That’s odd.
Yeah, I remember that too. But everyone did duck the showers after PE, so maybe the classroom teachers were complaining about the odors.
I also remember we had a Carlton player doing teaching rounds when Curly was in charge. If memory serves me, he was really young, but went on to have a fair career. Skinny, lanky type. David Glascott I think.
RIP Neil Sachse
I remember seeing him get injured on TV in the 70’s. Pretty brutal footage. Suddenly made the game a bit more serious the stakes dept. His life completely changed at 24.
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I remember it well, and is was an accidental hit by a Fitzroy player, who has never forgiven himself.
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Fitzroy guy was from down this way. I think his brother is a big wheel at one of the Hampden clubs.
But Sachse just drove his head, off balance, into O’Keeffe’s chest and gut. No blame at all could be attached.
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This was a Newspaper article about it. Kevin O’Keeffe was a good tough player, it was just a very sad accident. Today I reckon the player would be judged badly.
KEVIN O’Keeffe talks about moments in footy. In 115 years of the AFL, there have been trillions on trillions of moments that changed games and changed football clubs.
O’Keeffe’s moment, which was an accident, changed a life.
In April 1975, the top of O’Keeffe’s left leg, near the hip bone, collided with the head of a stumbling Neil Sachse. The collision, at Whitten Oval, snapped Sachse’s spinal cord.
O’Keeffe was playing for Fitzroy and Sachse for Footscray.
“You think about it all the time,” O’Keefe said yesterday. "I don’t bring it up. In my own head? Something in an article makes me think about it.
“The hardest part is I can’t tell you how it would be to be on the other side. I’m lucky. I can’t change it. I can’t take back time. All I can do is help people be aware of it.”
He watches football at all levels. Brisbane Lions in the AFL, sometimes Collingwood, the amateurs and country footy.
A talented and reliable half-back flanker, he played his footy at Glenormiston in the Western District, then nearby Terang, and arrived at Fitzroy in 1973.
He left the Roys in '79 for two years at East Perth, and rejoined Fitzroy for 1982. In '83, he moved to Queensland and played with Coorparoo, alongside long-time friend Jason Dunstall. He played until he was 40.
It is rare for O’Keeffe to speak about what happened in '75.
Yesterday, on the back deck of his Brunswick home, he said he was nervous. About what he’d say and how it would be written.
HE spoke to Dunstall yesterday, and to Sachse, and to his brother Peter, among others.
“I spoke to them to get an idea from his side (Sachse) and from a club side (Dunstall) about what you might talk about,” O’Keeffe said.
An hour later, there weren’t warnings from a bloke who helped put another bloke in a wheelchair.
He didn’t rant about players ducking their heads or players leading with their heads, and certainly didn’t lecture.
He spoke about the awareness of moments and how media scrutiny, thankfully, had helped these moments be eradicated from the game.
“Think about the game,” O’Keeffe said. "Everyone’s adjusted as the game’s gone on, as it’s got faster, and it’s become more scrutinised.
"You wouldn’t be here now unless you weren’t putting things under scrutiny. But it’s a good thing because if we didn’t have that scrutiny, there would be a lot worse things going on.
"Everyone’s been on the front foot whenever something’s not looking right, and because it’s scrutinised so much, anything that rears its head is pretty much dealt with straight away. In the old days that wouldn’t happen.
"When this happened with Neil, it’s just lucky it was on television.
“It was the first year of every game being telecast, and if had not have been on television, the innuendo would be there all the time.”
HE didn’t expand on “innuendo”. Guessing, the fact that everyone saw it as an accident meant O’Keefe wasn’t labelled as being in the wrong.
“Speaking to Neil this morning, all his awareness is - and I’m the same and that’s why I am talking, and neither of us like doing interviews - it’s the awareness of that split-second of what could happen.”
Kevin O’Keeffe is lead from the ground with a dislocated shoulder.
O’Keeffe admits he often is thrown back to that fateful day at Whitten Oval.
“You think about it all the time,” he said. "I don’t not look at the footage, but I don’t find it to look at.
"(When I do) it’s just one of those things that can happen in a split-second, and it’s about making people aware of that split-second if you’re not thinking about it.
“That’s what can happen. But if you think about the game and how many times it’s happened, we’re very lucky.”
He says he was 21 or 22 when the incident occurred.
He can remember the hit, but not much else. He can’t recall if there was a sickening crunch, or Sachse being carried off the ground on a stretcher. He played the next week, and every game that season.
A young bloke from the country, he was urged to put it behind him. And he did. He made the state team that year and played against Western Australia at Waverley Park.
The team photo is on a wall in one of his bedrooms. He stands second right at the back, beside Stan Alves. On his other side were Peter Knights, Phil Carman and Francis Bourke.
THE captain was Alex Jesaulenko, John Nicholls was coach, and the team included names such as Leigh Matthews, Sam Newman and Max Richardson.
After the Sachse incident, he didn’t receive psychological counselling.
“The support in those days was next to nil in a lot of areas,” he said. "Now there’s always someone you can go and see. Then, the club couldn’t afford to let anyone sit around.
"When you’re a young fella from the country, the best thing was to get back out there and play footy.
"Some people who saw the game felt sorry for me. I never thought of it that way. I just got back in and started playing.
"The incident, I don’t know, it never affected me. If I had been a lot older and mature, no doubt it would’ve affected me. The club and players were very supportive. Kevin Rose was the coach.
“I was a young bloke caught up playing league footy. Yeah, it was hard. It probably would’ve affected players in different ways.”
He visited Sachse in the Austin Hospital some time after the incident, with Rose. “I never spoke. What do you say?” he said.
The next time they met was on an episode of Where Are They Now, 20-odd years later.
“Neil didn’t like doing interviews, but if he wanted to do it, to raise awareness of what he’s striving for, it’s natural that you do whatever you can,” O’Keeffe said.
THE filming for the program, which took place at Sachse’s home, was the first time they had had a deep conversation about what had happened.
They are closer now and O’Keeffe is helping to raise money for the Neil Sachse Foundation, which revolves around a bike ride next March from Melbourne to Adelaide to help raise money for spinal research.
A shy man, he has never welcomed interviews.
“The best part about Melbourne is I can work, go to the footy, and no one knows me, which means I’m not under any scrutiny at any time,” he said.
"But if people know who I am, it’s the first thing they ask. It doesn’t worry me, purely because how Neil is and how he’s attacked life.
"That’s not to say sometimes he’d think something else, but his attitude towards me over the years has been exemplary.
“This is not about me, it’s about awareness, and if I can get on a bike for Neil’s foundation, it’s a small bit I can do.”
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An absolute football tragedy. And I know today’s footballers weren’t even born when that hit happened, but every time a player ducks his head with players coming at him, a shudder goes through me. It’s a miracle there have not been more of these types of injuries.
That’s what I would have said. With really young kids like Timmy Watson and others not quite so young, but still really young, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but he wasn’t ever going to get the ruthlessness into them that you need to win a flag. That’s what Sheedy brought. Sheedy has been the smiling, kindly uncle or grandpa for years now, but he wasn’t like that in the 80s. He was unbelievably focussed and hard.
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Actually that began to die when Ron Barassi, who had been the absolute heart of Melbourne through their amazing run in the fifties, was bought by Carlton as captain/coach in 1965.
I agree. A player who has his head down when there’s a front-on collision, no matter who causes it, is asking for trouble. There was an NFL player a while ago, well after Sachse, Bobby someone I think, who launched himself in what they called a “spear tackle”, i.e., head down and bent right forward, and ended up in a wheelchair. The tackle was illegal at the time.
I was always told that if you go in hard and low then you won’t get hurt.
That was important to me, because I was 65kg soaking wet.
It served me well, and turned cowardice into bravery, but it never occurred to me what would happen if my opponent was given the same advice.
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Local Melbourne musician Mike Noga who played drums for the Drones and Legends of Motor Sport has passed away.
This thread should be retitled “Random people who have done something obscurely noteworthy dearh thread”
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Same, but I sadly ruined my body as a result
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Holy ■■■■.
Chadwick Boseman passed away.
I didn’t even know he was diagnosed with cancer a few years back.
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Very sad, while marvel may not be everyones cup of tea, the global celebration of black panther was incredible.
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Can’t believe he was 43
And he already had it during Black Panther
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Wow, so he had it during filming of black panther, civil war and avengers? That’s nuts
Cancer sucks
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