THE old Tasmanian football guernsey, in my opinion, is the best guernsey ever.

To understand why, you have to remember the island before global warming, when the paddocks of the island's north-west were lush after winter rains. That's how green the guernsey was. And then the yellow of the map of the island at its centre was not a shrill yellow, but a rich one, the sort of colour the sun went around three-quarter-time when I was watching games at Longford as a kid. And, inside the yellow map of the island, a blood-red T. I don't know how much you know about Tasmanian history but that colour always struck me as having a fundamental truth about it.

Footy was huge in Tassie when I was a kid in the 1960s. It was huge when my old man was a kid in the 1920s. Not a great deal changed between my time and his, but a lot has happened since. In my father's youth, the scores from Victorian matches were reported in the Tassie press but not much else. People weren't interested in Victorian footy. They were interested in Tassie footy. There were lots of good players. Tassie footy wasn't too far off the pace set by the bigger states until the 1960s, when the mass exporting of its best talent began.

The general opinion on the island is that the best player Tassie ever produced is Darrel Baldock, captain of St Kilda's solitary premiership team in 1966. "Look at his size," they say. "Remember he played centre-half forward". In height, Baldock was 179 centimetres (that is, smaller than Robert Harvey), but with the balance of a circus acrobat and the bulk of a coal miner. Baldock controlled the ball with his hands, patting it like it was a live thing — a duck or a ferret — encouraging it to find ways through legs and out of packs. He got belted mercilessly as he did so and by the time he returned to Tasmania — which is when I saw him play — he was an extremely tough man.

Three other Tasmanians were in that same St Kilda side. One, triple Brownlow medallist Ian Stewart, was sublimely skilled with either foot, an exceptional mark for his size, courageous and a thinker on the game. Verdun Howell, a refined footballer, also won a Brownlow Medal and did so from full-back. The third Tasmanian in the side, John "the Count" Bingley, was one of the characters of Tasmanian football.

In the 1966 grand final, Bingley subdued Collingwood hard man and skipper Des Tuddenham. The Count was one of those players who was always there when trouble was to be found, once, it is said, sparking a brawl before an intrastate match had even begun by ankle-tapping an opponent during God Save the Queen.

Any rollcall of great Tasmanian players would have to include Royce Hart and Peter Hudson. Last year, an old Richmond trainer told me Hart was a champion at the age of 19. Hudson's a personal favourite from the era because he was so unlikely. Imagine a horse that doesn't look like a thoroughbred. It's too big in the rear end, it's got an awkward gait. You cannot look at the creature and take it seriously. But it wins the Melbourne Cup and you have to look at it again. And again and again. He just knew a few things about the game better than his opponents, like how to find the ball and kick it straight.

Then there's Brent Crosswell. If Norm Smith medals had been around in his day, he would have won two (1970 and '75). "Give me a grey day at the Western Oval with 15,000 people and I wasn't worth a cracker," he once declared. "Give me 100,000 people at the MCG and I was Hercules." Crosswell is as brilliant a character as has crossed the Australian football stage. An intellectual at a time when Australian culture didn't allow someone to be an intellectual and a footballer, he ended up belonging to no one but himself. He is also possibly the best writer to have written on the game but his writing, like his football, is sporadic. Crosswell is a novel waiting to be written by the man, or woman, who can track him down. In this respect, he resembles the Tasmanian Tiger.

Crosswell, who was from the midlands, had a near contemporary from Burnie named Johnny Greening. Greening played for Collingwood at 17 and was leading the Brownlow at age 21 when he was hit behind play, sent crashing to the ground and was never the same again. Johnny's sort of like Heath Ledger. No one knows how good he could have been. Barry Price, sportsmaster at Scotch College and Collingwood's centreman in the 1970 grand final, says what happened to Greening was a tragedy for Australian football. I spent part of my teens growing up in the same town as Greening. Even back then, his name had magic. He was the boy who could fly, who could do anything he wanted on the football field.

These are the big names of Tassie footy. Behind them are lots of little names. John "Frog" Newman, a legend of country football in the rugged north-west, once sought to motivate his team by flinging road kill at their feet. Bonox Barker, a legendary bush orator who looked a bit like Tony Hancock, once began a grand final pre-match address with the words: "I'm only going to say one thing to you fellers today and the first of them is …" Then there's the ground made of gravel at Queenstown. I was admitted to the Tasmanian Football Hall of Fame on the same night as Crosswell and the Queenstown Oval. There could be no higher honour.

A list of Tasmanians who were good VFL/AFL footballers would include my first hero Graeme "Gypsy' Lee, a great mate of Darrel Baldock's. It would include Derek Peardon, the man who led Kevin Sheedy to go knocking on the doors of Aboriginal Australia. Then there's Alastair Lynch, Steve Macpherson, Graham Wright, Tony Pickett, Doug Barwick, Chris Bond, Jimmy Manson, Benny Gale and Paul Williams, plus many others.

And one I've left until last — Matthew Richardson.

Some would quibble with me naming Richo next to the likes of Baldock, Hudson and Hart. No, he is not as accomplished or artful, but I ask his detractors three questions.

Has he not filled stadiums with his presence? Has he not striven so mightily for his club that at times it seemed he is their cause? Is he not a reason people go to watch the game? In my view, Richo is the last great Tasmanian footballer.