It was the last place where meeting someone at the footy was easy. You met under the scoreboard, a vulgar thing that looked like it had been ripped off the front of a giant Cadillac or Batmobile.
A lot of good footy was played at Waverley. The single most dramatic thing I have seen in footy happened there - Melbourne's Irish import Jimmy Stynes running over the mark to bring Hawthorn's Gary Buckenara within range of goal, in the last moment of the 1987 preliminary final. Melbourne had been so gallant that day, so brave, and none was braver than Melbourne's other Irish import of that generation, Sean Wight, who took on Hawthorn's warrior from the Irish dreamtime, Dermott Brereton.
The Hawthorn team of that era was mighty - a champion in every line. Melbourne hadn't won anything for decades. Suddenly, the Dees were within sight of a grand final, the dream-like nature of their quest highlighted by the fact that their team included one of the fairest and most skilful players of his generation, Robert Flower. It was to be his final game.
The rest of the team? A rag-bag, really. No one stands out in my memory from that day, except Wight.
You have to understand what a terrifying presence Brereton was as a player. When Dermott took you out, you woke up in the middle of a football field with concerned teammates looking down at you. My indelible image from that match is Wight and Brereton wrestling on the ground, Wight holding him in a headlock, Brereton's fury evident in his trapped body, Wight with a look on his face that said: "If it has to be this way, so be it."
Melbourne led all day, the fairytale was happening, until slowly, in the last quarter, Hawthorn edged back and Buckenara got his team home. In the aftermath, one of the great footy photos was taken, showing Stynes, his great heart broken, trudging back to the rooms, and coach John Northey pointing an accusing finger.
Years later, I interviewed Stynes and he told me he ended up taking a holiday out of Australia to get away from what had happened.
On a train in Paris, a voice said, "Aren't you the bloke who ran over the mark etc, etc?", and he realised he was never going to escape it.
But he also reckoned the hurt and humiliation he suffered extracted the depth of resolve that led to him winning the 1991 Brownlow Medal.
So that's a bit of what Waverley means to me and what I see when I look out at what is now a vista of recently constructed houses, all similar. But the surface of the oval is its old, healthy self and a single part of the old Sir Kenneth Luke grandstand remains standing like a giant tooth in an otherwise empty mouth. Hawthorn shares the premises with a couple of businesses, but within the body of the old grandstand, the Hawks have state-of-the-art facilities - a swimming pool, ice baths, running track, gymnasium - of which they are justly proud. There is also a fine club museum. And out the front, looking like he is about to stride out on the ground, is a statue of John "Kanga" Kennedy.
I put Kennedy up with Ron Barassi and Kevin Sheedy as one of the great coaches of the post-war era. What Kennedy did was take an old club and imagine a whole new identity for it. Hawthorn chief executive Ian Robson told me something this week I didn't know - Kennedy barracked for Collingwood as a kid. It explains something about him, if you consider the great Collingwood sides he would have seen in the 1930s with their legendary toughness.
Kennedy started as a player with Hawthorn in 1950. They were the deadbeats of the competition, going a whole year without winning a game. In later life, Kennedy was described, unforgettably, by Brent Crosswell as looking like "an old wildebeest". He was long and lanky and didn't look much like a footballer. Nonetheless, in his first five seasons with the Hawks, he won the club best-and-fairest four times. At 31, he became coach.
An intelligent man, Kennedy was once a school principal. He was also a strong Catholic. I read somewhere where he said the Catholic Church hadn't been the same for him since Vatican II. He liked his religion, and his footy, to be hard. That, it seemed, was the point. Under Kennedy, Hawthorn acquired a warrior code. He bred a team that played with a bushido spirit and a monk-like devotion to the cause. No club ever made it more clear than Hawthorn that the game was not about the individual.
Kennedy was also a great orator. A famous clip of him is at three-quarter-time in the 1975 grand final. The Hawks are losing. "Don't think," he tells his players in that booming voice he had, which was like a bass drum. If you heard it, you found yourself following the beat. "Don't think," he shouts. "Just do something." Then, finally, with a bellow of an enraged moose: "Just do!" It's a philosophy I recommend as an antidote to moments of existential despair. Don't think. Just do something. Just do.
The statue of Kennedy, by sculptor Louis Laumen, is a beauty. Kennedy's wearing his famous old raincoat, striding out on to the ground, long arm raised, summoning someone's attention, about to speak thunderously. The statue was forged in West Footscray. Usually, statues are kept under wraps until officially unveiled. Not with Kanga.
He was transported on the back of an open truck so that from the top of the West Gate Bridge he pointed like an Old Testament prophet to the Dandenongs. He was taken to Glenferrie Oval, to speak once more to the many ghosts at the Hawks' old home ground, then driven solemnly down Glenferrie Road - Hawthorn's main street - like a statue of Kim Il Sung returning to North Korea.
When they reached Waverley, he was lowered into place by a crane. To me, that statue is the symbol of a club that knows how to invest in the future.
People interested in reading more on footy and the history wars can read Martin Flanagan's blog at blogs.theage.com.au/flanagan/
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