Virtually every aspect of the game involves a significant degree of stress. There’s the initial selection of your side, trading, watching, picking captains, picking reserves, and, worst of all, the dreaded whispers that pop up each week and seem to suggest that every player in your team is under some sort of cloud.
If I had a dime for every time Brad Johnson was supposed to pull out over the years ... The man is about as injury prone as a sack of 50 cent pieces, but that didn’t stop the rumour-mongers predicting his downfall week in, week out for the better part of a decade.
Every game you play you always hear the same stuff. “Gary Ablett is OUT!” “Nick Riewoldt has swine flu!” “I saw Hamish McIntosh at training and he was favouring his left ear!”
You tell yourself it’s probably garbage, but it still scares the bejeezus out of you anyway, and when the game finally starts and you realise you’ve been had, all you want to do is hunt these people down and kill them.
Jimmy goes doooown!
Pre-game speculation is bad enough, but it’s nothing compared what happens when a game begins.
Watching an AFL match is nerve-racking at the best of times, partly because coaches are so pessimistic when it comes to their own players. If Cornes doesn’t touch it for two minutes it’s “Where’s Kane?!?” If Swan gets two less in the third then he did in the second, it’s “Dane has STOPPED!” And if a rookie spends the first 10 minutes on the bench, there’s always someone scrambling through the record book trying to work out what happens when a player gets zero.
This natural tendency towards panic is exacerbated by other coaches. If you’re not at the game or watching it on TV, you’re forced to rely on the internet and the legions of misinformed panic-merchants that clog up the web.
If Hayes so much as looks at his hamstring, it’s “Lenny gone for the game!” If Goddard wipes his sleeve, he’s somehow broken his arm. And if Jimmy Bartel happens to tumble over, get to his feet, and then jog back towards the play, the first thing you’ll hear is “Jimmy goes dooown!”
This week’s question
This week, I want you to tell me the silliest Dream Team rumour you’ve ever heard. Send your answers to dreamteam@afl.com.au, making sure to put ‘Hindy’ in the subject line. I’ll run the best answers in next week’s column.
Thanks to all those people who answered last weeks’ question and sent in their biggest Dream Team heroes and villains.
Brendan Fevola got plenty of mentions (now there’s a surprise) but Anita Phillipp chose Hayden Ballantyne and/or the people who kept telling her that his debut was “just around the corner.”
I feel your pain, Anita. I had Jonathan Brown a couple of years ago who was supposed to miss one week with a back and didn’t play again in the second half of the year.
Cheers,
Hindy
CEO and coach of the Hindsight Mayors
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
