BARRY'S HALL OF FAME

The sporting wheel of fortune can spring up a surprise, depending on where the rotation comes to a halt.

Just ask Tiger Woods, whose popularity knew no bounds when he stopped off in Melbourne just a few short weeks ago. Next stop on the wheel of fortune was not quite so kind.

For Barry Hall, the reverse has been the case. For much of it, 2009 was a year to forget, when the monicker of 'Big Bad' returned in any description of the Sydney Swans' star. Just when it seemed he had exorcised his demons of on-field indiscretions, he did it again with an unprovoked punch to the head of an unsuspecting Adelaide Crow Ben Rutten.

And so ended the career of Barry Hall at the Sydney Swans and, seemingly, in the AFL fullstop.

But the wheel of fortune wasn't finished yet. Slowly, it began moving to a point of redemption, passed the signpost called boxing, and on to the Western Bulldogs, with whom he signed a contract to prolong his career by at least a further two years. Just over a week ago, he was warmly embraced by Bulldogs fans at the kennel.

And now, Barry Hall's face is gracing advertising billboards in major metropolitan areas spruiking Telstra Bigpond. Dressed up in Christmas attire, playing on his very badness.

Two salient points emerge here. One is that it can be good to be bad. In this case, lucrative marketing opportunities arise by being cast as a villian.

More to the point, however, is that the events which have lead to Hall's departure from Australia's biggest city have conspired to make him one of the most recognisable faces in Australian sport.

Look at it this way. AFL is our most popular sport in terms of spectator following and exposure. And yet, its popularity is dwarfed in Sydney, and Brisbane for that matter, by the might of rugby league, where even Gary Ablett, Buddy Franklin and Nick Reiwoldt are barely known or recognised.

For an AFL player to have a significant profile in Sydney, you need to be a Sydney Swan. And, of course, that profile of a star Swan is no less in Melbourne, Adelaide or Perth because, in those cities, the AFL is the unchallenged king of the codes.

So Barry Hall has been able to create a huge profile right around Australia, in both rugby league and AFL heartlands, and cash in on his name, reputation and, his mum would suggest, his good looks. That's something Ablett, for all his brilliance and second generation legendary name, can not do. Nor Franklin. Nor Reiwoldt, Jonathon Brown or any other player.

And neither could Billy Slater, Cameron Smith, Greg Inglis or any of their Melbourne Storm team-mates because, despite their four consecutive grand finals, the Storm remains isolated in AFL-crazy Melbourne.

Barry Hall is back in Melbourne where it all began when he was a young hothead with St Kilda back in the 1990s, having traversed the Sydney market and undergone a metamorphism from bad to good and back to his bad old ways again.

It's probably not the road map he planned to follow, but it's ended up at the right destination. A genuine national football star in a country of football fragmentism.

And that can't be all that bad.