Last night at my work Christmas function I had the pleasure of sitting next to Graham Weatherly who played a handful of games for Fitzroy back in the 70's under John Murphy. His opinion was that Murphy carried the club, and he thinks that Marc is set to follow in a similar vein. Leadership and strong family ties were the things he saw in Murphy Jnr and he firmly believes that a single player of that character can go a long way to turning a football club around.

He wasn't so complementary about the Fev. In his opinion he is frittering away his considerable talent, and he fears that he'll never become the player he could have become with a liberal dose of hard work. He agreed with me that Fev probably got by on pure talent during his junior footy and that he hasn't got the work ethic to take it to the next level. Surprisingly he reckoned that Fev could have been the equal to any full forward bar Plugger and Dunstall had he put in the work early in his career.

Graham said one of the biggest privileges of his short career was playing on Bruce Doull. Before the game he was told "If you can keep Doull quiet we'll go a long way to winning this game" which he said for a CHF was an unusual request. He and Doull broke even that day, he did SFA at CHF, but Doull was quiet as well.

He told an amusing story about his first game, one of his teammates was in a scuffle so he thought he'd better go in and fly the flag. He grabbed an opponent around the waist from behind to drag him off and next thing he knew he was flipped over the opponent's shoulder, flat onto his back on the ground. It seems Gary Dempsey didn't take too kindly to being grabbed unawares by a kid in his first match.

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"One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds." - Frank Zappa

Great story. Doull was always quiet

Great post Wojee. I can't help but think that has to be the ultimate compliment to Doull, and probably a unique one as well.

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"The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, and the young know everything." Oscar Wilde

Thanks for sharing woj. What a great experience!

I think we all share his fears about Fev's position, and his impressions about Marc.

thanks Wojee

- great insight on his first hand experiences

- what is his first hand experience with Fev?

I prefer not to retell the story, but let's just say the locals were less than enamoured with the Shag on one occasion when he accompanied his mate Murray Vance to a Shepparton game.

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"One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds." - Frank Zappa

Must have been a while ago? Hopefully, he has matured somewhat since then.