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Nicknamed “The Dunny Brush” by Rex Hunt, Denham ended his career of 186 games with a Premiership in 1993 and a best-and-fairest in 1997.Ģ. Sean Denham, Essendon – Recruited from Geelong, the former Melton boy soon turned into a horrible pest and famously terrorised the legendary centreman and dual Brownlow Medallist Greg Williams. I thought we could go down memory lane to a time when players tagged for a living and pay tribute to some of the great pests of the past 30 years.ġ. There are some modern-day taggers such as Matt De Boer, but they only get used sporadically. As the AFL finals approach, I can still see the need for taggers especially when there is the opportunity to dramatically lessen the influence of these stars who will ultimately rise to the occasion in the big games. To be a tagger requires those qualities Heard demonstrated and it also helps to be little bit crazy! A “team first” attitude and high pain tolerance are essential because it’s only a matter of time as a tagger that you will be on the receiving end of some payback. I remember Sheedy played him on Robert DiPierdomenico in the 1984 grand final to great success and I think Heard even wrote a book about the fitness benefits of a boxing apparatus, the speedball. He was a fitness fanatic and disciplined. Heard was the perfect prototype for what was to come over the next 20 years. I think it may have been Kevin Sheedy in the 80s who first introduced a bona fide tagger in Shane Heard.
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Players such as Marcus Bontempelli, Clayton Oliver and Dustin Martin are incredible players but on the rare occasion they have been effectively “tagged” or “stamped” by an opposition coach, their output reduced significantly. Contested football still exists of course but it’s mainly in congested situations around stoppages which can be very frustrating for players and spectators alike.ĭespite the evolution of the game and level of intelligence available, there are still players who accumulate substantial possessions and inevitably play significant roles in destroying opposition. This wasn’t the case in the 80s and 90s when the emphasis was on contested, man-on-man football. Today’s game requires a lot of uncontested football to work around these zones and penetrate crowded forward lines. Players are conditioned to run at maximum speeds for shorter periods, utilising bench rotations, unlike past eras where coming off the ground was only prompted by injury or failure to perform. What began as “flooding” by the Sydney Swans in the 90s under Rodney Eade can now be constructed within seconds inside the opposition 50m arc due to the increased athleticism of today’s players. Terminology such as “structures” and “defensive shape” are now part of the vernacular and “zoning”, which was previously termed “loose”, is now ever present.
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AFL football has made some tremendous advances over the past 20 years, much of which I’ve loved and others that have been the result of coaches wanting to outsmart each other, unfortunately to the detriment of the game.