For my parents’ generation, it was things like the moon landing or the assassination of JFK. For Generation Xers like myself, it’s September 11 or when Princess Di was killed or when you found out that Darth Vadar was Luke Skywalker’s father. (To quote Luke himself – “No! That’s not true! That’s IMPOSSBLE!”)
Last week saw a new event added to this list. No matter how long you play the game for – no matter how long you live or how many matches you contest – every Dream Teamer will remember Thursday, August 6, 2009 when the team lists came in and half of their team was blown to bits.
Lest we forget
You expect some injuries in Toyota AFL Dream Team. You expect some omissions and same late withdrawals. Won’t you don’t expect is for Ross Lyon to suddenly rip your heart out and toss it under a truck.
In military terms, last week wasn’t just a skirmish. It wasn’t just a scuffle or a brawl or a fire fight. It was the Battle of the freakin’ Somme! One minute your troops were fit and firing, and the next some maniac had raked a machine gun over them and you had 22 jumpers full of hamburger meat.
A disaster of biblical proportions
Imagine you had the team listed below. This team isn’t a stretch or a crazy example. It’s full of popular picks, is captained by Gary Ablett and doesn’t contain any players with long term injuries that you should have traded out – such as Dean Cox or Jed Adcock.
Backs: Brendan Goddard, Ryan Hargrave, Sam Fisher, Sam Gilbert, Leigh Harding, Nathan Bock, Jack Grimes, Xavier Ellis, Alex Rance
Centres: Gary Ablett, Leigh Montagna, Lenny Hayes, Brad Sewell, Nick Dal Santo, Dayne Beams, Daniel Rich, Beau Muston
Rucks: Hamish McIntosh, Matthew Kreuzer, Sam Jacobs, Jake Spencer
Forwards: Nick Riewoldt, Paul Chapman, Steve Johnson, Ryan O’Keefe, Lance Franklin, Jonathan Brown, Shaun Higgins, Hayden Ballantyne, Taylor Walker
In round 16, your team would have been raining goals. They would have been bombing them from outside 50, snapping them from the boundary and pumping their fists, performing handstands or clutching telephones Warren Tredrea style.
Your boys would have racked up a lazy 2511 in that round, followed by an equally impressive 2302 in round 17. Only one week away from the finals and you could have been excused for thinking that 2009 was your year. Shaun Higgins had picked up a hammy, but with your scoring power and your depth, surely you could ride this out? Wrong!
Have a guess what this team would have scored over the weekend? 823. That’s right – 823! That’s a 1700 point turnaround in just three weeks! Of course, you could have traded one or two players in preparation for the first final, but what would that have got you? 1000? 1050? I mean, come on!
No one can plan for these sort of disasters and no amount of depth or trades can save you. That is why the ladder-topping Mayors went down in their public league to a little outfit called the Vikings – a team that boasted such Dream Team leviathans as Will Sullivan, Adam Spackman, Kyle Coney, Tom Simpkin, Scott Reed and, of course, Simon Prestigiacomo.
It doesn’t get much worse than that.
This week’s question
This week, I want you to complete this sentence “I’m going to remember round 19 because…?” and send it in 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 week’s question “I knew that a player’s appearance was affecting my selection when…?”
The weirdest answer came from Melissa Bee, who won’t pick players if they have the same hairstyles as certain ex boyfriends. I hope, for your sake, Melissa, that none of these exes were bald.
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.
