After all, players take the field for up to 200,000 teams at once, so the idea that they might try harder for one of them seems a bit stupid. And yet…
If I didn’t know any better, I would swear that some individuals perform less well in the Mayors’ colours than they do when playing for any other club in my league.
Take Jonathan Brown, for example. The Mayors drafted him in Round 10, 2006 after three big hundreds and what looked like career best form. He played one match, injured his back, was said to be out for “one to two” and then didn’t play again until 2007.
After that little debacle, we informed Jonathan that he was no longer welcome at the club – that his body had taken too much punishment over the years and we just couldn’t trust him to front up anymore. Since then, he’s played 56 out of 57 possible games.
The Medusa Touch
I believe, like many other Dream Teach coaches, that I have some sort of magical power that influences a player’s form, fitness and general well being. If I leave a player alone, they prosper. If I draft them into my team, they die.
I’ve often thought that I should hire out my services to an AFL club. For a tidy sum of, say, $50,000 a year, I’d be happy to pick a team based solely on who they’d like to get injured.
Playing Geelong and need Stevie J to miss? Call the Mayors. Think Corey’s played too many consecutive matches and needs a heel spur? Give me a buzz. No matter how fit or talented an AFL player is, I can take him.
It’s got to the point now that I often draft in players not so much because I want them myself, but because I want someone else to lose them. If there’s a team I don’t like in my league and they happen to be doing well, I just target their best players and watch them go down. This is known amongst my friends as a “hard tag”.
Divided loyalties
The ultimate proof that some players play better for others than they do for the Mayors is found when they transfer clubs.
The AFL is full of examples of players that performed brilliantly at their second or third home – players like Ablett, Lockett, Buckley, Williams, Judd, Woewodin (okay, I’m just kidding about that last one). This never happens with the Mayors – or if it does, it’s in reverse.
If we dump someone, they become football geniuses, immune to injury, poor form or the vagaries of team selection. If we pick someone up, however – someone who everyone else has offloaded and we’re hoping to turn around – it only ever ends in disaster.
Just look at what we did to Buddy.
This week’s question
This week, I want you to answer the question “I knew I had the Medusa touch when…” 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 “what’s the silliest Dream Team rumour you’ve ever heard?” There are always plenty of absurd injury rumours flying around and Wade Bunter heard that Nick Dal Santo has played the entire year on a broken leg. That’s some effort, Nick.
Cheers,
Hindy
CEO and coach of the Hindsight Mayors
