And he's made of that super-bouncy rubber stuff. Gets hammered, grins, gets up and jogs away.
Happened in his debut match. Huge home & away match vs Collingwood at the G.
I remember right in front of me at the Punt Rd End. It was a really tight, hot finals-like contest. Really intense, both sides tackling like packs of rabid dogs.
Bakes finds himself on the end of a chain of handballs (a hospital pass really) coming out of a passage of play that was a bruising rolling maul of Collingwood tackles. Pretty much a chain of handballs in tight traffic, trying to outrun the chain of ferocious tackles. He has a slight sniff of a goal with one of his first touches in AFL footy, but gets absolutely Polaxed by 4-5 Collingwood defenders all about twice his size. I thought they’d killed him on debut. Like it was going to be one of those scenes out of the Roadrunner, where the Coyote has been run over by a train and his body is imprinted 12 inches into the turf.
Bakes just bounces up like the energiser bunny exchanging pats on the back with his mates, enthusiastic grin on his face as if to say, “how good is this!”