Casey column
By Bill Casey
I'm beginning to think we're a generation of wimps. Perhaps our fathers and their fathersbefore them were tougher.
Certainly our sportsmen, despite the advantages of modern science and technology, donot seem anywhere near as resilient as their contemporaries of 30, 40 or 50 years ago.
Today's champions must be either very highly strung or very susceptible to injury.
One only has to notice the way Soccer players dive to the ground in terrible agonywhen injured in a football match. Posing for a free kick is one thing, but these blokesseem a pony beer off the morgue.
The days when Captain Blood Jack Dyer ran through a pack with his elbows precedinghim are gone forever.
A modern day footballer would call copper if Dyer used his elbows the way he did inthe thirties and forties.
We wouldn't allow that dangerous play anyway. That's for the old razor gangs, not ourenlightened community.
We only kill, rape and pillage these days. And more often.
Admittedly modern equipment has played its part but the value of boots saving ankleinjuries rather than the low protection light weight shoes the footballers are calledupon to wear today seems arguable.
The support the old boot gave to the ankle and legs surely is reflected in the preponderanceof hamstring injuries today's footballers incur.
The ball itself is not as heavy nor as rounded as the old blow up/lace up football of yesteryear.
But it still means that footballers are stretched out in Australian Rules at leastto kick it more then fifty metres.
There is no doubt that the modern day drop punt is more reliable than the superb dropkick of earlier years but the ball does not travel as far for certain and the game isnot as spectacular in consequence.
Blokes like Fred Hughson regularly used to kick it 70 and 80 yards after a point had been scored.
The modern era has had a different reaction in golf and tennis. Not more accurate. Just further.
In golf the equipment now is so high tech that the good players can hit the ball 300metres without much trouble.
The golf club, and particularly the golf ball, of the year 2002 is so sophisticatedthat golf courses are rapidly becoming old moded and indeed too short and too easy forthe modern champion players.
That does not alter the fact that the shot makers of old like Bobby Jones, Ben Hoganand Sam Snead would more than hold their own against the mechanical men of today.
Similarly in tennis the modern racquet has the women hitting almost as powerfully asthe men. Certainly they now hit it as hard and as accurately as their male predecessorscould.
The racquet does the work instead of the muscle.
But then again, if we are to believe the experts the best tennis player ever seen wasRod Laver, who was restricted to a small wooden "tennis elbow" producing racquet.
In football the pre-season training seems to encourage footballers to break down. Somany succumb to an injury.
In the old days first grade Australian Football squads were of nineteen men.
The nineteenth man was there just in case one of the top eighteen broke a leg or his neck.
He had often played in the reserves match beforehand anyway. Otherwise he warmed thebench for the afternoon. He didn't get a run just because he was there.
Now there are 22 in an Australian Rules squad and each of them gets plenty of matchtime under the interchange scheme.
But it is the way that football teams are still decimated by injury that fascinates me.
The incidence of leg injuries compared with the earlier years is startling.
Teams like St Kilda, Carlton and Sydney are particularly stricken this year by injuriesand have yet to be able to choose from a full squad.
And this even though the AFL season is but five rounds old.
It seems strange that so many people supposedly highly trained and in prefect health,cannot play a single game of football in the first month of a competition.
So much so Rodney Eade, the coach of the Sydney Swans, is heading an inquiry into whyhis team is hit by injuries each season.
The AFL season used to stretch from April to the first week in September.
Now we have had five rounds and a pre-season competition before the end of April andthe season will not be finished until the end of September.
Goodness knows how many players will be incapacitated by the time the full season is over.
Very rarely is there more than one or two players on a playing list who appear in everymatch of an AFL season.
The likes of Dyer and his mates never missed one despite boozing up after trainingon Tuesday and even having a few to celebrate their selection each week.
The average footballer these days looks after himself as though he was made of preciousmetal rather than flesh and blood.
The modern day "weakness" is reflected even in our pet animals.
Spot or Fido of the 1930s was never troubled by such maladies as heart murmur or even fleas.
He just survived on the back lawn or under a tree at nighttime, running along happilyuntil hit by a bus or old age.
I doubt very much whether he ever saw the inside of a veterinary surgery.
He even had his tail docked and other vital parts of him removed by the obliging localbutcher rather than veterinary operation.
And it was usually with the same chopper as our four quarter of mutton was shaped.
It was a far cry from the 120 bucks I spent on heart worm and flea prevention medicinefor my four legged friend the other day.
No one can tell me with the "superfit" footballers breaking down each week that theyare any tougher then their predecessors.
I'll admit the game must be faster but they don't jump as high and hit each other any harder.
Yet they are certainly more prone to injury then those blokes of fifty years ago.
I wonder why.
I don't remember the heroes of my school days breaking down each week. Perhaps it didn'thurt as much then.
ENDS
KEYWORD: CASEY ON SPORT COLUMN
No comments:
Post a Comment