BAGGY and Ben! Paul Bagshaw and Ben Hart, two brilliant South Australian footballers, have been inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.
Their recognition (in Baggy's case, long overdue) forever links them in football's annals of excellence.
They were such different footballers from totally different eras but they share two important qualities. 
They both had a wonderful temperament and they both played the game with sublime skill. These are personal honours but we share it with them.
Such is human nature that we immediately identify our connection to them. Perhaps it's an attempt to share the honour vicariously and, in the case of old team-mates, maybe even claim some ownership. After all, in football, we are nothing without our team-mates.
Baggy was more than an old football opponent to me.
As kids we played footy and cricket up and down the Fleurieu Peninsula. He played for McLaren Flat; I played for Reynella. It was country football and cricket at its best.
He was two years older and one of those kids who was clearly better than anyone else. He opened the bowling and had the ability, even at that age, to move the ball in the air.
His demeanour and his sportsmanship were impeccable but his mere presence and talent was intimidating.
McLaren Flat had a powerful football team, with names like Bagshaw, Burgan, Mills and Crago and we were always at their mercy but Baggy didn't play too much footy down there.
He was soon playing colts football at Sturt, where his father had played. In those days of the early '60s, Briscoes Bus Service was the transport connector between the city and the Fleurieu Peninsula.
In 1963 a couple of us from Reynella had been to a league match in the city and caught the bus home in the dark.
Sitting by himself, quietly, modestly at the back was Baggy. He had played in Sturt's senior colts team that afternoon. It was a long trek in those days from the city to McLaren Flat.
We were further in awe of his talent and commitment but proud that we knew him and had actually played against him. The following year he was playing league football, about to shape the greatest period of the Sturt Football Club.
He was a truly beautiful footballer - one of those rare talents who can command time and space.
He never lost control. One day, not quite accidentally, I elbowed him in the nose.
His only reaction was an indignant grunt that anyone should be so unsporting. But he had the last laugh.
In games that truly mattered he and his Sturt team-mates always had Glenelg's measure.
They prevailed over the Bays in the 1969, 1970 and 1974 grand finals and snuck home in the 1976 preliminary final.
In football's toughest competitive era, he played in seven premierships and in a team of champions, won Sturt's best-and-fairest award five times.
How he didn't win a Magarey Medal remains a mystery but is best explained by the reality that he was surrounded by great players who robbed each other of votes. It is significant, as it is puzzling, that no Sturt player won a Magarey Medal in the club's most successful years.
At last Baggy, after years of speculation and mystery, has been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
I hope he doesn't mind that those of us who knew him all those years ago can enjoy the recognition with him.
Ben Hart also has been recognised.
It had been easy to overlook him as being a worthy inductee. He still seems so young.
On reflection however, he ticks all those boxes. Some of us still see him as that schoolkid who, in 1990, rocked up to a Crows press conference in his now-famous school uniform. A skinny, red-haired, freckle-faced kid; who could have predicted what a great player he would become?
He was only 16 when his coach at North Adelaide, Mike Nunan, played him at centre half-forward.
When the first Adelaide Crows squad was assembled he was one of the largely unknown junior footballers selected in the 52.
Three of those youngsters, Hart, Shaun Rehn and Matthew Liptak would win the Malcolm Blight Medal but only Hart, of the original 52 would play 300 games.
He was a delight to coach and relished any challenge thrown to him. He settled in defence and could play on the best of them - Lockett, Ablett, Dunstall.
He was the first Crow to play 300 games, but his legend will be forever enshrined in the club's history by his match-saving, Horatio-at-the-bridge effort in the first half of the 1998 grand final.
He cites Chris McDermott, Tony McGuinness and Andrew Jarman as key influences in his football development and it is true that they taught him to play off the field as well, but his professionalism never suffered.
Ben Hart is now 41, a coach, a father of three and a Hall of Famer. His record and service to the Adelaide Football Club is outstanding, yet somehow I still see him as that 17-year-old kid who, when asked during a pre-season match against Fitzroy at Waverley if he would go and stand their champion forward, Richard Osborne, couldn't get on the ground fast enough.
Baggy and Ben.South Australia is proud to have known them both.