John Rantall collected countless football keepsakes over a stellar 18-year AFL career, but among his most precious is a pewter mug that celebrates its 40^th birthday this week.

It was presented to him on April 30, 1977 by the South Melbourne trainers in recognition of his 200^th game for the club against Carlton at Princes Park.

Coincidentally, it was Round 5, as it is today when the Swans play Carlton at the MCG.

Unaware that such a milestone was approaching, Rantall this week told how he put the mug to good use on the evening of his double century milestone, and still has it and a plaque given to him at the same time by the trainers.

“It was a very special milestone for me,” he recalled. “When you start out you just want to play one game. I remember thinking if I could just do that I’d be happy.

“But to get 200 games at one club – my club – was something I never dreamed of. It meant so much to me.

“In those days the trainers used to invite the players from both teams down into the rooms for a beer after each game.

“I certainly had quite a few beers out of the mug that night … you remember little things like that. It was fantastic.”

Indeed, it was a special moment in the career of a player described as one who “scarcely looked like a league footballer, with skinny, shrunken legs and an almost emaciated physique”, but turned out to be one of the all-time Swans greats.

The unflattering physical description of the much-loved champion known widely as ‘Mopsy’ on the australianfootball.com website bares no resemblance to the reputation he built over a long and distinguished career.

But the fact that Rantall is listed among the game’s champions and described in such glowing terms on a site which “celebrates the history of the great Australian game” is more than fitting.

The site says of the reluctant country kid from Cobden: “Renowned for his superb judgement and tremendous all round skills John Rantall was without doubt one of the best specialist half back flankers ever to have played this game”.

Rantall is certainly the most famous football product of Cobden, a town 210km south-west of Melbourne which boasts a resident population of anything up to 2500 and claims to be the ‘Dairy Capital of the World’ on the back of more than 140,000 head of cattle in and around the area.

While the town’s dairy claim might be open to some question there is no doubting Cobden’s football pedigree.

It also counts among its famous football products Geelong’s 1962 Brownlow Medallist and 1963 premiership team member Alistair Lord, his ’63 premiership teammate and twin brother Stewart Lord, Collingwood’s 1953 and ’58 premiership player and Team of the Century choice Thorold Merrett, and four current players: Sydney’s Gary Rohan, North’s Ben Cunnington and Essendon brothers Jackson and Zach Merrett.

Now 73 and enjoying retirement not far from Cobden, Rantall was the seventh player to post a double century for South Melbourne, following Vic Belcher (1918), Mark Tandy (1925), Jim Cleary (1947), Jack Graham (1947), Ron Clegg (1958) and Bob Skilton (1970).

He was 32 at the time of his 200^th game and was the oldest member of a Swans side coached by Ian Stewart and captained by Ricky Quade, against a Carlton side under coach Ian Thorogood and captain Robert Walls.

But Rantall was still one of their best. In a ’77 season in which the Swans finished fifth before losing an elimination final to Richmond, Rantall was one of just three players to play all 23 games. The others were Barry Round and Terry O’Neill. Quade, Graham Teasdale, Shane Zantuck, Mark Browning and Peter Morrison each played 22 games.

Sadly, there was no victory celebration to further enhance Rantall’s double century milestone. Carlton won by 27 points.

Gary Brice led the South possession count with 22 and Teasdale, later to win the Brownlow Medal and the South B&F to culminate a wonderful season, kicked four goals.

Walls had 21 possessions for Carlton and kicked three goals, while Mark Maclure kicked six and Peter McKenna, making a short-lived comeback at Carlton 12 months after the end of his stellar 11-year career at Collingwood, kicked five.

Rantall went on to play 260 games in jumper #5 of the famous red and white and 38 years after his last game still ranks sixth on the club’s all-time list behind Adam Goodes (372), Jude Bolton (325), Michael O’Loughlin (303), Jarrad McVeigh (287) and Ryan O’Keeffe (286).

Among 29 players to have played 200 games for the Swans, Rantall was the second-oldest, ahead only of Andrew Dunkley to the double ton. And only then by 153 days.

Why? Because in the middle of his career, after 174 games for South from 1963-72, he was recruited by a big-spending North Melbourne under a new and short-lived 10-year rule.

In the wake of threats emanating from rugby league whereby players had taken legal action based on a restraint of trade the then VFL introduced the 10-year rule, giving players who had given 10 year’ consecutive service to one club the right to transfer to another.

The rule lasted just 10 months, from August 1972 to May 1973, but that was long enough for North to lure Rantall together with ex-Essendon captain Barry Davis and ex-Geelong captain Doug Wade to Arden Street.


John Rantall in 2015 with former North Melbourne teammate Barry Davis.

Rantall had played 174 games in 10 years for South at the time, but only one final. That was the aforementioned ’72 elimination final in which they had lost to Richmond.

As much as he was a Swans man, having captained the club for one season in 1972 after Skilton (1961-71) and before Peter Bedford (1973-76), Rantall was tempted by the prospect of a premiership at North.

He was vindicated when he, Davis and Wade each played key roles in North’s historic first premiership in 1975.

As Rantall explained later: “Everyone wants to play in a premiership. I was lucky, I went across and played in a premiership, I played in two grand finals (in 1974 and ’75), and after that, I went back to the Swans,” he said. “I could’ve stayed… (but) I felt as though I’d achieved what I wanted to achieve. My heart was always with the Swans.”

After 70 games at North from 1973-75 and a club best and fairest in ’74, Rantall played a further 86 games for South from 1976-79, including his 200^th.

When he played his 308^th AFL game overall and his 238^th Swans game against Melbourne at the MCG in Round 21, 1978 he broke the club record, held previously by the legendary Skilton.

He retired briefly at the end of ’79 after coach Ian Stewart adopted a youth policy, but was snapped up by Fitzroy. There he played a further seven games in 1980 and broke the then VFL games record held by Kevin Murray. He retired shortly after having played a total of 336 VFL games across three clubs.

Prior to the 1982 season, Rantall was appointed coach of South Melbourne but the club's move to Sydney brought about a split and saw Ricky Quade take charge.

Thereafter Rantall moved north and for 30 years was a much loved and respected football pioneer in Queensland and New South Wales, which included a coaching stint in Brisbane, time on the board of AFL North Coast (NSW), and a junior coaching role with the Swans Academy in that region.

But while he enjoyed life out of the spotlight Rantall was never forgotten by the game. He was an inaugural inductee to the AFL Hall of Fame in 1996, was selected in the North Melbourne Team of Century in 2001 and the Swans Team of the Century in 2003.

In January 2014, wanting to live near his two brothers, he moved back to where it all began. Almost. He now lives at Noorat, about 30km from Cobden.

Enjoying “very good health”, he plays golf twice a week, plays competition table tennis, gets to the gym regularly, and rides a bike between Noorat and nearby Terang.

He is a Commissioner for the Victoria’s Western Districts AFL, which effectively has replaced the now defunct Victorian Country Football League, and has a role overseeing football in places like Warrnambool, Port Fairy, Portland and the Ballarat Rebels.

A keen Swans supporter, he already pencilled into his diary five of the club’s seven games in Melbourne this season. And only this week he recorded an upcoming edition of “Open Mike’.