JONTY: Alright boys, another big week of LTS and awesome to have our leader back with us, Dave. Tell us how was the trip and did you read LTS last week?
DAVE: I did read LTS two days ago and had a giggle and showed my wife and she said ‘those cheeky little buggers, getting stuck into you while you were away’, but I took the humour in good faith. Stewie was outstanding with a couple of nice stories. Trip was fantastic, 11 days, 10 good days and one that wasn’t as flash and that was Adelaide.
JONTY: Adelaide’s never going to be flash is it?
DAVE: I don’t think I’d go back to Adelaide unless I was watching sport because there wasn’t much there. People have told me it’s overrated.
JONTY: I didn’t even know it was rated.
DAVE: (Laughs) Well hopefully LTS doesn’t go to Adelaide this week; but all the wineries and everything else were outstanding so I’m refreshed for footy season, although feeling very much under-prepared after nearly two weeks off.
LOCAL FOOTY TRAINING
JONTY: That leads in well to the first topic of LTS. I was down at Devon Meadows’ training last Thursday and that’s where this idea has come from, tell me, and I’ll start with you Marcus, when you think of footy and training, what are the stereotypes that come to mind, things that are always occurring no matter what club you go to.
MARCUS: One thing that annoyed me in my footy days was the ‘dickhead’ forwards having shots for goal when you did a lap of the oval and you had to wait for them to jump the fence and get the ball back.
JONTY: It’s not just forwards though is it?
MARCUS: It’s primarily the showboating forwards. As a key defender I am going to throw them under the bus, because you are always told not to have a ping, and then they do it and are reluctant to jump the fence and get the ball and it was every week. And as far as coach sayings during training, one which made me laugh is “We don’t get time to work on our skills during the year so we have to take the 10 minutes at the start to practice your drop punts.”
JONTY: Pre-training craft.
MARCUS: Another one is that “It starts at the contest.” Every coach tells you as if they’ve just split the atom. Hard to play against, competition’s so even, all that sort of thing.
DAVE: Mine’s changed. When I played 30 years ago and when you talked about ice baths after training, you were talking about eskies full of beer and you would stay after training on a Thursday night until midnight. Now everyone just disperses so it’s a lot different. Today you hear footy coaches talking about their trump cards, well back then it was playing cards. We’d sit there after training, have a few beers, play poker sometimes until the sun came up the next morning then you’d go off to work. With daylight savings finishing, footy training is about to really change now. It’s all under lights. I don’t think people appreciate dry conditions, sunshine at training until now it gets into the greasy stuff.
JONTY: It’s a different dynamic. Deep heat for me. The smell. There’s nothing that has me wanting to lace up the boots again more than deep heat.
MARCUS: I’ll second that. I think when I first started playing junior footy, we had the same clubrooms as the seniors and I didn’t know what the smell was. I thought it was the material from the mouth-guard.
JONTY: Consume the smell not the taste.
DAVE: We had a cricketer come out from Scotland, Keith Joyce, and his first game of cricket with us, he had a shower and left all his clothes out ready for when he got out. One of our players, Jason Hardwick, the dad of Hawthorn’s Blake Hardwick, took the opportunity to rub a small amount of deep heat into Keith’s underwear while he was in the shower. Keith got dressed and had a beer with everyone after the game, but it was obvious he was uncomfortable. He thought it was the soap he used…poor bugger went red in the face…and never left his clothes out again!
JONTY: Footy fines. Getting out on the track, everything is worth two bucks. Marcus, maybe if a defender is the ‘fines master’, goalkicking forwards are getting fined.
DAVE: What about at 5.58pm, you see the ‘tradie’ that’s running late and you can just see them tear over the side of the roundabout doing about 60 clicks. They don’t come slowly or near the speed limit.
MARCUS: Then there’s also the people who wear caps at night. That’s one for me. We had a school footy coach who would blow up at people who wore caps at training. His view was, you don’t wear a cap during games, so why do you train in one?
JONTY: Optimism is the other obvious one I think we’ve missed. Everyone thinks they can make finals or their club is about to unearth the next gun.
DAVE: And every club has a bloke who is ‘flying’ on the track.
FOOTY PREDICTIONS
JONTY: I don’t mind how you tackle it, but I want some local footy predictions!
DAVE: In West Gippy, Warragul Industrials were about fifth or sixth on the ladder all year last year and then had a phenomenal run through finals. Scores were tied at the end of the prelim and they just missed out on the grand final going down in extra time. Harmit Singh, who has now by the way, moved from Essendon to lead Collingwood’s Peter Daicos Academy, is a very smart coach and has become a lot more likeable since moving to the Pies. I think the Dusties are going to continue to improve and will be there when the whips are cracking in September.
JONTY: Lots of big names you’re bringing in here with Hardwick and now Singh.
DAVE: I’ve been on my travels, Jonty. And Tooradin will obviously be up there again but will occasionally miss half forward James Trezise and Lewis Hill on the wing. Hill ran second in the club’s best and fairest in a premiership year so that gives an indication of what they think of him at Seagull-land. If they both play a lot of VFL at Richmond, the Seagulls will miss their dash. It will be interesting to see if Tooradin change their game style without those two on the park. But they’ve picked up a handy mid and strong full-back so they’ve probably balanced out the good and the bad.
MARCUS: I’m looking forward to Division One of Outer East, there has been a bit of trouble with Yarra Glen moving down. Only seven teams in the league heightens the intensity of each match-up. The uneven nature of the fixture means some teams will have two byes and some three. Hallam are the new boys to the competition, so it will be interesting to see them, and the talk of the competition is Berwick Springs – they lost the prelim last year but are expected to do big things, and Officer has done a lot of recruiting under Daniel Charles.
JONTY: We obviously don’t cover all the Southern League clubs but I’ll say it’ll be a good period for the Gazette-coverage zone of the Southern clubs. I think all three of them will make finals. Cranbourne to back up what they did last year and be around it again. I’ve got Tyson Barry in the Team of the Year. He showed heaps as a teenager last year and has put on a bit of size in preseason training with Casey. Springy Districts’ midfield will be led by Dylan Quirk and I think they will well and truly be in finals in 2023 and Dingley has lost Justin Van Unen, but with how good their youth and system is generally, I think they’ll remain around the mark.
DAVE: What are we expecting from ‘Boof’ Evans and his Berwick boys in Easter Premier, Marcus?
MARCUS: They’re a bit of a wildcard in that they had so many players injured last year. I think they’ll be competitive but placing them will be difficult.
MAKING A STANCE
JONTY: Last one. On Thursday night we saw Jamarra Ugle-Hagan kick five goals and make a stand against racism. It was Nicky Winmar-esque. Who have been some athletes you’ve seen using their profile to make a stand, Marcus?
MARCUS: I will take you back to 2020. It was a difficult time for everyone, but we were blessed with the bubble in the NBA. Jamal Murray, in a win-or-go-home contest in game six, during the first round against Utah, put up 50 points in a shootout against Donovan Mitchell. The significance was it came just a couple of days after another incident of police brutality against African-Americans. Jamal is Canadian but has Jamaican heritage and has been the victim of stereotyping before, and in the interview post-game, he was wearing shoes which were custom designed, and had pictures of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who were both killed by Police. He was in tears during that interview speaking about how much that cause meant to him and how special it was to play the way he did and take a stand. There’s an incredible photo of him in the tunnel afterwards on his knees. They used the tournament to give profile to social, issues so on the top of the jersey where names are usually, some players had messages and Jamal’s was ‘freedom’ so to have that moment after the game of his life, was extraordinary.
DAVE: Mine’s one that hasn’t happened yet – when is the first AFL footballer going to come out as gay? There would be a lot footballers in that boat but no-one has come out yet. Why is no-one brave enough do you think, Jonty?
JONTY: I think it will happen soon after we’ve seen Isaac Humphries in basketball and Josh Cavallo in soccer do it in other sports. If it is a solitary player, I think it will be from an interstate club away from the footy bubble. If it is a Victorian-based club’s player, I think you would need a group to do it at the same time to dilute the attention or pressure away from them. I guess it also takes a certain type of personality. Doing that forces you to be a poster-boy for the cause even if you just want to be someone who goes about their footy.
DAVE: It’s interesting because it’s just accepted in life now that there’s so many different ways to live your life but in football there’s this rugged, tough stereotype. I also thought of symbolic moments. When Phil Hughes died and everyone put their bats out on their deck. And Cathy Freeman in 2000, obviously. Just the symbol of her sitting on the ground with all the pressure on her in her suit.
JONTY: I’ll keep it short because Marcus, you have already talked about police brutality, but Naomi Osaka was another who took a stand against it a couple of years ago, getting the names of victims of police brutality emblazoned on a mask she wore at the US Open a couple of years ago. And Adam Goodes has obviously used his standing to champion for social change in the AFL.
DAVE: Nice work boys, a bit of everything there…I’ll take the reins next week.
