Comparing players from different eras is always a difficult task but a fun topic to contemplate nevertheless. The reality is that the average player will always be better than in previous generations.
Sometimes perception and fact become confused and as memories fade we tend to remember only the best of the former stars.
I had the great pleasure of coaching Daics for much of his career and the great problem of coaching against Didak for most of his.
It is not only that they both wore the Collingwood jumper, they also have a very similar look and style.
For a start they both have that same long body - short legs physique. This provides a low centre of gravity and is the perfect shape to have great balance and the ability to twist and turn out of the grasp of opposition tacklers. A hallmark of both players.
I think Didak has a quicker burst of acceleration, a bigger leap and can probably run harder, although resting on interchange a couple of times a quarter allows these short explosive bursts.
That’s about it. In every other facet Daics would be superior. A better kick both on both his dominant and non dominant side, a better body-to-body mark and had a proven ability to play brilliantly as a medium-sized full forward later in his career.
The night in 1991 when he kicked 13 goals against the Brisbane Bears was the perfect example of a goal-kicking genius in action.
Apart from their similar shape and size it is the ability to kick the freakish goal that sets them apart.
Last Saturday against the Swans , Didak’s soccered goal-scoring attempt from the boundary line deep in the forward pocket, for a moment, looked like making the impossible possible. It was so Daicos like. Turning slim, half chances into goals.
The modern player has such fantastic ball control that we see freakish goals kicked quite regularly in recent years.
What Daics could do with a footy almost 20 years ago was well ahead of almost all his peers at the time.
His best had to be a goal he kicked in the qualifying final of 1990. It was a similar set up to the Didak attempt last Saturday.
Hemmed in to the Waverley Park forward pocket, his left side to the boundary line with an opponent about to tackle from the inside, Daics took possession and curled a low grubber kick off the outside of his right foot which somehow landed at the feet of the goal umpire and continued on for an amazing goal.
No better goal has ever been kicked.
It should be no criticism of Didak to say that Daicos was a better player.
In fact for a player still only 26 with many years ahead it is a compliment that we can genuinely compare the two.
The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
