As football practice matches step into full gear as the local season approaches, we have found a nugget of this genre from the past.
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While clubs mix it up with practice games between teams from different leagues, both below and above the standard they regularly play in, there has been some famous cases in the past when coaches have thought outside the square.
But perhaps the most unusual practice match in recent, and rapidly becoming a distant memory was played at Friendly Societies' Park in Warrnambool in March 1979.
The game was between then VFL club Fitzroy and a Hampden Football League representative team.
The two teams had met 11 years earlier in a similar encounter, with Hampden winning.
But this was to be a more difficult assignment for the local boys as this Fitzroy team was on the cusp of a successful era.
The club went on to play finals in 1979, the first time it had done so in 20 years.
It was a regular finalist through to the middle of the 1980s, just missing out a grand final in 1986.
The Fitzroy team that took on the Hampden league included star players such as champion rover Garry Wilson, ruckman Ron Alexander, centre half forward Robert Walls, half forward Mick Conlan and ex-Collingwood star Max Richardson.
Of course Fitzroy had chosen Warrnambool for the game as the Hampden league was the VFL club's recruiting zone.
And to make sure it wasn't too stacked in the Lions favour, players that were now at Fitzroy who had originated from the Hampden league actually played for the Bottle Greens in this game.
This included Brian Brown, Noel Mugavin, Leon Harris, Kevin O'Keefe, Robert Scott, Keith McLeod, Allan Thompson and Neville Taylor.
Koroit's Bruce Chambers was also in the team and he must have impressed, as he went on to be recruited by Fitzroy for the 1980 season.
Other star local players in the Hampden team included Daryl Salmon, Bill Couch, Chris O'Connor, Leigh McCorkell and Terry O'Neil.
In front of a big crowd, Fitzroy won by 44 points, with Alexander best on ground and Wilson kicking four goals.
For Hampden, Scott kicked three goals and Harris was named best player.
Hawthorn coach Allan Jeans once questioned the merits of practice matches, comparing them to "dancing with your sister".
But one of Jeans' former players Grant Thomas saw more value in them.
Perhaps the most famous example of this was when Grant Thomas was coaching Warrnambool to a then record four premierships in a row in the late 1980s.
During this period, Thomas would regularly pit the Blues against VFA teams such as Box Hill, Williamstown and Werribee. While the Blues not surprisingly didn't win any of these encounters, they were super competitive.
It is club folklore that on one such occasion the Blues had pushed Williamstown to a closer margin at a game in Anglesea.
On the bus trip home the players were understandably upbeat, ready to hit the Lady Bay and Whalers hotel's to tell of their heroics.
But that was put an end to as the bus approached home and Thomas and club powerbroker, the late Bill Toleman, stood up to speak to the players.
The instructions from these two giants of the club was that if anyone asked how the team had gone, the line was to be that the Blues got thrashed and they were struggling.
Nobody, asserted Thomas and Toleman, needed to know the club's business, good or bad, except for those in the thick of it.
It worked, with the result not only giving the players great confidence but lulling the Hampden league opposition into a full sense that the Blues may be in decline.
Thomas was also involved in another famous practice match, this time as an assistant coach to Stan Alves at St. Kilda.
In 1994, the Saints played the Kevin Sheedy coached Essendon at Victoria Park, Koroit, before what was the biggest crowd ever seen at the ground. The Bombers won.
