Mega Thread Port Forum 'General AFL Talk' Thread Part 5 - Cont. in Part 6

[Pappagallo]

I'd blame all Melbourne's issues on Troy Chaplin.

Good ol’ Bookends Chaplin. I wonder how many other players have just missed out on playing in a premiership at the start and end of their careers?

 

[Garibaldi Red]

Haha, Simon Lethlean appointed at St Kilda to head up their Footy department. His first official function will be the Xmas party. He would be stoked.

 

[Grave Danger]

TSW

Kanye Kornes is out there triggerin' as well

 

[bomberclifford]

View attachment 445080
That smug expression.

"Mate. This one time, Roo took me, Smarty, Harty and The Weed down to Loxton to his mate's river shack. We spent the whole week 'going fishin', if you know what I mean. Tackle boxes in every room, if you know what I mean. Our rods got a real good workout, if you know what I mean. We got on the good stuff, if you know wha ... mate, what's your name again?"

 

[Janus]

I'll never forgive myself for the time when I had the opportunity to clean up a jaywalking Simon Goodwin and didn't take it.

 

[Pappagallo]

"Mate. This one time, Roo took me, Smarty, Harty and The Weed down to Loxton to his mate's river shack. We spent the whole week 'going fishin', if you know what I mean. Tackle boxes in every room, if you know what I mean. Our rods got a real good workout, if you know what I mean. We got on the good stuff, if you know wha ... mate, what's your name again?"

It’s almost like I’m there, just needs a death threat.

 

[Boxx]

Confirmed - I am Kane Corn.

 

[Boxx]

It’s almost like I’m there, just needs a death threat.

And a hot tip...

 

[Andre]

This pretty much sums it up. Unless anyone here happened to play for Melbourne last year we don’t know whether the issue is Goodwin being too hard on the players or the players being too soft. But either way it shows a disconnect between players and coach, which isn’t something you want ever, let alone before that coach’s second season has even started.

But anyway it’s good to see that clearing out Jack Watts has fixed up Melbourne’s culture once and for all. Just like GC’s culture was fixed forever by trading out Charlie Dixon.

And from the main board thread most Melbourne supporters think they've gotten a good outcome. Frak me, everyone has rose coloured glasses to a degree, but this board was scathing as hell during our dark era. Shit, even the last 3 years of underachievement, when we've been better than Melbourne we haven't (by and large) accepted shit. How many decades of mediocrity does a supporter base need to endure, before they take any praise between the beatings, as a sign that 'the club still loves me, I walked into a door officer'?

 

[Grave Danger]

Haha, Simon Lethlean appointed at St Kilda to head up their Footy department. His first official function will be the Xmas party. He would be stoked.

"Sinner turns Saint" was the headline on one of the commercial newses here

Oh, and this shite got their 'Play of the Day'

 

[Launchpad McQuack]

"Sinner turns Saint" was the headline on one of the commercial newses here

Oh, and this shite got their 'Play of the Day'

It's no The Twelve Days of Crowsmas.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

This was written by a US sports writer, has been at ESPN.com for a decade and before that at NPR - the US equivalent of ABC Radio.




http://www.espn.com.au/nba/story/_/...-football-made-ben-simmons-best-rookie-lebron

FROM ACROSS THE team's practice gym at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Ben Simmons spots it: the familiar Sherrin ball of his childhood. The red leather. Oblong with six cross-seams machine-stitched across the top. The silhouette of a kangaroo leaping across its surface. It's an object he'd devoted hours of his early life learning to control, to manipulate, to master -- the official ball of Australian rules football, or "footy," as it's known in the local vernacular.

It's media day before the start of last season, and Simmons' Philadelphia 76ers teammate Joel Embiid has procured the ball. He'd retrieved it from the office of the team's director of performance research and development, David Martin, who spent years in Australia working with the nation's most elite footballers. Embiid loves ball sports, picks them up like a prodigy, so the Sherrin tantalizes him like a new toy. Simmons' fellow rookie stands flipping it back and forth in his enormous hands. "What do you do with it?" Embiid asks, at once both curious and mischievous, holding the ball as if it's an ancient talisman that has been washed up on the banks of the Schuylkill River.

"Give it here," Simmons says. Embiid passes him the ball, and Simmons proceeds to put on a clinic. "He's good," Martin says. "It's been a while since he played competitively, but you could easily see that he had great aptitude as an Australian rules footballer." Dribbling an oval ball whose general shape isn't much of a departure from an American football isn't easy, but Simmons bounces the Sherrin against the hardwood with the same ease as when he dribbles a regulation, 22-ounce Spalding. He holds the ball over his thigh, kicks it with his right foot, repeats the sequence with his left. He demonstrates the art of the hand pass, punching the ball underhand in Embiid's direction, volleyball-style, as if he were a teammate advancing downfield. His positioning on the ball is perfect, his hand passes sharp. When Embiid sends errant kicks and passes his way, Simmons gobbles them up. "
http://www.espn.com.au/nba/story/_/...-football-made-ben-simmons-best-rookie-lebron

He was tooling around the gym with this thing," says Bryan Colangelo, the Sixers' president of basketball operations. "He had amazing control. It was stunning to see how comfortable he was." Like many elite athletes, Simmons grew up playing multiple sports. As a kid in Melbourne, Australia, the country's football hotbed, Simmons was a standout both in basketball and Aussie rules football. Always the tallest and most athletic boy on his team, he held down the position of ruckman, whose closest analogue in basketball would be center, if basketball were still played in the age of Russell and Chamberlain. While playing with his Australian junior team until the age of 14, Beverley Hills Junior Football Club -- a juggernaut with future pros -- Simmons won the Best and Fairest award, the equivalent of MVP, in the Yarra Junior Football League.

"He was a gun," says professional Aussie footballer Christian Petracca, who played both football and basketball with Simmons as a junior. "He was an absolute freak. He could jump. He could run. He could kick. He honestly would've been a top-five draft pick had he stuck with football." Amateurs typically enter the Australian Football League draft at age 17 or 18 -- although the AFL operates some state-level leagues for juniors -- but by that time, Simmons had given up Aussie rules for basketball. Since he entered the NBA as the No. 1 draft pick in 2016, the 6-foot-10 Simmons has come to personify the NBA's versatile, who-cares-what-his-position-is, modern-day supernova. At the insistence of Sixers coach Brett Brown -- the NBA's honorary Australian, having coached there for the better part of three decades, both in the professional leagues and as the head coach of the national team -- Simmons has assumed the role of Sixers' starting point guard.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

A little bit more from that article

And although the individual skills don't mirror basketball -- kicking, hand passing, running with the ball and tackling are explicitly forbidden in hoops -- the instincts required to excel in either sport translate to the other to a surprising degree. It's likely not a coincidence that, in recent years, there's a growing list of athletes from Australia who excelled at both sports: Simmons, Patty Millsand Dante Exum.

"So many things on the court for me to translate," says Utah Jazz wing Joe Ingles, who, like many schoolboys in Melbourne, grew up playing Aussie rules. "In [Aussie rules football], you're not afraid of contact. You're going to drive into a crowd with your eyes up and your face up. You don't go up for a rebound against other people half-assed because in AFL, you'll get hurt."

His coach at Philadelphia is American Brett Brown who spent 15 or so years in Oz, coaching in the NBL from the late 80's, either assistant or head coach at Tigers, Giants and Kings and was assistant coach of the Boomers at a couple of Olympics and before getting various roles which also included assistant coaching job in the NBA st San Antonio Spurs and then head coach at Philly in 2013. When he was at the Spurs he was head coach of the Boomers at the 2010 World champs and 2012 Olympics. So he knows Australia and Australians well. He explained to the reporter what a blue healer is and what its job is and then said this

"The AFL player has the ability to crawl up the back of an opponent just like [a blue heeler]," Brown says. "So, Ben, just like an AFL player ... when it's a 50-50 ball, he gets it."

Indeed, it's hard to unsee moments like Simmons in a scrum during the first quarter of a November home game against Portland, the Sixers pitching a 16-0 shutout to start the contest. Simmons drives up the middle with a big, sweeping, left-handed dribble, Evan Turner pokes the ball free, and now it's a tangle of arms and legs in pursuit of the loose ball just below the foul line.

and

Utah's Exum, who played Aussie rules with Simmons as a junior. "I remember watching Ben play football, and he was so good at that, just being able to deal with contact. He's always been such a physical player." For Exum, his countrymen Ingles and Bogut, and honorable NBA Aussies Martin and Brown, it's this quality that marks Simmons as an Aussie footballer as much as any other -- the proclivity to shuttle the ball in traffic like a hand pass minus the fist, or the instinct to devour any loose ball in his midst. "There's a toughness and a mentality," Brown says of the player he has helped shepherd to arguably the best rookie start since LeBron's. "Ben Simmons can rebound in traffic. Ben Simmons can run up your back and grab screamers. That's an AFL thing. That's Ben."

 

[Hellgood]

That is an absolutely outstanding article. In depth, covers the technical side of it exceptionally well - painting a picture of the things you know as a football player but never really actually think about to express.

Was expecting a good read story wise, but to couple it with the in depth parts of the nuances of our game that are analogous to basketball really should be appreciated!

 

[mic59]

"Sinner turns Saint" was the headline on one of the commercial newses here
Oh, and this shite got their 'Play of the Day'

Bob Dylan should sue.

 

[Grave Danger]

Bob Dylan should sue.

Or Richard Curtis.

If Essendon's season turns to shit Woosha should start calling the reporters "Carl" at press conferences

 

[Valentino]

I have what is bordering on a pathological dislike for that smug piece of shit, Goodwin. The daydream of Melbourne never amounting to anything and just missing out always whilst he is in charge would bring me untold joy. I also would like to think that there is some sort of justice in the universe and it would be fitting that the cheating scum that he is would actually never prosper.

Go Melbourne players keep protesting. Delightful.

The dream would only be complete after he was chosen as the coach of the crows soon after his parting ways with the demons.

 

[OneGreatClub]

The dream would only be complete after he was chosen as the coach of the crows soon after his parting ways with the demons.

Roo tried to move hell and high water to get him back. Some interesting stuff there. I shan't go into detail.

 

[Power Girl]

Roo tried to move hell and high water to get him back. Some interesting stuff there. I shan't go into detail.

oh but you must. I do love a good story.

 

[Janey]

Roo tried to move hell and high water to get him back. Some interesting stuff there. I shan't go into detail.

Come on, we're your friends, you can trust us.

 

[finbarr]

I'll never forgive myself for the time when I had the opportunity to clean up a jaywalking Simon Goodwin and didn't take it.

This exact same opportunity, but involving Christopher Pyne, presented itself to me on Magill Road last Thursday.

 

[VineValerian]

This exact same opportunity, but involving Christopher Pyne, presented itself to me on Magill Road last Thursday.

Traitor!
I vote "yes" for using him to flatten the bitumen.

Had chance to marmalise Rob Lucas last year at Richmond post Maggies game as he strolled across the road in front of me. Took pity on him as he seemed demoralised after we rogered the Bloods that arvo

 

[SgtSchulz]

Randomly selected average Port Adelaide attendances in South Australia for no apparent reason.

1877 - 250
1878 - 450
1884 - 1,200
1887 - 2,500
1892 - 3,200
1914 - 8,300
1980 - 16,169
1997 - 35,829
2014 - 44,364

 

[Tredz]

Randomly selected average Port Adelaide attendances in South Australia for no apparent reason.

1877 - 250
1878 - 450
1884 - 1,200
1887 - 2,500
1892 - 3,200
1914 - 8,300
1980 - 16,169
1997 - 35,829
2014 - 44,364

So what you're saying is; in another 140 years our average attendance will be 7,872,658? Cool.

 

[wannabejack]

So what you're saying is; in another 140 years our average attendance will be 7,872,658? Cool.

In another 140 years we'll be playing a few more games in China, so very likely.