Alex Jesaulenko

Oleksandr Vasiliovych "Alex" Jesaulenko ( ; , ; born 2 August 1945) is a former Australian rules footballer and who played for the Carlton Football Club and the St Kilda Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL). He also served as a coach at both clubs.

Jesaulenko is a Legend of the Australian Football Hall of Fame, and as a player was known for his versatility, uncanny balance and spectacular marking. He immortalised his reputation in the game by taking the most iconic mark in football history in the 1970 VFL Grand Final. In 2009 The Australian nominated Jesaulenko as one of the 25 greatest footballers never to win a Brownlow Medal.

Recruited from Canberra, Jesaulenko has played more games and kicked more goals than any other player from the Australian Capital Territory. He represented his home territory in 1978. His popularity caused the code to surge in popularity there, and he remains a household name in the ACT.

He remains to date the only Carlton footballer to have kicked 100 or more goals in a season, and the last player-coach to win a VFL/AFL premiership (1979).

In 2002, he was inducted into the Ukrainian Sports Hall of Fame. On 20 October 2010, he was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame. In July 2013, Jesaulenko was named captain of the first Australia Post Multicultural Team of Champions.

In January 2022, Jesaulenko was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

Early life

Jesaulenko was born in Salzburg, then Allied-occupied Austria. His father, Vasil, was Ukrainian and served as a German policeman during World War II. They spent the first six months living at the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre.

From there, the family moved to Canberra, where Vasil set up shop as a carpenter-cabinetmaker.

Playing career

Early playing career

Jesaulenko has credited his time at Eastlake for instilling in him a winning culture. After breaking into the senior team, he quickly established himself as a star, playing in three consecutive premierships for Eastlake from 1964 to 1966.

Carlton

On joining Carlton, Jesaulenko reflected in an interview with The Canberra Times that: [Eastlake] certainly provided a winning culture. I was lucky to play at a footy club that was on the way up that just had a new regime put in, with George Harris and his mob, appointed a new coach in Ronald Dale Barassi, they had experienced players and they recruited young guns ... and I just fitted into the mix. He would play every game for Carlton that season, one of four players to do so. In that season's Brownlow Medal count, he would poll 15 votes to finish third behind eventual winner Ross Smith (24 votes) from and 's Laurie Dwyer (17 votes). Jesaulenko was selected for All-Australian honours in 1969 and 1972. He also has the dubious record at Carlton for the most inaccurate score of 5 goals and 12 behinds, against Hawthorn in 1969. In an article for The Canberra Times, Jesaulenko reiterated his commitment to Carlton: He went on to play in the famous 1970 VFL Grand Final against Collingwood. In front of an all-time record MCG crowd of 121,696 fans, Carlton came from a 44-point deficit at half-time to win by 10 points. This "specky" is acclaimed by some to be the "Mark of the Century", and it was the first to be recognised officially as the Mark of the Year; the medal awarded to the annual winner is called the Alex Jesaulenko Medal. Jesaulenko has downplayed the specky, citing other marks he took—even during the same game—as greater feats. He later said: "The images make it look classical, like it was taken from the marking manual... It was against Collingwood, a Grand Final, the biggest crowd ever, Graeme's a six-foot-four ruckman, I guess there's a mystique in standing on top of him with your arms outstretched."

Media commitments

For a brief period in 1977, Jesaulenko wrote a weekly Tuesday column for The Canberra Times called 'Jezza on Rules'. In his first article on 5 April, he spoke of the Night Series rift between the VFL and the then National Football League (the VFL had separated itself from this umbrella organisation the previous year) and advocated the formation of a national competition:

The two separate night series will prove nothing and achieve little. Both will survive, but neither will prosper to the same degree as one half the response as one fully national competition would do. The ideal solution to the night-series dispute lies somewhere between the structures of the two present competitions. The VFL must play along with all the other States and games must be spread (televised) right around Australia.

Jesaulenko's vision would be realised 13 years later when the VFL became the Australian Football League.

1978–1981: The last VFL captain-coach

The 1978 VFL season began dreadfully for Carlton. After finishing top of the ladder in 1976 but losing the Preliminary Final by one point and then losing in the last round of the home-and-away season to miss out on the finals in 1977, they had brought Ian Stewart over from to replace Ian Thorogood as senior coach. By Round 6, they had only won one game and were sitting second-last on the ladder, and Stewart had gone. Carlton president George Harris turned to Sergio Silvagni to fill the void while a long-term replacement was being sought, but on the suggestion of media personality Michael Williamson, Harris gave the job to Jesaulenko.

Jesaulenko continued on as Carlton's captain-coach in 1979. With a superb support cast, the Blues took out the minor premiership with 19 wins and also set a new VFL record for the largest-scoring aggregate in a home-and-away season (2,772 points). In the second quarter of the Round 10 match against Collingwood at Princes Park, Jesaulenko was running back with the flight of the ball when he was met heavily by Stan Magro, resulting in concussion and a shoulder injury. The Blues were trailing by 25 points at that stage, He underwent a daily 30-minute exercise routine to strengthen his stomach and back muscles, He played 23 games and kicked 20 goals for the Saints in 1980–1981 and stayed on for a further season as senior coach. He was the last person to serve as captain-coach in the VFL; however, Malcolm Blight was a player-coach at North Melbourne until Round 16 of the same season but was not captain during this time.

Later years in football and coaching career

After leaving St Kilda, Jesaulenko went north to serve as captain-coach of Sandgate in the then-Queensland Football League. He retired at the end of 1984 after Sandgate lost their semi-final, after which he moved into the hotel business in Queensland for several years.

Carlton Football Club senior coach (1989–1990)

In the first half of the 1989 VFL season, Carlton was in disarray when communication had almost completely broken down between the players and senior coach Robert Walls, who only two seasons prior had guided the Blues to the flag. Carlton had fallen one game short of the Grand Final in 1988 but started the 1989 season with five straight losses. The defining point came after losing to the by three points in Round 10 at home, with Warwick Capper kicking the winning goal after the siren. At that stage, the Blues were second-last on the ladder with only two wins and in danger of "winning" their first-ever wooden spoon. Walls was sacked as Carlton Football Club senior coach two days after the match. Jesaulenko had not been back at Carlton since his acrimonious departure almost a decade earlier, when he was appointed caretaker senior coach of Carlton for the remainder of the 1989 season. Holding his first press conference after training at Princes Park for the upcoming match against , he seemed confident in restoring Carlton's fortunes: I don't think it will take too long to get back into the scene... The technique might have changed a bit but the basics are still the same. We'll play basic football at Carlton from now on. and would win six more games to finish eighth. This finish to the season was enough for Jesaulenko to be re-appointed as Blues senior coach for 1990, but he wasn't able to maintain the momentum and Carlton under Jesaulenko finished out of the finals yet again with a mid-table 11-11 record and another eighth placing when The Blues were expected to return to the top of the ladder in 1990 but won only fifty percent of their games.

Other coaching roles

His last coaching appointment, at Coburg for the 1993 season, was a total disaster, with the Lions losing all eighteen games during a losing sequence of thirty games in the dying days of the Victorian Football Association. He was also an inaugural inductee into the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1996, and in 2008 was elevated to Legend status. In 1996, he was also named on the half-forward flank in the AFL Team of the Century.

In 1997, he was inducted as an official Legend of the Carlton Football Club. When the Carlton Team of the Century was announced, Jesaulenko was also named on the half-forward flank.

In 2002, he was inducted into the Ukrainian Sports Hall of Fame.

In July 2013, Jesaulenko was named captain of the first Australia Post Multicultural Team of Champions.

Upon being elevated to Legend status in the Australian Football Hall of Fame, Jesaulenko was accorded tribute from the great contemporaries of his era.

The great Ron Barassi, Jesaulenko's first coach at Carlton, said: Aussie rules was very lucky that Alex chose our game. I've no doubt he would've been a brilliant international player for rugby or rugby league or soccer. I first saw his reflexes playing social tennis. He was at the net, he was unbelievable, and I remember thinking, 'Gee whiz, this guy's something special', and I had not even seen him kick a ball yet.

Jesaulenko first met Pratt when he arrived at Carlton in 1966,

Jesaulenko is mentioned in the 1985 song "The Back Upon Which Jezza Jumped" by Melbourne band TISM (This Is Serious, Mum), appearing on the band's self-titled demo tape. The song depicts Graeme "Jerker" Jenkin being left to be forgotten because of Jezza's spectacular mark.

The main character in the Australian children's book Jezza is a dog named after Alex Jesaulenko. "Ordinary dogs chase tennis balls or fetch silly sticks. But not me. Football's my game. My new family called me Jezza because that was the name of a famous footballer. He was brilliant. I don't mean to brag, but I'm quite a footballer too." (Bell, 1991).

In 2006, Jesaulenko was featured in a Toyota Memorable Moments commercial with Stephen Curry and Dave Lawson, which involved spray-painting Jesaulenko's navy suit and trying several methods to recreate the famous mark he took in the 1970 Grand Final, including a small trampoline, a stepladder and finally succeeded with a large crane.

In 2012, singer-songwriter Tex Perkins wrote and performed "Jesaulenko You Beauty" exclusively for The Marngrook Footy Show.