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Something something Tarzan, something something Jack Watts

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Darling isn't built like Tarzan tho... he's small for a forward

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Ok mate...

He's 6'3" and 95kg. He's a big body (and was big when he entered the league) who you would expect to be more physical than he is.
 

Easily the best example.

The guy was built like a bodybuilder/professional wrestler (especially when you add the sleeve tatts he got later), and was usually listed at around 100kg, yet I can never recall all that muscle having any purpose in his game. You'd think he would have bullied smaller forwards with his size, and have been a bit of a prototype of the Easton Wood intercept mark kind of guy, but he just seemed to be your standard seagull half-back. Never tackled, and can barely recall him really doing anything in one-on-ones TBH. He was probably carrying a good 20kg of useless show-off muscle. That along with his shaved head, tuff stickers, and general "I'm hard" demeanour, he looked like a wannabe tough guy f**kwit.

Meanwhile, the Cats would have Andrew Mackie, who looks like he's never seen a weight room in his life, built like Jane, playing like Tarzan and manning up Buddy Franklin one-on-one during Cats-Hawks games.
 

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Jack Darling shits me because he doesn't have to play like Jane but he still does.

He's a strong contested mark, pretty good overhead, chases and tackles hard etc. then goes and theatrically plays for free kicks and drops chest marks. Well chest mark, but everyone saw it.

We loved him when he started out but each year he puts more and more WC fans offside.
 
Kurt Tippett. Whats the point with all that muscle yet is a spud come any big game - Two Grand Finals where he has been garbage. At least Tom Boyd had the game of his life, Kurt is too busy thinking about off season and 'always next season..'
Dont get the hate for Tippett, except for Crows supporters of course. He did a lot to beat us first game last year by getting on top of Mummy in the ruck. Seemed to me that meant we were forced to use Lobb, which unbalanced us.
In the second his in game injury clearly cost the Swans, hard to judge how much of that was him and how much our outside mids getting over their defence.
Seemed to me he didn't come back well from that injury and wasn't in great form in the finals though.
 

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Easily the best example.

The guy was built like a bodybuilder/professional wrestler (especially when you add the sleeve tatts he got later), and was usually listed at around 100kg, yet I can never recall all that muscle having any purpose in his game. You'd think he would have bullied smaller forwards with his size, and have been a bit of a prototype of the Easton Wood intercept mark kind of guy, but he just seemed to be your standard seagull half-back. Never tackled, and can barely recall him really doing anything in one-on-ones TBH. He was probably carrying a good 20kg of useless show-off muscle. That along with his shaved head, tuff stickers, and general "I'm hard" demeanour, he looked like a wannabe tough guy f**kwit.

Meanwhile, the Cats would have Andrew Mackie, who looks like he's never seen a weight room in his life, built like Jane, playing like Tarzan and manning up Buddy Franklin one-on-one during Cats-Hawks games.

I get the Josh Hunt thing, but I'm pretty sure he looked like he does now (minus the tatts) when he was 19. He played 200 games and I'm sure there's been countless players with similar frames/game styles that didn't get to 20. To me, he's "easily the best example" simply because he carved out a successful career and he had a few embarrassing squib moments over a career where he had literally thousands of opportunities to pull out. Would he have been more respected if he spent his career ironing blokes out when they weren't looking/couldn't defend themselves like Plugger, or Byron Pickett?

I'm not saying his name doesn't deserve to get brought up in a thread like this (any similar thread might as well have his name in the title), but a bit of context. He played 200 games and won over 65% of them, including two flags. If he was as soft as people say he is, he would have been quickly forgotten like most of the other nobodies in this thread that are only remembered by their former club's supporters.
 
I wonder if the 28 people that like this realise that it's actually a Dwayne Russell-ism (originally about Jude Bolton, I believe).
That would be an interesting thread, probably less common though. Brett Kirk looked like he should be writing ballads for an alt rock band most of his career. Played like Tarzan might be overstating it, but Collingwood Dale Thomas and Nick Riewoldt are two who people wrongly assumed were soft based on their looks.
 
That would be an interesting thread, probably less common though. Brett Kirk looked like he should be writing ballads for an alt rock band most of his career. Played like Tarzan might be overstating it, but Collingwood Dale Thomas and Nick Riewoldt are two who people wrongly assumed were soft based on their looks.

Bartel would probably get a mention, although as I've said in a couple of similar threads in the past, he had the odd squib moment over his career too. The example I've brought up in the past was in the dying stages of a ho-hum late season victory against Brisbane in 2011, where he pulled out of a contest as badly as anything Josh Hunt ever did in his career. I think it was pretty clearly the opposite way of thinking to the Jonathan Brown 'throw everything at every contest, no matter what' philosophy that ultimately made people wonder if it was detrimental to Brown's game.

The game was won, Bartel was an established player, it would take a lot more than that to threaten to his well-earned reputation as a tough, fair player, so what was to be gained? If you looked at it in isolation, without any context, it would have been one of the most pissweak things you could ever witness on a football field. But with all the additional aspects, it's fair enough to understand what Bartel was doing: why bother in that situation? Nothing surer than he would have approached the contest very differently for a game that was still in the balance. So it's why I think sometimes the criticism that "He chooses when to go" is a little misguided: sometimes it's the smarter option. I'm speaking from memory, but I seem to remember Brown getting injured in that game, colliding with a teammate, going for the same high ball.

EDIT: It was Mitch Clark. I remembered the other player (Clark) cracking a joke about all the medical staff going to Brown and no-one checking him out.

 
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Matty Lloyd had his fair share of Jane moments but because he was a champion he got away with it a bit.
926 goals @ 3.4 / game says he was one of the great modern forwards
 

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