Fair To Say

It has finally happened, the Martians have been bested. The Moonee Valley Leader, that august record of philosophical excellence, reports that Kevin Sheedy is Australia’s Thinker of the year, as awarded tonight by the New York School of Thinking. Is that a tautology? Sheeds belongs up there with the great minds of Australian science, such as… that Nossal bloke… and the bloke off Beyond 2000… I’m drawing a blank here. Does Yahoo Serious count?

No, I’m being churlish. We should pay tribute to Kevin Sheedy by listing his great theories of years past:

Kevton’s Three Laws of Football Motion
A physical body will remain at rest, or continue to move at a constant velocity along a straight path, unless a thug in a black and red jumper gives it a hip and shoulder.
Rate of change of momentum is proportional to the resultant force producing it and takes place in the direction of that force, which means that once Leon Baker gets a run on in the last quarter he’s bloody hard to stop.
For each James Hird, there is an equal and opposite Aaron Henneman.

The Ramanauskas Effect
If you shine a football on both sides it will NOT swing from one side to the other when kicked from the boundary. That’s why footballers spin the ball in their hands so much while lining up for goal.

E = M.Lloyd²
The speed with which Matthew Lloyd whips his head around to appeal to the ump for a free after feeling the air move behind him in a marking contest approaches the speed of light.

Sheedy’s Super-String Theory
Always play James Hird, even if his body is held together by pieces of string, because he’s super.

The Sheedenberg Principle
Footballers are either injured or they’re fit, but we don’t know if they’re fit or not, particularly when their coach names them on a Thursday. The 22 players are kept in a box from Thursday until gameday, mewling pitifully, to keep the mystery going. Only when the team runs out on the ground do we “collapse the waveform”.

Big Bang Theory
Games of football only begin when the umpire blows the whistle and goes BANG with the football into the turf. This is why the umpires should never start the game by throwing the ball into the air, it would be against the fundamental laws of the universe.

Global warming
There is an excellent reason why Sheedy did so much work to increase the participation in Australian football at the elite level by our indigenous communities. With Antarctica melting away and the rain bands mostly falling on the Southern Ocean these days, Sheedy knew that we were going to have to rely on players to be more suited to the scorching temperatures of the Kimberley, Kakadu and Uluru. Case in point, you watch Shaun Burgoyne tear it up at TIO Stadium this weekend and bask in the reflected glory (if not scouring sunlight) of Sheedy’s foresight.