VALE Marx Kretschmer. Every tribute to one of the finest men of Port Adelaide's so-called "Golden Era" launched in 1950 - with the arrival at Alberton of club patriarch Fos Williams - conjures a striking image.
Kretschmer was symbolic of the Port Adelaide Football Club as it built a reputation for being ruthless, successful and as tough as "those wharfies" who were the enduring image of the LeFevre peninsula, its people and its famous league football club.
In essence, you did not get in the way of Marx Kretschmer on the football field. Indeed, many found it wise to detour from Kretschmer's path because - as team-mate Geof Motley recalls - "Marx never came off the line ... and he never shirked a contest".
But Kretschmer - who died on June 16 aged 91 - is a classic footballer marked by perception more so than reality. There is no question he was hard in a football contest - bloody hard at it - and uncompromising during his 143 games of league football with Port Adelaide from 1951-1960 when he celebrated the six SANFL premierships won with Fos Williams as his captain-coach: 1951 and the first five of the six-in-a-row dynasty from 1954-1958.
Kretschmer was particularly good in the 1955 and 1957 grand finals against Norwood, a team that ultimately marked Kretschmer with infamy in South Australian football.
That was Marx Kretschmer's winter image in an era when Australian football and cricket were sports of two differing seasons.
Marx Kretschmer also was a gentleman of the summer game. A true gentleman, as to be shortly reaffirmed with a story from the 1960-61 South Australian summer.
Kretschmer was the 274th man to represent the Port Adelaide Cricket Club. As an opening bowler, Kretschmer gathered 258 wickets at 18.99. With the bat, he chalked up 1050 runs in district cricket with an average of 14.38.
To appreciate the moment at Alberton from the 1960-61 district cricket season - that remains firmly in the memory of a future Sheffield Shield cricketer - does require a full understanding of the reputation Kretchmer carried as a tough league footballer.
The start of the 1958 SANFL league season - with the grand final rematch between Port Adelaide and Norwood in a Friday afternoon epic on Anzac Day - put Kretschmer on the front pages of newspapers for several days. In much the same way another Port Adelaide premiership hero, 2004 Norm Smith Medallist Byron Pickett, was run out of the game for his bone-jarring bumps, Kretschmer was tainted by one of the most controversial moments in South Australian football during the 20th century.
During the second term, behind the play, Norwood hero Ron Kneebone was supposedly "king hit" and left with facial injuries. The finger was pointed at Kretschmer.
"The publicity over the incident has made it practically impossible for Kretschmer to play again for the fear of someone being injured and his becoming the scapegoat," said Port Adelaide boss Bob McLean amid the fall-out.
McLean's defence of Kretschmer was splashed across the front page of The Advertiser three days later with "Big Bob" declaring Kretschmer was shepherding Kneebone when his elbow came into contact with the Norwood player's face.
"To substantiate this," said McLean, "Kretschmer can produce a bruised elbow ..."
And the ink kept flowing while no case was ever made against Kretschmer by the SANFL. A 13-year-old boy, who later wrote many front-page football and cricket stories, read every word while living at Halifax Street in the city. As McLean noted, Kretschmer would have a reputation precede him ... and it did beyond the football field to the cricket square.
During the 1950s, from age nine, this impressionable boy was hopping off trams at Adelaide Oval where Port Adelaide and West Adelaide were often in action at the cricket ground. The 1958 grand final rematch was played on his 13th birthday.
"I tried to get in the changerooms most times ... it was easier to get in the West Adelaide rooms," he recalls. "It was the Port Adelaide era of Fos Williams, Lloyd Zucker, Ted Whelan, Rex Johns and Marx Kretschmer ... bloody good player as a ruck rover and defender. Tall. Hard. Hard as nails. He would be good enough to play today's game too."
Two years and seven months after that 1958 Anzac Day clash that is remembered for the Kretschmer-Kneebone incident, the boy from Hailfax Street was walking out to bat at No.6 for East Torrens in his first A-grade game - at age 15 - against Port Adelaide and with the prospect of facing Kretschmer off the long run up.
"I was shitting myself; I was not the most mature 15-year-old," recalls the boy who is now aged 77. "As I walked on, Kretschmer - the bloke I feared - came near me. He said, 'Good luck lad. Take your time. Don't be nervous. Settle in.'
"Here was this real hard bastard of football wishing me good luck. I was staggered. And I've never forgotten it. He took the time to give me some words of encouragement ... and I must have looked frightened while he was doing so."
He made nine in the first innings, followed by 21 not out.
Three years later he was starting his Sheffield Shield career with South Australia as a right-hand bat ultimately scoring 1276 runs (at 33.57) in 23 first-class matches between 1964 and 1967 with two centuries. His top score of 202 not out (that today marks his Twitter handle) was against the touring MCC team of 1965-66 - in South Australia's first innings at Adelaide Oval at Christmas 1965 and included 19 fours and one six. Six weeks earlier, he scored 83 in the second innings against the MCC touring side of 1965-66 that had left-arm quick Jeff Jones, seamers Ken Higgs and Barry Knight and off-spinner David Allen in the bowling attack.
He also had been a successful under-age footballer at SANFL club Norwood, notably topping the goalkicking list at under-19 ranks in the early 1960s.
Alan Shiell then became a Hall of Famer for his carefully crafted sportswriting, most notably breaking the story of Kerry Packer's dramatic shake-up of the cricket establishment in 1977 by assembling the game's best players for his own private circus known as World Series Cricket.
Shiell's story of Marx Kretschmer highlights how one of the toughest men to ever represent Port Adelaide and South Australia in league football also was a gentleman. And that perception is not always reality.
Vale Marx Kretschmer.
