From Dusty the ‘waddler’ to the Kennett Curse: Footy’s worst calls
DUSTY to become a “waddler”. The Dees to be the hardest team to play against under Mark Neeld. Collingwood to move forward as one under Buckley and Malthouse. These are the AFL crystal-ball calls that went horribly wrong.
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COACHES, players and media personalities take to the airwaves, TV shows and newspapers every day to feed the insatiable appetite of the footy public.
Many of the things they say are stupid, misguided or just plain wrong.
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These are the AFL crystal ball moments that went horribly wrong.
Dusty the “waddler”
“His currency right now ... is as good as it’s ever going to be.” — Dermott Brereton
IT’S a good thing Dermott Brereton isn’t a player agent.
The Hawthorn great could have cost Dustin Martin millions of dollars had he been negotiating the Brownlow medallist’s contracts.
Brereton predicted Martin would become a “waddler” and urged him to take a reported three-year offer worth $800,000 a year to join a fledgling GWS in 2010.
“I’m looking at him from an outsider’s perspective and thinking he’s going to turn into a waddler,” Brereton said of the two-time All-Australian premiership star.
“He might still be a very good player, but he’ll have to be a very good inside player.”
“His currency right now, in relative terms to the market, is as good as it’s ever going to be.”
Martin stayed at the Tigers and in 2017 capped off what Leigh Matthews suggested was the greatest individual season — premiership, Brownlow Medal, Norm Smith Medal, Player’s Association MVP, AFL coaches award, Gary Ayres Medal, Richmond best-and-fairest — with an $8 million-dollar deal, turning down an even richer offer from North Melbourne in the process.
Not bad for a waddler.
The AFL’s ugly cygnet
“Unless the Swans change that style of play, they won’t win many football matches.” — Andrew Demetriou
Then-AFL boss Andrew Demetriou made clear his distaste for Sydney’s game plan midway through the 2005 season.
Unfortunately for Demetriou, Paul Roos was holding aloft the premiership cup shouting “Here it is!” just months later.
While Sydney’s low-scoring matches weren’t always easy on the eye, their run to the flag included one of the great finals victories over Geelong and a Grand Final thriller against West Coast.
Roos never forgot the Demetriou comments.
“What Andrew said was disrespectful, it was unnecessary, it was strange,” he wrote in his 2017 autobiography.
“This is not a criticism of Demetriou, but my knowledge of footy is far greater than his. I couldn’t have run the AFL, his knowledge of business was greater than mine.
“But for him to try to tell me how to do my job was farcical. Someone from the AFL Commission could have come out and said something about it in respect to the comment, but it’s over and done with now.”
Eddie’s dream team
‘‘Today I can say we go forward as one.’’ — Mick Malthouse
Eddie McGuire’s infamous Collingwood succession plan will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
McGuire had assembled his dream team in 2009: the veteran coach Mick Malthouse would step aside at the end of 2011 to assume a “Director of Coaching” role, with club great Nathan Buckley installed as coach.
But following a season of controversy and conjecture, Malthouse walked out on Collingwood after losing the 2011 Grand Final.
And it didn’t take long for Malthouse to turn on his former protege once ensconced in a media position for season 2012.
His criticism of Collingwood’s game plan prompted McGuire to suggest the former premiership coach “would not have a friend at Collingwood today’’.
And while McGuire predicted a bright future, perhaps the pending calamity was written all over Malthouse from the start.
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Mike Sheahan wrote this of Malthouse as he sat beside Buckley and McGuire at the unveiling of the succession plan: “His body language did not match his words.”
Sheahan summed it up best in his article that day titled Amicably into the unknown.
“It is a marriage made in heaven for Eddie McGuire, who wanted what most of us believed improbable if not impossible — two virile, strong-willed, hungry bulls in the same paddock.”
Malthouse this week confirmed Sheahan’s suspicion, saying he agreed to the succession plan under significant personal duress.
“My wife was ill, my daughter had a shocking pregnancy,” Malthouse said on the Don’t Argue podcast.
“There was a whole heap of things that was happening internally and in the end it just got the better of me and I said, ‘Damn this, whatever they want let’s do’ because it just got too hard, because there were too many things..
“If that’s what the club wanted let them have it.”
Treloar’s list analysis
“Richmond have a lot of good players ... but I think Collingwood have a better list, and a younger list, who in a couple of years’ time can hopefully win a premiership.” — Adam Treloar
Adam Treloar didn’t pull any punches in his first press conference as a Collingwood player, making clear his reasons for choosing the Magpies over Richmond which had also pursued the former Giant during the 2015 trade period.
And his prediction looked sound when the Tigers coughed up a 17-point lead late in their Round 2 clash with Collingwood the next year. Treloar put an exclamation point on that victory by ruffling the hair of Richmond captain Trent Cotchin after the final siren.
The Pies went on to finish 2016 in 12th position — one place higher than Richmond.
But that’s where Treloar’s prediction turned sour.
Richmond took all before it in 2017 on the way to a historic premiership victory while a mediocre Collingwood missed the finals for a fourth consecutive season.
Neeld miss
“That means all over the ground we’re going to be the hardest to play against.” — Mark Neeld
Mark Neeld’s brief stint as Melbourne coach will go down as a true footy debacle.
The Demons won five of 33 games under Neeld — losing several by more than 100 points — in a season-and-a-half of the most uncompetitive football since Fitzroy’s final days.
Neeld oversaw a shambolic team beset by controversy and tragedy (the death of Jim Stynes, a tanking saga, sponsorship woes) which went into a tailspin in his first game in charge and never recovered.
Shortly after his appointment, Neeld outlined his plans for the Demons new style of play.
“I simply want to coach the team that is the hardest to play against in the AFL,” he said.
“That means all over the ground we’re going to be the hardest to play against. There will be a number of components that come with that.”
The Kennett Curse
“They don’t have the psychological drive that we have.” — Jeff Kennett
No list of footy gaffes would be complete without Kennett.
The self-professed “football-loving bogon” delivered that bleak assessment of the Geelong players after the Hawks caused one of the great Grand Final upsets in 2008.
And thus the Kennett Curse was born.
As legend has it, the comment outraged the Geelong players who pledged to never again lose to the Hawks while they were at the club.
The Cats proceeded to punish Hawthorn in 11 consecutive games; a run that included two post-siren victories and the 2011 qualifying final and continued long after Kennett’s original presidential tenure.
The Hawks picked a good time to break the hoodoo, downing the Cats in a tight preliminary final on their way to the 2013 premiership.