Tigers of Old said:
crackertiger said:
Give the boy a game now. >
Zantuck is probably the most aggressive player we've had recently and his career was over at the age of 23. Tim Fleming played half as many games as Zantuck. Krakouer is in hot water over an off-field incident. Mooney is a laughing stock, getting a holiday every other week he plays. That sort of aggression gets you nowhere these days.
Look at the 2002 Brisbane side. Keating and McDonald in the ruck, Ashcroft, Hart, Pike, Notting, McRae, the Scotts - not champion players in the conventional sense, but they all have at least two premiership medallions. There was no bona fide mongrel in the side (though Headland is becoming unhinged these days), but also no player whose courage was suspect or would allow themselves to be physically intimidated. That unit took years to build which may be the sort of thing that TW was alluding to with his 2011 comment.
You can't just flick a switch and decide to be tough (witness Matthew Lloyd's comical efforts of a few years ago). Toughness is forged by playing and winning crunch games and then finals; right now we need to remember how to win ordinary games, and rediscover the belief amongst the players that they are going somewhere. We've had it at times over the past two years.
