Basketball On The Internet.

IT is incredibly sad that on the same day the late Roger King's life as an SA basketball great was being remembered and celebrated, the state's footballing icon Barrie Robran died, further closing the book on what can only be revered as arguably the greatest era of sport anyone aged near 60 can recall.

We revelled in the age of Werner Linde, Michael Ahmatt, Scott Davie, Ken Richardson while we saw the tennis torch passed from Rod Laver to John Newcombe and onto household names such as Borg, McEnroe, Connors, Gerulaitis, Tanner and Vilas.

And yet to come were Lendl, Wilander, Edberg, Cash and company.

We had the Beatles changing music, influencing everyone from Elton John to Billy Joel to Dave Grohl, fabulous innovative new songs blasting what seemed like daily from our radios.

Movies, the theatre, the Chappell brothers, Lillee and Thommo thundering down the pitch ... how great was it?

We saw Neil Kerley, Ken Eustice, Graham Cornes, Bob Shearman and the other recently departed and forever delightful Ian Day rule our footy fields. Then came the "dynamic duo" of Port Adelaide's Russell Ebert and North Adelaide's Barrie Robran who elevated their game up to a previously unforeseen and inconceivable level.

A career in journalism allowed me to walk among some of these men and enjoy an access of which most fans could only dream.

Yeah, like many of my colleagues, we took it all for granted - just part of the job.

Russell was known to me from a series of features I wrote when the famous Motley and Greer sports store in town evolved into the Motley and Ebert sports store. (That was before Ebert and Weston, but that's a different story.)

Watching him perform his weekly winter Saturday afternoon feats of magic was a joy to savour, as was following his brief foray into the VFL with North Melbourne.

His contemporary, Barrie Robran, never felt compelled to prove himself in the VFL, consistently beating the best Victoria had to offer in what then were eagerly-awaited state matches.

I loved watching Russell and hearing the perennial debate over which of them was the better player but for me, it was and always will be Barrie.

His skill was off the charts, his ability to read the play ahead of every other player donning footy boots, his toughness always evident but the grace and sportmanship with which he played were simply mesmerising.

Victorians love to debate whether Leigh Matthews or Wayne Carey was the G.O.A.T. of the VFL/AFL - why Gary Ablett Snr doesn't feature in that conversation always surprises me - but for me, Barrie Robran had all of them covered.

He was the Michael Jordan of Aussie Rules in terms of the perfect height, physique and skill. If you were building the perfect Aussie Rules football player, you were building Barrie Robran.

(And I always felt some kind of bond to him, silly as I later realised. He wore #10 for North Adelaide and won Magarey Medals as the state's best and fairest player in 1968-1970-1972. Or so I thought. My brother Huba wore #10 playing basketball for Norwood and initially won his Woollacott Medals in 1968-70-72. It was a nice obscure yet personal connection ... until I realised Barrie's third medal was actually in 1973. Malcolm Blight won it in 1972. Wow. Blighty. Did we have it good or what?)

Barrie wasn't just the best footballer of all time. He was one of the game's great gentlemen. Softly-spoken, humble to a fault, a role model just by the way he carried himself.

He also was a friend of the basketball community, often attending matches at Apollo Stadium back in its heyday.

The great sports action photographer at the now defunct "The News" newspaper where I began my working life was Ray Titus. Ray is a legend in his own right and the fact he barracked for North Adelaide meant there was no shortage of pictures of Barrie at his finest. That's Ray, below, with his absolutely iconic picture of Barrie.

(Ray has an archive of the best Barrie Robran stories of anyone I know.)

As someone with an unusual name which folks manage to regularly misspell, I found myself always agitated whenever Barrie's name was misspelt. (That won't ever change - saw it today among the many tributes.)

Inducted into the AFL Hall of Fame at its opening in 1996, Barrie was elevated to Legend status in 2001, the first South Australian to achieve that level of recognition.

He played 201 SANFL matches for North Adelaide from 1967, winning the Roosters' best and fairest award in 1968-69-70-71-72-73, leading the club to premierships in 1971 and 1972.

North lost an epic grand final to Glenelg in 1973, the Tigers winning 21.11 (137) to 19.16 (130) a goal after the siren inflating the margin of arguably the greatest premiership decider in SANFL history in front of a record crowd of 56,525.

Those were the days, Barrie Robran's death today at 77 a further reminder of our mortality but  also that we have been so very lucky to live through a time that may be the greatest since this blue ball first started spinning.

Vale to a great man.