The time Spud nearly skinned the TigersMatthew Richardson
Herald-Sun
June 04, 2015I COULDN’T help but spare a thought for the Carlton boys this week after hearing they were headed for an early morning swim after Chris Yarran arrived late to a team meeting.
The last few days have been absolutely freezing and make no mistake, players absolutely hate going down to the beach for a recovery session in June or July.
It’s only worse if you play for a Melbourne-based club. I always used to get jealous watching the Swans players jump in the water down at Bondi or Coogee — it always looked so much nicer than Port Phillip Bay.
The punishment might sound like something from the dark old days but we also saw Crows coach Phil Walsh employ it earlier this season. The AFL is certainly the only workplace in the world you’ll see employees asked to take a dawn dip in a bid to improve performance.
It reminds me of the time Danny “Spud” Frawley pulled it out during the 2002 season. It was round nine and we were playing St Kilda at the Docklands on a Saturday night. We had big expectations after making the preliminary final the season before but came out of the blocks slowly starting 2-4. A pair of wins against Sydney and West Coast allowed us to square the ledger and we had a chance to climb into the eight by beating the Saints — who had won just one game and were coming off a 99-point defeat against Essendon.
Spud was extra motivated to win because we were playing against his former club, which still featured players like Robert Harvey and Stewart Loewe who he’d played with during his career. It was pretty clear to us Spud was desperate to win the game.
Long story short, we lost by nine points. To make matters worse, Spud got a visit at home that night from Harvey and Loewe who were keen to rub it in a little bit more. So he rocked up to our recovery session and game review the following morning in a pretty filthy mood. Spud announced we were going to meet down at the Kerferd Rd Pier in Port Melbourne for the next three mornings at 5am. Not 6am like the Carlton boys, 5am.
So we got down there the next day, it was pitch black, freezing, and the mood was pretty tense while we were all standing around in a huddle waiting for Danny to turn up. Greg Stafford, our ruckman who was in his first season at the club after crossing from Sydney, obviously decided everyone needed to lighten up a bit and have a laugh. So he rocked up in the full frogman outfit — wetsuit, flippers, goggles, snorkel, the lot. As Danny arrived it was clear his mood hadn’t improved from the day before. Staff realised he’d made the wrong move and his costume was only going to make things worse. So he ducked down at the back of the group and madly took everything off.
Spud proceeded to tear strips off us, telling us we needed to get our season back on track and maybe this would wake us up. So we ran down to the end of the pier, jumped in and swam back to the beach and hightailed it back to Punt Rd to warm up in the showers.
After day one I think Danny realised Kerferd Rd Pier was a little bit too far from his house. He decided to move the Tuesday morning swim further around the bay to Elwood Beach, which was only a couple of minutes away from where he was living at Brighton.
So day two, we rock up, similar scenario as the day before, Danny tells us he wants us to run out into the water and do five duck dives and run back in. We’re thinking ‘this is supposed to make a difference to how we play the following weekend?’. So a few blokes sprint off in the darkness and the first player to hit the water goes under and realises we’re all going to be duck diving headfirst into a reef. He jumped up and screamed for everyone to stop to make sure there wasn’t an accident. We all stopped, trudged back up the beach back where Danny said ‘that will do for the day boys, get back to the club’. After the near tragedy of day two — which happened because no one had bothered to check the water — he cancelled day three.
The punchline to the whole thing was after these measures to try to wake us up and get our season back on track we proceeded to lose our next eight games. It didn’t quite have the effect Spud wanted. Let’s see how it pans out for Carlton.
http://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/the-time-spud-nearly-skinned-the-tigers/story-fndv7pj3-1227382373598
