Footy hasn't been the same for old Mike since Norm Smith was sacked 50 years ago and his beloved Melbourne turned to crap
. If you had to watch the Dees play every week year after year for the past decade then no wonder he thinks footy skills are worse than ever
.
It's nostalgic garbage. There were plenty of shocking and skill-less games back in a day. Any of us who have lived through the past 35 years saw plenty of them dished up by ours Tigers
. What was different back when I was a young kid (late 70s/early 80s) was you didn't see the terrible games on TV. With all 6 VFL matches on Saturday afternoons, all you got was about a quarter from the match of the round on Seven's Big League each Saturday night, followed on Sunday on World of Sport by short snippets of a couple of marks and goals from the other games. The only full game on TV was the Grand Final until the Swans moved up to Sydney in 1982 and Ch 7 started showing full games of Sydney games on Sunday arvo. Nowdays, you can watch all 9 games on Fox including all the bottom sides every week. It's bloody Carlton having so many Friday night games this year that has hurt Friday night footy on free to air. No matter what era, neutral viewers don't want to watch crap teams predictably getting flogged in one-sided games.
