Campbell Brown and his father Mal are two of the most colorful figures the AFL has ever seen, the former opening with an infamous incident that ended his 205-game career.
The 39-year-old Hawthorn star player ended his career with the Gold Coast Suns and was unceremoniously dumped after breaking then-teammate Stephen May’s jaw in a brawl outside a Los Angeles nightclub.
It took May two plates to repair the tear, and despite the fierce defender accepting Brown’s apology for the 2013 incident, which occurred after a pre-season camp in the US.
After a series of controversies on and off the field, the Suns finally had enough and fired the ferocious utility man, ending his career.
But it was an incident involving his father that has gone down in football folklore, and will be remembered by many more than the fight itself.
Campbell Brown has lifted the cover on the event that ended his football career – and his father Mal’s iconic reaction
It didn’t take long for footage of the fight to make its way Down Under, and with Brown’s father Mal a cult figure himself, after a WAFL Hall of Fame career and a stint at Richmond, that you would see him in court as often as he played. games; it was inevitable that he would become a target of the media.
Brown, fearing for his AFL career, called his father to describe what had happened and told him not to comment to the media, something his colorful father happily agreed to.
Until it broke out, in what is now an iconic footy spray.
Brown lifted the cover on the moment, detailing exactly how the moment played out, which went viral around the world.
“Three or four days passed and what the press was reporting about the incident was very far from reality. They were just saying all kinds of crap that just wasn’t accurate. The old man was a bit smoldering. He (Mal) is getting a little angrier and angrier every day,” he told the ausmerican aces podcast.
The slow burn continued to grow, before exploding right in front of the television cameras.
Cult hero Mal Brown was targeted by reporters once details of his son’s bar fight leaked, and he couldn’t help but respond, eventually.
“The Suns have never gone out and cleared up some of the misinformation that could have potentially helped,” Brown said.
“I think the story broke on a Thursday and I think it made it to Monday, so it’s been four days and Mal is smoldering and hasn’t said a word.
“He went out on the street for a while and came home and usually parked on the street, we had a house in Hawthorn, and there were two vans parked out front, a Channel 9 van and a Channel 10 van.
And they had been waiting there for a couple of days to try to catch Mal and stop him at the door.
“Mal said, ‘I’m too smart for them, I’m going around the block.’ My mom wasn’t there at the time, so she knew the parking in the back garage was free.
“So you go up the alley, up the garage door, go in, and to the best of Mal’s knowledge, he went in,” Brown laughed.
But he did not.
An eagle-eyed reporter had seen Mal trying to escape the media and walked down the alley, arriving just in time to receive a comment that has since gone down in history.
“She (reporter Sharnelle Vella) saw Mal coming up the alley, so she told the cameraman to come with me and they sneaked down the alley. And while Mal is trying to break down the roll-up door, she walks in (with) cameras rolling and microphone.
‘And Mal gets out of the car and bang. There she is. There’s the camera. He has been caught. He has been stopped at the door. And she says ‘have you ever talked to your son’?
‘And Mal, right on top of his head without breaking stride, throws the barrel: ‘No, I haven’t and you can go and get fucked and get out of my life and off my property and ring up and do a time like any other c*** that has manners’.
“And she says, ‘Thank you!'” Brown said.
Campbell Brown, pictured with his wife Jess, said his father’s iconic reaction was so iconic that he was blown away, despite asking him not to comment.
Brown, pictured attending the funeral of his close friend Shane Warne last year, had a colorful career, just like his beloved partner.
Mal Brown has often sparked controversy, most notably for calling indigenous people “cannibals”, before denying that he was racist.
In addition to some colorful on-field bullying during his storied 202-game career, he also delivered some of the greatest sprays of all time as a manager.
Brown said he was so impressed by his father’s now-viral reaction that it will be played at his funeral.
“I don’t even know how you can put shit and manners in the same sentence so eloquently, but it did,” he said.
‘The old man is calling. I pick up. ‘Hello’? And the old man says: ‘Son, I have made a comment to you.’
‘And that was it. And so she ran. And now everyone says that’s the biggest answer they’ve ever heard. It has become like a meme. It has gone viral. He can’t believe it. It has like a million views on YouTube. I wouldn’t even know what YouTube is,” Brown said.
The infamous fight may have ended his football career, but Brown, who is now heavily involved in the football, racing and betting industry, will never forget it.