Cold reality hits when the AFL ride ends

[Bulldog Revolution]

Murph-like views from a somewhat unlikely source?

Cold reality hits when the AFL ride ends
Timothy Boyle | October 3, 2009

MOST of the good things that happen to you in the AFL - like most good things in general - are only really definable once lost. You may perhaps know that something is good or be grateful for it, but until that something ends its goodness is immeasurable. I knew to some extent that the AFL as an experience was a rarity, but only now that it's ended can I take its full measure.

Although the AFL, for the most part, operates under the laws of society, it is by any other measure a world of its own. Like riding in the palm of a giant, you're held aloft and safe from the world and infused with a brilliant, but false, sense of power.

Eventually, football opens its palm and pours you back into the world. For me, it's a little colder, a little bigger and a little lonelier than I remember.

I'm sure there were times during injury and poor form that I considered bad times in my career. Maybe there were even times when I doubted football as a positive thing. The mind has a strange way of absolving anything that stains an otherwise good memory and, in retrospect, there are a lot of things I'll miss.

The drawbacks of a great experience are shelved somewhere in one's mind for the betterment of its memory. Like a lesson learnt through hardship, barely spoken of again but tidied into self-awareness by the sub-conscious.

http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/rfn...418713081.html

[alwaysadog]

If that's not ghost written the boy has a real future in the print media at least. A beautifully crafted piece that Martin Flanagan like uses the narrative form to make a series of points about the emotional impact of the event(s) described, without overdoing it.

[Raw Toast]

I really liked this piece as well - Boyle had lots of limitations as a player, but he can write!