Introduction: Too Tough to Think
“Too Tough To Think will do for football what ‘Monkey Grip’ did for Monkeys” — Helen Garner*
Shoot first and arks questions later is my motto, actually shoot first and bugger the questions is more me. All through my career people said I was mean, nasty, a drug taker, a cheat and a drunk. They — and they know who they are, and more importantly so do the Vietmanese boys down at the pool hall on Barkly St, so watch out fellas — said I was bad for the game.
They said I was mutton dressed as SPAM.
Well they might have been right, they might have been wrong, but It’s The Dawk that’s gonna have the last squawk. I ain’t pulling no punches for nobody — this is me on the game.
You know, a great man once said something very wise to me, but I’m buggared if I can remember what it was. Anyways, I reckon it would have been just the thing to kick off the story of my autobiology, so it’s a real shame I can’t remember nothing.
Irregardless of that however, let me start by saying this, which is something Dipper once said to me during one of ouur epic encounters back in the 80s:
“Dud,” he said, just after I landed him one right in the gob, “You’re a real turd.”
It’s not so much what he said, as the fact that he managed to say anything at all with his mouth guard and half his top set stuffed down his throat.
That such a great player as the Big Dipper, who let’s face it was truly special for a wog, could take the time to pay tribute to me when he should have really been ringing his dentist really shows you what a great game this great game of ours really is.
In over 300 games of league football I don’t think I ever missed the opportunity to hit a man when he was down, but I did that day.
Usually I reckoned football was a game for doers, not thinkers, but after I’d laid that one on The Dip I stopped to think to myself, “There’s more to this caper than meets the eye, old Dawky boy,” as a tear brought on by Dipper’s words, welled in my eye.
That all changed seconds later as ‘Lethal’ Leigh Matthews evened things up with an elbow to the kidneys which had me shooting stones at the porcelain for a week.
It was like an alarm went off in my head. From that moment on I knew that to survive in footy at the highest level even a top athlete like yours truly could never afford to stop and listen to anyone, not Dipper, not even myself. I had to be a machine, I had to become too tough to think, I had to grab the game by the balls, and I did, and I’ve never let go. Actually I grabbed Leigh’s balls at the time, and I did let go after he’d caved in my face, but you know what I mean.
*I don’t know who she is either, maybe she works in a monkey zoo.
