When James Packer and David Gyngell traded “cut lunches” in idyllic Bondi on Sunday, thoughts turned to windswept Mulgrave and VFL Park where in September 1980 the competing Carlton and Richmond coaches Peter “Percy” Jones and Tony Jewell exchanged blows.

This glorious black and white image was captured by an unnamed Herald & Weekly Times photographer, who presumably didn’t fetch the sort of coin earned by the well-placed paparazzo for his efforts at the weekend.

The Jones-Jewell biffo blew up at the quarter-time break of the 1980 Qualifying Final –Vin Catoggio’s last game for Carlton - when a rampant “Percy” pointed the paw at a marauding “TJ” just as the huddles dispersed.

Jones, livid with the loss of Ken Sheldon in an incident involving Richmond’s Graeme Landy, was further infuriated after making eye contact with his former team motivator the West Indian Dr. Rudi Webster, who had switched camps and joined Richmond the previous summer.

Webster, in his book “Think Like A Champion”, recalled the infamous moment in reinforcing his argument for retaining composure even if circumstance catches you off guard.

“A case in point was an unexpected incident in a finals game of Australian Rules football that shocked everyone watching it. I had been associated with the football club that had won the championship in 1979, and in 1980 I took up the challenge of working with a team that had finished near the bottom of the ladder. In those days, club loyalty was extremely important and my move did not please the members of my former club. The coach of that team, Peter Jones, was one of my best friends in Australia and we had shared many pleasant experiences together.

During the first quarter of the game my new team roughed up their opponents badly and pounded them mentally and physically. At the quarter-time break, Peter was furious about what had taken place and as he walked towards his players he saw me smiling and talking to some of the players in our huddle. This made him angrier. He suddenly changed direction, walked towards me and started to accuse me of being a turncoat. As he got closer his language became more colourful. My coach, Tony Jewell, was at first surprised by Peter’s actions, but it didn’t take him long to react. The two coaches moved towards eachother and within a few seconds started to throw punches. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Eventually they were pulled apart and after a while they calmed down. It was a sensational incident witnessed by about 80,000 spectators at the game and millions of TV viewers across Australia.

After the game, a few mischievous members of the press tried to play up the incident as a racial one. Several politicians got involved and some of them even wanted a full inquiry. On a TV sports programme (World Of Sport) the following day, the two coaches were asked to give an explanation but they couldn’t come up with a satisfactory one. The TV presenter then called me to the set and asked me what really happened. I said, ‘I don’t know, but this is the first time I have had two white men fighting over me’. That comment seemed to put an end to any racist interpretations of the incident. A few weeks later, Peter gave me a photo of the  fight with a note that said, ‘All over you, Rudi’.”

Shane O’Sullivan, the then Carlton team manager and pacifist pictured between Jewell and Jones (the Richmond runner is Ken Hailes), has a slightly different take on what triggered the dust-up.

O’Sullivan, who was effectively in the ring when Jones and Jewell started swinging, said: “Rudi Webster crossed camps all right, but said (to the Richmond players) ‘If you bash Carlton, they’ll weaken’”.

“Perc got the s…s with Rudi because he knew what Rudi was saying. He started yelling obscenities at Rudi,” O’Sullivan said.

“I got Perc over to the (Carlton) huddle, telling him ‘Come on, you’ve got to talk to the boys,’ but he was stuttering and carrying on and his head was everywhere else. Even when we were walking off he was still yelling obscenities at Rudi . . . and Tony Jewell turned to Perc and said ‘Oh you, you big weak so and so’ and went whack.”

Whether any punches actually landed remains a matter of some conjecture. To be sure, Jones and Jewell each contributed haymakers - “attempts” as O’Sullivan dubbed them – and not as many landed at Mulgrave as they did at Bondi.

“To be honest, what was going through my mind was the fact that I could hear Bruce ‘Bugsy’ Comben (the former Carlton Captain and Director) coming,” O’Sullivan said.

“He was in the dugout and I thought anything could happen here because Bugsy liked a fight more than a feed”.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” O’Sullivan said of those manic events of 1980 . . . “nothing involving coaches anyway”.