Originally Posted by
Velour&Ruffles
You are an odd bedfellow for me, BS, but I am with you on this one - at least to the key point of the respect we should give to BBBBH ... not so sure I mind about young upstarts giving feedback because I think about early Dan Hannebery and early Errol Gulden and I love the confidence that shows. But BBBBH has earned an exalted place in the Swans Pantheon.
There are a number of silly ideas on this thread, that seem to have become accepted wisdom. I'm not going to address specific posts, I will say this:
The idea that Barry had "numerous" issues as a Swans player is wrong. Sorry, but he just didn't. From 2002- PF 2005 he was a very solid citizen - that's how he was able to get a downgrade on his guilty finding for the stomach strike in the 2005 PF. He had at least three years where he was as upright as anyone else.
Less popularly (and I am sure I will be slammed for this, but I really don't care), go back and watch the game against the WCE where he ended up snotting Staker. I put the majority (yes, the majority) of the blame at the feet of the umpires. Staker was at him and at him and at him in constant breach of the rules for a full quarter but the umpires did nothing whatsoever. He was constantly being scragged and pinched and gut punched and blocked and nothing whatsoever was done. Nothing. That is not to excuse the reaction from Hall, which was clearly unacceptable, but it IS to say that if the umpires had done their job with even a remote hint of competency and enforced the actual rules of the competition a couple of times amongst the multiplicity of opportunities to do so, the situation would never have escalated to the boiling point that it did. Instead, it seemed they were being wilfully, obstinately blind. It was glaringly obvious what was going on - multiple umpires just “missing it” simply isn’t credible. Let's say the same enthusiasm for applying the rules had been as evident as it always was with Ablett, Judd and a few other leading players of the time ... it's X free kicks for Hall (and probably X goals, given his accuracy, which only deserted him after this point), not an 8 week suspension.
This is where comparisons with David Hookes and king hits in pubs breaks down. For that to be a valid comparison, you need the police to have been standing around in the pub implicitly endorsing Hookesy giving all sorts of @@@@@ to the bouncer - which is not how it was (and I've read the book). There's a big difference between a completely unexpected, unprovoked coward's punch and what Hall did. His reaction to sustained provocation was over the top and against the rules, but it's a bit like poking a hornets' nest or bear taunting - the reaction you get from the bear or the hornets may not be proportional to your actions, but they are nevertheless a reaction to your actions. The moral of the story is don't taunt bears and don't poke hornets' nests. It was totally within Staker's own power to avert the incident. If he hadn't been a bear taunting, hornets'-nest-poking cheat himself then he wouldn't have been clobbered. I have limited sympathy for someone who breaks the rules in a sustained way and then is the victim of the rules being broken against them in retaliation. Where my sympathy comes in is that overall it probably wasn't actually Staker's fault. He was no doubt following the instructions of his dickhead coach (who was a cheating thug as a player, who specialised in exactly these sorts of non-football actions) and was no doubt emboldened by the lamentable inaction of the officiators. He presumably had the (correct) impression that he had carte blanche from the authorities to do what he was doing. Staker was indeed a victim, but not solely of BBBBH.
BBBBH was colossal for us. As I said earlier, the idea he was just a "good average player" is beyond laughable. Look at his record. Watch his clutch kicks in the 2005PF and GF and ask yourself if that's a "good average player". Everything on the line. Seriously. He ended on a sad note, the problems at the end shouldn't overshadow what was an historic contribution to our club. It is fantastic to have him back.
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