Education & Reference The most interesting people on BigFooty

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RussellEbertHandball said:
Thanks for the compliment DOP and another one a few weeks ago thread on the main board I think. What do you want to know??
Click to expand...

How is it you are one of the few posters on this site who actually "gets" it re how modern footy is organised at a media/business/political level?
 
Quite a few posters are generally pretty good to read. Over on the Crows board Carl Spackler is golden. Very sarcastic and wrote a heap of hilarious fictional transcripts back in 10/11.
Over this side though, Caesar is very switched on. Bunsen burner was always interesting. I also find that i have very similar views to Quivorir on a lot of things too.
 

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Flawed Genius said:
Basically, there's a few people on BigFooty (more than a few, as I begin to read boards I've never stumbled across) who I am always hoping will post stories of their exploits, whether they are travel related, or work related, or anything involved with their lives.

I thought this could become somewhat of a "story-time" thread, but firstly, who are the people on BigFooty, whether it's on GD or any other board, who you feel like could pop up with a story that would blow you away at any time?

Personally, I always find Herne Hill Hammer interesting. Trying to piece together his employment history is difficult and yet I feel like he'd have stories for days about working in prisons, etc.

DawOfPromotion has a knack for telling stories and the vast majority of his posts are informative, if not a little vague & slightly secretive.

I read every post Gough makes in full. Don't know why, but I just do.

Others include Malifice blackcat (although I can't make sense of his posts the majority of the time) and the late fairdinkum.

So who's posts do you enjoy the most, and who do you wish would drop stories from their lives on the board?
Click to expand...

lol, thanks Flawed, I'll try and give you a time line to help you out. Sorry to get away from the so far light hearted nature of the thread.

Started at Coles in the afternoons after school in '83. Left school after year 11 in '84 and stayed with Coles. Great job as a young bloke, good social life and heaps of young impressionable chicks.;) I seemed to have the knack for it and really liked it.

Left right at the start of '88 and went to the mines in WA as a mill operator. The trip to the west on a train in sit up is still one of the most memorable trips I've ever had 25 years later. Full of back packers from all walks of life, telling stories, drinking and having sing alongs. Worked a 13 day fortnight for the first 6 months (every second Sunday off) then went onto shift work, 7 days on, 3 days off, 7 nights on, 4 days off. Three months before I left and 3 days before I turned 21 the mine flooded and 6 men drowned, 1 of them a good friend, was downhill after that. Left there after the first week of finals in '89. Got back to the Cattery just in time for Geelong to smack Melbourne :) and Essendon :) and lose to Hawthorn :( .

Had a couple of jobs to keep the boredom at bay, I worked in an abattoir as a casual for 4 days on the mutton line, I actually fell asleep standing on my feet, was ******* horrible but it's one of those things that I'm glad I had a look at. Next I was putting aluminium doors and windows together for a couple of weeks luckily some of the old Coles bosses got wind that I was back in town so after a few calls I went back to them as a nightfill manager / ordering officer. Was great until the recession 'that we had to have' hit and the job turned to custard so I decided one day that I would join the Navy, something that I first thought about when I was 12 and had originally planned to do as a junior recruit when I was 15.

I joined the Navy when I was 24 as a storeman because my previous experience meant that I could be in within 3 months, the jobs that really interested me, Survey Recorder (Hydrographic Survey I believe these days) and Electronic Warfare Linguist (Crypotolgical Linguist now) were at least an 18 month wait. I was based on patrol boats in Cairns for a couple of years, illegal fisherman mainly and a small trickle of boat people. Myself and a few crew mates spent one memorable night drinking and telling stories with Billy Thorpe and his band at the Nippon Night Club in Broome.

When we used to apprehend the Indonesia fishing boats and take their crews on board for their safety in rough weather, it used to be embarrassing to me that no one could speak Indonesian so I started thinking about changing over to become a linguist. I left Cairns and went to Canberra working on the national stores computing help desk after the ADF had upgraded their stores computing system. I lasted 18 months doing that before finally taking the leap and training as a linguist. 6 months full time at the ADF school of languages at Point Cook in Melbourne, with a month at uni. in Yogyakarta and then close enough to 12 months doing the electornic warfare component at Cabarlah just north of Toowoomba in Qld. From there it was back to Canberra and DSD for the remainder of my time in the Navy.

I was there for Timor, Tampa, the start of Afghanistan and the Hainan Island incident. I was also part of the team that set up the first desk aimed at specifically trying to track SIEVs into Australia (like trying to find a needle in a haystack in those days). I left the Navy in '02 and bought a small post office in north eastern Victoria, near the Murray River between Shepparton and Cobram. I owned that for 4 1/2 years.

Sold that in '07 and moved back to Geelong. I went to the round 5 game at Geelong against North in '07 and was fuming after they'd lost.:mad: The rest of the season went ok though :D Looked like I picked a good year to move back. I became a prison officer later that year. I lasted almost 4 years doing that, it would rank with the abattoir as probably the worst job I've done. When they recruit you they say 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror. Don't know about the sheer terror bit but it was pretty close to the mark. Was working the day that Williams copped it although not in the particular unit. I resigned as a fulltime officer in September '10 but remained as a casual, just in case. I trained with ESTA as a 000 call taker for the CFA / SES. I completed all of the training and then decided that it wasn't for me. We made the decision to sell up, buy a caravan and travel around for a bit on our way to WA. I continued to work at the prison up until we left.

I had reconnected with a couple of mates that I joined they Navy with and they were working in the mines over here, they told me I should come over. As fate would have it, they were in the town that I worked and lived in, in the late 80s. We travelled for around 6 months and lobbed here in July '11. We've been here since then.

Out of that lot, the best 2 jobs have been my first stint at Coles and my time as a linguist in the Navy. Having said that, I don't mind what I'm doing now and I definitley love the roster, 8 days on and 6 days off. It's very physically demanding work so I'll have to start looking to move up again.

Hope this brief outline helps you nail things down, lol.
 
Herne Hill Hammer said:
lol, thanks Flawed, I'll try and give you a time line to help you out. Sorry to get away from the so far light hearted nature of the thread.

Started at Coles in the afternoons after school in '83. Left school after year 11 in '84 and stayed with Coles. Great job as a young bloke, good social life and heaps of young impressionable chicks.;) I seemed to have the knack for it and really liked it.

Left right at the start of '88 and went to the mines in WA as a mill operator. The trip to the west on a train in sit up is still one of the most memorable trips I've ever had 25 years later. Full of back packers from all walks of life, telling stories, drinking and having sing alongs. Worked a 13 day fortnight for the first 6 months (every second Sunday off) then went onto shift work, 7 days on, 3 days off, 7 nights on, 4 days off. Three months before I left and 3 days before I turned 21 the mine flooded and 6 men drowned, 1 of them a good friend, was downhill after that. Left there after the first week of finals in '89. Got back to the Cattery just in time for Geelong to smack Melbourne :) and Essendon :) and lose to Hawthorn :( .

Had a couple of jobs to keep the boredom at bay, I worked in an abattoir as a casual for 4 days on the mutton line, I actually fell asleep standing on my feet, was ******* horrible but it's one of those things that I'm glad I had a look at. Next I was putting aluminium doors and windows together for a couple of weeks luckily some of the old Coles bosses got wind that I was back in town so after a few calls I went back to them as a nightfill manager / ordering officer. Was great until the recession 'that we had to have' hit and the job turned to custard so I decided one day that I would join the Navy, something that I first thought about when I was 12 and had originally planned to do as a junior recruit when I was 15.

I joined the Navy when I was 24 as a storeman because my previous experience meant that I could be in within 3 months, the jobs that really interested me, Survey Recorder (Hydrographic Survey I believe these days) and Electronic Warfare Linguist (Crypotolgical Linguist now) were at least an 18 month wait. I was based on patrol boats in Cairns for a couple of years, illegal fisherman mainly and a small trickle of boat people. Myself and a few crew mates spent one memorable night drinking and telling stories with Billy Thorpe and his band at the Nippon Night Club in Broome.

When we used to apprehend the Indonesia fishing boats and take their crews on board for their safety in rough weather, it used to be embarrassing to me that no one could speak Indonesian so I started thinking about changing over to become a linguist. I left Cairns and went to Canberra working on the national stores computing help desk after the ADF had upgraded their stores computing system. I lasted 18 months doing that before finally taking the leap and training as a linguist. 6 months full time at the ADF school of languages at Point Cook in Melbourne, with a month at uni. in Yogyakarta and then close enough to 12 months doing the electornic warfare component at Cabarlah just north of Toowoomba in Qld. From there it was back to Canberra and DSD for the remainder of my time in the Navy.

I was there for Timor, Tampa, the start of Afghanistan and the Hainan Island incident. I was also part of the team that set up the first desk aimed at specifically trying to track SIEVs into Australia (like trying to find a needle in a haystack in those days). I left the Navy in '02 and bought a small post office in north eastern Victoria, near the Murray River between Shepparton and Cobram. I owned that for 4 1/2 years.

Sold that in '07 and moved back to Geelong. I went to the round 5 game at Geelong against North in '07 and was fuming after they'd lost.:mad: The rest of the season went ok though :D Looked like I picked a good year to move back. I became a prison officer later that year. I lasted almost 4 years doing that, it would rank with the abattoir as probably the worst job I've done. When they recruit you they say 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror. Don't know about the sheer terror bit but it was pretty close to the mark. Was working the day that Williams copped it although not in the particular unit. I resigned as a fulltime officer in September '10 but remained as a casual, just in case. I trained with ESTA as a 000 call taker for the CFA / SES. I completed all of the training and then decided that it wasn't for me. We made the decision to sell up, buy a caravan and travel around for a bit on our way to WA. I continued to work at the prison up until we left.

I had reconnected with a couple of mates that I joined they Navy with and they were working in the mines over here, they told me I should come over. As fate would have it, they were in the town that I worked and lived in, in the late 80s. We travelled for around 6 months and lobbed here in July '11. We've been here since then.

Out of that lot, the best 2 jobs have been my first stint at Coles and my time as a linguist in the Navy. Having said that, I don't mind what I'm doing now and I definitley love the roster, 8 days on and 6 days off. It's very physically demanding work so I'll have to start looking to move up again.

Hope this brief outline helps you nail things down, lol.
Click to expand...




nah kidding, it was a good write up :)
 
DawOfPromotion said:
How is it you are one of the few posters on this site who actually "gets" it re how modern footy is organised at a media/business/political level?
Click to expand...

Ah probably because when I was ten I changed schools, I had 4 sisters and went to an all boys school, got away from the girls for part of the day, started watching and playing sports in particular Aussie Rules an cricket seriously, it helped me fit in at school, started watching, listening and reading politics seriously eg started listening to ABC radio flagship programs AM and PM so that next year when Gough was sacked I knew what was going. When I was 13, Packer changed cricket and sports in Oz for ever. I was a cricket tragic and had to learn the whys and how's of what happened and in particular the power of TV.

Went and lived in Canada and travelled extensively in North America when I was 24 for 12 months. Saw how big an event Gretzky being traded unwillingly from Edmonton to LA was, it was the time of Ben Johnson and all the build up and then fall out of getting caught, including watching some of the subsequent Dubin inquiry live on TV, got pay TV and had a 24 hour sports channel TSN and saw the impact that had on sports broadcasting. Canada was a lot like Oz in sports ie had a strong amateur structure unlike the US which if you didn't go to college you retired from competitive sports at 20, so I read and talked to people who explained how Canadian sports became professional over the previous 20 years, and studied what happened in the USA sports and somehow kept up with what was going on in all 4 professional sports. Basically from that experience I saw what was coming down the pipeline to Oz sports over the next 5, 10 and 15 years.

I am Olympics nut so I study that closely and that is a great intersection of politics, sports and media. Was hooked on the Olympics when my mate at school brought his uncle's 1968 hockey silver medal to show and tell during the 1972 Olympics. I was a cold war warrior and the Olympics was a bit of a substitute for the cold war in the late 1970's and 1980's. I am an athletics fan as much as an Aussie Rules fan so you gotta understand politics to understand that sport. I moved to Sydney in 1992 over a year before winning the hosting bid. Watched that and the next 7 years after winning the hosting rights in the lead up to Sydney 2000 watched the machinations of sports, media and politics. I think people don't understand how getting the Olympics to Australia changed how sports is run in this country. It had a massive impact of professionalising sports across the board in Oz and how a whole lot of people who worked for SOCOG got this great experience and went and worked for sports organisations around the country after 2000.

My mate I did an MBA with was a senior executive at SOCOG from late 1997. At 25 he was in charge of all venues catering at the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games. We talked a lot about what was going on in the 3 years leading up to Sydney. Eight months after the Olympics we put our heads together an went and made a presentation to Athletics Australia to build a membership driven fan base and projected over 3 to 5 years we could double their revenue. We had s**t timing. A few weeks earlier AA had employed a new marketing manager from the UK who had worked with the British Athletics Association. They weren't prepared to outsource a large chunk of their marketing to us.

I like to understand things to the nth degree. In 1995 I read Garry Linnell's Football Ltd - The inside story of the AFL, about how the AFL went from a suburb league to a national league. That helped a fair bit.

Living in Sydney between the early to mid 1990's I saw up close how successful the NSWRL were marketing their game and were expanding nationally, but the AFL were struggling withe their expansion. Sydney and Brisbane were basket cases on and off the field and WCE whilst doing well on field had massive financial problems off field thanks to being forced to pay $4mil up front for the licence fee + set up costs and the failed float of the company that owned them. I feared rugby league was going to take over as the dominate code.

Then Murdoch and Packer gave Aussie Rules a big free kick by tearing RL apart. It was all driven by the on coming pay TV industry and internet and set top boxes. It started because Arko and Quaylie went to News Ltd and Ansett ( owned 50% by News Ltd) in 1994 and asked them to pay the Winfield cigarettes premium sponsorship - remember they had naming rights and all TV and radio advertising was pulled in the 1970's and then in the 1980's sports sponsorship was their only marketing outlet, but in the early 90's the federal government banned sports sponsorship by tobacco companies but allowed existing contracts to run their terms. Ken Cowley said there is no way they would pay a $12mil/yr sponsorship ie tobacco premium. Toyota today are paying about $10mil/year for sponsorship. Cowley found out Packer paid about $3mil/year for TV rights as he had bullied NSWRL down to bugger all. News Ltd knew this was a joke and the mix of sponsorship vs TV rights monies was wrong and pounced. The rest is history.

Then the NRL set up with News Ltd as 50% owners, having all veto powers as a way to recoup their $560mil lost in the Super League war was important to understand the way RL was run. Like the Olympics, living in Sydney at the time allowed me to see up close and personal these great shifts and power plays and to understand them compared to someone living in the southern states. And being someone who likes to know things to the nth degree it meant you had to dig a fair bit to fully understand it.

And then my footy club is subjected to the cold war footy politics of 1990 when we tried to join the AFL but was thwarted by an organisation who said they didn't want to join. I have had to understand footy politics since then.

Before the Sydney Olympics I didn't really care about stadium yields and knowing all details of the finances of my club and the AFL to the nth degree. But in 2000 the game went professional ie players full time, the impact of the Olympics, Docklands being built and ch 7 losing TV rights basically at Christmas 2000 changed everything. If you wanted to understand the game from that point on, you had to dig to the nth degree.

As the Coodabeens say it was a WNBG - a whole new ball game.

If you don't join the dots and you forget or don't understand the past and why things are the way they are, you wont see and understand the future.
 
RussellEbertHandball said:
If you don't join the dots and you forget or don't understand the past and why things are the way they are, you wont see and understand the future.
Click to expand...

Great post.

Final line is telling. I suppose it is why many North posters are so clued in as to how the AFL political economy works. We have to be, to survive.
 
Caesar said:
...
I reckon the internet exaggerates people's personality traits. I'm way more opinionated and full of myself on here than I am in real life. It's a place where you can really cut loose and not have to worry about what everyone else thinks of you.
Click to expand...

Not only this... but since the rise in power of Google people have a wealth of information at their finger tips (ok and images). If they're making a point they can quickly and easily look it up to strengthen their point. In RL they would be less sure, less committed and would mostly just STFU in case they're wrong.
 
RussellEbertHandball said:
If you don't join the dots and you forget or don't understand the past and why things are the way they are, you wont see and understand the future.
Click to expand...

Most people could live several hundred lifetimes and not really understand the implications of these two lines. If I was wearing a hat right now I'd take it off.
 

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Gasometer said:
Mine-

Hard_to_Beat is someone you other 17 other teams dont wanna mess with here on BF. Glad he is a Roos supporter.

mantis like her dog sagas.

NSWCROW...who else posts a thread on their bday and asks what did ya get me?

Cruyff14 has excellent music knowledge.
Click to expand...
Oh thanks Gas. You'd be cool to hang out with too, providing you don't bring pics to reply to me :D
 
The Reaper said:
Hard_to_Beat has to be the most interesting poster on the site and over the past few months I've found myself in the weird position where I'm actually agreeing with some things he says.
Click to expand...

Good bloke to sink piss with.
 
Love reading through REH's posts, in particular the one above for obvious reasons. Ridiculously informative over a very wide array of topics

Whenever reading through general discussion, I find Poseidon's posts humourous, just short little stupid witty one liners which make me laugh inside.

DOP has some very interesting stuff to say as well. Obviously a fair bit of trolling on the main board, the success of which is varied depending on how much effort is put in, but opens up about his career/life experiences with some impressive stories elsewhere more than most.

I reckon Silent Alarm is ok, theres a bit of narcissm that comes through his posts sometimes, but has some interesting theories which are well written and an outlook on life that I can understand. Also, I grew up reasonably near Albany and am a similar age so have played footy/cricket with and against a few of the kids he talks up/down on the draft board and have heard similar stories about certain people that he has brough up on here.
 
royals1922 had a good period at the end of 2011 with his SFA threads.

I like reading Quivorir posts as he's the sort who makes a quip here and there and moves onto another thread with little fuss.

Andonis1997, lmach, Mowse amongst others for their ripping designs.

Mowse, in particular for his Mowscot Manor works.

Special mention to Knightmare, Chris25 and Quigley for their comprehensive run through's of the mock drafts in particular Quigley's 2009 mock draft with his disclaimer.

UpForGrabs for his WAFL Stats thread.

The stats guys RogersResults, worbod and @RonTheBear who have a ridiculous amount of statistical storage.

TheBrownDog for his enviable ability to accumulate posts.

questionable, the brain behind the legendary RompingWins thread.

Mero for his wealth of design experience and the creator of a fantastic website.

Duritz for his ability to lose the plot/trolling which I find entertaining.

Likewise vjknight.

No one can surpass the story-telling ability of grizzlym whose father has given a certain thread some pure gold.

Last but not least, an old schoolmate of mine by the name of aplant92.
 
Hellgood said:
I reckon Silent Alarm is ok, theres a bit of narcissm that comes through his posts sometimes, but has some interesting theories which are well written and an outlook on life that I can understand. Also, I grew up reasonably near Albany and am a similar age so have played footy/cricket with and against a few of the kids he talks up/down on the draft board and have heard similar stories about certain people that he has brough up on here.
Click to expand...
Get aboard the Darcy Cameron and Corey Byrne bandwagon!

EDIT: TheAlbany lads (as they've self-anointed themselves) who came up this year, are they doing anything other than drinking Emu Export and going to Cap-S?
 
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