Insights from the coaching bench

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.

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David Walker
12 years ago

Here Malthouse shows the strong influence of Kierkegaard on his thinking.

This Malthouse passage shows a similar influence:

When a man ventures out so decisively as I have done, and upon a subject moreover which affects so profoundly the whole of life as does Aussie Rules, it is to be expected of course that everything will be done to counteract his influence, also by misrepresenting, falsifying what he says, and at the same time his character will in every way be at the mercy of men who count that they have no duty towards him but that everything is allowable.

I think this was before the 2003 Grand Final.

Simon Musgrave
Simon Musgrave
12 years ago

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.

FDB
FDB
12 years ago

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.”

Ken Parish
Ken Parish
12 years ago

“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).

David Walker
9 years ago
Reply to  Nicholas Gruen

I think that’s from one of Nietzsche’s half-time addresses.

KB Keynes
KB Keynes
12 years ago

Surely an AFL man would be talking about taking Marx all the time at any engel

Simon Musgrave
Simon Musgrave
12 years ago

why did I type Cheney when I meant Rumsfeld? I need words of advice from Mick!

philatvvb
12 years ago

I’d be seeking peer review from the Philosophy Department of the University of Woolloomooloo.

KB Keynes
KB Keynes
12 years ago

thats where Bruce works with Bruce