THE WEDNESDAY HORN

There are few things sadder than a former superstar sportsman plying his trade when his use-by-date has well and truly expired.
Boxing is the obvious example. I think Evander Holyfield and Riddick Bowe are still plugging away and the sport in general has seen more comebacks than John Farnham. The other one that springs to mind is beach cricket, where guys who used to average 50+ in test matches now drag their beer bellies through the sand to the amusement of a pack of booze-hounds, body-boarders and knuckleheads. It is astonishingly bad stuff.
The danger with a competition like ours is that we become a grazing paddock for old timers who still want to have a kick around and an adrenalin rush on a Saturday. Aaron James did it for years in lowly suburban leagues – he’d rock to a new club, kick a ton, collect his pay cheque and then shop around for the highest bidder. The last thing we want is guys like that sniffing about and donning VAFA jumpers.
Old Haileybury sometimes cop a bit of flak on this front. The critics point to Stewart Loewe, who turns 41 next month, as a prime example of someone who is hanging on for the sake of hanging on and merely denying a youngster a senior spot. The presence of other St Kilda alumni, Robert Harvey, Tony Brown and Brett Voss, sometimes prompts comment that Old Haileybury is simply amateur football’s version of beach cricket. And there’s no greater insult than that!
But the argument just doesn’t stand up. Loewe looks as fit as someone half his age and still has a major impact on games. His involvement with the school team and the fact that he stuck with the Bloods through their lean times suggests that he is exactly the sort of ex-AFL player you’d want at your club. And ditto Tony Brown, who many believe was the premier VAFA player
last year and Voss, who has served the competition with distinction as a representative player. The Harvey factor is a little more blurry. I must admit it is a bit strange seeing a two-time Brownlow medallist and 383 game player running around in a B-Section amateur game. It’s not quite like seeing Dennis Lillee or Curtley Ambrose trundle around in bare feet on a Mooloolaba beach but…
Who I am kidding? The presence of Rob Harvey can only be good for the VAFA, for his club and dare I say it, for him. The Sunday papers and TV news gave his comeback a good run. And he’s hardly the sort of guy who’s going to be blasé about the whole thing.
That said, I am often surprised as how little impact the ex AFL players have at the amateur level. They seem to bob up in the big games however, as Anthony McDonald proved a few years ago for Xavs, as did Scotch’s Adam Houlihan in last year’s ill-fated first-semi final. And in the case of someone like Matt Robbins at Ormond, they can be instrumental in helping their club progress through the grades.
These days, VAFA rules definitely make it easier for ex-AFL players to slot straight into an Old Boys’ Club. Even if you have no affiliation with the school, university or club, you can now walk right in, so long as you don’t have a dubious record at the tribunal. And I guess it’s sometimes easy to be cynical about guys from outside the system slotting into such a club. I remember thinking that about Craig Kelly when he was trotting around for Old Xaverians a decade ago. Seeing Paul Licuria on the transfer list for Old Scotch elicits a similar response. But that sort of talk is unfounded. We don’t want our Old Boys’ clubs to be all ex schoolmates, from the same demographic, with the same old school tie mentality. Sometimes, throwing say, a Steve Lawrence into the mix of a club like Scotch is good for all involved. There will still be players who see it all as a bit of a lark and hold the “I’m too good for this type of footy” type of attitude. But thankfully, they’re few and far between and besides, they tend to get found out pretty quickly anyway. For every Adrian Cox, there’s a dozen Matthews Robbins’. The more the merrier I reckon.
The views expressed by Jonathan Horn are not necessarily those of the VAFA.
He can be reached at [email protected]