Welcome to the Western Bulldogs: Louis Butler

[Axe Man]

When was the last time we had a Louis play for us?

According to AFL Tables, never! No Cody or Riley either (although John Riley played 1 game in 1984).

Closest was Lou Barker who played 23 games from 1947-1949.

[bulldogtragic]

According to AFL Tables, never! No Cody or Riley either (although John Riley played 1 game in 1984).

Closest was Lou Barker who played 23 games from 1947-1949.

Breaking new ground! There's another Cody next year and a Jamarra, to add to Louis, Cody & Riley.

Did parents turn quickly on naming ever child the name Bailey about 18 years go?

[Twodogs]

Breaking new ground! There's another Cody next year and a Jamarra, to add to Louis, Cody & Riley.

Did parents turn quickly on naming ever child the name Bailey about 18 years go?

I do have an 18 yo but her name is Lucy...

[Murphy'sLore]

I do have an 18 yo but her name is Lucy...

And I know an 18 year old called Lucy Bailey...

[Twodogs]

According to AFL Tables, never! No Cody or Riley either (although John Riley played 1 game in 1984).

Closest was Lou Barker who played 23 games from 1947-1949.

Is there ever a story behind that one game that Riley played for us...



It is set against the background of the Sylvio Foschini court challenge to the (then) VFL recruiting rules. Foschini was tied to the Swans but didn't want to move to Sydney so he challenged the zone based recruiting model that we had back then. Foschini got a stay of proceedings so him and Paul Morwood just turned out for St Kilda without a clearance or a legally based contract. We had been in discussions with an Adelaide club (South Adelaide I think it was) but when this all played out we decided that we didn't need a clearance for Riley and just picked him to play.

This is where the story really starts to get interesting. Apparently as part of the negotiations the club bought Riley a brand new car and after he found out how hard and fast VFL footy was at first hand he hopped in said car, pressed the accelerator and didn't hit the brake again until he was the other side of Bordertown. We never saw Riley or the car ever again.

The other interesting thing about John Riley was he worked as a nuclear physicist-he is probably by far the smartest bloke to ever play for us.

[Murphy'sLore]

According to AFL Tables, never! No Cody or Riley either (although John Riley played 1 game in 1984).

Closest was Lou Barker who played 23 games from 1947-1949.

Rhylee West has to count for half a mark too.

[Raw Toast]

His kicking certainly has some promise (at least from the highlight clips) - might float a bit at times, but I really liked how he kept on kicking to the advantage side of his team-mates. An important skill, and even more important with the way we often like to attack by kicking to small windows of space.