all the time, particularly when the going was blackest.

“He could carry players like no man I’ve seen, and he became a hard-hitting champion at full-back. He was one of those great clubmen who would do whatever job you asked him to do.

“The same guy turned into a great philosopher and coach. He was a humble postman, but he could quote Byron or the Bard.”