Secondly, despite being the object of unrestrained and often illegal vigour on the part of his opponents Tom Leahy always maintained a cheerful, unflustered demeanour, and never retaliated. This is not to suggest for a moment that his play lacked aggression; however, his aggression was always controlled, and seldom transcended standards of what was acceptable, both legally and morally.
Tom Leahy remained in the upper echelon of the nation's footballers throughout his 2 decades in the game. One of his contemporaries, Vic Richardson of Sturt, when writing of Leahy half a century after his retirement as a player, paid him the ultimate accolade of suggesting that "had (he) played under the modern rules, which do not permit shepherding or interference at the bounce, no ruckman in Australia could have taken one knock from him. His tremendous power and wonderful judgement would have given him far too great an advantage". [see footnote 1] This assessment may have been magnified somewhat by the rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia, but evaluations of the abilities of footballers are always subjective and it is at least arguable that the opinions of a player's contemporaries should count for rather more than the subsequent evaluations of so called 'experts' whose perceptions have, to all intents and purposes, been pre-packaged and delivered to them whole, albeit with scant regard for historical veracity.
