The good, the bad and the ugly
Cold reality hits when the AFL ride ends – RFNews – realfooty.com.au
Cold reality hits when the AFL ride endsTimothy Boyle | October 3, 2009
“MOST of the good things that happen to you in the AFL – like most good things in general – are only really definable once lost. You may perhaps know that something is good or be grateful for it, but until that something ends its goodness is immeasurable. I knew to some extent that the AFL as an experience was a rarity, but only now that it’s ended can I take its full measure.
Although the AFL, for the most part, operates under the laws of society, it is by any other measure a world of its own. Like riding in the palm of a giant, you’re held aloft and safe from the world and infused with a brilliant, but false, sense of power.
Eventually, football opens its palm and pours you back into the world. For me, it’s a little colder, a little bigger and a little lonelier than I remember.
I’m sure there were times during injury and poor form that I considered bad times in my career. Maybe there were even times when I doubted football as a positive thing. The mind has a strange way of absolving anything that stains an otherwise good memory and, in retrospect, there are a lot of things I’ll miss.
The drawbacks of a great experience are shelved somewhere in one’s mind for the betterment of its memory. Like a lesson learnt through hardship, barely spoken of again but tidied into self-awareness by the sub-conscious.”
Read more > http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/rfnews/cold-reality-hits/2009/10/02/1254418713081.html
Reading this reminds me of why I despise players like Brendon Fevola. That fact that someone as stupid as Fevola gets so much attention (mainly for being stupid) and takes the spotlight away from the other kinds of young people, like Tim Boyle, who play AFL, is his real crime. Tim is obviously thoughtful, intelligent and not as uncommon as those who want to believe that people like Fevola ‘represent’ AFL players. I was recently at a conference about football, gender and race and one of the speakers spoke incredulously of the possibility of considering AFL footballers as ‘positive role models’. I felt mildly infuriated. But then I realised that to those ‘outside’ football culture, the stories and images that remain in their minds are those created by the likes of Fevola and his knuckle headed mate, Sam Newman.
Nice work, Tim.
