It’s a familiar summertime trap…”one too many!” A good time just tipped too far.
Sporting careers, too, are too often marred by the decision to go on for “one more”. When is the right time to go?
Pundits are calling for Kevin Muscat to step aside immediately after his awful mauling of young Heart, Zahra, on the weekend. Even he is conceding that the pace of the game may have passed him by.
How do sporting talents know when the time is right? And who has got it awfully wrong?
Ricky Ponting?
If Joe Janiak puts Takeover Target back in to work one more time…
Mick Martyn going to Carlton for that final year was a tragedy. I know he brought up his 300th game but it just wasn’t the right exit for one of the toughest full-backs of all time.
Damo, I’ll second that. Blues supporters weren’t impressed either.
Brad Johnson and Jason Akermanis.
Andre the Giant. Leaning against the top rope for five minutes to catch his breath wasn’t an exciting spectacle.
Tony Lockett 2002, enough said.
The Duck to the Crows.
Ali?
(Fair dinkum) Charlie Clymo was coach of Geelong for one year (the 1931 flag).
It’s a bit murky as to why he left to go back to Golden Point in 1932.
If he left on his volition, his timing was perfect.
Hickey took over.
Dave # 6 Re Andre the Giant, I think he was called the immovable object, not because he couldn’t be moved, but because he couldn’t move himself. How pathetic was that Wrestemania 3 finale vs. Hulk Hogan. The entire match was based around Hogan slamming a guy who barely walk.
Worst comeback: Bobby “The Brain” Heenan vs. The Red Rooster at Wrestlemania 5.
Maybe the committee expressed its full support of him and he thus saw the writing on the wall?
A Bridge Too Favre.
Herb Elliott
Some may say too early. Retired early to study I think.
Unbeaten at 1500m and the mile.
Damo, when I last watched the wrestling, Paul Mr Wonderful Orndorf and Greg the Hammer Valentine stalked their prey. Even then, Andre looked in awful shape. Occasionally sauntering across the ring and grabbing someone with his giant hands before ultimately smothering them with his significant flab.
#10 Any thoughts on why Charlie Clymo left Geelong, most welcome. I interviewed a 95 year old bloke in Ballarat once who said it was because Charlie was given opportunity to return to his job as a foreman in the Ballarat railway yards. it was the height of the Depression I suppsoe. I ask because I am wriitng a chapter on the 1931 premiership. (Go Cats!)
Mick McGuane at Carlton. Carlton supporters (correctly) believe it was a Collingwood conspiracy.
You got us on that one AF :(
Hard to believe we fell for it after Glenn Hawker. :(
Mike Gatting in 1993. An Ashes winning Captain remembered mainly as Warnie’s victim of ‘that ball’.
Damo and Dave, watching Andre The Giant bow to Chump Hogan was sad. Even sadder is that Hogan,Roddy Piper and Ric Flair are still wrestling at the ages of 57,57 and 61. They look terrible.
Len Thompson and Max Richardson going to Fitzroy dimmed their auras. The same with Damien Monkhorst and Tony Francis going to St.Kilda.
David Cloke finished his career with 8 goals against Carlton in 1991 after the Pies axed him in ’89. Remember that JB?
From memory, I think Clokey polled 16 votes in the Brownlow in his final season, so he must have been playing okay. Mind you Clokey just had to turn up to get votes. Wasn’t he runner up to Moore in ’84 when he wasn’t even invited to the count? It helps to have a brother-in-law as an umpy.
I hear you re some of those old wrestlers, although you have to admit the Nature Boy Ric Flair still gives good interviews.
True Damo,Clokey looked slow and cumbersome, but he knew where the ball was most of the time. One of my favourite memories is of him taking bounces through the centre like he was a Rover.
The Nature Boy is one of the best interviews:”A limousine ridin’,lear jet hoppin’,kiss stealin’ son of a gun’! I’ve seen matches from the early 80s where he wrestled Ricky Steamboat (Pre WWF)to a one hour time limit draw. For an hour they went at it, hold and counter hold, barely taking a breath and no sips of water.
It saddens me to see him move so slowly now. He was a great technical wrestler and witty bad guy. “The self-proclaimed dirtiest player in the game”. WOO!
I reckon Rob Harvey went one season too long. St Kilda played as if released from the shackles when he retired.
PS. I read just today in the Encycoledia of Players that Charlie Clymo was from Eaglehawk, the old Cornish mining village on the edge of Bendigo.
After playing for St Kilda, he returned every week to Eaglehawk where he continued to work as a miner.
Maybe it’s a Cornish thing to coach footy clubs for only one year.
Lleyton – except instead of one too many it’s nearing 10. Would also say Ben Cousins, I reckon he should have retired after the drug scandal. He was never a star for the Tiges in the short time he played with Richmond though, admitting, West Coast did have a significantly better team than Richmond when Cousins player with them
Howard
Crio, I suspect Howard thinks he should STILL be leader.
Phil, I think I recall Clokey’s dash – was it at VFL Park? Mid 80s. I love the fact that he played 333 games, kicked 333 goals and wore the number 33.
I saw one of those Steamboat/Flair NWA matches. Stunning. The guy who used to run the Wrestling Information Line (after Ch 10 ditched the WWF) used to run shows at the Prince Patrick Hotel and other pubs around Melbourne in the early 90s. I used to love when Flair was swung with force into the corner, he would do a somersault and fly over the turnbuckle, then miraculously he would be back on his feet again on the outside of the rope and would sprint to the nearest turnbuckle climb to the top rope and fly into his opponent who would usually catch him and roll him over for a dramatic two-count. Electrifying.
Damo and Phil, probably shouldn’t take ths too far off topic, but what are your favourite elaborate wrestling moves – in name or practice?
In the name category I like knife-edge chops, but as a move you can’t go past the camel clutch (the favoured move I believe of the Iron Sheik) and Greg the Hammers figure-four leglock.
I can’t believe that Mario Melano’s “abdoninal stretch” was a submission hold.
Dave, my WWF knowledge is confined mainly to glory days of the mid to late 80s (much more colourful back in those days), but here’s a few:
Jake The Snake Roberts DDT (followed by the slithering of the snake on the unconsious opponent)
The Honky Tonk Man’s shake, rattle and roll (liked his guitar smashing as well!)
Mr Wonderful’s piledriver
Macho Man Randy Savage’s flying elbow from the top rope
Any movement whatsoever by Macho Man’s manager Elizabeth.
Ahh, the lovely Elizabeth, defiled by that brute Macho Man.
The most beautiful manager in the caper, closely followed by Mr Fuji.
Mulcaster, was there a ye olde move known as the brain buster? Growing up my best friends’ dad used to always go on about giving us a brain buster.
Tony (#13), not too many Cheese Heads worrying about whether they should have kept Favre at the moment
Dave….the brain buster remember it well… I was particularly fond of the “Atomic Drop” but nothing beat “the claw” as administered by one of the Tojo brothers (Hiro and Heto). I used it with great effect against my older sister for many years.
I remember my two mates who were brothers tag teaming their poor younger sister.
Adrian would get her in an arm lock and Paul would jump off the couch with an elbow drop.
All the while the dad would be clapping and chatting about Sven Svenson. Is that some old wrestler?
Sven must be before my time.
Wrestling must have been big in thr 1940’s I remember reading that Ben Chifley once said of Chief Billy White Wolf that “Every ten year old boy in the country knows who the Chief is but none know who the Chif is”
Wrestling has the most extensive and colorful vocab than any other ‘sport’
I’m planning to write an article about the symbolism and language of wrestling soon. If you want to find out about every registered wrestler, dead or alive, the best site is http://www.obsessedwithwrestling.com
There is heaps of info on old Aussie wrestlers like Arion,Milano,Ronnie Miller,Larry O’Dea etc
For what it’s worth my top ten moves are:
1. Sting’s “Scorpion Death Lock” (submission hold)
2. Steve Austin’s “Stone Cold Stunner” (modified neck breaker)
3. Mr.Perfect’s “Perfect Plex” (suplex with leg hooked)
4. Mr.Wonderful’s “Piledriver”
5. The Dynamite Kid’s “Superplex” (Off the top rope)
6. Diamond Dallas Page’s “Diamond Cutter” (modified neck breaker)
7. The Iron Sheik’s “Camel Clutch”
8. Chris Jericho’s “Walls of Jericho” (Boston Crab)
9. Jake ‘The Snake’Robert’s “DDT”
10.The Undertaker’s “Tombstone Piledriver” (Reverse Piledriver)
If any of these moves were applied legitimately they would do enormous damage, so please kids…Do Not try this at home.
If you go on youtube and type in any of these moves, heaps of clips will come up. If you love wrestling, you’ll be entertained.
I’m sure you’re all over Roland Barthes elevation of wrestling, but I’ll add it for interest in this wrestling thread.
Each sign in wrestling is therefore endowed with an absolute clarity, since one must always understand everything on the spot. As soon as the adversaries are in the ring, the public is overwhelmed with the obviousness of the roles.
As in the theatre, each physical type expresses to excess the part which has been assigned to the contestant. Thauvin, a fifty-year-old with an obese and sagging body, whose type of asexual hideousness always inspires feminine nicknames, displays in his flesh the characters of baseness, for his part is to represent what, in the classical concept of the salaud, the ‘bastard’ (the key-concept of any wrestling-match), appears as organically repugnant.
The nausea voluntarily provoked by Thauvin shows therefore a very extended use of signs: not only is ugliness used here in order to signify baseness, but in addition ugliness is wholly gathered into a particularly repulsive quality of matter: the pallid collapse of dead flesh (the public calls Thauvin la barbaque, ‘stinking meat’), so that the passionate condemnation of the crowd no longer stems from its judgment, but instead from the very depth of its humours.
It will thereafter let itself be frenetically embroiled in an idea of Thauvin which will conform entirely with this physical origin: his actions will perfectly correspond to the essential viscosity of his personage.
Dave,
that is one of my favourite essays. The distinctions between good,bad,ugly,face,heel etc have blurred with time. Fat wrestlers or effeminate,asexual types have all but disappeared.
Going back to the original topic: I see some parallels here between Thauvin and Kevin Muscat…particularly the personage!!
Dave/Phil,
I sense a bit of Adorable Adrian Adonis in Thauvin. Fascinating.
Also Goldust. I’ll never forget when Rowdy Roddy Piper stripped off his costume after a match, only to find he was wearing lingerie underneath.
Look forward to your article Phil.
Is Steve Lombardi the only wrestler to earn himself a three part name?
Feel sorry for the two name chumps – poor old Mr X.
I thought Leaping Lanny Poffo was the only poet in wrestling from memory
D.K. Lillee’s Tasmanian cricket career….and maybe Big Merv with the Canberra Comets!
What about all the old bands doing one more “farewell” tour?
Helen Porter Mitchell.
Hi Crio, (#43): The Gold (FM) standard of bands not knowing when to quit is The Eagles and the ‘When Hell Freezes Over’ Tours (yes, that’s plural). Then, of course, there is Johnny Farnham. Jess, even The Clash didn’t know how to quit. After Strummer sacked the band (who, by the way, just toured as rhythm section for Gorillaz) he toured and recorded an album as The Clash that included a song called, ‘We Are The Clash’ (they weren’t).
Much closer to home: Dermie. F**K, he even played for Collingwood!
Cheers
Unrelated btw: Sad to see Federer exit the Open tonight.
Mate, “A Day on the Green” lives for this stuff.
“Flight of the Conchords” had an episode where the boys split but shared billings playing the same covers etc…