Discussion 2024 Grand Final: Teams & In Game Discussion

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#62
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#65
Dane Rampe, Jake Lloyd and Luke Parker have now played in four losing grand finals.

Parker, the substitute in the 2012 grand final, is the only player left on Sydney’s list from their last premiership side.

Tom Papley, Isaac Heeney and Callum Mills have lost Sydney’s last three season deciders 😮
 

KLo30

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#68
Dane Rampe, Jake Lloyd and Luke Parker have now played in four losing grand finals.

Parker, the substitute in the 2012 grand final, is the only player left on Sydney’s list from their last premiership side.

Tom Papley, Isaac Heeney and Callum Mills have lost Sydney’s last three season deciders 😮
Callum Mills?
 
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How do you build a premiership team?

Neale, Dunkley, Cameron, Ah Chee, Daniher...
that's some serious grand final winning talent brought in at the trade table.

Add to that some solid drafting 7-9 years ago to build the spine and engine room of the team (McCluggage, Berry, Big O, Hipwood, Rayner, Bailey, Starcevic, Payne all came in between 2015 and 2017).

Along with some recent spark from young guys (Wilmot, Lohmann, Ashcroft, Fletcher, Morris) and you just about have the recipe :unsure::LOL:
 
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#71
Ashcroft, youngest Norm Smith winner, Fagen, oldest coach to win, also first to win not having played AFL. Most had written them off half way thru the year.
I’m sure there are other remarkable feats but that is a good start!
Oh! Just remembered the story of Morris’ first game earlier this year. Played a reserves game, ate Maccas afterwards, rolled up to watch the game (late Sunday night game), was in the stands, didn’t bring his boots and played in someone else’s boots. Kicked a goal!

McKenna former Essendon player, how many former Essendon players have won a premiership medal since Essendon last won Finals game 🤣 (added for laughs!)
Jack Worrall won 5 premierships without playing VFL/AFL (outstanding career with Fitzroy in the VFA , was one of those involved in forming the VFL)

Also played 11 Tests
 
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Jack Worrall won 5 premierships without playing VFL/AFL (outstanding career with Fitzroy in the VFA , was one of those involved in forming the VFL)

Also played 11 Tests
Almanac Footy: Fitzroy’s Jack Worrall – 19th century sporting superstar
October 13, 2023 by Rod Gillett 4 Comments

Jack Worrall – on a higher level in footy & cricket



9th century sporting superstar Fitzroy’s Jack Worrall

By Rod Gillett

In the lead up to the 2023 AFL Grand Final the footy media commentariat peddled the line that Brisbane Lions coach Chris Fagan would be the first premiership coach since Jack Worrall not to play ‘at the highest level’ if the Lions won.

This was disrespectful to Fagan who played 263 games in senior Tasmanian competitions and kicked 430 goals. He represented Tasmania eleven times and played in two premiership teams. Quite an impressive record, and clearly a proficient footballer.

Even more disrespectful to Jack Worrall that illustrates the lack of research and insight into this history of the game that simply views that the history of football competitions started with the VFL in 1897.

Jack Worrall did play at the highest level of the game, albeit for Fitzroy in the Victorian Football Association in two stints, 1884-87 and 1889-93 playing 90 games and kicking 132 goals captaining the Maroons for seven seasons. He was awarded the Champion of the Colony in 1887 and 1890.

He missed the 1888 season as he was on the Ashes tour of England as an all-rounder. He also toured England again in 1899 as an opener. He played eleven Tests for Australia.

As footballer Worrall was described by a contemporary observer

“…. as a lovely mark, an untiring rover, and a deadly shot with either foot. Of this I had evidence… it was a wet day, and Worrall, after kicking two or three goals right foot, finding the angle more suited for a left shot, deliberately shifted and potted one or two from about fifty yards out” (“Onlooker,” Referee 4 January 1918, p5).​

The VFA was the premier competition in Melbourne in this period until the eight foundation clubs including Fitzroy left at the end of the 1896 season to form the Victorian Football League.

As Colin Carter shows in Football’s Forgotten Years: Reclaiming the AFL competition’s earliest era – 1870 to 1896 (2022) the list of premiers published in the VFL records up until 1915 dates from 1870. He notes the removal of the list from VFL publications in the 1920s.​

Carter puts this down to ‘football politics’ between the VFL and the VFA following the changing of the guard from the VFL’s founding officials who either played or administered clubs in the period prior to 1897.

Both the pre-eminent historian Geoffrey Blainey, who wrote A Game of Our Own (2003) and Mark Pennings, who has written extensively about football in Melbourne in the nineteenth century, both support Carter’s views that the AFL’s records are ‘wrong’ and that ‘they are based on an old feud between two sets of football officials’.

Bizarrely, Jack Worrall is in the AFL Hall of Fame as player for Fitzroy 1884-1893, but unlike all the otherentries no games are recorded.

Yet, he is equal third on the VFL/AFL premiership coach list with five flags (Carlton 1906-08 & Essendon 1911-12) with Frank ‘Checker’ Hughes (five) behind legendary Collingwood coach Jock McHale (eight) and Melbourne master mentor Norm Smith (six).

And ahead of Barassi, Hafey, Jeans, Parkin, Sheedy, and Leigh Matthews, all of whom are either in the Hall of Fame as coaches or as Legends.

After he stops coaching Alistair Clarkson will also be elevated to the Hall of Fame as a coach, which he fully deserves, but nonetheless almost certainly ahead of Jack Worrall.

CoachClub/sPremiership YearsNumber

Jock McHale Collingwood 1917, 1919, 1927-30,1935-36 8
Norm Smith Melbourne 1955-57, 1959-60, 1964 6
Jack Worrall Carlton/Essendon 1906-08; 1911-12 5
Frank Hughes Richmond/Melbourne 1932; 1939-41, 1948 5
Allan Jeans St Kilda/Hawthorn 1966; 1983, 1986, 1988 4
Tom Hafey Richmond 1967, 1969, 1973, 1974 4
Ron Barassi Carlton/North Melbourne 1968, 1970; 1975, 1977 4
David Parkin Hawthorn/Carlton 1978; 1981-82, 1995 4
Kevin SheedyEssendon 1984-85, 1993, 2000 4
Leigh Mathews Collingwood/Brisbane 1990; 2001-2003 4
Alistair Clarkson Hawthorn 2008, 2013-2015 4


However, Worrall is not in the Hall of Fame as a coach or as a Legend. A victim of the contemporaneous nature of the selection process that continues to be a major flaw.

After he finished coaching football, Jack Worrall became a highly regarded football journalist having already began work as a cricket writer soon after his retirement from playing cricket.

As the senior figure in the press box Worrall is ascribed the credit for coining the phrase ‘Bodyline’ to refer to the English bowling in the 1933-34 Ashes series in Australia.

Distinguished historian John Ritchie in the Australian Dictionary of Biography described his writing as follows:

“For over twenty years his columns were characterized by poised sentences and rich vocabulary; for all its partisanship, his direct prose was spiced with comparison, reminiscence and prediction, and conveyed a sense of drama.”​

Not many footballers have an entry in the prestigious Australian Dictionary of Biography.
 
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