Big Nick by John Nicholls with Ian McDonald VFL Carlton Blues Legend HBDJ 1st Edition, 203 pages with a Foreword by Ron Barassi and a Preface by Lou Richards of Toorak, with numerous black and white photos of rare interest.

Big Nick is an Australian Football Hall of Fame Legend, the most capped Victorian representative in the history of interstate competition and a triple premiership-winning Carlton captain and coach.

He is a five-time Carlton best and fairest who wore the famed No.2 in 328 matches through 18 seasons of League football. And his name now graces the coveted medal which hangs from the neck of the latest club champion.

To think that John Nicholls – long regarded as the greatest footballer ever to lace a boot for the old dark Navy Blues – first signed with the club as he stood on the footpath by the branch of an E S & A bank.

It was there some time in late 1956 that the 17-year-old kid from Primrose lent his moniker to a Form Four thrust into his hands by Carlton captain Ken Hands, the man Nicholls would later declare as his great mentor and greatest influence.

“John Nicholls came to Carlton in 1957, his first year and my last year as a player. I signed John Nicholls outside the bank in Centre Road, Bentleigh,” Hands says.