Graeme Allan, known universally throughout the world of AFL football as "Gubby", has been one of the best backroom operators the game has seen, at Collingwood, Brisbane and St Kilda.
He was also a very good footballer in his day, first with Sunshine in the VFA, then in racking up 141 games over 11 years with Fitzroy and Collingwood, playing for the Pies in the 1981 Grand Final against Carlton, and even representing Victoria in interstate football.
But pragmatic, unromantic and a realist, Allan isn't one for reflecting much, which is probably just as well. Because this weekend marks an anniversary which for more delicate souls, could conceivably still be the stuff of nightmares.
On Sunday June 2, it will be exactly 40 years since a moment which has become part of football folklore, is replayed endlessly, and still sparks endless wisecracks and laughter whenever it is.
We're talking, of course, about the day at the Western Oval in 1984, when Footscray beat Allan's Collingwood on the final siren.
It was Bulldogs' spearhead Simon Beasley who kicked the winning goal, and who got that opportunity after, with literally only a few seconds remaining and the Magpies a point in front, Allan infamously had a short pass across the face of goal intercepted.
Winning a free kick in the back-pocket, Allan, rather than play it safe down the line, decided on a short pass to teammate Greg Phillips, a pass pinched by Beasley, who backed back into Phillips to mark in front of him. He duly converted from 20-odd metres out straight in front as the siren rang and pandemonium broke out in the western suburbs.
"It was a funny day that one, though it wasn't funny at the time," Allan told me for 'The Age' in 2006. "Straight away, I thought: 'I've f----- this up'. I remember thinking how glad I was Tommy Hafey wasn't still coach, because I wouldn't have been able to go back in the rooms, I would have been hitchhiking along Ballarat Road.
"I didn't cop it from Jack Cahill (who was coach). To Jack's credit, he didn't spray me, but I sure copped it from everyone else. Mick Malthouse was Footscray coach, and he wanted to buy me a beer.
"I think everyone in Australia reckons they were there that day. The other week, some Adelaide kid kicked across goal and the commentator said: 'He's done a 'Gubby' Allan'. Straight away, I got about four text messages from people about it."
They don't tend to talk about Allan's good stuff on the field, of which there was plenty, even on this same June afternoon, when from a half-back flank, he, along with wingman Ricky Barham, had been close to Collingwood's best, the Magpies getting out to as much as a 37-point lead midway through the third quarter.
After an even first quarter, the Bulldogs had gone goalless until the 21-minute mark of the that third term, but Beasley and Footscray skipper Jim Edmond spearheaded a comeback which saw the home team within 11 points at the final change.
The final quarter twisted this way and that, goals to Footscray's Rick Kennedy and Michael "Magic" McLean almost getting the Dogs in front, but Collingwood finding answers through Shane Morwood and Derek Shaw.
The Pies looked as they were going to hang on, but when veteran small man Bruce Duperouzel raced into an open goal for Footscray, it was just one point the difference deep into time-on. With the ball bobbing around in the Bulldogs' forward pocket, Allan was tackled by Edmond and, much to the home crowd's displeasure, ruled to have been pushed in the back.
But as the hot-headed Edmond gave the umpire a spray, full-forward Beasley, who'd already kicked three goals, noted that Allan was shaping to chip the ball short, and launched himself into the path of the kick, taking a great and critical mark.
In another oft-replayed moment, Allan put his hands to his head as the ramifications of his miscalculation hit home, Edmond taunting the Magpie defender by pointing to his own head, the message quite clear even to amateur lip-readers: "You're f----d!"
Beasley's shot from right in front never looked like missing, the goal umpire barely having time to raise two fingers before the siren rang, the Footscray coach's box melting into a gigantic group hug.
As Allan correctly recalled, his coach spared him too much public embarrassment. "When it's tight and it's time-on, you go wide and long to the boundary," Cahill told reporters immediately after the game. "The players did their own thing and cut across goal. There was no reason to take a risk. The player should never have led there, and the player should never have kicked there."
But Cahill was more irate about the six-goals-plus lead his team had let slip.
"The second half was a disgrace. We were six goals up and the players wanted to do it nice and soft and wide instead of crashing through and earning victory. Even in the first half our lack of fierceness worried me. Footscray were definitely more desperate in the closing stages.
"We let so many people down today. We could have and should have won. There are no excuses."
And the unluckiest person at "The Kennel" on this day 40 years ago? Well, that had to be Collingwood tough man Denis Banks, who shortly before half-time took an amazing mark floating across a pack which saw him not only flying high, but parallel to the ground, arguably one of the best marks the game has seen.
It was an incredible grab. But because of one much-repeated blunder, it never gets the kudos it deserves, Banks' heroics even now routinely overlooked because of his teammate's error. "Yep, Banksy's still dirty on me," Allan chuckled.