Few footy programs had a chemistry like the classic days of The Rub on MMM, which probably explains why it was so popular for so long.

It was full of personas like James ‘JB’ Brayshaw, Garry ‘The Lone Wolf’ Lyon, Damian ‘Purple-Headed Warrior’ Barrett, Brian ‘Bristle/BT’ Taylor, Luke ‘The Duke’ Darcy, Danny ‘Spud’ Frawley, ready to burst into life like a golden retriever, and Jason ‘The Chief’ Dunstall, who has long been a people person, to the point that he threw rice at Stephen Quartermain.

Explains why I was named after Chief.

Anyway, In an effort to beat my current state of boredom, here’s some of the great moments in Rub history.

The 360 Degree Feedback Sessions

Back in 2010, JB, Damo, Spud, and Garry all started giving each other humorous scathing critiques about their personal performance in everyday life.

Spud’s phone etiquette was critiqued by Damo, Damo was ripped for his usual nerdy behaviour, Gaz was ripped for his Lone Wolf persona and doing things like “Walking around with a tin of baked beans in your shopping trolley” according to Spud, while JB was torn to shreds by Spud and Gaz for his behaviour in the North Melbourne club gym.

For some reason it stopped after 2013, but if you ask me, the undisputed best-ever Feedback session was the 2012 edition, mainly because of Spud’s epic performance, tearing into JB, Damo and Gaz for 5 minutes straight.

It starts with him calling Gaz “The Ultimate Double Agent”, and just goes from there.

“Travis Cloke’s out of contract! 300 billion Chinese DON’T GIVE A STUFF! THEY KNOW HE’S OUT OF CONTRACT! BRING SOMETHING ELSE TO THE TABLE!”

2011: Makeupgate

In July of 2011, JB’s brother Mark was mistakenly sent an email by Spud, detailing his desire to purchase a different make-up for his appearances on Bounce on Fox Sports.

“BLOODY OATH IT WAS WRONGLY SENT!”

After learning of the email, Jim got his hands on it, and took it to the Saturday Rub, and with help from Gaz, set up the hilarious moment known as Makeupgate.

“SPUD FRAWLEY, THE BALLARAT BUMPER, THE MAN WHO WAS THE FULL-BACK OF THE CENTURY FOR THE BLOODY SPUD FARMERS, THE MAN WHO HAS LED THE CHARGE FOR THE THRASHING MACHINE 18…. IS BUYING MAKE-UP!”

“Can I get some of this darker colour, or tell me what colour AND I WILL BUY SOME!”

“What are you looking for Spud, a bronzer?”

The World According To The International Cool Breeze

In this epic journey through 2009, Damo read excerpts of Bristle’s book Black And White: The Taylor Diaries, written in 1989-1990, a time when Bristle’s Collingwood career was winding down due to injury, and the Pies finally broke their premiership drought.

Funnily enough, the book was released a week after the flag.

As Damo reads in Episode 1, BT clips everyone from Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, to his former coach Leigh Matthews, Collingwood captain Tony Shaw, Don Scott, and even Rob de Castella.

After Cool Breeze got a stinger in Episode 2, which details BT practicing road rage against 2 Collingwood supporters on the day of the 1988 Semi Final, the segment just took off from there – Episode 11 is absolute gold, detailing BT’s Tribunal visit after an incident in the reserves.

7 years later, after Bristle returned from his 3AW tenure, Damo revived the series with the International Cool Breeze Chronicles.

The Golden Trumpet

Spud had a segment called “Wobble Watch”, and every year, he would dish out the Headwobbler Of The Year, awarded to the individual who had gotten so far ahead of themselves through the course of the year.

The winner received The Golden Trumpet (Blowing your own trumpet, obviously) – A little plastic trumpet that made a hilarious sound whenever Spud played it.

2016 was the last year Spud awarded the Golden Trumpet before he moved to SEN, and after years of giving it to JB and Damo, this time it was Luke ‘Mudflap’ Darcy who absolutely copped it, for making the Bulldogs’ Grand Final run all about himself.

Nobody could take down a headwobbler like Spud.

2013: Spud is the new Chompers

It seems like everyone now refers to Channel 9’s sports anchor Tony Jones as ‘Chompers’, on account of his dental work being very noticeable during the Channel 9 News.

Spud was the man who helped Chompers nickname take off due to his often hilarious mockery of anyone who delved into cosmetic modification.

But one day in May 2013, Gaz stumbled on some information, and delivered a 4-minute long preamble about the Rub team members, before turning to Spud, and revealing an utterly hilarious sub-plot involving the boy from Bunagree and his mockery of Chompers.

After years of mocking anyone who would go down the path of self-appeasement, Spud had turned to the dark-side, and was now Chomper Frawley.

Hilarity ensued.

“BULLSHIT!”

“IT WAS ONE TOOTH!”

Gaz starts calling him Chomp (To everyone’s delight), and we also had this classic line from JB at 5:35 to leave everyone in stitches:

“I’ve lost something in the foot well of my car, have a smile for me!”

Spud later reasons that the cause was an infected root, stemming from having a tooth knocked out at the Wycheproof Pub when he was 17.

However, the last word is reserved for none other than a delighted Tony Jones, who waited years for a moment like this.

2009: The Ricing (Better known as Ricegate)

Some would argue this is the most notorious incident in Rub history.

May 31, 2009 – The Sunday Rub at Docklands for Essendon vs Geelong.

It featured the old Sunday Rub team of lead commentator Stephen Quartermain, Shane Crawford, Hamish McLachlan, Mark Stevens and Jason Dunstall.

The tension starts boiling when Quarters (A noted Hawthorn supporter) asks hard questions to Chief (Who was still a Director at the Hawks) about Trent Croad’s “Clouded” future, due to his serious foot injury in the 2008 Grand Final, which was still keeping him out of footy.

Chief couldn’t be categorical about Croad’s return, he hadn’t had any setbacks, and started having a go at Quarters for rumour mongering, sensationalism, and supposedly talking shit.

Quarters then called Chief a goose and told him not to swear on air, Chief responds that he won’t talk to him then, and in a moment preserved by history, he attacked Quarters with his bucket of Nasi Goreng.

In a moment forgotten because of what happened, Hammer awkwardly tried moving on the topic to Hawthorn’s chances against Adelaide, while Quarters left the box for 15 minutes, was then coerced back inside by Triple M boss Ben Amarfio (Who was giving some guests a tour of the MMM box), and then called the game between Essendon and Geelong with rice and sauce still in his hair.

Here’s Quarters giving his side of the incident last year on MMM, and serving it up to his former colleagues:

The funny thing is, Quarters ended up being right – Croad never played another game due to his foot injury, and retired in the 2010 pre-season.

2012: Spud’s Richmond Coaching Tapes

Towards the end of the 2012 season, Damo was sent some old cassette tapes of Spud during his tenure as coach of Richmond (2000-04), in the style of ‘From The Lips Of Lethal’, a show on the old Fox Footy Channel which brought us the audio of Leigh Matthews coaching in the 2002-03-04 Grand Finals.

Spud tried getting an injunction, on account of it “Damaging his brand”, but Damo was 2 steps ahead and had it cleared by legal, allowing us to hear gems such as this to Joel Bowden:

“You’ve got 15 minutes to take the pumpkin off your ****in’ neck and put your ****in’ head on!”

The tapes grew legs through the 2012 Finals Series, under the new name of “Spud Frawley – Boxed In”, despite Spud’s repeated clubbings of Damo.

Future episodes included moments like Spud declaring “We’re a ****ing disgrace!” and calling for a fake stretcher to stop the game when the opposition had momentum.

2008: Spud, not quite Full Back and Vice Captain of St Kilda’s Team Of Century

For many years, Spud was introduced at sportsmans nights by BT, and by JB on The Rub, as the Full-back and Vice Captain of the St Kilda Team Of The Century.

It was never questioned by any of the panel members, the listeners, and Spud especially never questioned it.

Gaz finally did some research – Not only was Spud not the Vice Captain, he wasn’t the Full-Back.

In fact, Spud wasn’t in the team at all.

Spud admitted the truth on the phone, and as only Spud could, he took the piss out of Bristle especially for not doing his homework.

2015: Dr Daniel Frawley

In a similar situation to being in St Kilda’s Team of the Century until his outing, Spud once attended an AFL concussion seminar, where he was somehow addressed as Dr Daniel Frawley, which he never bothered to correct.

A few years later, Spud attended the opening of the Bridge Road Imaging Clinic in Richmond, mingling with heavy hitters like an un-named Nobel Peace Prize winner, Healthcare executives, and high-profile doctors.

There were three key note speakers on the night – One of them was a certain ‘Doctor’ from Bungaree.

2017: The Vault – Brian on 3UZ

The Vault takes us back to 1991, The year after Bristle left Collingwood for Prahan in the VFA, and it was also his first year in the media, at the helm of breakfast radio on 3UZ (Now known as RSN).

As was revealed in The Vault, a young Bristle interviewed the likes of Olympic legend Nadia Comăneci (Come-An-Inch as he named her), George Foreman, Shane Heal and Jeff Malcolm – Often with hilarious results.

Perhaps the funniest one of them was Valentine’s Day 1991 – Among many things, there’s a Brian-off, and just wait until BT mentions the title of a certain Manfred Mann song.

2014: Jarrad ‘Microphone Head’ Grant

Former Bulldog Jarrad Grant was one of Triple M’s cult heroes, affectionately referred to as Spindleshanks, a name you give to a thin person with long legs.

After suffering an injury at the start of 2014, Spindle came and joined the boys in the box before the game against Richmond in Round 3.

In an off conversation about Marcus Bontempelli, Gaz claims that one of Spindle’s nicknames when he joined the Dogs was ‘Microphone Head’, because, well, his head obviously looked like one.

After the interview ended, Spud pissed himself laughing after noting that Spindle didn’t seem to enjoy the name Microphone Head.

It was probably thanks to that reaction that the nickname took flight – Grant apparently warmed to it by the time his career ended in 2017

2006: Spud’s Manscaping

This is rare piece of audio of Sam Newman on The Rub.

In 2006, Spud claimed he had only gone to a Boutique Store for a haircut – In a set-up, the shop claimed he’d actually received the ‘Full Monty Package’.

After being outed, Spud could only do one thing – Unload on anyone.