There are two significant memorials to E.J. "Ted" (Mr Football) Whitten at opposite ends of this country.

One is the statue outside the Western Bulldogs' headquarters in Melbourne's western suburbs. As befitted the man, it is a larger-than-life statue of Ted as he appeared on swap cards when I was a kid, arms flung to each side, a prodigious torpedo spinning from his perfectly outstretched foot. It is a study in power and style.

Ted's other memorial is a pukumani pole in the Tiwi Islands. Ted went up there a lot. The Tiwis are in no doubt whatsoever that Whitten was — or, rather, is — Mr Football.

Whitten was like the Greek god Dionysus — a man of large appetites with a great zest for life. I once asked former umpire Frank Schwab, father of Hawthorn player and coach Peter Schwab, the best player he saw. He said the choice was between Barassi and Whitten and he would choose Whitten. I asked why. "Because he was the more natural player."

He meant that Barassi's game — at least compared with Whitten's — had a manufactured edge. Whitten was like the character played by Robert Redford in the American sports movie The Natural. He was the natural footballer, the natural larrikin, the natural performer.

Ted played two games. He played the game that was about chasing an odd-shaped ball. And he played the game that was the sport as theatre. That's why it's only natural he is remembered in the Tiwi Islands.

All their stories come back to characters like Ted. Larger than life, beyond constraint; and, in Ted's case, frequently brilliant in what he did on the sports field.

His end was mythic, too. A model of masculinity, he died of prostate cancer. Wouldn't admit he had it until it was too late. He did a last lap of the MCG a few weeks before he died with his son, Ted jnr, beside him.

A full stadium saw a dying man robbed of his sight feeling the face of his son with one hand and instructing the crowd to, "Stick it up 'em" with the other. That was Ted's creed, the defiance of the working-class boy who grew as big as the game's imagining of itself.

Stick it up those who say you can't, who say you shouldn't. Stick it up 'em.

As I understand it, to umpire Whitten was to engage in a long dialogue with him about the rules. He was always trying to twist the game to his advantage. I heard, for example, that when he coached Williamstown in the old VFA, he hosed out the opponents' change room just before their arrival so the place would be cold and damp and dispiriting for them.

I also recall Bob Skilton telling me of his first game as captain of South Melbourne against Ted when he was captaining the Dogs. The coin was tossed. Before it had even landed, Ted had pulled away and run off, arm pointing to the end he chose. The game swung into motion around him. The young South Melbourne skipper had been conned (he made it clear he didn't fall for the trick a second time).

Ted also invented the flick pass. Delivered with the flat of the hand rather than the bunched fist, the flick pass was slicker than the more cumbersome hand pass. In 1961, with Ted as captain-coach, the Dogs played in and lost a grand final.

One account I read said that Ted had his whole team using the flick pass when the matter was brought to a head. The flick pass was outlawed. That's the sort of character Ted was. Always up to something. Always bringing life to the game.

In the AFL's 150th year, I don't think it's untimely to say that, in this respect, Whitten reminds me of Tom Wills.

The particular Wills story I have in mind is from the game's earliest days when Tommy turned up for a match between Richmond and Melbourne and insisted on his right, as captain of the home club (Richmond), on selecting the ball for the match. The ball he produced was oval-shaped.

I have read elsewhere that Tommy, an old boy of the Rugby school, could punt a rugby football 60 yards. It is apparent from the ensuing match report that no one else could control it much at all.

The journalist reporting the match, J.B. Thompson of The Argus, one of Tommy's major opponents in the sporting politics of the day, went apoplectic. "Next year we can expect to have … some geometrical monstrosity equally inapplicable to the required purposes …"

Discussions of the history of the game tend to centre on newspaper reports written, almost exclusively, by Wills' political opponents such as Thompson. Or they use letters …

Imagine judging Whitten by his letters. What these arguments fail to factor in is the pull and power of personality.

One principle that is as true of games played in school playgrounds as it is of games played by professional athletes in the biggest sporting arenas in the world is that a special aura surrounds those who, in the words of the Tina Turner song, are simply the best.

When you're that good, you don't follow the game — the game follows you.

One of the intriguing ingredients of marn-grook, the Aboriginal version of football observed by the early white settlers in western Victoria, was that the best player got custody of the ball (a possum skin stuffed with charcoal) until next time, which he then buried in the ground.

Maybe this meant there was no game, practically or symbolically, without him.

I don't reckon Whitten would have had much trouble getting his head around that idea.