Nice pick up. Inconsistent as hell but his best is seriously good. Fingers crossed he can put it all together.
Any chance that was planned?
Doubt it. If you’re going to suck deliberately so your dad’s side gets you cheap, why not suck deliberately for the whole season rather than just the middle? Surely the end of the season would stick in recruiters’ minds better, and that’s when he played his best.
Besides, if I deliberately agreed to take a season-long dive so my dad’s team could get me with a late pick, I’d damn well want them to guarantee me a main list spot before I agreed to the plan, none of this rookie ■■■■!
So nah, tempting to believe it, but sometimes inconsistent is just plain inconsistent…
OK, so we rolled the dice on him. Inconsistency can be corrected. 2015 was a very consistent year for a SMack, who was de-listed for lack of consistency.
If Tom is as good a player for Essendon as his father was, I will be very happy.
People remember Dean Wallis as an enforcer, and he definitely was that. But he was more than that as well. In our 1999 and 2000 sides, he was a valuable and reliable player at both ends of the ground. It took him 7 years to get to 100 games, but his 100th was sensational (speccies, 4 goals and b.o.g. from memory) and he continued to play at that standard through to the end of 2000. And right from the beginning we won a lot of games with Dean Wallis in the team.
Good luck to young Tom. Let’s hope he works hard and shows his father’s determination.
If Tom is as good a player for Essendon as his father was, I will be very happy.
People remember Dean Wallis as an enforcer, and he definitely was that. But he was more than that as well. In our 1999 and 2000 sides, he was a valuable and reliable player at both ends of the ground. It took him 7 years to get to 100 games, but his 100th was sensational (speccies, 4 goals and b.o.g. from memory) and he continued to play at that standard through to the end of 2000. And right from the beginning we won a lot of games with Dean Wallis in the team.
Good luck to young Tom. Let’s hope he works hard and shows his father’s determination.
An excellent CHF too, and his game in the 1989 QF vs Geelong, he played a great game at FF, yet didn’t kick a goal. Not the greatest kick for goal, DW. Even Hooksy is a better shot.
Just need a Barnes to go with him to keep up the Squadron 617 connection. Couldn't believe it when Barnes and Wallis arrived at the bombers in the same year in the 80s! Even down to the spelling of Wallis.
Anyone who has no idea what I’m talking about should go read Brickhill’s book about the Dam Busters. Plenty of Australians feature, including ‘Mick’ Martin (real name Sir Harold Brownlow Martin) (footy name coincidental references galore), considered to have been the greatest pilot ever in the RAF (transferred from RAAF), above even Guy Gibson.
Wally played some seriously good footy when it mattered, that game in 99 should have been locked away well before the last minute if that team had played anything like it should have; can’t blame one mistake for the loss.
And if anyone ever cared to listen to Sheedy or Wally on this subject matter, they will tell you that when he first grabbed the ball & looked upfield, all he saw was a wall of Carlton blokes 50m in front of him. So the idea was to get around Brown, sneakily gain an extra 15m & kick it over the top of the mass of fark Carlton blokes.
His biggest issue was his lack of peripheral vision & not spotting Fletch out wide, but I guess we’re all experts who have been in an identical position & would have known exactly what to do.
Anyone blaming the big clunk CHB for a mistake running up the field is doing it wrong. That Dean Wallis was our option out of defence was the issue, not that it didn’t work.
I don’t blame Wally wholly for the loss, but you’ve got to admit he farked up royally. Someone of his agility should never be taking on the guy on the mark. Lloyd was screaming for it in the square, and it’s not like Wally had a Lucas like peg and was likely to goal from outside 50. He made a really bad decision, but plenty of great players have made terrible decisions in big moments.
He definitely ■■■■■■ up, but fact is we missed almost 20? shots before it got to that point. Any one of them gets kicked and there’s no pressure to score, he can kick sideways or wait for someone to run past.
The only good thing about 1999 is that it’s the best memory Fark Carlton have in the past 20 years, and all it got them was the opportunity to lose another grand final.
I’ve always maintained that 1999 set the foundation for our best ever year in 2000, and arguably the best ever season of any team in the AFL.
I think the hurt was a big driving factor for the merciless brute force of 2000. With the off-night of the game against the Doggies, no team got closer than a 3 goals to us in 2000, and most games had an 8-10 goal margin.
And, we toweled up Fark Carlton 3 times that year, including the epic round 20 game in front of 91,000 where it was arguably the top 2 teams playing off ahead of the finals, and Mark Johnson collided with Kouta and he did his pcl, meaning it was a dirty dirty night for Fark Carlton.
Yeah, 1999 sucked. But it led to 2000, which was the best possible response ever (apart from the one doggies blemish).
You see sides that have beaten the opposition before they take the field over a season but that season was off tap. We had sides beaten by 10 goals before anyone got onto the park.
The Mercuri miss was the thing that lost it, surely nobody blames Wallis
Unfair to pin a result on one act by an individual. Overall poor performance by the team put us in a losing position. Not a missed goal or a tackle on someone trying to take the game on.
We win as a team, we lose as a team.
The first half of the Prelim was what lost it for us in '99.
Giving Fark Carlton a four goal lead at half time put the team in the unfamiliar position of having to chase a game down (apart from that late season game against the Crows at Docklands where Longy’s six goals helped them come back from a seven or eight goal deficit), otherwise nearly all our games were decided by halftime that season.
I think Sheeds even alluded to the players attitude before the game, thinking that all they had to do was just turn up and they’d win and that that had concerned him leading into game.
That lazy, arrogant first half effort and letting a farking big, fat, lumbering oaf like Lance Whitnall off the leash to wreak havoc is what farked us that year IMO.
