To be a successful AFL club these days, you have to embrace the value of the one percenters.
You have to instil in your players a fanaticism to chase, hurry, bump and block.
You have to nurture a culture which places a high currency on knock ons, spoils, smothers and shepherds.
These sacrificial and pressure acts are the hallmark of any well drilled and disciplined unit, and if not adopted wholeheartedly, can reduce a team to rabble (and a big hello to the ‘bruise free’ Melbourne teams of the early noughties).
But illuminated as we’ve got about the value of one percenters, it strikes me that we’ve only just begun to tap into the science of constructing the ultimate football team.
Yes folks, to do that, we must go venture off to a darker place; albeit, one that’s been under our noses all this time: the world of the .01 percenters.
This is a world where the decimal point has been moved two digits to the left. A world where AFL players are coached, schooled and up-skilled to outwit umpires and psyche-out opponents with expertise.
For starters, I see the ultimate AFL player in years to come handing the ball back after a free kick in such a way which harvests every skerrick of allowable time. He will be trained to get the optimum amount of hangtime on the ball, knowing that every microsecond he buys allows teammates to pick up opponents.
To advance this, I see teams engaging aerodynamics experts, who would experiment with Sherrins in wind tunnels in search of its oh so elusive hangtime sweet spot.
Or perhaps they’d look to high school burnouts, who mentor players on recalcitrance, so as to hold off passing the ball right to the cusp of giving away 50 (and can’t you see how valuable someone like Vinnie Barbarino would be in this application?).
I also see inching over the mark taken to the next zenith.
Clubs would consult illusionists like David Copperfield or Dynamo to construct ways for their players to eat into the mark. Players would use the art of conjuring and sleight of hand to inch metres over the spot, all the while as the umps looked on like flapped ear puppies who’d been shown a card trick.
And what about putting opponents off their games?
The AFL player in 2030 will have long left behind sledges about mums wearing army boots. He will have a degree in sports psychology and spend all four quarters – and indeed, the seconds leading into all four quarters – messing with opponents’ heads. Any insecurity, character flaw or predisposition will be psychoanalysed, so much so that just about every player will shoot for goal looking like Travis Cloke.
Yes, it will be a dark age for the AFL once the .01 percenters are finally tapped into. Remonstrating with umpires will be done in a calculated way. Jumping on the spot and waving your arms to put off players taking set shots will also have given way to something more dastardly. Indeed, it might get so dark, the ‘Manchurian Candidate’ template might be engaged so that a club will brainwash and program its own players.
The bitch is, how are we going to find room for all this stuff when our stats charts are already so crowded?
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But they went back to cheers when Elliot Yeo was adjudged the winner!
To sum up Freo's dirty night, Bailey Banfield went on to miss the shot.
The young gun is already taking down Brownlow Medallists!
Tomahawk didn't know this is illegal, apparently!
