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Malcolm Blight on flag teammates’ boycott of North Centenary event
SEN • June 24th, 2025 12:02 pm
North Melbourne great Malcolm Blight has confirmed that a few of his former teammates are not keen to attend the club’s 100-year celebration next month.
Blight’s 1975 premiership teammate Sam Kekovich is one who has publicly boycotted the event, telling the Herald Sun that he wouldn’t attend as the club arranged a centenary celebration in conjunction with the 2024 AFLW premiers instead of a gala dinner to honour the club’s first V/AFL flag.
Kekovich believes the club should have arranged a dinner function for the ’75 team to celebrate their achievement, instead of combining things with the rest of the 100-year celebrations in a less formal environment.
According to the Herald Sun, another one of Blight’s premiership teammates, John Burns, is also set to boycott the event, and Blight himself gave his insight on why he thinks a few of his teammates won’t be present at the game vs the Western Bulldogs on July 3.
“Well, I've heard plenty, of course,” Blight said on SEN Sportsday SA.
“It was originally gazetted for Round 20 when they play Geelong, which was the first team they played against in 1925. That sounded lovely.
“But suddenly they've got a Thursday night game playing the Bulldogs, and they've changed everything.
“You know, we're all getting a bit older, and a lot of them had holidays booked.
“It went from a dinner to a (cocktail event) stand-up with pies, pasties and sausage rolls. Apparently, that's right.
“So a few of the lads just are not buying into it.”
While Kekovich wasn’t pleased that the 1975 premiers weren’t honoured in a standalone event 50 years on from their achievement, Blight wouldn’t weigh into things being combined with last year’s AFLW flag and other successes over the previous century.
“I don't know, I suppose if you're sitting on the board or executive of North Melbourne (you can see the idea) and I mean they're part of the club now, and they're gonna be part of it going forward,” Blight said.
“Would I have made that decision? I don't know, I didn't have to go through the mechanics of it.
“But I just think it was interesting that the focus was on 50 years and 100 years, and there are a lot of players probably not going, who played more than a role, rather than in a premiership team.”
The Herald Sun reported that both Blight and other 1975 greats like Keith Greig will attend the celebration.
