I somehow caught a replay of a game back in 1996 between North and St Kilda the other day.
A couple of things stood out to me....
Firstly, individual acts of high-level skill were common. Common to the point of seeing Nicky Winmar break free from a clearance with the pill in one hand, take a bounce whilst drawing away from the bloke chasing him, then hit Stewie Loewe on the tit with a 55m pass - and it barely rating a mention from the commentators, and had the crowd merely clapping in their seats.
These days, Judd does something similar and it's on the front page of the Herald-Sun the following morning.
There's no doubt the defensive nature of the game today has robbed us of this aspect of the game.
The other thing that occured to me, which is the point of this thread, was that Rod Keogh was an average/sort of good footballer back then.
However, watching him play I realised how ahead of his time he was.
He'd almost be a top 10 player in the comp if he was playing the game today.
Not that he was underrated back then, moreso that the way he played the game back then wasn't really rated the way it is today.
He tackled like a demon, had very good footskills (only a left foot though) and was in almost every single contest! The way he hit packs and contests was incredible.
I reckon if you were to put a kid in front of the TV who had only ever seen AFL footy from the past year or two, he/she would probably assume that he was a superstar of the comp.
However at the time, he was only rated a 'decent player', or thereabouts.
So, who else from 'the old days' (and that term will vary from poster to poster) was ahead of their time? Who had attributes that weren't valued that highly back then, but are worth gold today?
A couple of things stood out to me....
Firstly, individual acts of high-level skill were common. Common to the point of seeing Nicky Winmar break free from a clearance with the pill in one hand, take a bounce whilst drawing away from the bloke chasing him, then hit Stewie Loewe on the tit with a 55m pass - and it barely rating a mention from the commentators, and had the crowd merely clapping in their seats.
These days, Judd does something similar and it's on the front page of the Herald-Sun the following morning.
There's no doubt the defensive nature of the game today has robbed us of this aspect of the game.
The other thing that occured to me, which is the point of this thread, was that Rod Keogh was an average/sort of good footballer back then.
However, watching him play I realised how ahead of his time he was.
He'd almost be a top 10 player in the comp if he was playing the game today.
Not that he was underrated back then, moreso that the way he played the game back then wasn't really rated the way it is today.
He tackled like a demon, had very good footskills (only a left foot though) and was in almost every single contest! The way he hit packs and contests was incredible.
I reckon if you were to put a kid in front of the TV who had only ever seen AFL footy from the past year or two, he/she would probably assume that he was a superstar of the comp.
However at the time, he was only rated a 'decent player', or thereabouts.
So, who else from 'the old days' (and that term will vary from poster to poster) was ahead of their time? Who had attributes that weren't valued that highly back then, but are worth gold today?
