The pair chatted about Underwood’s more than six decades in the world of journalism, his history as a football player and coach, some of his favourite rivalries across the years and his interactions with football royalty.
Underwood also shared some unheard stories from his time spent covering sport in the region.
To give a small taste of the extensive chat with Underwood, here are a couple of excerpts from the podcast to whet your appetite.
Marcus: What was it like coaching Melbourne great Garry Lyon when he was a junior?
Gus: Somebody (once) asked me, ‘How did you go with Garry Lyon?’
I just said, ‘Well he taught me a lot’.
He was well ahead of his time, a very brainy footballer who knew all the positions to go to, but also very, very skilful too.
He grew into a pretty awesome player and he kicked 10 goals in a VFL/AFL game once and was seven times captain of Victoria.
The thing about Garry is that he has never, ever forgotten where he come from; he will come back to Ky, you only have to make a phone call.
At one stage there, Ky in the early 2000s were really under the pump, they could hardly get a senior side or a seconds side.
(Lyon) and his father Peter, who coached Kyabram to a premiership in 1976, I am sure they poured in a lot of money to keep Ky afloat, so there is a big debt there from the club to them too.
Marcus: What are some of your favourite memories of clashes between sporting rivals in the region?
Gus: I will always remember — this is my personal touch in this — we were playing Stanhope (around the late 1960s) out at Stanhope and Stanhope got a run on us.
Paul Wadham, who played for Collingwood, was coaching Ky at the time, ran up to me and he said, ‘Can you do something?’
I think he was insinuating that I rough someone up or something.
I had a dog called Freckles in my car and I whistled to him and he jumped out of the window and jumped onto the ground.
All the Stanhope players were saying, ‘That’s Gus’ dog, that’s Gus’ dog’.
I said, ‘That’s not my dog, I have never seen him before in my life’.
It took about 10 minutes to get him and get him back in my van; it stopped their run and we kicked a couple of goals and ended up kicking on and winning the game.
After that there was a guy called Jack Arthur who was president of the (Goulburn Valley League), he wasn’t very happy with dogs being at footy grounds and he banned all dogs from the footy grounds until after he died.
