Roar Pro
Joined December 2016
2.3k
Views
2
Published
70
Comments
It loves to happen.
Published
Comments
Like any human pursuit worth blood, sweat and tears, sport has always been the whole world writ small. We find in it all the…
Most who love Aussie rules do not like the level of congestion in the current game. Some years back the AFL started tweaking interpretations…
I’m really glad I was living in Sydney when that Port/SANFL stuff went down, so I’m not touched with it. Came back to Adelaide as the Crows won the 97 GF, and the Power (hate the name and wish they were wearing the prison bars) entered the AFL. Saw my first Power game in the Maree pub taking the long way from Sydney to Adelaide (ie, all around the country).
Can’t understand how the Power are playing so far down on their potential and tradition. Fos would have turned in his grave many times in the last few years! As a Redleg supporter from birth I still have great memories of Port. One pops into my mind right now: Eric Freeman approaching goal with incredible balance and accuracy. One of the first to use the drop punt in SA. And at the Adelaide Oval for the GF Port beat Sturt in the mid 60s – what a glorious spring day and a great match. Barracked for Port that day.
Eddie Betts inks Adelaide Crows extension
Oh, I knooow … We had a little chat last year about it when I posted as vocans. All power to Danger. Gave his all to the Crows. He had the year we all expected since he lobbed into Footy Park. Great guy too. Glad he’s happy back home.
Eddie Betts inks Adelaide Crows extension
Rick, vocans here. No more pseudonyms. So, an Adelaide boy cheers Adelaide’s Danger loss to the Cats, but lives in Sydney? What about your own go home factor? God, Australia has changed : it’s multi everything!
Eddie Betts inks Adelaide Crows extension
Eddie is a phenomenon in Crowland. On a serious note for Adelaide: can Eddie kick more goals than last year? Will he kick less? If so the rightfully feted Crows forwards definitely need some other players to improve. Tex surely has more goals in both those boots. Jenkins needs greater consistency if he’s to bag more. I don’t know that more can be expected of Lynch. Cameron is mooted to spend more time midfield. The real improver might just be McGovern, who I would love to see at full forward. He is capable of producing a lot more goals.
Everyone knows the improvement has to come from the mids, and that against the certainty that a number of teams mids will improve in 2017. Some one or two of the Crows mids will have to really deliver on their potential, if the Crows are to surprise us.
The backs were better than most gave them credit for. Ryan tells us no blow outs against despite the midfield lacks. They will only improve.
There is depth to cover injuries in all quarters of the game, but a lot of it is potential rather than proven.
Eddie Betts inks Adelaide Crows extension
Can’t see that I’ve ignored it, but I can see I didn’t make a big point about it.
Some thoughts inspired by James Hird
In what way is the comparison between the effects of the Chamberlain’s defensive withdrawal and that of Hird and the Bombers contraindicated?
I’m not talking about guilt and innocence so much as the social and individual behaviours that are constellated by a notorious event. The Chamberlains were innocent full stop. Hird and the Bombers had real cases to answer, and some of those answers had to be mea culpas.
Some thoughts inspired by James Hird
I remember those days too, VII. The Chamberlain’s began by withdrawing as a way to protect themselves, but this only left an empty slate on which so many prejudices could be projected. They tried to reverse it but the horse had bolted. There’s an echo of this in the way the Bombers rounded the wagons, and tried to keep tight in their redoubt. Only offers more projection room. Projections became polarised into die-hards for and against. And it made things worse, as you say.
Not many for the Chamberlains however. Human prejudice runs far deeper than reason, down somewhere in the magma.
Some thoughts inspired by James Hird
Good try Wayne. I agree with a number of others here that this is the best attempt yet. I also agree that the problem is not a huge one. I’m not clear on how the home and away draw would look – how many games, with whom, and where? To me, the US has enough teams and the geographical distribution of teams to make their conferences fit wnd work. I don’t think we do as yet.
A revised attempt at an AFL conference system
‘We already have two non-final finals, we don’t need more useless games.’
Does this mean the Bulldogs would not have got to the GF from 7th, if we follow your logic, Cat?
A revised attempt at an AFL conference system
I don’t think you can meet a person like Dank and operate as if he’s kosher without some level of self-deception. It’s easy to do: how many of us have not been conned by someone and later asked ourselves, How did I gloss over that? That’s down to me even if I was pretty asleep at the wheel when I did it. Glossing over means I had an inkling but something in me chose to ignore it – I chose to ignore it.
How do certain parts of the media gloss over their vested interest in the way they tell the story? Self-delusion/self-deception? The world is full of it, neh?
Some thoughts inspired by James Hird
At the very least that he was keeping his players safe by trusting naively. He has said that of himself.
Some thoughts inspired by James Hird
Yes, and I suspect, but do not lnow, that Dank’s personality played a powerful role in Hird’s self-delusion.
Some thoughts inspired by James Hird
Well put Paul. I am not absolving James Hird, far from it. No human being can. It is his to work out. He will carry the darkness with him all his days; with or without courage and integrity regarding these things. Hubris is real and consequential. It weighs heavily on the scales we carry in us.
As to complexity. The pattern of his doings took place in the context of a wider world made up of all those around him, all the way to the footy public and our responses to those doings. ‘No man is an island’ does not simply mean we owe something to humanity, or are nurtured by others, it also means nothing we do is conceivable outside the whole human context. Everyone contributes to the actions of everyone else. My coffee pays a wage pittance to all but slaves, and it is better than nothing. And so on.
Like with JH, I am not privvy to the intimate details of the motivations of so many who were directly involved. The players, the Bombers staff and management, the AFL decision makers, the ALP government, ASADA, WADA, the media and so on. Add to that the role of money and prestige that our society gives to players and sport.
If JH inflates, let us also recognise that we tend to inflate when our team wins. Our inflation does not help the players resist inflating. (I am often proud of our Game for the way so many resist it, and the psychological health built into many of its attitudes and structures.) Let us acknowledge the role of hostility, tribal and personal, in the Game. There are many attacks, and they call out defences of a similar kind, or people find ways to avoid them. Who’d be an umpire for instance? I don’t decry these things; they simply are and are part of the weave of darkness and light in the Game and life. They are the context in which we live and try to navigate. Failure to navigate, consequences that unfold, including desparate self-discovery, are ineradicably part of the story.
When winning is all, the rewards we give the winners often supports an unreal fantasy we have of them and they have of themselves. I hope you get my gist, because I’ll leave it there.
So, complexity and complex responsibilities are a part of the Game just as they are of life. It is hubris to think we can avoid them, control them, eradicate them. Oedipus thought he could avoid Fate, and we have our own ways of doing the same.
Some thoughts inspired by James Hird
I am not prescribing what others know about James Hird. I think anybody not really close to the story has no real idea. I am in the land of Croweaters, and so not face to face with Melbourne. I do know that I have seen many examples of people flying off the handle. Don’t think I’m alone in that. I am trying to say that life is sometimes, often, far more complex than the media and people can cover. That we need to be careful with that, but inevitably often won’t be. Get ready for the results. I think that’s what got James Hird, and when you really wake up, you are shocked to your core, you doubt everything about yourself and the world you thought you knew, and you can lose hope that anything is real or good. For a while at least. Then it will never be the same again.
Hird may be all the things you say, but I don’t know it. Naivete is no defence from carrying what we do. It should lead to a deepened sense of how little we know when we think we know it all. The Greeks called this hubris and they knew all about its consequences, being quite as hubristic as us.
I don’t feel sorry for Hird, but I recognise the commonality of his story, and ours in reaction and response to it.
Some thoughts inspired by James Hird
I don’t know about the ‘mea culpa’. Perhaps it was all he could honestly say?
It throws into high relief just how much depends on being alert and aware in our choices and actions. This may be why the fence-sitters are just through the gate. To avoid action, and the choice implicit in action, is a kind of neglect or dereliction, culpable when deliberate. And, as I try to make clear, whether deliberate or not, our actions are with us forever. Oedipus killed his father and married his mother, a fate he tried to avoid, but in trying, walked straight into. He said he was not guilty, because he knew not what he did, but the full weight of the reality was a heavy shadow he felt he had to carry if he was to be truthful about the life of the man, Oedipus. I, Oedipus, did these things. A dark fate awaits all humanity – the inevitablility that we will damage ourselves and some of the world during our lifetime. The shock comes at the awakening to this reality.
Some thoughts inspired by James Hird
Totally agree that the Chamberlains are different, but not in the sense that their story brought out the worst in some, and the not so fine in most, of us. It was Michael Chamberlain’s death that also inspired my writing at the time I did.
Some thoughts inspired by James Hird
Jenkins, probably because his first sport wasn’t footy, still succumbs to self-doubt. I think this is why he doesn’t back himself to mark enough of the time. He brings the ball to ground, but you can do that by going for the mark and failing. With Eddie and Co. around you can see the reason he settles for making the contest. I wonder about the coaches letting this go on though. He also takes refuge in trying to get out the back when presenting on the lead is called for.
If Mc Govern did make a hand of FF, I think Jenkins would be great down back on big key position forwards. He’s an awkward bastard! And he’s fast.
Eddie Betts inks Adelaide Crows extension