MUHAMMAD ALI declared himself "The Greatest". Russell Ebert was too modest to do the same but he commands the title as Port Adelaide's greatest player - emphatically.
The Port Adelaide Football Club today mourns the death of Ebert at age 72, 11 months after he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.
Ebert is Port Adelaide's greatest-ever player. The tributes tell not only of a footballer who rewrote the record books but of a man who gave so much to the game, his football club, to his family and friends and to others as a devoted servant to charity - and always with humility.
"People will first remember Russell Ebert as the four-time Magarey Medallist," says Port Adelaide premiership captain and former chief executive Brian Cunningham. "But we should also remember the person - and he was a very good man. He was a genuinely caring person who made the people who came into his left feel important."
Olympian and basketball legend Phil Smyth emphasised the character of Russell Frank Ebert saying: "I don't know anyone who has spent time with Russell who has not walked away feeling better about themselves."
Fellow Australian Football Hall of Famer - SANFL opponent, State and North Melbourne team-mate and media colleague - Graham Cornes says of Ebert: "Russell was an icon in the purest meaning of the term. To know Russell the man, you loved him. If you did not know him, you revered him."
EBERT'S resume in Australian football reads like no other at Port Adelaide: The record four Magarey Medals, the record six best-and-fairest titles, the record for games played (392) and the pivotal role as centreman in Port Adelaide's greatest team.
To the Port Adelaide faithful, he was the player who could do - with ease - on a football field the remarkable feats other could not even imagine let alone contemplate while under pressure. Nothing seemed beyond Ebert's capacity. So they called him "God".
Former Advertiser sportswriter and famed broadcaster Mike Coward captures the essence of this exalted status in football by saying of Ebert: "It is problematic whether there has been a better player anywhere when the ball was on the ground. At pace and with his strong body arched, Russell’s balance, power and calibrated feints in and around packs, often with the ball in one hand, exemplified his greatness. Blessed with sure hands and a sixth sense of which he modestly made light, his courage complemented an exceptional creativeness by hand and foot."
For strength, skill, durability, dedication to his preparation and his God-like perception for how the game would unfold, Ebert was to his coaches, his team-mates and the Port Adelaide fans a heaven-sent gift.
At Alberton, there had not been such a messiah since the early 1900s when Harold Oliver came from the same Riverland district as Ebert.
The 17-year playing story at Port Adelaide - interrupted with a one-season adventure in the VFL with North Melbourne in 1979 - began at Alberton Oval in the season-opening round on April 13, 1968 against Glenelg with Ebert at full forward covering the absence of goalkicking champion Eric Freeman who was in England on an Ashes cricket tour.
Twelve days later, in his third match, Ebert announced his arrival in league football with a match-winning six-goal performance in the Anzac Day grand final rematch against Sturt at Adelaide Oval.
"We," recalls Sturt premiership captain and 1961 Magarey Medallist John Halbert of the reaction among his team, "were left a bit surprised by this lad Port Adelaide had a full forward."
Two decades later, Ebert completed his league football career having proven himself capable of holding any position against any rival - even Australian Football Hall of Fame legend Barrie Robran who was his great rival on the field and great friend in life.
"He could play any position; I think he played in every position," said Fos Williams, Ebert's first league coach, in 1982.
Through the 1970s, one of the greatest eras in South Australian league football, Ebert lifted the hearts of Port Adelaide fans and sank the spirits of his rivals as a match-controlling centreman wearing the No.7 jumper.
Umpires became accustomed to putting Ebert's name against the three votes they awarded at the end of matches for the Magarey Medal, the highest individual award in South Australian football.
"As a player, he had to get Magarey Medal votes," said Hall of Fame umpire Murray Ducker. "He was around the ball so much and did so much. His technique was intense. He could control a game. And he would deliver the ball to his team-mates beautifully. He was fair; Russell never did anything behind the door."
Ebert's delivery to his team-mates was with perfectly honed kicks - and a handpass no-one else could perfect, the overhead handball that became his trademark.
"Russell had everything - and then he invented the overhead handball that could go 20-30 metres," Ducker said. "It was not a throw. It was his technique but it was a handball."
Norwood rival Michael Taylor knew just how difficult Ebert made it for his opponents with that overhead handball.
"He was strong - as I learned when I would go to tackle him hard on the hips and find the ball moving on because Russell had lifted his arms to complete his overhead handball," Taylor said.
BEFORE the world of soccer debated if Pele or Maradona was its greatest player, SA football consumed itself with the same question: Ebert or Robran?
They were the once-in-generation players who superseded so many other legends in more than a century of South Australian football while collecting seven Magarey Medals.
Remarkably, they played against each other as direct opponents just three times. The most famous encounter was at Prospect Oval - Round 20, August 26, 1972. Ebert, the 1971 Magarey Medallist, at centre half-back against Robran, the 1968 and 1970 Magarey Medallist, at centre half-forward.
The match also was a preview of the 1972 SANFL grand final and a rematch of the 1971 play-off won by North Adelaide.
"There always was that talk about Russell and Barrie Robran as to the greatest player the competition has seen," recalled Port Adelaide patriarch Fos Williams in 1982. "That day in 1972 when Russell played against Barrie - to me - was the greatest battle I've ever seen in a football game.
"Russell won the day. It was the best game as a centre half-back I have ever seen anyone play."
Robran recalls the day saying: “I was at centre half-forward, Russell at centre half-back and he cleaned me up while Port Adelaide smacked our butts (by 77 points),” recalled Robran of the day 15,895 filed into Prospect Oval and many more watched the black-and-white edited replay on television that evening.
Ebert kept Robran scoreless.
"It was weeks before the finals and that result left us worried about our premiership defence,” said Robran, “and I didn’t play against Russell in the 1972 grand final (won by North Adelaide). My brother (Rodney) got that job.
"It was daunting to play on Russell. You knew you were up against a champion,” adds Robran, the first South Australian to have “Legend” status in the Australian Football Hall of Fame.
"You would always be trying to work out how best to play against such a great player. He was so versatile in that he could play centre, centre half-back and full forward and play the ball ‘high’ in the air and ‘low’ on the ground. He was powerful. And explosive."
ONLY three "modern era" footballers have statues outside Adelaide Oval - Ebert, Barrie Robran and Malcolm Blight.
"And that statue depicts Russell just how he was as a player," says Robran. "The ball is tucked under one arm, he is starting to lift his eyes and turn ... and you know he will get the ball to a team-mate. He was a great deliverer of the ball ... unlike many professional footballers today.
"It shows his determination ... and that is not just in football with Russell.
"I hold that image of a bouncy, robust, very competitive player ... you couldn't help but notice Russell while he left a very strong - and very good - presence on the field.
"As a player, Russell always was in control. He could play 'high' - and there are not enough photographs of his high marks. Thankfully, you can see how good he was for high marks on video. He was a great player when the ball was on the ground - this too was his strength even as a player who stood at 6'2. He could play very well 'high' and 'low'.
"Russell also never lost his feet. And he is famous for how he used his hands with that overhead handball; for that to be remembered 40 years on is quite an achievement. That handball - and the way it mesmerised opponents - was brilliant.
"Handball was not a feature of the Port Adelaide game when Russell started playing league football in the 1960s. He was the exception and Russell started handball at Port Adelaide as a way to bring his team-mates into the game."
NO moment will live longer in Port Adelaide fans' memories than the 1977 SANFL centenary season grand final. On ending a then club-record 12-year premiership drought by beating Glenelg at Football Park, Ebert raised the flag saying: "It has taken us a long time, but by geez it is worth it."
These emotional words resonate and stay with Port Adelaide fans in the same way the world always recalls Neil Armstrong's first words on landing on the moon in 1969.
"Russell and I had played in three losing grand finals (1971, 1972 and 1976)," recalled 1975 Magarey Medallist Peter Woite. "We had that disaster against Sturt the year before and Russell was hurting by being without what we play for - premierships. To win in 1977 was a great relief - as you can still hear in his voice when you watch that vision of him taking the premiership flag."
Ebert always chased such defining success as measured by premierships for the honour of the Port Adelaide Football Club and the pride of the fans. Of this motivating drive, he said last year:
"It was the greatest reality check.
"Whether you played at home or away, you were expected to return to Alberton to face the fans. If you won, they would pat you on the back but also set a challenge to do better next week. It was their way to keep you in the real world by reminding you there was still more to be done.
"And if you lost ... well, didn't they tell you!
"The fans are incredibly important to Port Adelaide. That was made clear to you as a player, particularly with Fos Williams who used them as a weapon. At three quarter-time, Fos would be reminding us that we had to face our supporters after the match - and how they lived their lives through us; they wanted to go home as winners.
"As soon as you got upstairs to the social club at Alberton, the faces of the supporters were all shaped by the result of the game. So was what they told you. And we knew that their week also was determined by our results on the football field.
"You cannot get a stronger reminder of why winning is so important to the Port Adelaide supporters."
NORTH Melbourne was the only other club that knew Ebert as a player. His move to the VFL in 1979 finally unfolded when Ebert was aged 29 (turning 30 mid-season) and there were many cynical thoughts among Victorian football greats and media critics on the merit of South Australians in the "Big League".
Ebert joined fellow Magarey Medallist Malcolm Blight, who was well established in the VFL and had added the Brownlow Medal to his resume, and Graham Cornes as the South Australians at Arden Street under the tutelage of Ron Barassi.
"It was at North Melbourne that I learned it was not just natural talent with Russell," said Cornes who had an adjoining apartment to Ebert. "I walked in one Friday night at 8 and Russell already was in bed to make sure he had the right sleep before a game. And early Saturday morning, he was up early taking a football to the park across the street to hone is skills."
Ebert played all 25 VFL games to North Melbourne's exit from the premiership race in the preliminary final.
Blight marvels at how Ebert maintained high standards in a demanding league while still working at a sports store in Adelaide.
"It was a bloody difficult year for Russell as a fly-in, fly-out player arriving from Adelaide for one training session a week on Thursday," Blight said. "We also had so many bad injuries so Ron Barassi had to play Russell in so many spots. But when he was put in the centre, he really showed his wares."
EBERT coached Port Adelaide for five seasons, three as a playing captain-coach from 1983-1985 after John Cahill moved to VFL club Collingwood. He is the last playing coach to take his SANFL team to the grand final, the epic 1984 battle lost to Norwood in a dramatic Sunday at Football Park.
Despite no premiership as coach, Ebert's legacy at Alberton was the lessons that stuck with the golden generation that delivered nine of 12 SANFL premierships decided between 1988 and 1999.
"Russell," says premiership captain Tim Ginever, "taught us to never be easily satisfied with just finishing a training session. We were left to ask ourselves, 'How much better can I do this?'; 'What are the extras I could be doing?'
"Russell was a driving force in our development as premiership players. Most of the players from that run of nine flags in 12 years played their first 50 games or so had their development start under Russell Ebert. Those one-on-one sessions, the hard work he put into our game, made sure we became the best we could be."
Ebert's greatest success as a coach was in State junior ranks delivering the 1991 and 1995 Teal Cup under-17 titles to South Australia.
Glenelg champion Peter Carey was alongside Ebert as an assistant coach and noted integrity and honesty probably worked against Ebert's ambitions as a senior team coach.
"How do I say he was not 'devious' enough to be a league coach," Carey said. "His honesty and integrity was unquestionable. We were to play a Denis Pagan Victorian team in a dead rubber match before the finals and I suggested to Russell that we put our players in unusual positions to keep our tactics secret before the grand final.
"But Russell would not have it. And we did win the grand final anyway. That is the bloke Russell was - it was black and white, no grey. It was do it the right way and never try anything in between.
"What a great man he was. And he always looked for the positive in anything he did. Great footballer. The very best. Loved by his team-mates and all because he played fair. He was always wanting to win the footy."
EBERT'S legacy, as Coward notes, "extends well beyond his beloved Port Adelaide Football Club" and the game of Australian football that he "enriched in South Australia and beyond". As Cunningham notes, Ebert's positive influence on life touched so many.
Ebert's charity work was most notable at Novita, or the Crippled Children's Association as it was in 1980 when Robran came to know Ebert as far more than a footballer.
"We were not just fundraisers (at Novita), we were ambassadors for the cause - and Russell took to this with qualities that already defined him as a footballer and much more," Robran said. "He had more than dedication to the cause; he had sincerity. And sensitivity. He had untiring enthusiasm to make sure we were successful.
"Again, Russell was always thinking of others. That (was) his nature - very friendly, very obliging with people, very welcoming."
Peter Woite, the able lieutenant during Ebert's captaincy at Port Adelaide from 1974, notes: "Russell had an amazing attitude to life. I will carry that with me. He cared so much for so many."
Keith Thomas knew Ebert as his idol while growing up as a Port Adelaide fan, as his tough rival while playing SANFL league football for Norwood and as the man while leading Port Adelaide as chief executive.
"As a boy, Russell was a hero to worship," Thomas said.
"As a man, a hero to fear.
"But at Port Adelaide, he showed me what mattered most to him ... humility and a giving spirit."
And now it is for St Peter to do the introductions: God meet "God".
