For 45 years there has been a lie in the football world that has been repeated so often it is treated as fact – and that is a crime.

Football writers who foam at the mouth over a WADA or ASADA leak have ignored the greatest cover-up since a footy legend was sacked for organising a burglary on a business owned by his club's major benefactor.

And they failed to report how for a decade a police inspector was rewarded with the best grand final tickets provided by a club he didn't support for making a star player's double-digit breathalyser reading disappear.

In the world of Naked City, a lie is a lie and must be exposed.

It is accepted without hesitation that the "Traditional Game" (based on marks, kicks and positional play) was usurped by the "Modern Game" (play on, handball and numbers at the ball) on September 26, 1970.

At half time of the grand final, Carlton was 44 points behind Collingwood when Ronald Dale Barassi, the desperate Blues' coach, told his team to play on at all costs. They charged home to win by 10 points and the game changed forever.

But the truth is the Modern Game was invented two years earlier at the Whittlesea Showgrounds, but as there were no reporters there to record the breakthrough Barassi gets the credit, an Order of Australia and statue at the MCG.

It is the football equivalent of asking, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it still make a sound?"

Or in this case, if the play on game was invented and no one wrote about it, did it really happen?

Well indeed it did, and how do I know? Simple – I was there.

For I am the father of the Modern Game – or more accurately – the co-father.

First the backstory.

There was to be a football jamboree where northern suburban cub packs (baby scouts) would contest a lightning premiership. We were the First Preston Scouts – the youngest and frailest of the lot.

The cub master quickly confessed: "I can tie a reef knot, start a fire using two stones (which was handy at nearby Northland) and can organise a game of British Bulldog, but I do not understand footy."

As a student of the game I stepped forward to take command, an offer he gratefully accepted, allowing him to return to reading Kipling while playing with his toggle.

I enlisted the help of my best friend, Ricky Jarman. I immediately appointed myself playing coach and vice-captain, with Rick captain and assistant coach. It was the first known leadership group.

(It should be noted I did not appoint myself captain-coach, for at the age of 11 that would have been the act of a megalomaniac.)

We held our first training session and it was obvious we were skilled but tiny. I said to Rick, "What we have here is a Mosquito Fleet."

Rick was a rover with skills on both sides of his body and clean hands – which was handy as he became a respected paediatrician and dropping kids on their heads would be bad for business.

It was apparent if we played the mark and kick game we would end up severely marked and kicked and probably in hospital.

After all, we still had our baby teeth while many of our opponents had lost their second set in bare knuckle fights in Preston's Little Chicago. Using plastic footballers on the linoleum kitchen table we developed a series of drills based on never kicking to packs, honouring leads, maintaining possession, handballing to the overlap and going back over the mark only to have a shot.

I explained the tactics to the players. The philosophy was simple, "Run, or die." This was the football extension of Darwin's theory of evolution. The small mammals would eventually defeat the slow-footed dinosaurs, known as Tyrannosaurus Rex Hunts.

Thankfully they bought into the game plan.

We held closed-session training runs for weeks, perfecting a game of perpetual motion that ran like a Swiss clock.

The week before the first game we invited parents to observe the great leap forward over a sausage sizzle.

As we started our drills taking handballs at pace all you could hear was spitting pork fat as the adults looked on in horror.

Eventually the cub master walked out to say: "The parents are worried. They say, this may be football but not as we know it."

I offered my resignation unless I had the full support of the board. He left to tie some reef knots.

Just this week Dr Jarman recalled: "There were people yelling, 'Just bloody kick it' and naturally we ignored them."

"Looking back, I think the game plan was based on cowardice, as we wanted to make sure we were never tackled."

We arrived at the showgrounds driven by our parents. Our opponents arrived driving cars, most of them stolen.

The sheep manure on the ground indicated Merinos rather than motor mowers had cut the grass but it was big, which would suit our game plan. We identified the "fat side" as the one where they parked the doughnut van.

We were to play three 40-minute games on the Saturday and two on the Sunday. The winner would play the champions from another division (probably B Division, Pentridge from memory) in the grand final of 100 minutes the following weekend.

I was ruck-rover changing at full forward (not bad for a slow, frightened wingman). Rick was rover changing at centre half-forward. The ball was bounced, I kicked scrubber to the centre half-forward, who gave it off to Rick without looking. Jarman dropped a pass on the chest of the leading full-forward who gave it back to Jarman who gave it to me. I handballed back to him and he ran into the open goal. Swiss clock – tick tock.

The goal umpire was frozen with his mouth open, dribbling chewing tobacco down his off-white coat (he was the local barber). The crowd fell silent while the sheep looked amazed as they grazed. Even the ewes were in awe.

Bounce after bounce, game after game we ran and handballed. They stood in their positions – as effective as the Maginot Line, only less mobile.

And we were the football version of the Harlem Globetrotters – if they were scared white boys who hadn't reached puberty.

That Sunday afternoon we had a picnic by a creek. All of a sudden I was struck in the head by a rock (thrown by a local bully) and collapsed into semi-consciousness.

I was taken to a local doctor who appeared to have honed his craft through failed attempts to resuscitate local roadkill. Somehow he stemmed the bleeding with a tar brush and I was sent home.

It was touch and go if I could make the big game and so I gave myself a fitness test on the Thursday doing sprints in the hallway at home. I passed without passing out.

And then it rained and rained and rained.

By Sunday the ground was a goat track (literally) and we couldn't lift our Jenkin High Cut football boots from the mud.

It was hopeless. They were too big and we couldn't run.

At three-quarter time I tried to rally the troops with a Churchillian address, declaring: "The bigger they are the harder they fall."

Then I heard a voice mutter: "Actually the bigger they are the harder we fall."

It was Jarman. I knew I had lost the playing group.

We lost and teams reverted to traditional game until the 1970 grand final.

So why would Carlton take the First Preston Scouts game plan to exploit so ruthlessly?

Where is the missing link?

We wore the Preston Scouts Football Club jumpers – the team that played in the Preston District Junior Football Association. Members of the club were present at the lightning premiership.

Question – what was Ron Barassi's first football side?

Answer – Preston Scouts.

A coincidence? I think not. A leak? Almost certainly.

The theory is supported by some of the greatest names in our great game.

Multiple Hawthorn premiership player and former coach Peter Schwab says: "This is football's Watergate minus the Cubans."

Legendary Hawthorn full-forward Peter Hudson, says: "I have had the privilege of sitting at the football with Silvester and the Dolces (a mysterious alternative Hawthorn brains trust that offers unsolicited advice to coach Alastair Clarkson and his panel). I was stunned to see so much football brilliance in one place at one time."

Former Hawthorn and West Coast coach Ken Judge says: "In regard to football tactics, Silvester was ahead of his time. But I think his time peaked around 1852."

Multiple award-winning football writer and journalistic legend Michael Sheahan, says, "It is one of the greatest unwritten stories in the game and that is how it should have remained – unwritten."