Legendary West Perth captain Les Fong has declared Dennis Cometti his best coach as he and his teammates reflect ahead of the iconic broadcaster’s State memorial service.

Cometti was at the helm of the Falcons from 1982 to ’84, taking them to a preliminary final in his first year at the then Leederville-based club where he’d played under the late Graham “Polly” Farmer.

“As a coach, I thought he was very astute,” Fong said of Cometti, who died in March at the age of 76.

“He wasn’t probably given the credit he should have been as a coach because like most, you’re only as good as your cattle.

“And certainly that first year when he coached in ’82 when we lost the preliminary final, which was tough, and if we’d won that, who knows we could have been premiers.”

Fong, 69, was West Perth’s respected captain when Cometti took over the helm of his old club where he’d played from 1967 to ‘71.

“I was close to Dennis because I was part of the selection committee with him,” Fong said.

“He allowed me that privilege as captain, which I respected greatly.

“When he addressed the group, he could almost mesmerise you. It’s just the way he spoke, so fluently and well about how we were going to play the game, what we had to do.

“And he did spend time individually with guys, take them aside as all good coaches should do.

“He certainly wasn’t a rant and raver. Occasionally we might have got a burst but only because we deserved it for whatever reason.”

Fong said he and Cometti both knew what he needed to do as a captain.

“My job was to rally the boys,” he said.

“The most difficult thing I found as a captain - and I think he respected that - was if I was having a bad day myself, my job was still to go and pat someone on the back and say ‘ok get that side and do this’.

“And the playing group accepted that I might not have been touching the ball a lot, but they still liked the idea that I was trying to encourage them.

“So I think Dennis gave me that licence to sort of coach on field as best I could, which I appreciated.”

Cometti was one of several coaches the 284-game champion Fong played under at West Perth, including the 1975 premiership coach Graham Campbell, the grandfather of Collingwood backman Brayden Maynard.

“People would ask me who you’d rate as your best coach,” Fong said.

“The coach I got on best with alongside as a person, would be Dennis followed by Graham Campbell.

“As much as I won a premiership under Graham, I still had Dennis right up there.”

Fong said Cometti’s passing was an “exceptionally sad loss” and that “76 years of age is not old”.

Fong said he and his former teammates were aware their one-time mentor had dementia.

“I knew he wasn’t well for quite some time,” Fong said.

“He was just one of those absolute icons in the media, and just fantastic at all sports.”

John Duckworth, who played for Fitzroy and won the 1979 Magarey Medal, was 33 and in his second stint as a player at the Falcons when Cometti took the reins in 1982.

Duckworth, 77, said the death of his former coach was “bloody devastating”.

“I knew that he was sick with Alzheimer’s, and that’s the disease my wife’s got, so I know what he went through because I’m looking after my wife full time,” he said.

“But he was a great fella, a really good coach, and we probably became pretty good mates in the finish.”

Duckworth recalled Cometti using him on match day “where we had a shortage”, and referred to his humour.

“If we were struggling at full forward, I’d go to full forward,” he said. “We’re struggling at full back, I’d go to full back. If we were struggling in the middle, I’d go to the middle. So he just used me wherever he wanted.

“One day we had a big loss, and he got us all together. He said our best player was the oldest player (Duckworth) and he wanted my job,” Duckworth laughed.

“So that was the type of bloke he was.”

Duckworth said Cometti had “an aura about him” as a coach.

“It was because of what he was and what he did,” he said. “You know, being the person he was on TV and his standing in the community.”

Champion West Perth wingman Peter Menaglio, 67, shared all of his teammates’ sadness at Cometti’s passing.

The doyen of Australian broadcasting “had a big effect on me even prior to when he coached me”.

“He was often in the changerooms at the West Perth footy club prior to the game, and he’d often have a chat to me about how I would go and how the game would go.

“And he always had a few encouraging words for me.

“But he was a very humble man, extremely kind, extremely intelligent, sharp-witted and really eloquent.

“He could speak so well as everybody knows, and that’s what made him famous, his lovely voice, his wide vocabulary, the phrases that he’d instantly put together, and he made commentating really interesting for the general public.”

Menaglio, whose forebears came from the same northern Italian province of Sondrio as Cometti’s, used a story to illustrate how Cometti was “one of the nicest men you’ll ever meet”.

“Someone said to me the other day that they met him at a party somewhere 15 years ago,” Menaglio said.

“They came up and introduced themselves, and they walked away feeling like he was a really nice bloke who really cared.

“They met him again 10 years later and he remembered their name, what they did… and that’s the sort of man he was. He just made people feel good.”

Menaglio’s wife Michelle also wanted it known that Cometti had reached out to the wives and partners of the players in an age when they could be seen as ornaments.

“Dennis would go out of his way to make himself acquainted with the wives and the girlfriends, and never forget them and have plenty to say to them and make them feel welcome,” Menaglio said.

“And no other coach did that, or no other coach did it to the extent that Dennis did - that was just the sort of man he was.”

The State memorial service for Dennis Cometti is at Optus Stadium on May 4