My Hero

I was having trouble deciding on a hero. I am not sure I actually look up to any one that much to be called a hero but there a few I have a lot of respect for.

My choice ended up between two very different people. The first one being Jack West Junior, the fictional hero character in Matthew Riley's book series. He is an American living in Australia who races around the world fighting against all the world super powers unlocking and safe guarding all the secret powers of the pyramids and other mystical legends. Sort of a quiet tough guy, much like Lee Childs's Jack Reacher and Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp. I decided against Jack as I did not have any related photos and he isn't a real person.

I ended up choosing an Australian rules footballer, I grew up watching when I was a youngster in Melbourne. He was the Captain of a very competitive Hawthorn Football Club who won a number of premiership titles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Upon his retirement he coached the Collingwood football club to there first premiership in 32 years before he moved to my new home town of Brisbane where he coached the Brisbane Lions to 3 premierships in a row 2001,2 and 3.

He obviously knew what he was doing. I think this is where my respect comes from. The fact that I was trying to coach my sons junior football teams and I know what a tough job it was to keep so may people happy, motivated and still win without crossing some imaginary ethically line of pushing too hard.

He was infamous as well as successful, famously being the only player every charged of assault for an on field incident. The game was tough in the old days with all in brawls and punches thrown behind the play. His nick name was lethal because of his hard bump and tackling, he also broke a goal post in half after running into during a game.

Nowadays he still does some football commentating on T.V

I still have one of this early football cards from 1976.

And me trying to coach my son's team more than 10 years ago, like Leigh Matthews LOL.