Blair Campbell, the accomplished sporting all-rounder, who played senior football for Richmond and Melbourne, plus first-class cricket for Victoria and Tasmania, has died, aged 74.

Campbell passed away peacefully on November 3 surrounded by members of his family.

Although his time at Tigerland was only brief, with just eight senior games across the 1966 and 1968 seasons, it included an astonishing debut, a near career-ending injury, reintroducing football crowds to a now iconic kick, and an unexpected coaching stint.

Blair’s senior debut for Richmond, in Round 17, 1966 against South Melbourne at Lake Oval was the stuff of childhood dreams.

The game fell on his 20^th birthday, and he kicked the winning goal after the siren to snatch a one-point victory for the Tigers.

In an interview I conducted with Blair in 2005 for my history book “Richmond FC”, he recalled the setting sun blinding his eyes as he lined up for the shot at goal with a torpedo-punt kick.

“So, when I did kick it, it was a very poor kick and just cleared the hands of the ruckman in the goals and went through,” he said.

Herbie Matthews Jnr was standing the mark for South and claimed he touched the kick, his protest supported by nearby teammates Bob Skilton and John Heriot. But the goal stood.

“I reckon they did touch it. It was such a poor kick and Skilton was there, and I would say that Skilton was an honest man”.

As a left-footer, Blair was credited with popularising the “banana kick” in Victoria, a trademark of his game when shooting for goal. He called it the “boomerang kick”.

It’s wrong to say he invented the kick. At the time, the press wrote he had “perfected it”, and Blair himself later agreed the description that he popularised it was more fitting, “Even though not too many people were using it after I finished,” he said.

The influence for the kick came from watching St Kilda’s full-forward Bill Young thrill the crowd at the Junction Oval in the late 1950s.

“I was just a young boy in the crowd watching him run out and snap the ball back over his left shoulder. And I’m thinking, he’s doing something radically different there. It’s not the normal way people snap for goal; he is holding the ball really in the opposite direction to normal.”

When Young retired in 1961, so too did the kick, until Blair’s arrival (coincidentally, Young died earlier this year).

Blair’s football career took an unexpected turn in 1967. A dodgy right knee at the end of the previous season was exacerbated during a district cricket match for Prahran in the summer. “I noticed something clicking in the leg”, he said. The following day, his knee gave way during a touch football game on Channel Seven’s ‘World of Sport’ program.

After surgery to remove the cartilage, Blair was faced with a year out of football. But he subsequently took up an offer from Richmond to coach its newly-formed Little League team.

The captain of the team, a then 11-year-old Simon Brisbane, shared the same birthdate as Blair. In their debut season, the Little League Tigers won the premiership. The pair remained close friends for the next 53 years, with Simon able to speak to Blair the night before his passing.

At the end of 1968, Blair was seeking greater opportunities to play senior football, and he received a clearance to Melbourne. He played 12 games for the Demons in 1969 but suffered a recurrence of his knee injury and retired.

As a teenager, he won the League’s under-19s goalkicking leading goalkicker award in 1965. The following year, he was voted best on ground in the Richmond reserves Grand Final win against Collingwood. Then, in 1968, he won the leading goalkicker award for the Tigers’ reserve-grade side.

Across all grades at Richmond, he kicked 166 goals in 67 games.

Blair’s first-class cricket debut for Victoria was equally impressive, capturing 6 for 87 with his slow left-arm wrist-spin and going on to be a member of the Vics’ 1969-70 Sheffield Shield-winning side. 

He later played for Tasmania from 1977-1980, and during a Tasmanian Invitation team versus touring West Indies match in 1979, he dismissed the great Vic Richards on 127 runs with a wrong-un that produced a stumping.

For many years afterwards, Blair’s children would ask him to bowl that same delivery in the practice nets to them.

“So he would roll out a loopy wrong-un (or bosie as he liked to call them) that dipped late, gripped and spun far enough to slip past the bat, as you would be coming down the wicket to try and smash it,” his son Luke told me via email.

He represented Prahran Cricket Club across 12 seasons, took two hat-tricks, was a member of its 1983-84 first-grade premiership, took 6 for 26 one day, and ended with 244 wickets at a highly-impressive average of 22.73.

Blair also was a sports writer for Melbourne newspapers The Age and The Herald, and he later coached football teams East Malvern and Sale.

In a way, Blair Maesmore Campbell was almost indefinable. You could say he was a mixture of eccentricity, intelligence, skilfulness, humility, and mischievousness.

In his own words, from a 1984 newspaper article, Blair said: “There’s the ambitious and competitive side to me, and there’s the aesthetic and the spiritual side, and I reckon both of these can blend together.”

Blair’s funeral, on Monday, November 9 at 10.30am,  will be live streamed at  https://cranefunerals.com.au/funeral-notices-and-tributes/blair-campbell-funeral-notice/ , where tributes can also be left for the family.