When you start each year, your team is like a shiny new car. You love it, you spend ages selecting it, and you spit-polish it within an inch of its life until it glistens in the sunlight and is the envy of the street. Then, slowly but surely, it gets damaged.
Trent Hentschel hurts his knee and it feels like someone keyed it. Liam Anthony gets stress fractures and it feels like someone bent back your aerial. Raines goes down, Ablett goes out, Didak strains his groin, Cornes smashes his shoulder, Hodge, Higgins, Beams, Brown, Broughton, Hartlett and Houlihan go missing and suddenly the entire thing’s a wreck.
You walk into the garage one day and find your tyres let down, your windows smashed in, the words “Parramatta Boyz” sprayed across the door, and some dude jumping up and down on the bonnet.
This is how I feel about my team right now.
Late withdrawals - a short, sharp kick where it hurts
Injuries are bad enough, but at least you can react to them. Late withdrawals, on the other hand, are a different matter entirely. They come out of nowhere, unexpected and unwanted, and can turn victory into defeat in the blink of an eye.
There’s nothing worse than those first few seconds when you realise what has happened. You click on live scores, you scan the list to see how your boy’s doing, and then your eyes start darting around frantically when you can’t find his name.
“Where is Shaun Higgins? Did I miss him? He must be here somewhere! Maybe down the bottom – or up the top – or maybe I’m looking at the wrong team or … what is SCOTT WELSH doing here!?”
Nasty surprises like this can be bad for a Dream Teamers’ health and I’m pretty sure round seven took a year off my life.
In Nick Riewoldt I trust
It can difficult to explain to people, especially girlfriends, just how stressful Dream Team can be.
“It’s just a game,” they say. “It’s just a game played on a computer,” they lecture. But do they know the pain of a late omission? Do they know what it’s like seeing ‘hamstring’ next to a player’s name? I think not. This weekend was a perfect example.
Like many teams, the mighty Mayors were looking the goods with three games to go and a lead of 64 points over our league’s reigning premier, the Maribyrnong Mustangs. That was, of course, until Shaun Higgins’ exit. Our forward back-up, Mitch Brown, had strained a hammy at training and Higgins’ untimely departure meant a Krispy Kreme in the forward line and 115 bonus points to the opposition.
Words cannot describe the sheer, unadulterated panic that followed. Suddenly the game was in the balance and I needed 105 from Nick Riewoldt to get the Mayors over the line.
Death from Dream Team
Normally, you’d think this would be a test of loyalties. After all, I have barracked for the Pies since I was kid and am no fan of St Kilda. I still remember listening to a drawn game against the Saints way back in 1990 and being so angry with the result that I kicked a hole in my bedroom wall.
Given this, it is with some shame that I confess to abandoning my team as soon as the siren sounded. When the Saints kicked the first, I was happy. When they kicked eight in the second, I was thrilled. And when it became perfectly clear that my team was heading for a record loss, all I could think of was this – Awesome! More ball for Nick!
Despite the Pies’ unmitigated flogging, I still needed 10 points from Riewoldt with 10 minutes to go and paced around the room screaming, shouting and striking things until he finally took a mark. When the ball sailed through for a goal and the Mayors hit the front, I was so relieved and so ecstatic that I’m sure I came close to a heart attack, or a brain embolism, or some other form of sudden death.
I wonder if, in 10 years time, Australia’s leading causes of death will read:
1. Heart disease
2. Cancer
3. Road trauma
4. Dream Team
Personally, I think it’s possible.
This week’s question
I know that there are a lot of people out there who are hurting with injuries at the moment. This week, I want to hear your sob stories!
I want you to complete this sentence – “I knew God had personally set out to destroy my Dream Team when…”
Send it 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 for all your responses to last week’s question: “I knew I was hardcore leaguer when…?”
Jeffrey Brown knew when he stood up among fellow West Coast supporters and cheered Stephen Hill of the Dockers.
Wayde Pascoe and Brett Gaborit knew when they engraved shields for their league premiers.
Ben Mitchell knew when he called his opponent in the middle of the night to make him tired, on the off chance he’d choose a bad captain.
And Lyndon Rice knew when his wife went into labour last year and he took the opportunity to put in “some good time” on Dream Team research. Nice.
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.
