Players that have disgraced the colours

[Shinboners]

Okay, we've chatted about the best. Now how about the worst? Which player has disgraced your club's colours?

For North, even considering some of the dross we had to watch during the mid to late 80s, the one player who I thought shamed the royal blue and white more than any other was....please step forward.....Keenan Reynolds.

It was hard to believe that we were genuinely excited by this player and thought that he could hold down centre half back. He even did a half decent job on Carey when Reynolds played for Footscray. Anyway, Reynolds refused to extend his contract with the Doggies, went into the draft, and we got him, all fresh and ready for the '95 season.

He started badly, and got worse. In one game against Richmond, one incident showed that we had made a big mistake in recruiting him. Reynolds was in defence, all on his own, the ball coming to him and he.....punches it. Straight to a Richmond player. Who also happened to be running into an open goal. From there, it got worse. No player picked the wrong option with the same consistency as Reynolds. It got so bad that every time the ball went towards Reynolds, we would yell to the player who kicked the ball, "Hey, next time save time and just kick it to the opposition!....Cut out the middle man!". When Reynolds got the ball, if he managed to pass it to someone wearing the vertical blue and white stripes, it would be considered a miracle.

Even worse for Reynolds, he did it all with Schimma's number on his back.

 

[Bluey]

Ahhhh Reynolds. A name to remember.

 

[Arch]

dave calthorpe with his stupid "lets try and run around the man on the mark even if its Robert Harvey" tactics and his ability to turn an easy play into a turnover for us.
Also, somerville, gave away about 5 frees per game and missed targets continually. the guy just looked dumb (some bomber fans may disagree) and played accordingly.
At Bombertalk- we also have a few Ben Doolan haters (dont spose the doc reads here does he ???) who celebrated our disgarding of this hack.
Im sure theres more but these recent ones spring to mind.

(oh and eagles fans- pls dob in Phil Read- that guy has cost you two games that Ive watched (the St Kilda draw being one) and hes an arrogant little turd with stuff all foot skills).

 

[Rooboy 96]

what about Chris Groom, dud of the decade.

 

[GoEagles]

Arch - Phil Read is young, tough, hard at the footy, quick and a good learner. I do agree that he has made vital errors, but he was a very late draft pick for the eagles and still in his early 20s I wouldn't consider him a dud.

Rooboy 96 Chris Groom showed a lot of promise with local club West Perth but he failed badly at Freo, North, Adelaide and wherever else he was at.

Looking at the 1998 Freo dockers squad list, half their players were dudsMichael Brown, Tony Godden, Paul Maher, Mark Gale, Andrew McGovern. Trent Carroll. . . where are they now!

 

[Bloodstained Angel]

We at the Swans are famous for recruiting absolute duds over the years so I won't go through the entire catalogue of horrors that we have seen, but I will single out one individual :

Dermott Brereton 1994

We spent a fortune getting him up here, so much in fact that we had little left to spend on anyone else .

And what did he do when he got up here ? - absolutely goddam nothing, I think he ended up playing less that half a dozen senior games. Granted, he kicked a winning goal for us V Demons at the MCG (was a memorable game) but that was it.

Just a big, fat waste of money and time and for a club that was at the time a laughing stock, it was just the kind of disaster the Swans and the game in general did not need.

 

[Drakey]

You guys are totally wrong about Chris Groom.
He was absolutely vital in our winning 2 flags. WE traded him to Freo for Andrew McLeod.

 

[Shinboners]

Rooboy96

You're being a bit harsh on Chris Groom....he had two knee reconstructions and when he was at North, he played in a position where we also had Darren Crocker, Craig Sholl, and Corey McKernan taking turns in supporting Carey.

Besides, Groom never played enough senior footy to do as much damage to us as $@#$#@@%$$#@$#@ Reynolds did.

 

[sandie]

I think when the Eagles drafted Tim Watson was quite amusing, I'm sure the only time he put the jumper on was for PR work.

------------------
Mantis

 

[servo]

Andrew Jarman disgraced himself and the crows when he was named emergency once for an away game to Carlton.

In disgust he wouldnt get on the plane and in the end we needed him and he refused to play.

 

[Arch]

sandie,
didnt timmy say to the eagles "If you draft me, I wont play for yez- I wanna play for essendon " and the eagles in their stupidity drafted him anyway ? Maybe why he sprayed all that mud in Materas face at Subi in 93. God that was a cack.

PS- Eagle girl- im biased about Phil, went to school with a few mates of mine who all thought he was a tool.
& wasnt jugdey going to drop him a few weeks back ???????

A.

 

[Jerome]

Servo,

You stole my thunder. As i remember it, he got dropped. His attitude and form had fallen badly after he had been suspended from his spot on Channel 9 (he had hit a Channel 7 cameraman at training after that).

Rob Shaw decided to drop him. He was named as an emergency and when someone got injured, John Reid called him up and he rerfused to play.

He then went to a function that night that KG and several other media people were at and told everyone he knocked us back. And he writes in Inside Football about commitment, loyalty, discipline and still wonders why AFC sacked him!

 

[gocatsgo]

to tell you the truth, I can't think of any one player who we've drafted that has disgraced himself and become a dud....

WAIT A MINUTE, YES I CAN - TIM HARGREAVES

How could we have swapped Aaron Lord for him, officially the worst move in the history of football.

Aaron Lord was starting to become a mighty fine player, he towelled up Williams in only his second game (in a final) and played in the GF in 1995, then for some reason we decided to get rid of him and pick Tim Hargreaves from Hawthorn. Lord could have become the crumbing forward that we now need, I'm sure he'd get a lot of it at Geelong, after all, none of our talls can mark!

On another front, a disgraceful act was when Garry Sidebottom (yes, that was his name!!!) missed the bus to the preliminary final in the early 80s, he had been starring all season and was the main reason Geelong were in the finals. needless to say, we got done.

 

[The Dutchman!]

Two words:

Mark Athorn.

Worst performance ever by a player in a Grand Final... then again he did start on Longy....

 

[Jaffa]

Now please, none of you good people can even compete with the might of the Collingwood Football Club when it comes to attracting skillfully challenged or mentally challenged footballers during the 90's.

Let's see, just as a start.

Jason Wild, Luke Godden, Stephen Patterson, Aaron James, Trent Hotton, Jonathon Ross (he wins), Paul Sharkey, Jon Hassall, Matthew Francis, Brad Cassidy, Brad Hardie, Damian Houlihan, Stephen Ryan, Justin Staritski, Nick Hider, Adrian McAdam (didn't even turn up), Jason Taylor, Stuart Mangin, Ricky Olarenshaw, Gerard Healy, Fraser Murphy, Barry Mitchell, Terry Keays, Brad Plain, Jon Ballantyne, Jason Bevan, Dwayne Griffin,, John Barnett, Shannon Gibson, The entire 1991 National Draft who played a grand total of 0 games.

I haven't mentioned the ones who didn't play a senior game (except the 91 draft class) and there are plenty of them.

There was a lot of hard work that went into building the 1999 Wooden Spoon team.

 

[Rooboy 96]

Jaffa, my hat goes off to you, definately the worst recruiting I have ever see.

Shinboners, Groom was the biggest disaster to hit Arden St, he never played a decent game, and we knew he had injury problems when we got him. I remember one game when he nearly killed Wayne, coming off the bench he tried to intercept a pass intended for Wayne, bowled Wayne over caused a turnover and a goal to the opposition, that says it all. At least Reynolds played some good footy in the 1995 Ansett Cup Night Series, after that I agree with you, definately too small for CHB.

 

[Shinboners]

GoCatsGo

So Tim Hargreaves was WORSE than Stephen Handley? Now that's something to cringe over......

 

[Gonzo]

SB

Have to agree with you re Reynolds, I acant believe that he thought he was worth that amount of money. Last I heard he was playing for the Burnie Dockers in Tassie - that was about two years ago

How about Bradley Plain (weaker at the ball than Paul Hudson!!!)

 

[gocatsgo]

Steven handley at least had a go, he couldn't play, but was bloody handy in 1992 as a ruckman before John Barnes took up the position in the finals.

Tim Hargreaves was slow, couldn't kick and all he would do is get himself reported, officially a dud.

But nothing compares to Collingwood, maybe thats why they finished last, last year

 

[magpie greg]

How about Jim O'Dea of St. Kilda?

That mongrel ruined John Greening's career and cost him the 1972 Brownlow. When he king hit Greening behind the play in R14 1972, Greening had amassed 14 votes from 12 games and was having his best of 5 good years. He had played 98 consecutive games.

The best Collingwood player I ever saw and that includes Daicos, Millane,Buckley and any one else you care to mention.

If I saw O'Dea in the street, I'd kick him.

 

[sainter]

Jaffa, I think the St Kilda recruiting of the 1980's would surpass Collingwoods effort. We earned our wooden spoons, all of them! (Though I am pleased to say we haven't had one since 1988)

Even when we had a great player, we managed to find a suitable trade to replace him with, ie Russell Greene.

Hawthorn and Carlton made significant contributions to the St Kilda Football Club, trading every washed up player they could to us.

However, I couldn't fault the effort of our guys during the period. Unlike today, we clearly didn't have the players then.

Although the players lack of success on the field was made up for in the social club afterwards!

 

[Shinboners]

Gonzo

Yeah, how could I forget Brad Plain? The only memorable thing about his only senior game for North was that jumper he wore with the sleeves that finished at his elbow.

I suppose at least we got one mediocre game out of him which was one more than the Pies got out of Adrian McAdam.

 

[colley31]

I know this is going back a while, and I'm probably showing my age a bit here, but what about the players we got in the 80s like Richard Dennis (played in the 87 Carlton premiership) and came across and did absolutely nothing. John Mossop from Geelong was another who did nothing, but the best recruiting disaster was Tim Bourke (who - brother of Geelong captain - Damian, who was drafted in the October, and delisted by the following February). I also agree with Keenan Reynolds and Adrian McAdam.

After all that, we have picked up some pretty ordinary footballers from other clubs and turned them into very good players (some even excellent players) since Pagan has come on board.

 

[servo]

OK off the players for a moment.

What about Adelaide's appointment of Robert Shaw as coach after his highly successfull stint at Fitzroy.

This guy was know to be playing table tennis at the start of training and because he was winning did not attend training but just kept playing. Now i know he didnt ever win much and this table tennis match was probably a major achievement for him but what a joke.

 

[Roylion]

Officially the worst draft move in the history of football, was Fitzroy's swapping of Paul Broderick, Michael Gale and Matthew Dundas for Jeff Hogg. Dundas didn't go onto do anything for Richmond, but Gale and Broderick gave several years of sterling service to Richmond. Hogg kicked five goals in one match for Fitzroy but did little else. Fitzroy's swapping of Alistair Lynch the year before for Nigel Palfreyman and David Bain was another one, although admittedly that was a forced move as Lynch had already decided to go to Brisbane as a priority uncontracted player draft pick. The Bears kept their priority pick as a result and used it to draft someone else.