What the box taught a Tiger about footy
Geoff McClure
The Age
February 29, 2008
SPENDING long periods on the sidelines through injury tends to teach footballers a lot about themselves, about how they cope with such cruel twists of fate and, when they return, how they get through the fear of repeating the injury.
Nobody knows that more than Richmond ball-getter Mark Coughlan, who has had two knee reconstructions in the past two years and has not played an AFL game since round 12, 2006.
But the Tigers' 2003 best-and-fairest winner, who turns 26 in April, has revealed his long stint out of the game taught him something else — he now knows why, on those odd occasions when he has been dragged from the ground, his coach did it.
It is, he said, all a result of spending time in the coach's box alongside Terry Wallace and his team, an experience he said he would recommend to all players should they ever get the chance because it had shown him a lot more about on-field reality than he previously had encountered.
"I was in the box a couple of times. It was good … different," Coughlan said this week.
"It was quite hard not to say anything and I had to bite my lip a few times. It was my first time and a fair bit different to what I expected. There's so much going on that you don't actually realise. I've never been in a commentary box before, but I imagine it was almost like that in some ways just because of the number of stats that are being read out. It's all, 'This bloke's struggling against this bloke and this match-up's struggling, so we have to make this change'."
Then this: "Meanwhile, Terry's got to take it all in and make a move, so it's really quite complex. I understand more now why I do get dragged sometimes."
Oh, and being out of the game also taught the unlucky Tiger a few things other than football.
You see, Coughlan, whose second reconstruction came after an unfortunate slip in the shower, also revealed he had bought himself a new bath mat … this time, a slip-free one.
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