BRETT KOHLHAGEN: Your father, Haydon, won three league medals in the Farrer and Albury and District leagues in the 1950s and is a legend at the Culcairn Football Club. Do you remember him playing?

NEVILLE HENSEL: I remember cleaning his boots. As kids Terry (brother) and I would be out kicking the footy on the farm at Culcairn just before dark and he would come home after working on the tractor or whatever. He would spear these stab passes into you which would almost go straight through us.

BK: Do you remember your first senior game for Culcairn?

NH: It was pretty eventful actually (laughs). I had finished in the juniors and a few of us young blokes were pushed up to play a game in the reserves in the last match of the season at Lockhart. Anyway Kenny 'Shimma' Holt belted the umpire that day as we were walking off the ground. The umpire had given him a bit of a hard time so Kenny was giving him a mouth full as they walked off. The umpire then decided he was going to report him. Next thing, Kenny turned around and whacked him. Michelle's dad (Barry) took him to the tribunal and they gave him a 12-month suspension. Kenny wanted to argue but Barry dragged him out and said "Come on, that's pretty good".

BK: You weren't one of those kids who just stepped into senior football were you?

NH: No, I spent 1979 in the reserves and got dropped as well. I was doing TAFE on Tuesday and Thursday nights and couldn't get to training. I had a dip the next year and ended up getting runner-up in the best and fairest in the seniors which was a bit of a turnaround.

BK: How did you end up at Albury?

NH: Joe and Kevin Watson used to come out to the Culcairn abattoirs where I was working to buy meat. Joe was involved at Albury and got talking to the old man and it went from there. I went in with Mick and Barry Brown. 'Dingus' (Mick) won the thirds best and fairest that year, Barry won the reserves and I played seniors so it worked out pretty well.

BK: You had second thoughts at one stage though didn't you?

NH: In the first few games Albury gave me a taste but about four games into the season we were playing Lavi at Lavi and it was going to be a really wet day so they picked a squad of 24 or 25 and I wasn't in it. The Cul boys thought if you can't make a squad of 25 you aren't going to make it and talked me into coming back to play against Dederang that weekend. The following week Tom Doolan and 'Bakesy' (Daryl Bakes) came out and had a meeting with Cul at the bowling club. I wasn't invited along to the meeting but Tom apparently explained I was 67kg wringing wet and that was the reason why I wasn't picked in the squad. I went back in and played a game in the seconds before Tom found out that Jay (McNeil) and Paul Edwards had been out on the grog one night and dropped them. That gave me a chance and I think I played every game after that.

BK: You played 99 matches for Albury including the 1992 flag. Doolan had a huge impact on your footy didn't he?

NH: He definitely had the biggest influence on my football career. I learnt a lot from him over the years. He was a fantastic coach.

BK: You had no luck at all with hamstrings?

NH: I lost count how many times I did them. The worst was probably at Albury when we were playing Lavington and Darren Holmes was chasing me and it just went. It was like someone teeing off with a golf ball and whacking it into the back of my leg. I thought he'd kicked me but I looked around and he was five metres behind. When I was coaching in the Tallangatta league, Michelle used to look across the ground and want me to put up my fingers, like one, two, three or four, to tell her how many matches I would miss.

BK: You spent two years at Ainslie along the way?

NH: I was working at Cooma, it was good footy. Ainslie invited myself and Michelle down the year before for a look and I didn't know if I'd get a game as they were flying players in from places like Melbourne. I broke my scaphoid in the first year and missed 10 weeks but got back and we made the grand final under Rod Oborne. It was the fifth grand final I'd played in a row and only won one of them.

BK: Then you played under Geelong chief executive officer Brian Cook in 1986?

NH: He was a good bloke, very smart. He was fairly high up at the Institute of Sport in Canberra at the time. He played Hawthorn's reserves prior to coming to Ainslie.

BK: You then went back to Albury for two years before signing as Culcairn's coach in 1989?

NH: I did four years as coach

BK: You mentioned it was a tight-knit side?

NH: I was back at Culcairn working at the abattoirs and I reckon three-quarters of the side worked there or at the tannery across the road. A lot of them were on night shift so we'd have a kick during my lunch break because they couldn't get to training.

BK: You still have big regret from that first season though don't you?

NH: Yeah, we'd lost a really tight elimination final to Mitta after it being close all day. It was my first year as coach with Billy Taylor and 'Nifty' Brand running the bench for me. After the game had finished we were in the rooms and disappointed and I was going around to all the players one by one when I got to Trevor Gardiner. As soon as I looked at him I realised he didn't get on the ground all day. My heart sank. I blamed myself because Billy and 'Nifty' ran things by me and had wanted to make a change but you just get caught up in how close it was. I still regret it. To 'Tag's' (Gardiner) credit we still get on but I will always feel bad about it. It was the last time he pulled on the boots and he didn't get on the ground.

BK: On a much brighter note, you coached Culcairn to a grand final win over Tallangatta the following season. That must be right up there with anything you achieved in football?

NH: Definitely, when you look back there was only Mick Stagg, Brett Heathcote and Peter Nugent who weren't local and the rest of us pretty much went to school together. We had no big heads and everyone was just there to play their role for the side. I take my hat off to Tom Doolan because he drummed that into my head at Albury. We used to laugh when we played Lavington because they always bought in players and when we started to get on top of them they would start bitching with each other.

BK: It must have been satisfying coaching your home club to a premiership?

NH: I remember getting up after the game and that was part of my speech to the players and supporters. People said you couldn't do it as a local .... well, we did. We had the whole town behind us that day as all four sides were in the grand final. We won three of the four with only the reserves missing out. It was Culcairn's first senior premiership since 1968.

BK: You had to work hard to beat Bert Hollands' Tallangatta side by 23 points didn't you?

NH: We did. The boys on the bench moved David "Boogie" Moore from a wing to the forward-line and he took a couple of screamers to get us over the line. My now good mate Mark McSweeney took Jason Lawson out of the game early and we had to reshuffle things. He was the best centre half-back in the league by a mile at the time so we moved Brett Heathcote to centre half-back and Steve Schultz into the ruck. Shane Dyde had done his hamstring in the first few minutes of the game as well which didn't help. We didn't recruit a player that year with McGrath (Scott), Watson (Murray), 'Robbo' (Andrew Robertson) and Schultz coming up from the thirds.

BK: Then in 1992 the Lions switched from the TDFL to Hume league. How did you find that as the coach?

NH: It worked pretty well. We were coming from smaller grounds and more congested footy but the boys adapted. We lost the grand final to Osborne.

BK: Then you shocked a few by joining old Tallangatta league rivals Holbrook?

NH: I'd had enough of coaching and the Culcairn committee said they were thinking of talking to Peter Copley which I thought was a great idea. I just thought they didn't need me because blokes like Kerry Bahr and others were coming. Laurie McInnes had been on to me about joining Holbrook so I thought why not and went there as McSweeney's assistant. It was a good year.

BK: Any fall-out switching from Culcairn to Holbrook?

NH: Nobody ever said anything to me but I'd imagine a few people thought 'what the hell are you doing'. I wouldn't have done it if Culcairn and Holbrook were still playing in the same league.

BK: In recent years, you've been tied up at Thurgoona. How did that come about?

NH: My kids played at Thurgoona. We went there when they took the under-17s out of the Albury-Wodonga Junior Football League and made it under-16s. Braedon was at that age and I thought he wasn't big enough to play Ovens and Murray thirds at the time. Braedon had one season at Thurgoona before going to Albury and Rhys never left.

BK: What do you put Thurgoona's emergence down to over the past decade or so?

NH: Tony Way is the best thing that happened to that club for sure. He nearly did it all off his own bat, along with a few others like Lachie Butler and their wives.

BK: You spent a few years helping out on the bench for Brett Wightman, Peter Copley and most recently Jayden Kotzur and Jamarl O'Sullivan. How did you enjoy that?

NH: I had a bit of fun with Dallas Kotzur listening to the races during the footy and things like that. Copley was full on as expected and he put a lot of time into his coaching both on and off the track which I think made him a successful coach. It was very enjoyable being part of Thurgoona's first flag and Rhys playing a part in it.

BK: Your family went through enormous heartache with the passing of Braedon in 2014. You must be proud of the legacy he has left?

NH: Naturally we miss him but we have plenty of good memories. The support he and us received from all his sporting clubs and my past footy clubs was incredible. St Pats Cricket Club still plays a big part in our lives. His mates are our friends for life.

BK: St Patrick's Cricket Club has the Braedon "Pup" Hensel Memorial Hill at Xavier and one of your good mates Phil Nicholson named a pacer Braedos Babe. They are nice touches aren't they?

NH: For sure. Braedon loved his sport. He played in a premiership for Albury's reserves one year and the same season played in a first grade cricket flag for St Patricks.

BK: He also had a big honour bestowed upon him at Latrobe University at Bundoora

NH: He only played one match for the uni's under-19 side and kicked five goals and got three votes in the league best and fairest. That was the last game he played before being diagnosed and operated on the next week. During treatment he went back as team manager and did the match report. He loved team sports in particular and was always out in the backyard with his brother playing something, usually with Carla keeping score.