The Irishman Who Took Australian Rules Football By Storm
Meet one of Europe’s great unsung sporting heroes.
Were it a real place, the European sporting pantheon would be on the scale of the British Museum. If one was to walk through its imaginary galleries, it’s unlikely that you’d find a lot of room given over to Irish Australian Rules Football star Jim Stynes. Which is a shame because few people have shaken up a sport that isn’t native to the continent in quite the same way as the affable Dubliner.
Between 1987 and 1998, Jim Stynes played 244 consecutive games for the Melbourne Football Club. As sporting streaks go, it’s right up there with Cal Ripken Jr playing 2,632 games on the trot for the Baltimore Orioles. For while baseball certainly takes a toll on the body, it’s got nothing on Aussie Rules, a game so aggressive the comedian Jasper Carrott once suggested that the reason the shirts don’t have sleeves is to prevent the players from ripping them off and throttling the opposition.
Endurance wasn’t the only thing Stynes brought to AFL, mind. Widely praised for reinventing the role of the ruckman in Aussie Rules, his combination of talent and temperament saw him become the only player born outside Australia to win the sport’s highest individual honour, the Brownlow Medal. He was also admitted to the AFL Hall Of Fame; named in Melbourne’s team of the century; twice selected for the All-Australian Team; and a four-time recipient of Melbourne’s award for best and fairest player, the Keith ‘Bluey’ Truscott Medal. Not bad for a gangly bloke from County Dublin.
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