September 11, 1993.

Waverley Park, Melbourne.

Carlton are playing Adelaide in the First Semi Final, the winner guaranteed a spot in the 1993 Grand Final.

During the 2nd Quarter, just before half-time, giant goofy Carlton ruckman Justin ‘Harry’ Madden, standing 206cm, took a mark in wide open space in the centre square, and proceeded to run full sprint for a ruckman, which to the average human being is glacial pace, while Crows ruckman Shaun Rehn gave chase, in one of the most mesmerising pieces of footage ever seen during an AFL game.

Without a nearby teammate to handball to because they were all peeling off, and with every Crows player not even bothering to go at the player with the ball on account of him being an alleged dumb uncoordinated ruckman, Madden got two bounces in, then he ran to 50 and launched an enormous inswinging kick that was apparently meant for Stephen Kernahan in the goalsquare, but instead rolled through for a goal, much to the hilarity of Drew Morphett in commentary for Channel 7, and to the Carlton faithful at Waverley, to whom Madden blew kisses.

Inspired by Madden’s recreation of a scene from Jurassic Park, which had only been released in Australia 9 days prior to the game, Carlton made the Crows pay for poor goalkicking and win by 18 points.

Fun fact – Justin Madden took more bounces in that video clip (2) than Melbourne ruckman Max Gawn has in his 202 game career (0).

This was Madden’s description of the incident from his Open Mike episode in 2018:

“David Parkin had given the instruction that if you get the ball, and you bounce it, you’ve upset the whole system so much that you may as well have a shot for goal.”

“I was running and I was looking to give it away to our teammates, because I’m not supposed to run and bounce the ball… but Adelaide must’ve had a man-up sort of gameplan, so as I ran all our running players peeled off to get a handball, and their Adelaide opponents followed them!”

“So they just parted the waters for me and I just ran down the field, and if you’re running you’ve got to keep bouncing it, so I did, and I looked up thinking I could kick it to Stephen Kernahan, but he had run so far up the ground by this stage because it had taken me so long to get there, the ball just bounced through for a goal.”

Still, I’d call that the greatest goal by a ruckman in the 20th Century, because I reckon Dean Cox, the man once described as looking like Justin Madden but playing more like Simon Madden, did this to Essendon in 2006: