Ever since I can remember, Dixon has been championing the idea that Australian football should be an international game. It's led to him being regarded as an eccentric, a bit of a footy nutter, in the way I imagine Tom Wills was viewed in 1879 when he declared it was the moment for Australian football to be taken to the world.

Wills' idea was to send Geelong and Melbourne, the two oldest clubs, to play a series of exhibition matches in England or, alternately, to send one club to England and the other to the United States, to excite an interest in the Australian game. History suggests Wills' sense of timing may well have been right.

Dixon and Wills share several characteristics. In addition to having an international vision for the game, they were both champion players. Dixon played in five premierships for Melbourne in the 1950s and '60s. He would have played in six had he not disobeyed coach Norm Smith and played an inter-faculty game at Melbourne University just before the 1955 finals began.

That's another characteristic Brian Dixon shares with Tom Wills. He's not frightened of falling out with people. He was one of the very few to argue with Norm Smith . "Arguing with Norm,"  Dixon recalls with a grin, "could be fairly fatal."

Not a tall man (175 centimetres), Dixon played on the wing. He was fast with a strong, bustling style but an unreliable kick. In 1960, he won Melbourne's best and fairest. In 1961, he won the Tassie Medal for the best player at the interstate carnival, which meant he was one of the best footballers in Australia. He later coached North Melbourne for two seasons in 1971-72.

In 1964, while still playing with Melbourne, he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as the Liberal member for St Kilda. There he fell out with Sir Henry Bolte - the Liberal premier who embodied the state of Victoria like Putin embodies Russia - by joining the campaign to abolish capital punishment in Victoria. More recently, he has been involved with asylum seekers.

He says the first time he thought Australian football could be an international game was in 1961 when Melbourne conducted a series of clinics in New Zealand. "The kids loved the game." That's what sustains his belief that Australian football can still be an international sport – everywhere he takes the game, kids love playing it. Among the countries he's taken the game to are Iran, China, India, Argentina, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, the UK, the US, Germany, Spain, Bulgaria, Cuba and the West Indies.

Basically, he has done so as a volunteer, if necessary sleeping in hostels or renting a room in a local home. Occasionally, he says, the AFL has helped. He also represents an organisation called The Association for International Sport for All, which enables him to combine "my enthusiasm for physical activity with my enthusiasm for Australian football".

But, in all this, he hasn't forgotten his old club. In 1996, Dixon led the resistance to the proposed merger between Hawthorn and Melbourne with a blazing passion. Asked about the current Melbourne team, he says drily, "They can only improve."

At times, Dixon's dream of making football an international game has seemed less than worldly. In South Africa in 2006, I heard a talk he gave where he proposed that every AFL club be responsible for a country or region of the globe. The particular line I recall is, "And Richmond can have China." Colin Carter was also at that meeting. Later, when he was elected president of Geelong, I sent him a message: "And Geelong can have the Middle East."

Dixon really does believe Australian football is the best game in the world. Once, when he organised a tournament in South Africa, a local woman asked Carmel Dixon, "Why is he doing this for us?' She replied, "Because he wants to share the joy."

For six years, Dixon was chairman of AFL South Africa. Once, when AFL South Africa organised a tournament and brought in 20 buses loaded with players, Carmel Dixon spent five hours cooking with the African women to feed the many who had come. Her husband then travelled in the back of a truck with pots of food to keep them from spilling over.

The truck arrived and hundreds of players gathered. Before eating, however, they sang a special song they had composed for the Dixons, a mass choir celebrating their names with African rhythms and harmonies. "That moment was worth more than any trophy," says Carmel Dixon.

I ran into Brian Dixon at the International Cup on Tuesday, eagerly watching South Africa as it lost to Ireland in the semi-final. Ireland has a team so tall the players look as if they have been sired by Finn McCool and stepped out of Irish mythology.

In the final, which will be played as the curtain-raiser to Saturday night's match at the MCG between Hawthorn and Geelong, the Irish will meet Papua New Guinea, a smaller team but one with speed and indigenous ball skills. Brian Dixon will be there, barracking for Papua New Guinea. He's coached in PNG.

The final of the women's International Cup, Ireland v Canada, will be played on Saturday afternoon at Richmond's Punt Road Oval, starting 2.10pm.