Welcome to ‘The Rovers’, a series of awards where I get to acknowledge some of the less-recognised achievements of the football season just gone.
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Amid all the media hype around our great game there are those players, those moments, those memories that disappear through the cracks despite some outstanding efforts in the not-so-glamourous areas of the sport.
Not for them is the glory of taking a screamer over the pack, kicking a crowd-raising goal, laying a match-winning tackle or doing the selfless one-percenter that brings glory to others.
They don’t win a car or a trip or a dollar, and I doubt it helps anyone get a better class of girlfriend, but when their careers are over and they look back at what they achieved it will be ‘The Rover’ on the mantelpiece that makes it all worthwhile.
Well, it would … if I had actual awards made up. Here goes nothing...
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Awarded to the Rover for the rumour he most glaringly got wrong. Hey, it’s an honour just to be nominated!
Winner: The Rover for insisting Tom Boyd was gone from the Dogs
I called it early that Boyd was gone at the end of the year: Beveridge never wanted him, he was costing too much and delivering too little, and the Dogs wanted to trade while he still had value.
Then he glassed teammate Zayne Cordy – papers signed, locker emptied, job done!
But the Whitten Oval medical room was filling with injured players and Beveridge had no choice but to play the Million Dollar Baby, even if he was only getting a average-wage return.
And then there was the grand final … and a million-dollar performance.
In the end I was wrong.
I stand by the claim that mid-season Boyd was being bandied around in recruiters’ get-togethers, but I banged on about it and finished with mud on my face, not for the first time and probably not the last.
But if mud’s the worst thing that happens to my face after getting on the wrong side of Tom Boyd then I’m doing alright.
