Universal Love Your football experiences!

mattymac

Why no midfield crowz?
10k Posts
Jul 9, 2009
18,167
32,188
Yes
AFL Club
Adelaide
Other Teams
No
Was a star rover at PAC junior school until moving to a school that had no footy tean . Switched to soccer and div 1 tennis before I picked up a golf stick and got hit with the golf bug. Played some pennant golf and have been a golfer ever since. Had the skills for AFL but didn't have the height.
Is this a quiz question?
 

jo172

Brownlow Medallist
Sep 23, 2004
16,786
15,478
Adelaide
AFL Club
Adelaide
Other Teams
San Antonio, Redbacks
I did something a little similar. Year 11 and tackled this guy near the boundry line in front of the grandstand at Saints. Went after the spillage on the ground and this kid comes in knees first, I attempted to retaliate by punching him but dislocated my shoulder as I rotated around and froze, so copped one on top of the knees and the shoulder. The grandstand got the added benefit of watching a surgeon relocate my shoulder right in front of them.

I remember playing once at Saints circa 2005 when a team mate slid into the goal post and broke his leg (not dissimilar to Carey).

His mother dryly turned to mine in the grand stand and said "good thing there's a lot of surgeons about"
 
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CrowBloke

Solum stulti se excusant!
May 14, 2017
11,166
12,355
AFL Club
Adelaide
Other Teams
West Adelaide
Anyone else still get all the memories flooding back from the smell of liniment?
That intense camphor-smell is one of my strongest memories from playing sport, going into change rooms, getting ready.

The liniment back then was a liquid, slightly green in colour from memory, called PENETRENE.
I was about 18 playing B Grade for Camden on the oval near the Morphett Road/Anzac Highway bend --- second ruck. I strained my right hammy and was off the ground where an enthusiastic trainer was working on my leg using PENETRENE so liberally that he spilled some onto my jock strap.
Of course, it set fire to my boys; felt like a blowtorch and I ended up running into the changeroom showers to rinse it off.
Big mistake!
The water just spread it all over and I howled and jumped until I was able to get some soap onto my barbecued (Penetrene-marinated) genitals.
 
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Carmo

Norm Smith Medallist
Apr 15, 2011
6,522
5,860
SA
AFL Club
Adelaide
Forgot the aftermath of the whack in the eye that dislodged my contact. Ended up with a beaut of a shiner that lasted most of the next week at school. People kept asking what happened so I'd tell them I copped a punch to the eye but still played the game out and kicked two goals. Never mentioned it was a backhander from a 14 year old who was about 4 foot tall.
This one reminds me, in my career, ive had probably half a dozen split open eyes. Every one was exactly the same cause, same situation.

Carmo is in the seniors and is now well and truly a senior player. Other team has, like our team did, some juniors in it. A kick would come out and Carmo would lick his lips and say this looks like a good one to mark. Runs, leaps (has a good leap on him). Junior player is trying really hard tho (unlike most of the seniors who are jaded and just do whatever) and junior jumps as high as he can in the contest are reaches up as far as he can and goes to spoil the ball, however, since they can't jump as high as Carmo all they do is end up cracking him in the head, often the eye, splitting it.

Little shits. I mean most times they were just trying hard and not malicious about it, so I couldn't even be angry at them let alone retaliate, a grumpy face look was about the worst I could give them.

Was pretty annoying tho, only the smallest and skinniest people in the opposition were the ones to take me out bad enough to come off (mostly to get blood cleaned up but a couple required stitches).
 

Carmo

Norm Smith Medallist
Apr 15, 2011
6,522
5,860
SA
AFL Club
Adelaide
Another one from my last year of U17's, I'd just started going out with my girlfriend (now wife) and we were well in the mushy puppy love phase. She and her bestie came to watch me play as we were playing in the town her friend lived (10 mins away from our town). I told her the night before that if I kick a goal, it's for her.

I also have one from the puppy love vault....

Growing up, I was a real mans man type, totally not in touch with my feminine side at all. Anyway, despite this, managed to get a girlfriend and she used to come out to a number of my games. This one game I can remember (actually I can't) getting knocked, totally out cold, got stretchered off. Apparently took like 10 minutes to come to. GF came around to the rooms and came in to see if I was alright. Anyway, also apparently (because I have no memory of this part) , when I first started talking I rambled on with the most mushy, gf dedicational, pledging my eternal undying love speech you would have ever heard. At first, when I had cleared up and they were telling me this I thought they might be making it up, but some of the stuff they were repeating and the way they were saying it and the way they were all pissing themselves reenacting it I knew they weren't stitching me up and I had genuinely produced this speech. I am just glad this was before mobile phone videoing was widespread otherwise I would probably have gone viral for that one. :grinv1::roflv1::tongueoutv1:
 
Kicked 13 goals in a ressies match once. I was on top of the world thought my sh*t didn’t stink. Team was looking for me and trying to get me as many goals as possible. Was great.

I got talking to my opponent and he said he was legally blind was guessing most of the day what was happening.

I don’t often speak about my 13 goal game now, not sure if I should have kicked more or I should have been a little less smug about it.
whod you play for?
 
Small country town in Victoria Navarre. You may have heard of our senior side when they went on a 50 win streak including 4 flags in a row.
Nah

When I moved to Adelaide I played a season with Broadview.
I think I only got recommended to go there because they were short on numbers.

Our league side went 3-15 or 2-16 or something that year, while the B and C grade didn't win a game.

The C grade team was a team of deaf people and were meant to be D grade. But due to lack of numbers, they had to play other teams' C grade teams.

Mid-season, some of the better deaf players were starting to break into our B grade team and there was a game against Henley where the opposition FF went crazy and kicked something like 13 goals. So I wondered if you were playing for Henley against us that day.
 
I spent most of my junior career in Sydney and only playing 1 year in Adelaide before giving up the game and getting into umpiring.

Nothing really happened for the first few years of my career. I played in 2 grand finals (I was u9s playing up intot he u10s team, then in u11s with another club) but lost both games.

In u11s we did a Collingwood 2011 - Beat everyone except 1 team whom we lost every game we played them. And my dad missed that GF because he was in South Korea for work.

Then the team progressively got worse every season as we had a new coach every single season (In my 10 years of playing, I had 15 different head coaches)

In u14s (the 5th year at my 2nd club) - Since going from beaten everyone but 1 team in u11s, we now couldn't beat anyone. We had a 1-win season. But that 1 win was against a team close to us regionally, and they had 3 players from my grade at school, 2 of which were in my home-class. I kicked 3 goals that day, another team-mate kicked 4 and all 7 of them were against one of my best mates from school. Yeah, got to give him a little bit of banter that week.

Also, despite being the worst team in the league, in my 100th game, my dad came and coached it (he normally did the u12s, but he switched with the u14s coach (who had his younger son in the u12s) so he could be there for my 100th) we played that team from u11s who we could NEVER beat. Despite being the worst team in the league we were dominating the game as we tried a new tactic in the midfield. We lined up our FF (Me), Ru and FB in a ruck like position. Confused the s**t out of the opposition ruckman and we dominated the midfield against a team stacked with NSW scholarship players (Fremantle, North Melbourne and a Brisbane one). Eventually our FB had an asthma attack and couldn't continue in the midfield. They got ontop and ran away with it. Ah well. Honourable loss for the worst team in the league vs one of the best.

In u15s, one of my mates from my team (1 of 2 who could make the regional team, and only 1 who could make the NSW team (not good enough for NSW/ACT)) was being recruited by that team with the Fremantle, North Melbourne and Brisbane scholarship players. He was umming and ahhing, but I decided I'd join him and we both went (as long as a Collingwood scholarship player coming down from Newcastle to play). We had a 2 game stint mid-season where we had our best team available and played the other 2 teams who could compete with us. 1 week I got decimated in the ruck (by a Hawthorn scholarship player), the very next week against the eventual premiers, I kick 4 goals from FF while our Collingwood scholarship player dominated in the ruck. After starting the year as the ruckman, I was now the FF. The coach said at the end of the year. He regretted making that move as our structure was better with me tapping it down to the better player. Him being in the ruck took him out of the contest more. We played the eventual premiers 3 times that year, rd 1 we both missed half our team (all state players held out and were water runners) and we won by 3-4 goals. The 2nd time we were both at full strength (though, our Brisbane scholarship player was partially injured) and we lost by 1 goal. The 3rd time injuries decimated us and they destroyed us. Though, one of the opposition players (Geelong scholarship player) was super fast. And despite me being a ruckman, I can take long strides. I nearly chased him down. Only applied pressure as he kicked it though :(

But one of my favourite games was in u18s. I was now with my 4th club (the club my mates in u14s played for) - I was in the 2nd u18s team (1st u18s was our 18 year olds, 2nd u18s was our 17 year olds). The 1st u18s ruckman was so dominant they didn't waste their time with a backup. So he played for us. So all I was, was the 2nd ruckman/2nd FF (behind my mate in that u14s game who was playing FB back then and we kicked 7 goals on him). The #1 ruck got injured on the opening ball-up of the game, so I had to play the entire game in the ruck and it was my best game of my career. Absolutely dominated, marked everything that came my way, dominated the ruck, set up goals. But whatever, my opponent that day actually happened to be a Sydney scholarship player, who had games for Sydney, got cut, played for North Adelaide, and then got re-drafted into the AFL and played for Richmond. For the game of my career to be against a scholarship player shocked me. Though, I did that sometimes, in u14s I broke even with Hawthorn scholarship player I referenced earlier, and I was there going, how the **** is this guy on scholarship. Yeah, u15s he showed why he was good.

Now umpiring - Obviously goal umpire.
Spent 2.5 years with the SANFL but only got to u18s level, did get an u16s GF though.

But I've been in the Amateur league in 2 stints, 1.5 years directly after the SANFL, took a year off, and now into year 7 with the AdFL.
In my first division 1 game back in 2013, I had a game at gaza and got knocked down. Only time in my career I've been knocked down by a player. Just annoying it was my first Div 1 game.

But I absolutely love umpiring. Mostly done Div 1 over my time there. But my favourite ever game was probably my first ever game with the league. Back in 2010 I was still SANFL academy. However, once u16s was over, if we didn't get an u18s game we did Amateur League. First ever game was a huge shootout at Mitcham. To this day Div 3 is my favourite division to umpire. Div 1 is skillfull and has heavy defensive tactics. Div 3 (and down) are very attacking. But Div 2 is what i'd say is the worst division to watch. They try and do what Div 1 teams do on a tactics front, but they dont have the skill. Terrible viewing.
 

Alwaysacrow

Premiership Player
Jul 8, 2016
3,628
4,473
AFL Club
Adelaide
I was never much of a footballer or sportsperson but I could run like the wind. In 1 school game I was playing half back. The ball was kicked to their half forward and I completely miss judged the flight of the ball and the half forward took the mark over me, and played on towards goal. I could see the look of despair on my captains face so instead of dropping my head I took off after him and brought him down as he was about to kick the goal. HTB.
I made up for my error.
 

Bob Neil

Club Legend
Sep 20, 2011
2,888
6,118
At a table with old friends
AFL Club
Adelaide
Great thread 👍. Always good to reminisce about our own footy memories in between moaning about the Crows!
Played my first match at aged 5 and still playing (technically!) at aged 48 in Masters...hoping to hold out long enough to play some 9s matches with my son in a few years 🤞.
  • Played for primary school, SAPSASA, SANFL juniors, high school, did an U19s preseason with Sturt, 99 games of Amateur League (A1/A1R) and now Masters Over 35s/45s...loved it all without ever threatening to be a champion.
  • Best players I played with or against (in no particular order) Paul Rouvray (Crows/Sydney), Trent Mills (South), Chris Prime (Legs aka Moose / Tractor), Mark Russell (Glenelg), Ian Willmott (Sturt), Grenville Dietrich (North), Glenn Nugent (ex Hawks/St.Kilda) and most recently Aker!
  • Never won a flag (😢); also coached lots of juniors, umpired the kids and been President / Committee for 10+ years.
  • Held the cup in the rooms after the 1979 grand final (old man was dyed in the wool Port supporter!)
  • Played mini league at the first game under lights at Footy Park in 1984.
  • Went to the first ever Crows game but the best game I saw live was the 1984 SOO when Sticks kicked 10 and we lost by 4 points.
  • Got carried off on a stretcher after doing my knee at Kilburn (think I was trying to avoid getting in big Grenville’s way!) and being called a Uni NTTAWWTter as they carried me through the crowd!
Good times!
 
Jan 7, 2009
533
660
Melbourne
AFL Club
Adelaide
Other Teams
MUFC
Talking about bags of goals in another thread got me thinking about my football experiences.
Give us your interesting football experiences from your time playing football.

My funniest one I can think of was tackling a bloke and realizing he was wearing a g string.

Another one, was playing a SAPSASA lightning carnival, I wore my kit to the game and brought a towel and a jumper.
Not realizing I had to give the shorts and guernsey back after the matches.
We won the carnival and I had to go up and accept a medal with just a jumper and a towel on.
Very embarrassing.

I would have played against you at this carnival!
 
Oct 1, 2003
17,776
17,440
Adelaide, Australia
AFL Club
Adelaide
Other Teams
NFC AUFC MUFC Socceroos
Played mostly school footy up until year 10, then got badly knocked out playing an intra school game. Was playing FB against the school's year level FF at the time and giving him a bath. He didn't like that so tunnelled me in a marking contest, landed on my head instead of feet. Spent the night in hospital was one stage away from a coma and had a bad headache for a week. Couldn't handle strobe lights for a few years after either. Try not to think about what may happen later on in life with all the recent info.

Needless to say I didn't play again after that switched to soccer.
 
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