THE SUBIACO grandstands shook. Fans jumped the fence in delirium.
And as the ball tumbled across the line, Western Australian youngster Andrew MacNish performed a furious star-jump dance in the goal umpire’s face, part celebration and part plea.
The cause of all that pandemonium was Gary Buckenara, the Hawthorn star back home in Western Australia elevating the 1986 State of Origin clash with Victoria into legend.
WA v VICTORIA All you need to know about 2026 AAMI AFL Origin
“I just ran forward to be at the drop of the ball, the ball fell and I found some space,” Buckenara recalls.
Thirty minutes into the last quarter of a torrid game, the second in four days for most of them, Buckenara could barely summon the energy to grasp the ball in the mayhem.
“I couldn’t get much of a kick on it, but I got a kick, and it kept floating and floating … and just got over the line,” he said.
It was one of his 19 kicks for the day, to go with five goals. Three of those goals came in the last quarter.
The exhausted effort capped a desperate Western Australian comeback in the dying minutes in a game routinely cited as the best football exhibition ever caught on camera.
“I don’t know what a perfect game of footy is,” Western Australia’s Ross Glendinning would later say. “But that was pretty close.”
Veteran The Age football scribe Ron Carter was unequivocal: “Never was there such a thrilling interstate clash.”
Four decades on, it is one of those warm and fuzzy memories that has traditionalists rejoicing at Origin football's return.
In a hot field of 1980s contests, it stands as the most iconic between the two states; a two-hour celebration of why superstars of the era like Buckenara treasured pulling on their state guernsey.
That Buckenara played the hero role in the most fondly remembered of WA clashes against those Victorian overlords seemed fated.
The advent of State of Origin football in 1977 had been a watershed moment for his own football career.
A 19-year-old student teacher, Buckenara was pursuing cricket dreams in the Perth Grade competition. Football was an afterthought, a bit of fun with his college team in the WA amateur league.
He and his teammates went along to Subiaco for what had been billed as ‘The Match of the Century;’ the first time Western Australians playing in the VFL would represent their original state.
“I thought ‘how good is that’ to finally see all those guys who’d gone to Victoria come back and play. Usually, we’d get thrashed in those state games and this concept brought everyone together," Buckenara said.
“And WA had a huge win.”
Immediately the black swan on the WA guernsey held a similar lustre to a baggy green cap.
Soon enough Buckenara was doing it himself and doing it better than most others.
Inspired by that 1977 game, Buckenara took his burgeoning amateur reputation to WAFL club Subiaco in 1979, and by 1981 he was kicking goals in a victory over Victoria.
It would become a greater habit when he headed east to Hawthorn in the VFL.
Across eight State of Origin games against Victoria he would kick 22 goals, including a bag of seven that engineered a similarly stirring three-point win in 1983.
That ‘Bucky’ would take a shine to State of Origin games was not just about civic pride, he had a game built for the big occasion.
While his skills were immaculate, it was what he did without the ball that set him apart. He played a game of three-dimensional chess to outfox opponents.
“You’re anticipating if your guys get the ball, where was the space?” he says.
“Who was in front of you who was likely to get the ball? You’re reading the play a couple of plays ahead.”
Just ask the Carlton team he broke the hearts of with four goals in 30 minutes in the 1986 Grand Final. How about the Geelong team that ran into a Buckenara goal every time they threatened in the 1989 Grand Final?
Or, most famously, the Melbourne team he stole victory from in the 1987 preliminary final with that goal after the final siren. The one cool head amid the most chaotic final quarter in finals history.
Unlike mere mortals, Buckenara had a studied sense of where the ball would go. In state games that was even more advantageous given the calibre of players.
“In a way they were easier games, albeit very quick. The ball moved so quickly and there was hardly a mistake, you could judge the ball and pre-empt where the ball was going.”
It is why he thinks merely ‘good’ players in struggling club teams would have their true greatness revealed when playing for their state.
“All of a sudden, the ball movement is easier to judge, and they can use their abilities and read the play. “They’d make position and the ball would hit them on the chest; that was the level of skill in State of Origin games," he said.
*****
Away from the on-field action, the games had a rhythm, routine, and opportunities.
None of Buckenara’s eight games for WA against Victoria were in Victoria. He and his state teammates playing in Victoria would catch a flight on Sunday after their Saturday game, meet the squad for a light run team meeting on Monday, play on Tuesday afternoon and fly home Wednesday.
All the while, they were relying on a sympathetic Monday-to-Friday employer to give them time off, just as their Victorian opponents did.
Ahead of that 1986 match, Wayne Harnes told The Age how an unexpected state call up could rearrange a man’s week: “I was having my second beer, and the message came through to go to the MCG, it was a shock!”
For WAFL players that had designs on the bright lights and big dollars on offer in Victoria, a state game could be life-changing.
“The VFL was where the big boys went,” Buckenara says.
“If you had a standout game in a state game, the talent scouts were soon on the phone to chat.”
As the VFL’s expansion into a national competition loomed large through 1986, there was a ‘last-dance’ sense that this 1986 game could be the final game where not only state pride, but league pride, was on the line.
WA captain Brian Peake told Westside Football pre-game that "victory is very important in this match for our young players and their future with a national competition so close.”
Indeed, a Western Australian Football League-commissioned report released just days after the game recommended a composite team enter the VFL.
In the lead-up, the game had a deeper personal meaning for Buckenara too.
A nasty knee injury in the opening minutes of the 1983 Grand Final not only saw Buckenara completely miss the moment of winning a flag, but it also derailed a career that promised greatness.
Hawks physio Barry Gavin would later tell The Age that Buckenara had an “almost pathological reaction” to the whole experience.
“I kept tearing quads and couldn’t get my soft tissues in my legs right after the operations," Buckenara recalled.
In addition to the functional injuries, he lost weight and confidence.
He played just one senior game in 1984, and then an indifferent year in 1985 saw him dropped for the Hawks' losing Grand Final.
Before his teammates were humbled by Essendon on the big stage, he went out and dominated the reserves grand final with eight goals.
Going into that game, he intended to call it quits afterwards; instead, it was the impetus for a final shot at recapturing his pre-knee wizardry, getting fitter than ever before.
He made a fast start to the 1986 season, but the state game shaped as the big atmosphere he craved to frank his comeback from football oblivion.
Starring among the best of the best was the final vindication that he was back.
“It was a breakout really," he said.
The late-career revival would earn him a spot in the 1986 VFL Team of the Year, another berth in 1988, and three more Hawthorn premiership medallions that held much better memories.
Western Australia had won classic matches by three and four points respectively in 1983 and 1984 before Victoria hit back with a comfortable win in 1985, with all games played at Subiaco Oval.
There was no doubt that the winner could rightly claim national supremacy.
Amazingly, the game itself exceeded the hype.
Buckenara recently watched it back on Fox Footy and was blown away by the spectacle and the ball movement.
“There were no mistakes made by either team. The transfer from back to forward was smooth, the kicking was great. The skills were unreal," he said.
“And the goalkicking - which drives me mad today - guys never missed.”
Buckenara was not the only hero on that Tuesday at Subi.
Peake enjoyed a storied career in the WAFL but did not match that lofty reputation when he eventually joined Geelong in the VFL. As Lou Richards cracked in the commentary box, the Victorian critics had labelled him ‘Past his (Peake).’
On this day Peake would make Victorians eat those words, when in a shock move the on-baller was positioned at full forward. The bulk of his seven goals came early and built a WA lead.
“I don't know who came up with that idea because I’d never seen him play there before,” Buckenara says. “But he was pretty determined to show Lou Richards and some of those commentators what he could do.”
Peake was happy to finish the work of an army of WA running players in Buckenara, Maurice Rioli, Michael Mitchell, Leon Baker, and Brad Hardie. All made their mark in the VFL.
The Victorians kept in touch through the steady goalkicking of Brian Taylor (who under current Origin rules would play for WA) and the brilliance of roving duo Dale Weightman and Brian Royal, who each finished with five goals.
“It was a skill-based game,” Buckenara says. “It was a ripper to watch.”
Yet the three-goal WA lead at three-quarter time was just an undercard for the main event.
Previously quiet, Dermott Brereton exploded in the last quarter with five contested marks and two goals that quickly gobbled up the WA lead.
From there it was two heavyweight fighters slugging it out, the lead changing six times from the eight-minute mark of the last quarter.
For every madly cheered WA goal, there was deathly silence as another goal by a running Victorian went through at the other end. Fourteen goals were kicked in an exhilarating, heart-in-your-mouth final stanza.
The Big V looked to have broken the resistance when it opened up a nine-point lead into time-on, but a goal to MacNish, after he'd missed earlier in the quarter from arguably the greatest Origin mark taken, set up Buckenara’s opportunity to steal the lead for the last time.
Yet, like a great action film where the seemingly dead villain rises for one last shot at the hero, the Big V ensured there was a final act to play out.
With no more than 30 seconds to play Victoria surged again with Royal baulking Footscray teammate Hardie to shoot for a sixth goal.
As the ball left Royal’s hands, Wayne Blackwell flashed into screen in a blur from the right; diving, smothering and defusing Victoria’s last challenge.
Exhausted but elated, the WA players and crowd celebrated with premiership-like gusto.
From the Victorian point of view, coach Kevin Sheedy knew that the game had transcended a simple win or loss.
“While we lost today, we lost admirably,” he said in the aftermath.
“It’s still the best thing that has happened to football - State of Origin.”
Buckenara would go on to skipper WA against Victoria in 1988 and 1989, and he is one who still believes what Sheedy said that day.
He even coached his state in 1995 at a time when the concept started to fall from favour with clubs, coaches, players and eventually, the fans.
“When it got canned, players were looking for excuses not to play, so it wasn't a true state-of-origin match, and it took the gloss off it," he said.
He thinks that it had a knock-on effect in people's minds. It diminished how good the concept had been through the 1980s and early 1990s.
“The difference now is that it seems the players are supportive and are excited to play," Buckenara said.
If today’s players can perform anything like Buckenara did back in 1986, fans at Optus Stadium will agree that Origin footy should never disappear again.
MATCH DETAILS
Western Australia 21.11 (137) d Victoria 20.14 (134)
GOALS
WA: B. Peake 7, G. Buckenara 5, A. MacNish 3, M. Mitchell 2, M. Rioli 2, L. Baker, P. Wilson
Vic: D. Weightman 5, B. Royal 5, B. Taylor 4, D. Brereton 3, T. Alvin, A. Bews, G. Healy
BEST
WA: M. Rioli, G. Buckenara, M. Mitchell, P. Narkle, A. MacNish, L. Baker, B. Peake, L Keene, B. Hardie.
Vic: Best: D. Weightman, B. Royal, G. Healy, B. Taylor, W. Harmes, T. Daniher.
This article appears in the State of Origin edition of the AFL Record, on sale now at newsagents, Coles and Woollies supermarkets in Melbourne and on Saturday night at Optus Stadium for $6.