Mick Malthouse, “latter optionist” and coach of Collingwood Football Club had some insights to share with club tragics such as me in his latest video.
Regarding the Brisbane Lions he feels that
The more they become less reliant on thinking about people who aren’t in the side, that’s an indicator of how sure they are of going forward.
This statement was made with football in mind, but I think somehow it goes deeper.
Discuss with reference to Malthouse’s philosophical influences both acknowledged and unacknowledged.
Here Malthouse shows the strong influence of Kierkegaard on his thinking.
This Malthouse passage shows a similar influence:
I think this was before the 2003 Grand Final.
Before rushing to attribute influences, I think it’s important to clarify one point: when Mick speaks of going forward, does he mean mounting an attack, or does he mean making progress in a more general sense? Or is this a deliberate ambiguity?
But I am sure we can in any case see the influence of the great pomo thinker Cheney, in the emphasis on negative potentiality.
With his talk of dissecting and studying ‘indicators’ of the Lions’ subjective attitude towards forward movement vis-a-vis Aussie Rules, he sounds like a Durkheim man to me.
In a strange twist, The Durk himself was prone to inserting fairly blatant subliminal references to AFL into his philosophisin’, viz:
“From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far beyond all it can attain.”
“I often quote concepts, texts and phrases from Marx, but without feeling obliged to add the authenticating label of a footnote with a laudatory phrase to accompany the quotation. As long as one does that, one is regarded as someone who knows and reveres Marx, and will be suitably honoured in the so-called Marxist journals. But I quote Marx without saying so, without quotation marks, and because people are incapable of recognising Marx’s texts I am thought to be someone who doesn’t quote Marx. When a physicist writes a work of physics, does he feel it necessary to quote Newton and Einstein?” (Foucault 1980, p. 52).
I always thought that the latter optionist in Malthouse was a more or less direct reference to Nietzsche.
Surely an AFL man would be talking about taking Marx all the time at any engel
why did I type Cheney when I meant Rumsfeld? I need words of advice from Mick!
I’d be seeking peer review from the Philosophy Department of the University of Woolloomooloo.
thats where Bruce works with Bruce