Best Aerialist
- Thread starter Roddy
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- Dec 9, 2015
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He's pretty good but I think G Ablett snr is still the best
Nope. Trevor Barker, Ablett, Jesaulenko, Hunter and Bosustow probably top him.
Shaun Smith not bad either.
Howe is very consistent and not many regular high markers in this decade that readily come to mind.
Andrew Walker and Brett Burton were good ones previous decade.
Every match has cameras everywhere now so no high mark gets missed.
Would have been heaps not caught on camera a few decades back. Especially Trevor Barker as Saints rarely were on tv in his time.
Maybe two or three Saints matches a year on tv so most of his marks were probably missed.
Shaun Smith not bad either.
Howe is very consistent and not many regular high markers in this decade that readily come to mind.
Andrew Walker and Brett Burton were good ones previous decade.
Every match has cameras everywhere now so no high mark gets missed.
Would have been heaps not caught on camera a few decades back. Especially Trevor Barker as Saints rarely were on tv in his time.
Maybe two or three Saints matches a year on tv so most of his marks were probably missed.
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Go and watch one of the "Ablett highlights" packages if you've got a spare hour or two
Russell Robertson, Brett Burton and Howe are the ones that stand out to me this century.
Modra and Ablett when I was a kid
Modra and Ablett when I was a kid
Currently, Howe easily
Over the last 50 years, he would still be top 10
Over the last 50 years, he would still be top 10
Tony Modra….but Jeremy Howe is the best in 20 odd years for sure.
Yeah, Robbo was good.
Tom De Koning takes some big marks for someone still relatively new to senior footy.
Modra was one earlier I forgot about so good mention.
Peter Knights another I liked as a kid.
Probably my favourite Hawk to watch play footy along with Cyril more recently.
Yeah, he certainly in top ten in last 40 years for sure.
Some Idiot
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Think Howe's way ahead of Robbo and Burton, as good as they were.
Bluelegs
Celebrating what we're good at
Howe in 2012 and 2013 would actually take them every week. The degree of difficulty on some of them was crazy. Only reason to go to the footy in those years. He's slowed down a bit over the past few seasons.
A dickhead but none the less some of Cappers marks were huge.
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Howe does it so easy, he's the best I've seen
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Nope
Howe is a better aerialist than all of them. Nobody has taken as many big hangers as him. I agree with OP. Howe stands alone. He is a freak. There have been legendary high-flying superstars like Jezza and Ablett who took more famous iconic marks. But nobody has done it with the same regularity, big elevation and extra hang-time as Howe. Not even Barks. Birdman took a few... More than most of the Carlton blokes you named.
They had cameras at all the games during Barker's career, by the way, but only 3 games with commentary and multiple camera angles. They still showed highlights of the other three games the next day on World Of Sport, albeit pretty mediocre quality from one camera (sometimes at ground level) and with weird generic dubbed crowd noise - not with big crowd roars like during the Covid games, but with this monotonous tape loop of distant cheering & whistling.
But no big marks or goals were missed. Problem was they rarely won because the TV presentation (commentary and camera angle) is everything.
Brett Allison (NM) took the Mark of the Year at the MCG one year in a non-televised game with one crappy camera and no audio.
They added Drew Morphett's fake commentary well after the event when they realised it was gonna be MoTY
Other aerialists:
Peter Knights
Tony Modra
Nicky Winmar
Russell Robertson
Bill Picken
Warwick Capper
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Agree.
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Brett Burton criminally under rated here
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I remember it as the other way around
Plenty of hysteria about the mark vs Fitzroy because Channel 7 captured it perfectly from a side-on angle, close by, down near the fence.
But then he took an even better mark vs North a week or two later. Not a classic hanger like the mark v Fitzroy, but higher & more spectacular.
I thought Capper's greatest specky was vs Hawthorn in the 1987 Qualifying Final when he lay horizontally across Chris Langford's shoulders and took a nap before snaffling the mark. He was up there for a week.
Guy Threepwood
Premium Platinum
Agreed. People saying he isn't in the same league as Howe obviously have short memories. He was spectacular to watch in his prime.
Two from my club that haven't been mentioned yet that had careers cut short were the Ox and Jurrah. I would have loved to see what they were capable of had injury and off field issues interrupted them.
How do you actually know this?
In recent times yes every game is recorded and you can watch the replays virtually straight away. And any big mark is quickly shared. But is was not always so even when there was TV game coverage. And before TV film coverage was sparse.
As a teenager and young adult I would go along and watch St Kilda and Barker and every week he would take speccies. Sometimes multiple times.
He was only 183cm, and 71 kg and yet played many games at FF and FB, though he was talented enough to play well in virtually any position. Think about that. He was only small but could play key position at either end!
How? Well many reasons, but one of the key ones was an amazing leap and aerial ability. He displayed this in every game, and often with speccies.
Even when he was out of position he was able to somehow contort himself to mark the ball, or to spoil. Absolute freak.
It could explain why the Saints were down the bottom of the ladder most of those years.
