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Youre kidding right? Ball was still one of the top players going around at his prime.
David Armitage
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Ball made an AA team and won a B&F in a prelim team (that contained the likes of Riewoldt, Harvey, Hayes, Gehrig and Dal Santo) at the age of 21!
Ball was one of the shitty players in the history of AFL
With a premiership medal
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Stan_Darsh72
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So Ball is better then Buckley?
Having a premiership medal does not mean you are a good player, it just means you are 1 of 22 people who won a single game
Armo has been playing very well and it has been good to watch, if he keeps it up he gets AA.
Armo struggled with the same thing Ball did truth be known.
Living under the shadow of #7 wasn't easy, nor was there a lot of ball left to win for the other inside contested ball winning type.
IMHO anyways.
Difference was, Armo waited it out happy to play a role, resigning himself to the fact he wouldn't particularly shine but ok with that as long as the team did.
Living under the shadow of #7 wasn't easy, nor was there a lot of ball left to win for the other inside contested ball winning type.
IMHO anyways.
Difference was, Armo waited it out happy to play a role, resigning himself to the fact he wouldn't particularly shine but ok with that as long as the team did.
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Do you mean this one? They could have found some better ones from the match I reckon, like him bursting through some of the packs, but anyway:
http://www.afl.com.au/video/2015-05-09/armitage-simply-sublime
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deserves to get interviewed by Samantha on sunrise
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In 2004 and 2005 Ball was at his peak and looked like a monty to win a couple of Brownlows and captain a Premiership team. Injuries really did cruel him, particularly his kicking and his pace. He was still a very good in and under player but he lost the ability to break lines and penetrate with his kicking.
Yep there's no denying in 2005 it was Judd>Ball>Hodge, Luke had a thumping kick was as hard as a cat's head and seemed to bleed St Kilda. People blame Ross for mismanaging Luke but in essence Grant Thomas forcing him to play through OP completely stuffed him and I remember a commentator saying at one stage in about 2006 something like "You can play him now and lose him later or let him get his body right"
I still believe if GT didn't stuff his body around he would've become everything we expected him to in the early days.
Riccardo11
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Armo is all class which is more than I can say for some of the comments in this thread.
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Saints shouldve beaten GWS, Carlton and Essendon we should be 5-1
Seriously. Maybe not carlton though they did spank us in last 40 minutes but I reckon we LOST all those games on our own non belief.
Carn saints!!!!
Seriously. Maybe not carlton though they did spank us in last 40 minutes but I reckon we LOST all those games on our own non belief.
Carn saints!!!!
Did I say Ball was better than Buckley? Shitty players don't get poached by other teams, and shitty players don't get picked to play in a premiership side.
Stan_Darsh72
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Yes they do.
A lot of shit players have medals and guess what they are still the same shitty players as before.
The reality is that Armo right now is playing better footy than what Ball displayed since 2006
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Ball certainly was after OP practically "crippled" him.
Anyone who only saw him play in his latter years would say that he was slow, couldn't kick at all on his left and wasn't much better on his right, but just to show how much his earlier injuries cruelled him, at his draft camp he recorded a 2.85 second 20m sprint, which well and truly puts him in the "elite" category for speed for anyone ever tested at a draft camp/combine (in most years the fastest time recorded has been between 2.82 and 2.86 seconds, with very few each year under 2.90sec). He was a "sprint star" at school and had the sort of speed that the likes of Dangerfield and Judd had. Perhaps not quite as blistering, but not far off it.
He was also excellent by foot, with a legit 55m kick on his right foot and he was also very dual-sided, with a very neat and useful left foot that he used plenty. His kicking in his early years for us was definitely what I would consider to be "above average".
By the time he left us for Collingwood though he was struggling to kick it 40m on his right and he would be lucky to kick it half that distance on his left and he was as slow as a wet week and struggled to spread, hence Lyon only playing him for half a game each week. At a time when he "ought" to have been at his physical peak, at 25yo.
Injuries just ruined him physically and it's a credit to him that he got as much out of his career as he did after that and that he won a flag and kicked ass in another GF.
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