Lace Out with Jackson Clark

JDC!

Premiership Player
Jan 14, 2005
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I have interviewed a series of former AFL players who I feel have an interesting story to tell. This is obviously a work in progress and I see this project as a sort of Open Mike on a shoestring budget.

Interviews can be accessed here - https://soundcloud.com/user-544964259

Jason Cloke, Kirsti Miller (transgendered footballer), Brock McLean, Damian Cupido, Michael Braun, Steven Armstrong, Jason Snell and Lazar Vidovic.

FACEBOOK - https://www.facebook.com/laceoutfooty/

It must be difficult growing up with the pressure and expectation that comes with being the son of an AFL legend. Tonight’s guest on Lace Out is former Collingwood player Jason Cloke and he gives us an insight into what this is like, while also discussing his career and the suspension that resulted in him being rubbed out for the 2002 grand final. He also chats about what lies ahead for his brother Travis and his options moving forward.

 
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JDC!

Premiership Player
Jan 14, 2005
3,253
1,699
AFL Club
Richmond
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RESILIENT LINCOLN THE INSPIRATIONAL MASCOT:


BY - JACKSON CLARK (Twitter - @JClark182)
Follow - Lace Out with Jackson Clark on Facebook


Lincoln Bruhn may be the oldest mascot in Australian Football, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

The 21-year-old has had to jump many hurdles in his life after being diagnosed with a brain tumour at the age of 14 months.

After suffering a stroke during surgery as a baby, Bruhn required intensive therapy to allow him to do the basics in life, such as walk, talk and eat.

It left him permanently blind in one eye and completely paralysed down one side of his body.

Bruhn is unable to play contact sports as a heavy blow to the head would almost certainly prove fatal.

In total he has had ten surgeries on his brain; each time he has had to learn how to walk again and the thing that has kept him motivated is knowing that he has to get back up to run out with his footy team.

“Football is one of the main things in my life, I live for it,” said Bruhn.

“Although I have never been able to play the game due to my disabilities, I like to participate with the other players and I do this by running out with the players each week.

“I love being part of the team and have been lucky in that all of the clubs I have been involved with have accepted me as part of the team.”

I would argue that Bruhn, and others that are as passionate as him, are not just part of the team, but the heart and soul of the team.

Bruhn started running out with the CMS Crows in South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula Football League in 2007 before moving up to Darwin three years later and joining the Banks Football Club.

He has recently started running out with the Moonta Football Club and last week notched up a personal milestone of 150 career games as mascot.

Bruhn says it has allowed him to create many new friendships and that he is always there to support and encourage the players.
Lincoln’s mother Angela could not be prouder of her son’s achievements.

“When he was diagnosed with the brain tumour we were told they could operate straight away or we could wait two weeks – we waited two weeks as it could have been the last two weeks we had with him.

“The last surgery was five years ago, he was so upset as it was around the time the Banks Football Club were in the finals and he really wanted to run out.

“He left hospital in a wheelchair but was determined to walk, so he did a lot of therapy exercises to get himself to training on his crutches.”

As a testament to Bruhn’s determination, he was up and about walking without assistance just one week later and was able to run out with his team.

“All the clubs have been so good to him.

“Lincoln gets very nervous before he runs out and often makes a speech to the boys before they head out to play.”

As for his career highlights?

“I was lucky enough to run out with NT Thunder in 2012, thanks to my mate Brad Vassal who is a past player.

“I also got to run out with the Woodville West-Torrens in the SANFL thanks to my mate Matthew Goldsworthy and my brother Henry for organising it.”
 

JDC!

Premiership Player
Jan 14, 2005
3,253
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AFL Club
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Tonight on Lace Out we are joined by the highest profile Australian sports agent of all-time in Ricky Nixon. There is perhaps no better man as qualified to talk about the Ben Cousins situation than Nixon, as he spent over a decade as the former Eagles champion's player-manager and friend. Don't miss this.

 

JDC!

Premiership Player
Jan 14, 2005
3,253
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AFL Club
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Imagine being told about losing your job while in the process of smashing down beers with a couple of strangers in a Copenhagen strip club. Well that was exactly the scenario for our guest on Lace Out this evening – former Melbourne and Carlton star Brock McLean. He chats about his heated discussion with Carlton Football Operations boss Andrew McKay, his reasoning behind the controversial snubbing of a Brett Kirk handshake and what prompted him to donate $10,000 of his own money to the Melbourne Football Club. Tune in!

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/laceoutfooty/

 

JDC!

Premiership Player
Jan 14, 2005
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Tonight’s Lace Out interview features the prodigiously talented Damian Cupido, who had a much-maligned six seasons in the AFL with Brisbane and Essendon. He chats to us about his time at the top level, his post-AFL football career and in the process dispels some of the “footy rumour bullshit” he has been surrounded with. Love him or hate him, this guy is one talented footballer and he has an interesting story to tell …

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/laceoutfooty/

 

JDC!

Premiership Player
Jan 14, 2005
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Our guest this evening on Lace Out is a West Coast premiership midfielder who once ran so hard in a game that his opponent publically accused him of being on performance enhancing drugs. Michael Braun chats to us about his career at the Eagles including the heat he copped from the AFL after his infamous Ross Glendenning Medal acceptance speech.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/laceoutfooty/

 

JDC!

Premiership Player
Jan 14, 2005
3,253
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Our guest this evening on Lace Out is a man that suffered arguably the most graphic injury ever seen on an AFL field. Jason Snell joins us to talk about that fateful Easter Monday that saw him crashing down to the MCG turf resulting in a nasty compound fracture of the ankle the ultimately ended his career. He also discusses his time at Geelong and what it was like playing alongside of the great Gary Ablett senior.

 

JDC!

Premiership Player
Jan 14, 2005
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Tonight’s guest on Lace Out light-heartedly jokes about having actress Sandra Bullock to thank for saving his life. Former Melbourne and West Coast player Steven Armstrong was incredibly lucky to escape without major injury, or even death, while on a footy trip in Bali during the bombings of late 2002. He would later go on to play a role in the Eagles’ now infamous premiership side of 2006. Tune in!

 

JDC!

Premiership Player
Jan 14, 2005
3,253
1,699
AFL Club
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The mere mention of the name Lazar Vidovic was enough to send fear up the spines of opposition teams during the 1990s. The workhorse St Kilda ruckman joins us on Lace Out to discuss his upbringing on the mean streets of Melbourne suburb Broadmeadows, his “misunderstood” on-field temperament, returning his country footy match payments and the rumoured fight with former teammate Barry Hall. Do not miss this!

 

Gibbsy

Cakewalk
Oct 12, 2009
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Can't wait to listen to these, you must have some good contacts. I recognise your name actually, you don't happen to run the Northern Territory footy updates page on Facey do you?

Good work
 

rimb

Team Captain
Jul 5, 2011
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These look really interesting and it would be great if there was a podcast feed for them, rather than just youtube videos.
 

JDC!

Premiership Player
Jan 14, 2005
3,253
1,699
AFL Club
Richmond
Can't wait to listen to these, you must have some good contacts. I recognise your name actually, you don't happen to run the Northern Territory footy updates page on Facey do you?

Good work

Thanks, I was lucky that these high-profile ex-players were happy to volunteer their time. Yep, that's me.

These look really interesting and it would be great if there was a podcast feed for them, rather than just youtube videos.

Yeah I kind of did this just to practice for other projects that I might look into, but thanks for the feedback, I will definitely try to convert them to SoundCloud or iTunes or whatever people prefer for their podcasts.
 

JDC!

Premiership Player
Jan 14, 2005
3,253
1,699
AFL Club
Richmond
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ADAPTABILITY IS THE KEY INGREDIENT TO SUCCESSFUL COACHING:


BY - JACKSON CLARK (Twitter - @JClark182)
Follow - Lace Out with Jackson Clark on Facebook

What is the key ingredient to being a successful coach? That is easy, it’s the ability to adapt.

To adapt to game plans. Adapt to external happenings both within and outside of the football club. Adapt to the opposition. Adapt to your own emotions. Adapt to the personalities of the individual players that form a team.

Charles Darwin once said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

There is certainly no blueprint for what is required to be an effective coach, history shows us that many different styles have been implemented and become successful over time.

The game’s most successful current coach, Alastair Clarkson, has been described by former Hawthorn player Tim Boyle as a “peculiar man.”

But the tone of this description did not come from a man that was a disillusioned delisted player, but rather an endearing ex-student.

I racked Boyle’s brain on just what it was about this current Hawthorn unit that has allowed them to dominate the competition under Clarkson’s tutelage.

“Clarkson is an intense guy, as you can probably imagine, he is an incredibly driven person,” Boyle told Lace Out Podcast.

“He has a very aggressive personality and I think that has been an advantage for him as a coach.

“I think it has been proven over time that the playing group needs to have a certain level of – not fear – but a version of respect that goes beyond a regular type of authority figure.”

Clarkson demands a lot of his players, a lot of the people around himself, but perhaps most importantly, a lot of himself.

It feels apt to refer to the Hawthorn team as a ‘unit’ and their game plan as a ‘system’ because their methodological style almost dehumanises the group.

Clarkson has an innate ability to stay a step ahead of the game and has played a major role in the evolution of footy into the highly skilled and technical game that it is today.

His legacy will live on long after he is retired, largely through the assistant coaches he has nurtured who have gone on to achieve relative success at other clubs.

“Clarkson was able to raise the stakes – he has a teaching background and he was qualified in that sense to deliver a message and teach people what he wanted to do,” Boyle added.

“He had good people around him with clear, intelligent ideas on the best way to do things and they were willing to adapt when things weren’t working.

“There is always a bit of a mystery as to how the whole thing come together, otherwise every club would do the same thing – and they almost do.”

It is this mystery that makes the art of coaching such a beautiful thing.

I was fortunate enough to spend some time training under former Geelong All-Australian Matt Egan, who has experience as an assistant coach at the Cats and also at Essendon. Perhaps he is a future AFL coach in waiting.

I could not say a bad word about him – he was approachable, measured, self-assured and knowledgeable.

Everything was a learning process and training sessions were goal-oriented. It was not uncommon to stop a training drill for an on-field discussion on what we were doing well and what needed to improve – it almost felt as if I was back at school.

It is important to note that this was a genuine two-way back-and-forth discussion too, not the type of ‘discussion’ you get from an angry teacher or parent when they are reprimanding you.

But while I found Egan to be great, his style might not be conducive to other personality types.

Some coaches unnaturally attempt the “fire and brimstone” approach, which only serves as an avenue to losing the respect or confidence of the playing group.

But coaches are only human and football is a passionate game, so their emotions are not always going to be in check.

Coaching is undoubtedly a cut-throat caper and it is often the first position a football club looks to change when they are struggling on-field.

Further compounding the pressure on coaches outside of professional level is the different roles most are required to undertake for their club: recruiter, opposition analyst, player welfare, fitness coordinator, the list goes on.

Don’t get me wrong, a good spray can come in handy for certain scenarios, but the best coach is one who can diversify their message and relate to all of their players on an individual level. This requires knowledge of your group as people and good communication skills because what makes one player tick into good form may shatter another player’s confidence.

Coaching is certainly an intriguing art and you will never find a ‘perfect coach’, but the ability to adapt effectively to different stimuli should hold most coaches in good stead.
 
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