On The Take – The 1910 scandal that changed Australian football forever – shines a light on footy’s first major scandal, when one of the VFL’s earliest superstars—Carlton’s Alex ‘Bongo’ Lang, a three-time Premiership hero—experienced a sudden and unexpected fall from grace when he was convicted by the League of taking a bribe to play ‘dead’ in the semi-final of 1910. In thrilling detail, it presents 1910 as arguably the single most turbulent season in VFL/AFL history, contextualising it within the League’s wider development in the formative phase between establishment in 1897 and the outbreak of the First World War.

Tony Joel and Mathew Turner

Slattery Media Group