Brent Reilly, longtime Adelaide Crow who recently passed his 200th game, is retiring amidst his recovery from a horrible skull fracture in a training accident back in February. His doctor has advised him never to play contact sports again with the danger of recurrence to his skull, and for obvious reasons he's agreed. One of the great aspects of Aussie Rules is the "manliness" of playing without helmet or padding - but sometimes casualties occur. Interestingly, more injuries seem to happen with American style football, because of the protective gear - you don't see Aussie players leading with their heads, for example, or hitting each other as hard as the linemen do in the NFL. Rarely have any retired footy players had trouble with concussion or head injury issues for those reasons. Still, it's hard to see someone like Brent Reilly have to retire early because of something like this.
On the other hand, here's a different reason for an early retirement that I've almost never heard of in the NFL - only the legendary Pat Tillman comes to mind...
Kane Cornes, fast approaching his 300th game at Port Adelaide (a huge milestone!), has decided to retire immediately following that game on May 23rd. The reason? He's been offered a position as a firefighter for the city of Adelaide.
Picture Shaquille O'Neal actually following through on his thought to become a Miami undercover cop, and you've got an idea what this means in Australia.
Cornes is about to be the only player in Port Adelaide's history to play 300 AFL games, a testament to his durability and ability...and yet, he's ready to step aside now, just because it's a convenient time to start his firefighter training. (He also doesn't want to risk any more injuries in advance of his retirement, although he's been remarkably durable over his 3oo games.)
Amazing.
No comments:
Post a Comment