The One Player from Each Team Squadron.
At the end of every AFL season, the who’s who of football’s elite, crowd into a tiny room – equivalent to that dud cinema at HOYTS which is usually hidden away down the end of that spooky corridor, whilst the All-Australian team for the year is read out. Signalling the best player in each position for the season just passed.
This system just really gives me the irrits. A panel of senile hasbeens take turns gaining a bit of look at me time by seeing who can make the most controversial and erroneous selection possible. The head of the selection panel is none other than ex-Geelong Premiership Captain – Cameron Ling. Now, when Cameron Ling is the face of your 10-men panel, how repulsive are the other 9 representatives..?
The All-Australian team each year is basically filled with 18 midfielders, with the addition of a full-back, centre half-back, centre half-forward and a full-forward. Selectors even tried to sneak Toby Greene into the ruck position last year, thankfully the most intimidating man in football – Glen Jacovich – grabbed that wrinkled, decrepit squirt Kevin Bartlett by the throat and threatened to smash his giant fist through Bartlett’s Gollum like cranium. Lucky for Kevin though, due to his obsessive, biased opinion for his beloved tigers, he’d only be left with ONE black EYE.
Despite the concerning workplace violence inside the walls of the committee, it’s getting tireless seeing the same old players be awarded with a high-school type bomber-jacket, usually selected from the same dominant sides of the league. Your Sydney’s, your Hawthorn’s and your Geelong’s.
As a Carlton supporter, I’m sick to heck watching players from every other team being paraded around before my worthless eyes. When is Simon Wiggins, Jimmy Plunkett and Clem Smith going to get their turn!?! Holy crud our club is crap.
Thankfully, Carlton stole the very talented and homesick Sam Docherty from the luckless Lions, managing to slip himself into the 2017 squadron. The first Carlton player since the very talented and homesick Chris Judd was plucked from the luckless Eagles and was selected in 2011. Proving, if you can’t beat them; buy them..and still get beaten.
Enough about the miseries of being a Blues fan, I decided to change up the All-Australian team selection process, just in case a Space-Jam style scenario plays out and humanity is forced to choose 18 players, one from each team – who must play in that exact position for their clubs, and are forced to battle it out with 18 tiny, off-pastel coloured Aliens to keep control over our planet. And if this incredibly specific and implausible chain of events do in fact proceed, I suggest we resort to Plan B and trick the Aliens into stealing the powers of Mason Cox.
So, thanks to that Space Jam reference, basically you should get the general gist of the criteria I used to select my team. If you got caught up in memories of the feel-good Looney Tunes motion picture, here they are in dot point form:
- One player from each of the 18 clubs must be selected
- The players must play in the position selected during the regular season.
- A North Melbourne player has to be selected despite how hard it will be.
So without further-ado, here is the 2018 All-Australian One Player Per Team with Proper Positions Line-Up.
In turn, to the busy folk or trendy youth reading this, the 2018 AAOPPTWPPLU squad for short.
I designed this image myself. You don’t understand how tedious of a task it was.
For all you simplistic critics.
FB: R. LAIRD (ADE) A. RANCE (RICH) B. STRATTON (HAW)
HB: S. DOCHERTY (CARL) M. HURLEY (ESS) E.WOOD (WB)
C: A. GAFF (WC) P. DANGERFIELD (GEE) S. CONIGLIO (GWS)
HF. D. ZORKO (BRIS) L. FRANKLIN (SYD) R. GRAY (PORT)
FF. B. BROWN (NM) T. LYNCH (GC) J. BILLINGS (STK)
FOLL: M. GAWN (MEL) N. FYFE (FRE) S. PENDLEBURY (COLL)