Recent Posts
It will be a sad but proud moment for the Essendon football club when Damien Peverill, Jason Johnson, Mal Michael and Adam Ramanaskaus take to the field this weekend against St Kilda.
All four players have announced their resignations on the back of a disappointing season for the Bombers, who are now well and truly out of contention for the top eight.
Ramanaskaus and Johnson both played in the memorable Essendon premiership side of 2000, while Michael is a multi-premiership winner with the Brisbane Lions.
It is the end of a long and illustrious football career for all four players, who have overcome much hardships to share in the glory of the game.
None more so than Adam Ramanauskas, who valiantly fought off a recurrent malignant form of cancer to return to the senior Essendon side.
Their presence, both on and off the field, will be sorely missed.
It will be a sad but proud moment for the Essendon football club when Damien Peverill, Jason Johnson, Mal Michael and Adam Ramanaskaus take to the field this weekend against St Kilda.
All four players have announced their resignations on the back of a disappointing season for the Bombers, who are now well and truly out of contention for the top eight.
Ramanaskaus and Johnson both played in the memorable Essendon premiership side of 2000, while Michael is a multi-premiership winner with the Brisbane Lions.
It is the end of a long and illustrious football career for all four players, who have overcome much hardships to share in the glory of the game.
None more so than Adam Ramanauskas, who valiantly fought off a recurrent malignant form of cancer to return to the senior Essendon side.
Their presence, both on and off the field, will be sorely missed.
If curiosity killed the cat, then what is it that’s killing the careers of modern AFL footballers?
The postmortems of recent times will tell you it’s sex (think Wayne Carey), drugs (Cousins), alcohol (Shaw) or violence (too many to mention). But these are all symptoms, not the cause.
When you dig a little deeper – and not too deeply mind you – it really comes down to three things:
• Ego
• Testosterone
• Clear and utter stupidity
All three factors came into play on Sunday night when the Collingwood Football Club was deeply embarrassed by the serious misconduct of two of its respected and talented footballers, Heath Shaw and Alan Didak.
Shaw admitted his car had collided with a stationary car in Kew at 11:30 pm on 3rd August. More disturbing was the fact that he returned a blood alcohol reading of 0.14 when breath-tested by police at the scene. Still more disturbing was the fact that he lied to the media, falsely stating that Alan Didak had not been in the car with him at the time of the accident. The latter factor – clear and utter stupidity – had once again reared its ugly head at the Collingwood Football Club.
Shaw's indiscretion is the latest of a handful of alcohol-related incidents to have plagued Collingwood off the field in recent years.
In 2006, Chad Morrison was charged with drink driving, and later that year his teammates Ben Johnson and Chris Tarrant - now at Fremantle - were involved in a brawl outside a nightclub.
Last year Didak was threatened with the sack after accepting a ride home with Christopher Wayne Hudson, who subsequently pleaded guilty to killing a man and wounding two others in Melbourne's CBD shootings last year.
In January this year, Collingwood lost its sponsorship deal with the TAC after young midfielder Sharrod Wellingham was also charged with drink driving.
Following the incident, Shaw was punished by being thrown to the media wolves by captain Scott Burns and the Collingwood leadership group. He got off lightly. Meanwhile, Collingwood continues to mourn the death of former champion Darren Millane, whose decision to drive after drinking cost him his life in 1991.
Bombers supporters relished Essendon's inspirational 48-point victory over Collingwood last weekend, but it has come at a cost.
According to Essendon Coach Matthew Knights, tough matches in recent rounds have left a number of key Bombers players feeling sore, including charismatic key forward Scott Lucas
[ Click here to read more ]
Let me first state that nobody could ever replace Hird in the hearts and minds of the thousands of loyal Essendon supporters throughout the country. James Hird is an undisputed legend of the game and always will be.
At the same time, AFL football is a forward-looking game; a game where rules are refined and records are broken, where legends are honoured and new heroes rise in the ashes of their former glory
[ Click here to read more ]
Regular readers of this blog will notice that it has been quite a while since I posted anything, and yes, there is a very good reason for that. You see, I've actually been in China for the last few weeks.
Now China is an incredible place to visit - I mean, that place is absolutely pumping in the lead up to the Olympics - but let's just say that AFL is not exactly a priority for the national newspapers and television networks over there. It's just about the only thing you can't get in China
[ Click here to read more ]
Credit Where Credit is Due: Excessive Criticism of Humanitarian Aid Organisations is Unnecessary and Counter-Productive
On 8th May 2008 I was invited to address the board of Oxfam Australia about risk management in not-for-profit aid organisations. Just the night before, the world had been rocked by news of a devastating cyclone in Burma putting tens of thousands of lives in jeopardy, and frankly I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would I find a group of out-of-touch dreamers, stuck in a time warp, overwhelmed by the challenges confronting them, with noble ambitions but limited professional capacity? Or would I find a group of disillusioned bureaucrats, lacking in vision, without a dream, more interested in bean-counting and number-crunching than in making the world a better place? Or perhaps something else entirely
[ Click here to read more ]
Blomley v Ryan: The Decision
In the majority, McTiernan and Fullagar JJ (the JJ after their names means “Justices” Mctiernan and Fullagar) ruled that the contract should be set aside. This meant that Ryan won the case and he didn’t have to sell the property to Blomley at an undervalue. Kitto J dissented, but he was in the minority, so his judgement didn’t affect the outcome
[ Click here to read more ]
|
|
Recent Comments
I've not commented on anything yet :(
|
Add Comments
Read More
Comments (1)