Harley Pick Up Your Toys

The Restump Podcast

Someone has some tidying up to do after throwing all the toys out of the cot! To be fair to Harley, he did make it a great entertaining Derby. Time to Restump Podcast the Eagle’s grand final loss.
It was far from the iconic demolition derby but we saw a return to some highly entertaining derby spite, plenty of antagonism and several subsequent flareups. In this new world of sanitised and scrutinised football, it was probably as close to the great derby era as we’re ever going to get.
Whatever you think of Harley Reid, he brought enough hostility and created enough friction to turn what have been lifeless, often dispirited, recent derbies into something most of us were thrilled by.
The high and mighty finger waggers, will look down their noses, make tut tut sounds, cry 'unnecessary' and self-righteously suggest bigger fish need frying!
Let the purists stew in their own joyless existence! The rest of us know thoroughly enjoying the moment and the journey and remaining focused, can all co-exist.
It was the win and the game we needed. A 100-point belting wouldn’t have helped us from a mindset perspective. We needed the kitchen sink thrown at us, we needed to wear the pressure and be made fight tooth and nail. Admittedly West Coast are in wooden spoon territory but the game was played at a level far above and beyond that. Personally, I’d go as far as to suggest it was up there with our best wins of the season.
There was a professionalism about it, about how we assessed it on the run and then went about rectifying it. To endure the heat that West Coast brought, be near on four goals down, click up a gear, take back the ascendency and then put them to the sword, was super impressive and it can only put us in good stead going forward.
It shed some light on a few questions that were lingering above our heads. Could we turn a game under extreme duress? Would we be able to insert our game style in the face of that level of pressure? Yes, again it was West Coast and they weren’t going to be able to sustain their first half pressure for the full game, but they did a better job at it than we all probably thought they would.
Andy Brayshaw is back to his 2022 form and Caleb Serong was just absolutely absurd! His clean ball handling skills are Lachie-Neale-like! And while Hayden Young might be the silky-smooth left foot deliverer, another ridiculous 12 big tackles show he’s not afraid to get down and do the hard stuff.
Down back the crew continues to perform and now the forward line is entering well oiled machine territory. Josh Draper was rightly recognised with a Rising Star nomination. The mind boggles where he is going to be in a few years! Even our wings look super solid with Sharp and O’Meara.
We’ve become a serious team. There are no heroes or egos, everything is team oriented, team first. Players seem willing to do the hard yards today without personal reward. Consistent individual team orientated based effort across the board, sees everyone have their day, but not necessarily on the same week. The acceptance of that and the willingness to work for the greater cause, is paramount to achieving ultimate success.
The Mi Casa Property Boutique metres gained competition failed to go off as Tommy Emmett took the fourth quarter and was shown no love by participants. That means there is a $100 spend at 2 Brothers Foods this week against the Bombers.
Enough of this rambling here, lets get into it on the pod as we go through Saturday night’s Derby in depth. So, if you’re still ginned up and looking to non-violently fight anything clad in blue and gold, put on the purple mitts and join us in throwing metaphorical haymake

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