In a week in which the club pays tribute to its 1977 premiership stars, it’s only fitting NMFC.com.au looks back at the amazing impact of the great coach Ron Barassi.

‘The Coach, A Season with Ron Barassi’ was penned by John Powers, who followed Barassi and the North team for the entire 1977 season, which culminated in the club’s second flag.

All the way until game day, we’ll be publishing excerpts from the book.

PART 1: The build-up | PART 2: Is it all over? | Part 3: Tied game

After one of the most famous finishes in VFL/AFL history, North faced the reality of coming back to the MCG the next week to do it all again. 

But fighting back from 27 points down at the final change to draw gave Barassi and his troops plenty of confidence.

"When he finally called then into the coach's room, his (Barassi's) voice sounded drained as he congratulated them (the players) on the magnificence of their fightback in the last quarter. "It should have won you the match", he told them. "It did, in fact, win us the match ... then we lost it! But it was still a magnificent quarter ... bloody magnificent. And I'm very grateful that we're still here with another chance next week. And that's when we'll win it. OK?"

They all filed quietly out of the coach's room. A jumbo-sized plastic rubbish bin filled with iced champagne for the celebration toast remained unopened. It, like everything else, had to wait one more week.

A perceptible hollowness sounded in the players' voices as they warmed up to begin another three nights of intensive training. They tried to rev each other with cries, "We'll do the job properly next Saturday!" and "Let's show them what we can really do this time!" But the mood remained sluggish and anti-climatic. And on the oval, at the start of the first training session, handpasses lacked precision, the kicking looked lethargic and even the marking lacked authority of the previous few weeks.

To snap this invidious mood, Barassi first harangued them after each sloppy mistake. This sharpened the mood a little, but not enough. So far the first time since the start of the final series, Barassi imposed penalty push-ups. The sight of players like Crosswell and Cassin - who only three days previously had thrilled millions of viewers on live television - prostrate on the ground to atone for slackness, shocked everyone into total application. Within minutes, the entire squad transformed itself from plodding competence to zestful brilliance. Yet Barassi kept yelling: "Faster! ... More talking! ... You should be hitting him on the tits with those passes!" 

Barassi replayed all of the match except the last minutes of time-on, when Collingwood's two scoring shots equalised the score. He switched off the set while North was still in ascendancy. "Well," he said to them as they shuffled anxiously on their benches - it was 10.30 and they obviously wanted to be home in bed - "watching that game through again, and seeing all the mistakes we made, mistakes that should not happen in a professional league football team, coached by Ron Barassi ... a North Melbourne football team ... footballers in a Grand Final, must make you confident that, if we play anything like we're capable of playing, we can eat this mob on Saturday!"

After a chorus of support, Barassi nodded. "All right," he said. "We don't need to do anymore talking about it. We've seen where we fell down. Let's just sharpen ourselves up in the two nights we've got left, then get out there on Saturday and do my job properly this time.

It was almost time to do it all again, a second Grand Final in as many weeks loomed. 

The Coach, A Season with Ron Barassi, by John Powers, (Slattery Media Group, 2017). RRP $19.95. 

Available from participating bookshops, the North Melbourne Football Club, or books.slatterymedia.com.