Worst afl player you've seen (and why)

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To give some indication of how far ahead of everyone else the worst AFL footballers are:
Mark Blake was possibly one of the most limited footballers I have ever seen. Atrocious kick. Limited by hand. Poor mark. Deer in the headlights when having to do anything other than a ruck contest. Not even that great at rucking.

Post-retirement, goes to the Geelong league… and kicks ten on debut.
 
iameviljez said:
To give some indication of how far ahead of everyone else the worst AFL footballers are:
Mark Blake was possibly one of the most limited footballers I have ever seen. Atrocious kick. Limited by hand. Poor mark. Deer in the headlights when having to do anything other than a ruck contest. Not even that great at rucking.

Post-retirement, goes to the Geelong league… and kicks ten on debut.
Click to expand...
Didn't they chose Blake as number over 1 over Mumford, and Mumford walked as a result?
 

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Foxx said:
Didn't they chose Blake as number over 1 over Mumford, and Mumford walked as a result?
Click to expand...
No. Ottens was always number one, Mumford was really raw at the time and Sydney offered him good money plus the number one spot. At the time, it was uncontroversial.

Steven King v Mark Blake was the bigger one.
 
Wallaby said:
Is there a special section for ruckmen, who only get a game because they are 6-8+, and can put their arms up? Because we've had some doozies.

Andrew Browne comes to mind. He was about 6-8 (at least), and once had 95 hitouts in a VFL match (that's right, 95). In the seniors, he had plenty of hit-outs as well, and at least 2 or 3 of them went in the direction of his team-mates (maybe).

When he ran through the banner at the start of the game. the little kids doing it that day had to slow down and wait for him.
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Nick Bruton gets a nomination if we're talking about unco gangly ruckmen.

Imagine a 7 foot tall 4 year old trying to use a slightly oblique hula-hoop and you get the idea.
 
TheBigHorne said:
Kayne Turner, gets 10 disposals and most of them are forgettable, no height or speed, no footy IQ, no AFL traits other than the fact that he 'tries hard'


Oh and he's also in the leadership group and has been described as 'first picked' by Jack Ziebell

FML.
Click to expand...

10 disposals is being extremely generous.
 
Of the current day players it would have to be Ben Long.
 
iameviljez said:
To give some indication of how far ahead of everyone else the worst AFL footballers are:
Mark Blake was possibly one of the most limited footballers I have ever seen. Atrocious kick. Limited by hand. Poor mark. Deer in the headlights when having to do anything other than a ruck contest. Not even that great at rucking.

Post-retirement, goes to the Geelong league… and kicks ten on debut.
Click to expand...
There's a quote from a guy named Brian Scalabrine, an old and pretty average NBA player who was a career bench filler. He was fond of telling people who called him a shit basketballer "I'm closer to LeBron James than you are to me". He was probably right.
 

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Kayne Turner has to be up there of the current players getting a regular gig.
 
Also think Ned McHenry is very average. Every time I've seen him he seems to just run around like a headless chicken, yeah he looks busy and I haven't looked it up but I'm sure he at least has some good 'defensive' or 'pressure' stats, but that's about it I reckon.
 
Foxx said:
Didn't they chose Blake as number over 1 over Mumford, and Mumford walked as a result?
Click to expand...

Blake still had a year of his contract to run, Geelong had no cap room, they could only afford to pay Mummy sausage money. I think he was annoyed at rucking for most of the year and then having to make way for Blake who became a premiership player. To be fair though, from memory Mummy was just about cooked at that stage of his first serious AFL season.
 
Wallaby said:
Is there a special section for ruckmen, who only get a game because they are 6-8+, and can put their arms up? Because we've had some doozies.

Andrew Browne comes to mind. He was about 6-8 (at least), and once had 95 hitouts in a VFL match (that's right, 95). In the seniors, he had plenty of hit-outs as well, and at least 2 or 3 of them went in the direction of his team-mates (maybe).

When he ran through the banner at the start of the game. the little kids doing it that day had to slow down and wait for him.
Click to expand...
He’s now stoppage coach for the Richmond AFLW side.
 
Schulzenfest said:
There's a quote from a guy named Brian Scalabrine, an old and pretty average NBA player who was a career bench filler. He was fond of telling people who called him a shit basketballer "I'm closer to LeBron James than you are to me". He was probably right.
Click to expand...

Probably? That's an unquestionable fact.

Considering the population and spots available, getting a division 1 college scholarship is probably not too far off getting a spot on an AFL list. For Scalabrine to excel at that level, to earn one of around 450 available spots on an NBA roster and to keep a roster spot for more than a decade... yeah part of it is being a good chemistry guy and accepting whatever role you're given, but you still have to be an incredibly talented basketballer.

Anyway on the Mark Blake example I would have thought it was pretty clear by the way he (or any of a number of similar players) would rip the game apart whenever they had a stint in the VFL. Which is either the second best football league there is, or close enough to it. Probably a level that the best 5-10 players at our local leagues could possibly hold their own in for a season or two. And Blake dominated at the level. Of course he was going to destroy a mid-tier Vic Country league.

We see the best players we grew up with, maybe they had a mortgage on your club's best and fairest and won a league b&f or two. That probably gets them on to a NAB league list, where half the players will have a similar pedigree. Or they end up spending a couple of years kicking around in the VFL. Then you have to be one of the best few players from your NAB league team to even make it on an AFL list. To essentially be a first choice player for four seasons and almost 100 games, including nine finals and two grand finals, that's not an accident and, although I know there's a lot of people out there who think that if they were as tall as Mark Blake or they had a dad who was a star footballer like Mark Blake did, then they'd have been a better AFL player than he was. And 99% of the time, those people are hopelessly deluded.
 
Herne Hill Hammer said:
Blake still had a year of his contract to run, Geelong had no cap room, they could only afford to pay Mummy sausage money. I think he was annoyed at rucking for most of the year and then having to make way for Blake who became a premiership player. To be fair though, from memory Mummy was just about cooked at that stage of his first serious AFL season.
Click to expand...

We used the Mummy pick to select Mitch Duncan too. Hard to be too upset about it. Plus, although Blake was a bit on the outs at the time as a dinosaur from a bygone era and Mumford had become a bit of a fan favourite with his second efforts and full blooded approach to rucking, Blake was the more effective ruckman of the two - by far - in 2009.

It wasn't hard to envision Mumford going past Blake rapidly, but Blake earned his spot in that grand final team.
 
With the talk about terrible ruckmen, it would be remiss not to mention Cain Ackland. Not many get their own highlights package of ineptitude:

 
I thought it was Billy Frampton until very, very recently.

Aside from the meme that he is, has anybody mentioned Relton Roberts yet?
 
TheBigHorne said:
Kayne Turner, gets 10 disposals and most of them are forgettable, no height or speed, no footy IQ, no AFL traits other than the fact that he 'tries hard'


Oh and he's also in the leadership group and has been described as 'first picked' by Jack Ziebell

FML.
Click to expand...
Easily the worst leadership group player of all time, surely
 
Roobs321 said:
Raphael Clarke had some handy games, but majority of his seasons whenever the ball was near him you wanted to close your eyes out of pity, never really felt trustworthy at the level and didn't convince as a footballer.
Click to expand...
His brother Xaiver had all the talent in that family, Raph just had the lack of injuries.
 

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Worst afl player you've seen (and why)

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