Games & Recreation Pointless Trivia

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There's lots of unlucky AFL players over the years who narrowly missed playing in a premiership team on multiple occasions while playing in losing GF teams, changed clubs at the wrong time and had their premiership dreams thwarted by their former teams or who had long careers in bottom teams, never getting within sight of the finals.

While some players certainly seem to be jinxed, one of the unluckier players comes from the NRL and not the AFL, and for none of the reasons above, and this is Jamie Goddard, a talented player from the early 1990s to the early 2000s.

Goddard started at the struggling Gold Coast Seagulls in 1992, the second of four different identities the original Gold Coast team would carry. He was one of their better first grade players from 1992-1995, but the Seagulls were plunged into crises following the 1995 season and over the summer it looked like they would not see the 1996 season. Eventually the Gold Coast were rescued, becoming first the Gladiators, which never took the field, and then again to the Chargers.

Despite the turmoil off-field to start the year, the Chargers were pretty competitive in 1996 and the improvement continued in 1997, when they made the finals in the ARL section of split competitions that year, beating Illawarra in an Elimination Final, Goddard a major contributor. But it all came crashing down in 1998 in the 20 team reunited NRL season, the Gold Coast Chargers falling to second last with just four wins and a number of terrible thrashings, and the end of the season not only saw them down - but out too - cut from the league along with the Adelaide Rams.

The North Sydney Bears were the lucky club to sign the services of the now-defunct Gold Coast's best player, and Goddard gave the Bears good service in his only season at North Sydney. It was not Goddard's fault that he played only one season at North Sydney. Throughout the 1990s, the Bears had given their long-suffering fans and eager neutral supporters hope that they would break a GF drought dating back to 1943 and a premiership drought all the way back to 1922, but were never quite able to do it, suffering heart-breaking finals losses and slumping down the ladder in 1999.

The Bears' poor financial position at the end of 1999 saw them forced into a loveless 3-way joint venture with bitter rivals the Manly Sea Eagles and Central Coast Rugby League to form the Northern Eagles, Goddard a part of the inaugural squad. But unlike other recent joint ventures the St George Illawarra Dragons and Wests Tigers where things ran relatively smoothly, the Northern Eagles despite their impressive playing squad could not make it work with poor on-field performances and plenty of in-fighting between the North Sydney and Manly factions during 2000 and 2001.

There is some dispute to this day as to when the Northern Eagles actually ended. Some say it was after the 2001 season, when North Sydney and Central Coast withdrew and Manly took on the Northern Eagles license alone; others say at the end of 2002 when the Northern Eagles were officially disbanded and the license reverted to the Manly Sea Eagles in 2003. But whatever the case, Jamie Goddard was part of the Northern Eagles when the joint venture collapsed in 2001 and retired when the struggling Eagles finished their 3 year tenure at the end of 2002.

So in an 11 year rugby league first grade career, Goddard saw his original team re-brand three times before folding, was at another club one season before it was forced to enter a joint venture; saw the joint venture disband two years later and the next year retired as his club was wound up for good.
 

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RedmanWasHere said:
No doubt lived with survivor's guilt for the rest of his life.
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This didn't help.
www.tennessean.com

'Why would he die and not me?' Waylon Jennings' life-changing choice on ‘The Day the Music Died’

Waylon Jennings gave up his seat on the plane that crashed and killed Buddy Holly, a decision that haunted the country legend for years.
www.tennessean.com
The tour had been stranded on more than one occasion that winter and, before takeoff, Holly jestingly told Jennings he hoped the bus broke down. Jennings responded with “I hope your ol’ plane crashes.”

"I was so afraid for many years that somebody was going to find out I said that,” Jennings told CMT in 1999. “Somehow I blamed myself. Compounding that was the guilty feeling that I was still alive. I hadn’t contributed anything to the world at that time compared to Buddy.
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