In my day (way back in the 90s) you might have seen Greg Williams not in the weight room, but at your school selling photocopier toner, as a friend of mine did. Because the players didn’t just play, they worked. Then they played. Then they usually drank. How times change.
As the late Carlton and Fitzroy great Clen Denning aptly put it, “In those days you trained two nights a week and played on a Saturday, because everybody had jobs in those days.”
Take Paul ‘Molly’ Meldrum who legend has it, walked in off the street and asked for a game. He might not have been in such good nick if he hadn’t been working as a labourer.
Or Wayne Harmes, who worked for Visy when he wasn’t winning us grand finals, just like Juddy. Although Harmesy was a cardboard salesman, not an environmental warrior. Which I think is Juddy’s job description.
Fellow Carlton supporter Tom Elliott (son of John) was working the stock markets in the heady, pre-crash 80’s. He tells me that Sticks Kernahan was as commanding a presence in the trading pit as he was in the forward line. Whether Sticks wore the Gordon Gekko white collar/blue shirt/suspenders combo cannot be verified at time of printing.
Even the coach had a job. The highlight of my university career was bumping into David Parkin at Deakin Uni in Burwood. Although coach at the time, he was also a lecturer in sports coaching. We can only hope he wasn’t giving away too many secrets.
So was it better when football wasn’t so all-encompassing? It’s hard to deny that they’re more skillful and athletic today than they were 20 years ago. But is football’s gain the rest of the world’s loss? Has the world been deprived of motivational speaker ‘Rowdy’ Matthew Kreuzer? Or relaxation expert Mitch Robinson? Or moustache model Dennis Armfield? I guess we’ll never know.
