Universal Love "Never Toumpas Apart" - Jimmy, I like your hustle, thats why it was so hard to cut you
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Biffinator
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OFFICIAL "THE TOUMP" UPDATE
Brothers, this is an important missal;
Port Adelaide’s Jimmy Toumpas is working his way back to enjoying his the game again
Michelangelo Rucci, Chief Football Writer, The Advertiser
March 19, 2017 3:02pm
Subscriber only
“WHERE’S Jimmy?” And every Port Adelaide fan may well ask what has happened to Jimmy Toumpas.
A year ago, the 2012 No. 4 draftee (for Melbourne) returned home as a timely, strategic gain from the AFL trade market.
The Power was dealing with the gap exposed on its player list by losing pacy wingman Jared Polec in the 2015 season with a serious foot injury.
Toumpas was a poster boy for the Port Adelaide faithful living off the scouting reports that made the Woodville-West Torrens (SANFL) midfielder a top-10 draft prospect.
Jimmy Toumpas of the Power runs with the ball against Brisbane Lions at Adelaide Oval.
And, just to lift expectation another notch, he was asked to carry the No. 18 jumper of 2004 premiership midfielder Kane Cornes, the only Power player to reach 300 AFL games.
A year on, Toumpas, 23, is out of the spotlight. He did not play in any of Port Adelaide’s four competitive pre-season matches.
Such an absence should stand out, more so when Toumpas has not been on an injury list this summer. He will not be mentioned in the build-up to the premiership-season opener against Sydney at the SCG on Saturday.
So where is Jimmy, as he starts the second year of the two-season contract he signed at Alberton after working a complicated trade that ultimately shuffled three draft picks off Power recruiting manager Geoff Parker’s whiteboard?
“Waiting for an opportunity,” says Toumpas who nine days ago (March 11) returned to the field to play in an SANFL trial with the Magpies against North Adelaide at Alberton.
There is a strong sense of realism from Toumpas on just where he stands at Port Adelaide. As coach Ken Hinkley has reassigned players – such as key forward Justin Westhoff to a wing – Toumpas has more competition for his spot.
Polec is on his feet again. And there is Karl Amon now taking a wing. Plus there is Sam Gray and Aaron Young as rivals for a half-forward role in the new-look Power team system.
Travis Boak and Ollie Wines puts Jimmy Toumpas under pressure. Picture: Sarah Reed
The post-season review at the end of 2016 – in which Toumpas played eight AFL games – has demanded Toumpas work on his kicking, defensive themes and find greater consistency, first in his training that should then lead to enhancing his reputation in games.
“And making sure I am in a good enough spot so that I hold my position rather than being in and out of the team as it has been for me in the previous few years,” says Toumpas, who played 27 of a possible 66 AFL games with the Demons in three seasons.
Where Jimmy is mentally is now just as important as all the physical fitness data Darren Burgess collects at Alberton.
A significant shift in understanding the power of the mind among athletes has prompted Port Adelaide, through assistant coach Aaron Greaves, to run a new program that has the Power players mentally in tune through an AFL season that can be just as demanding on the mind as it is on the body.
Physically, Toumpas is better than he was on arriving from Melbourne in October, 2015 with an ankle injury.
He did not miss a training session in the summer program at Alberton. He also is leaner and trimmer to be able to play “an outside role; so I need to be an elite runner,” says Toumpas.
Brandon Ellis of the Tigers is tackled by Jimmy Toumpas of the Power.
Mentally, Toumpas is finding a new space – at a time when many are questioning how much professional AFL players are still enjoying the game when it becomes their full-time work.
The alarm bell has been raised by recent player union surveys revealing as many as 60 per cent of AFL players find no fun in their chosen sport.
“I put a lot of pressure on myself,” admits Toumpas.
“So I just want to enjoy footy this year. That is what allows me to play my best footy … having fun. And that is what I have been doing the last few weeks.
“I haven’t been in the AFL side, but I am okay with that … I know where I sit and where the coaches have me at the moment,” says Toumpas adding assistant coaches Matthew Nicks and Michael Voss have not lost confidence in him.
“I’ve always put pressure on myself. And I put a lot of pressure on myself (last year at a new club) to perform. And when I didn’t (deliver), things did not go too well for me. It wasn’t the year I wanted it to be.
“I think I have found a recipe over the summer that will hold me in good stead.”
A former high-call draftee at the Power, key forward John Butcher (No. 8, 2009), learned SANFL crowds can be cutting – and their voices carry across suburban grounds.
So as Toumpas searches to stay in a “good space”, his new recipe for success demands he block out the negative “white noise” that will come on those inevitable in-hindsight reviews of who won (and lost) in any trade deal.
“That is irrelevant to me,” says Toumpas.
“I don’t listen to that stuff. I care most about what my team-mates and my coaches say to me and, obviously, my family and mates. I’ve learned over the past three or four years what to listen to – and what not.”
Port Adelaide’s Jimmy Toumpas gets his handpass away against Essendon at Adelaide Oval.
JIMMY TAKES NEW ROLE SERIOUSLY
JIMMY Toumpas today benefits from a generational change in Australian football, particularly with attitudes towards ethnic classes supposedly “suited” to other football codes.
So the Port Adelaide midfielder – who is of Greek heritage - takes his new role as an AFL-Australia Post multi-cultural ambassador as critical to opening up the same hassle-free path to Australia’s new wave of immigrants from Africa and Asia.
Toumpas is the only SA-based AFL multi-cultural ambassador. He takes this role from former Port Adelaide full back Alipate Carlile, who is leading the Power’s new multi-cultural program that is to add to the successful social and educational campaign the club has established with indigenous children.
“Our Power multi-cultural program is currently taking us (Toumpas, Carlile and Ugandan Emmanuel Irra) to Underdale High School where they see us a role model,” Toumpas said.
Chen Shaoliang, Jimmy Toumpas and Emmanuel Irra at Alberton Oval. Picture Sarah Reed
“Sometimes they, as Sudanese or Chinese immigrants, look at us and think if I can fit in, so can they. That makes you feel pretty special.
“Footy was, for me, my vehicle to fit in when my mates at school were ‘Aussies’. They all played footy and as soon as I started playing footy, the (racial profiling) was never an issue for me. I never had to deal with racism at all. Times have changed from when my dad might have heard those remarks.”
The AFL has learned in the past two years – and most recently with Crows specialist forward Eddie Betts at Adelaide Oval – that there is still work to be done in clearing racism off the terraces after the players have done so much to end the taunting on the field.
“We have made massive ground (on the field), so it is about education so that a minority (off the field) understands,” Toumpas said. “It’s important to appreciate we are all different and do things differently.”
Brothers, this is an important missal;
Port Adelaide’s Jimmy Toumpas is working his way back to enjoying his the game again
Michelangelo Rucci, Chief Football Writer, The Advertiser
March 19, 2017 3:02pm
Subscriber only
“WHERE’S Jimmy?” And every Port Adelaide fan may well ask what has happened to Jimmy Toumpas.
A year ago, the 2012 No. 4 draftee (for Melbourne) returned home as a timely, strategic gain from the AFL trade market.
The Power was dealing with the gap exposed on its player list by losing pacy wingman Jared Polec in the 2015 season with a serious foot injury.
Toumpas was a poster boy for the Port Adelaide faithful living off the scouting reports that made the Woodville-West Torrens (SANFL) midfielder a top-10 draft prospect.
Jimmy Toumpas of the Power runs with the ball against Brisbane Lions at Adelaide Oval.
And, just to lift expectation another notch, he was asked to carry the No. 18 jumper of 2004 premiership midfielder Kane Cornes, the only Power player to reach 300 AFL games.
A year on, Toumpas, 23, is out of the spotlight. He did not play in any of Port Adelaide’s four competitive pre-season matches.
Such an absence should stand out, more so when Toumpas has not been on an injury list this summer. He will not be mentioned in the build-up to the premiership-season opener against Sydney at the SCG on Saturday.
So where is Jimmy, as he starts the second year of the two-season contract he signed at Alberton after working a complicated trade that ultimately shuffled three draft picks off Power recruiting manager Geoff Parker’s whiteboard?
“Waiting for an opportunity,” says Toumpas who nine days ago (March 11) returned to the field to play in an SANFL trial with the Magpies against North Adelaide at Alberton.
There is a strong sense of realism from Toumpas on just where he stands at Port Adelaide. As coach Ken Hinkley has reassigned players – such as key forward Justin Westhoff to a wing – Toumpas has more competition for his spot.
Polec is on his feet again. And there is Karl Amon now taking a wing. Plus there is Sam Gray and Aaron Young as rivals for a half-forward role in the new-look Power team system.
Travis Boak and Ollie Wines puts Jimmy Toumpas under pressure. Picture: Sarah Reed
The post-season review at the end of 2016 – in which Toumpas played eight AFL games – has demanded Toumpas work on his kicking, defensive themes and find greater consistency, first in his training that should then lead to enhancing his reputation in games.
“And making sure I am in a good enough spot so that I hold my position rather than being in and out of the team as it has been for me in the previous few years,” says Toumpas, who played 27 of a possible 66 AFL games with the Demons in three seasons.
Where Jimmy is mentally is now just as important as all the physical fitness data Darren Burgess collects at Alberton.
A significant shift in understanding the power of the mind among athletes has prompted Port Adelaide, through assistant coach Aaron Greaves, to run a new program that has the Power players mentally in tune through an AFL season that can be just as demanding on the mind as it is on the body.
Physically, Toumpas is better than he was on arriving from Melbourne in October, 2015 with an ankle injury.
He did not miss a training session in the summer program at Alberton. He also is leaner and trimmer to be able to play “an outside role; so I need to be an elite runner,” says Toumpas.
Brandon Ellis of the Tigers is tackled by Jimmy Toumpas of the Power.
Mentally, Toumpas is finding a new space – at a time when many are questioning how much professional AFL players are still enjoying the game when it becomes their full-time work.
The alarm bell has been raised by recent player union surveys revealing as many as 60 per cent of AFL players find no fun in their chosen sport.
“I put a lot of pressure on myself,” admits Toumpas.
“So I just want to enjoy footy this year. That is what allows me to play my best footy … having fun. And that is what I have been doing the last few weeks.
“I haven’t been in the AFL side, but I am okay with that … I know where I sit and where the coaches have me at the moment,” says Toumpas adding assistant coaches Matthew Nicks and Michael Voss have not lost confidence in him.
“I’ve always put pressure on myself. And I put a lot of pressure on myself (last year at a new club) to perform. And when I didn’t (deliver), things did not go too well for me. It wasn’t the year I wanted it to be.
“I think I have found a recipe over the summer that will hold me in good stead.”
A former high-call draftee at the Power, key forward John Butcher (No. 8, 2009), learned SANFL crowds can be cutting – and their voices carry across suburban grounds.
So as Toumpas searches to stay in a “good space”, his new recipe for success demands he block out the negative “white noise” that will come on those inevitable in-hindsight reviews of who won (and lost) in any trade deal.
“That is irrelevant to me,” says Toumpas.
“I don’t listen to that stuff. I care most about what my team-mates and my coaches say to me and, obviously, my family and mates. I’ve learned over the past three or four years what to listen to – and what not.”
Port Adelaide’s Jimmy Toumpas gets his handpass away against Essendon at Adelaide Oval.
JIMMY TAKES NEW ROLE SERIOUSLY
JIMMY Toumpas today benefits from a generational change in Australian football, particularly with attitudes towards ethnic classes supposedly “suited” to other football codes.
So the Port Adelaide midfielder – who is of Greek heritage - takes his new role as an AFL-Australia Post multi-cultural ambassador as critical to opening up the same hassle-free path to Australia’s new wave of immigrants from Africa and Asia.
Toumpas is the only SA-based AFL multi-cultural ambassador. He takes this role from former Port Adelaide full back Alipate Carlile, who is leading the Power’s new multi-cultural program that is to add to the successful social and educational campaign the club has established with indigenous children.
“Our Power multi-cultural program is currently taking us (Toumpas, Carlile and Ugandan Emmanuel Irra) to Underdale High School where they see us a role model,” Toumpas said.
Chen Shaoliang, Jimmy Toumpas and Emmanuel Irra at Alberton Oval. Picture Sarah Reed
“Sometimes they, as Sudanese or Chinese immigrants, look at us and think if I can fit in, so can they. That makes you feel pretty special.
“Footy was, for me, my vehicle to fit in when my mates at school were ‘Aussies’. They all played footy and as soon as I started playing footy, the (racial profiling) was never an issue for me. I never had to deal with racism at all. Times have changed from when my dad might have heard those remarks.”
The AFL has learned in the past two years – and most recently with Crows specialist forward Eddie Betts at Adelaide Oval – that there is still work to be done in clearing racism off the terraces after the players have done so much to end the taunting on the field.
“We have made massive ground (on the field), so it is about education so that a minority (off the field) understands,” Toumpas said. “It’s important to appreciate we are all different and do things differently.”
stretcharmstrong
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Yeah, this is getting old
- May 3, 2014
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It was fun when Port thought they had an Ablett Jnr waiting in the wings once they dusted the Melbourne off him, but now Port have come to the realisation that we had years ago about his 'actual' ability, this thread has kind of lost it's appeal.
I miss the Port supporters coming on here gloating about his 20 possession games with no impact whatsoever.
In all seriousness tho, what are they thinking trimming him down? As if he was Ollie Wines' size and an inside animal they're forced to play on a wing.
PerfectFooty
Perfect Cell
I'd go past the wing and look in the stands
astrodee
Team Captain
But the stands are where the white noise come from.
Biffinator
Norm Smith Medallist
- Thread starter
- #1,684
guys, we are going to the end of the line - Round 23 - and Gotterdammerung of the Toump
Proper Gander
Owl whisperer and secret agent
Going to be a slow thread, Biff. I can't honestly see him getting a game, and Port aren't that good.
I think he'll play somewhere between 0-5 games, as they'll be looking for something/anything to get them going, and/or, the care taker coach will be instructed to try him out to see if there is anything there to suggest he'll ever be a player.
astrodee
Team Captain
There is no doubt in my mind that at some time this season Ken will be seduced by the tempting toump. And like a mocking meringue that melts to nothing, Dmitri will look into the headlights and a brown soggy mess will appear where he had been.
Biffinator
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This is why we should persist with this thread.
- Sep 18, 2006
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It's not nice to mock the weak and infirm. I hope Jimmy has an amazingly successful and happy life. It's just not going to be as an AFL footballer. He's a champion human and he's worked to make it, he just doesn't have the basic prerequisites ie athleticism, power.
Cannon82
Cancelled
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Persistence and dedication. See this thing out and in 6 months this thread be consigned to rot in the BigFooty archive.
Yakker
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Port player reviews (admittedly from Port fans) from their SANFL game against Glenelg
My player reviews.
Ah Chee for mine was our best player by a mile. Knocking on the door.
Summerton got a heap of the ball but even though he was on the wing he found it hard to have a big impact on the game.
Reynolds was ok, kicked a few goals but it's possible that he may get dropped because our fwd line is too tall.
Frampton when thrown into the ruck had a good impact on the game. Should play there more often.
Johnson had flashes of good play inside forward 50 but not enough for it to be a solid game.
Marshall was probably our best AFL listed forward for the night, not great but showed decent signs.
Krak was ok in patches but for mine wasn't good enough.
Lienert didn't have the best of days, probably more help down back would be good.
Snelling and Drew were not good enough in the midfield and lost that battle.
Pittard had no room to move in a highly contested game.
Ladhams, Palmer and Bonner had little impact on the game.
Atley and Irras disposal were pretty bad.
Lobbe was horrible in the ruck but took a mark up forward and got a goal.
Neade had a terrible game, no urgency in his play at all.
Toumpas and Austin got absolutely destroyed.
Hewett might have a concession or shoulder injury after some friendly fire not 100% sure.
Toumpas - a couple of nice things but most of the night was asking for the ball in bad spots and luckily most times was ignored by his team mates. he looked a bit lost out there at times.
Toumpas- did he even play?
It was a rookie midfield (Atley, Drew, Snelling) and very raw tall forward line (Ladhams, Marshall). You've then got serial underperformers in Neade and Toumpas.
My player reviews.
Ah Chee for mine was our best player by a mile. Knocking on the door.
Summerton got a heap of the ball but even though he was on the wing he found it hard to have a big impact on the game.
Reynolds was ok, kicked a few goals but it's possible that he may get dropped because our fwd line is too tall.
Frampton when thrown into the ruck had a good impact on the game. Should play there more often.
Johnson had flashes of good play inside forward 50 but not enough for it to be a solid game.
Marshall was probably our best AFL listed forward for the night, not great but showed decent signs.
Krak was ok in patches but for mine wasn't good enough.
Lienert didn't have the best of days, probably more help down back would be good.
Snelling and Drew were not good enough in the midfield and lost that battle.
Pittard had no room to move in a highly contested game.
Ladhams, Palmer and Bonner had little impact on the game.
Atley and Irras disposal were pretty bad.
Lobbe was horrible in the ruck but took a mark up forward and got a goal.
Neade had a terrible game, no urgency in his play at all.
Toumpas and Austin got absolutely destroyed.
Hewett might have a concession or shoulder injury after some friendly fire not 100% sure.
Toumpas - a couple of nice things but most of the night was asking for the ball in bad spots and luckily most times was ignored by his team mates. he looked a bit lost out there at times.
Toumpas- did he even play?
It was a rookie midfield (Atley, Drew, Snelling) and very raw tall forward line (Ladhams, Marshall). You've then got serial underperformers in Neade and Toumpas.
astrodee
Team Captain
After being demelbourned the rudderless sstoump settled into port. And promptly sank.
Salvage teams are following a brown trail to find and refloat as they believe there's gold in there somewhere.
Salvage teams are following a brown trail to find and refloat as they believe there's gold in there somewhere.
Gysberts2Bate
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I too enjoy cyber bullying
RossFC
Moderator
- Moderator
- #1,695
Hey guys, Not trying to defend Toumpas as I don't think he's AFL standard. But in that game vs Glenelg a month ago he was playing in the back pocket on a small forward instead of playing on the wing. Was a complete mismatch.
Since then he's been off half back. Has got 28, 28, 29 and 31 disposals in his last 4 games.
My thoughts are though is that he is just a good SANFL player, Nothing more. So I reckon he's unlikely to play AFL anytime soon.
Bluelegs
Celebrating what we're good at
His hip injuries ****ed his career before it started. Was never able to run and build any kind of confidence.
Poor bloke.. Always had a soft spot for him. I think his hip injuries just zapped all confidence out of him unfortunately.
ThePuppetMaster
Yay
I think he was just coached terribly and now is at a stage where he can't make the improvements he needed to in order to be a good player.
Still has a chance at a career, but it's slipping.
Still has a chance at a career, but it's slipping.
Sylvia Saint
Cancelled
The 2012 draft would have to go down as the worst top 5 of all time. Whitfield is meh, O'Rourke and Toumpas duds, and Plowman a C grader. I suppose Stringer goes OK but even he has stagnated since 2015.
