Leahy's lament: The ruck shepherd

by Mail Staff Writer

The Mail reports on the case Tom Leahy and the problem of the ruck shepherd, the most controversial position in the game before its prohibition in 1938.

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No name stands out more prominently in South Australian League football than that of Tom Leahy, the powerful follower of the North Adelaide Club, who is generally credited with being the finest ruckman playing the Australian game today. Big and broad, with no end of staying power, he is a picturesque figure on the field, and so far as it is possible for a ruckman, under modern conditions, to play a clean game he has few rivals in the matter of fair tactics.

It came as a surprise, therefore, to learn that tonight the league committee will deal with a charge against him of having violently struck an opponent over the head in the North v. Norwood match last Saturday. If the charge be correct the majority of football followers would doubtless exclaim, "Well, I don't blame him;" but on second thought they would hardly credit that such a thing occurred. Tom Leahy plays the game fair, even against the very dirtiest opposition. He has earned that reputation, and it rests on a solid foundation. We understand that the man he is said to have struck over the head is Vic Stephens, another player whose presence elevated the game from the point of view of cleanliness.

As to the accuracy of the charge, that may well be left to the committee to investigate, but there is no question that the matters Tom Leahy will probably bring up are crucial in modern football. It would not surprise us if Leahy does not know if he struck anyone.

As a big man, he was given on Saturday the double dose of attention he usually gets and finding a strong man like McNamara against him he had to exert himself to the utmost to do the best for his side. A ruck man under the rules as, observed today has to take the bumps and stand also the attentions of one man whose sole duty is not to look for the ball at all, but by every means in his power to stop the big follower from reaching it. This man is known as the shepherd, but his calling is by no means the gentle one that the word implies.

The ruck shepherd nowadays is little better than a football jackal. Admittedly, he is not there to get the ball. His job is merely to stop the other man. Sometimes the 'other man' has two such creatures hanging on to him jostling, pulling, and bumping him out of it at every throw in. In these circumstances, a man requires a very even temper to keep his head, and a plentiful supply of liniment afterwards to efface the body marks that come as the result of such play.

The big follower puts up with this buffeting merely for the honour of his side, but there is a limit to all endurance, and close followers of the game know that Tom Leahy is pretty sick of the whole thing. He and all other first followers want to play football, not indulge in wrestling bouts in which football is conspicuous by its absence. They do not appreciate shepherds crawling all over them in an endeavour to stop them getting the ball, and no doubt the committee will realise the seriousness of the position when Tom Leahy gives his testimony regarding the troubles of the ruckman in the modern game.

His only protection when the attentions become particularly severe is to pay back the opposition in its own coin, and possibly that is what occurred on Saturday. Force must be met with stronger force, and to the onlooker, Leahy certainly played a no different game on Saturday to that which he usually does. If Stephens got a clout over the head in one of these shocking melees, Leahy would probably not know that he ever gave it. The number of times he must have been charged can best be left to the recollections of the keen followers of the game, who know that charging is one of the most popular methods of downing big men in a general fly for the ball. If any line can be drawn between charging and throwing one's self at a man, it is a thin and shaky one, so that it is not unjust to class most of the efforts to stop big followers at the throws in as plain charges.

Charging is an offence, but the offenders are seldom penalised. This is hardly the umpire's fault, as penalties freely given for it would change the whole nature of the game, which the authorities have not given the umpires power to do. At present, they sometimes penalise really glaring instances, but the majority of the unseemly thrown-in scuffles are allowed to pass unnoticed. In these circumstances, it suggests that the big follower is the man who really needs the protection, not those who get a stray blow from a fist in approaching too close upon a mass of whirring arms.

The word 'fist' is not used advisedly. It is known, of course, that the doubling up of the fingers is not contemplated in the Australian game, and that as far as possible, players must keep their palms open, but if a follower observed that rule always he wouldn't have a digit left after two or three Saturdays of the modern game.

It is to be expected that Tom Leahy will bring all these matters before the league, and it would not surprise us if he not only goes there without witnesses, but makes a plain statement that the committee can do whatever it pleases with him— rub him out for life if it likes— since he must be heartily sick of the present system, and tired of a game that affords the hardest worked man no protection at all. Tom Leahy is full up of the ruck game, and it will be for the league to say if the present human baiting is to continue.

Shepherding, as known now, is really a recent development. It arose out of the very heavy followers, initiated in this State by West Adelaide, when Leahy appeared on the scene. Tom was a surprise to football, and with a strong man like Tierney to assist, West went straight to the premiership. The beauty of the game as played by those two men was that nobody knew which was going up for the ball. In later year, however, this big man predominance was overcome by putting on a "shepherd" to spoil him altogether, and from that, the evil system has grown.

The real shepherding was introduced away back in the eighties, when Geeelong, then the crack team of Australia, taught how the game should be played. Geelong brought shepherding to a fine art, and the old school will remember such giants as Jack Sandiland, Steve Fairburn, Jimmy Wilson (the champion of Victoria for a number of years), and his brother Bill, not forgetting the wonderful Stiffe. They came over to Adelaide in about 1881, and showed what shepherding was— a follow-up game in the open rather than a plain melee at the throw-in.

As a matter of fact, there was no throw-in in those days like there is now. On the boundary, the umpire had to throw the ball over his head, and no man was allowed to touch it until it had reached the ground. Nowadays they simply invite trouble by throwing the ball at the players in much the same way as a Zookeeper throws a shin bone to a beast. Further than that, the old Geelongs looked at nothing but long kicks and the running drop kick—almost a lost art in the modern game. Punting was unknown then. It was a later development.

The rucks, it may be said, too, were much lighter in the old days than they are now. Men were not picked for weight and size, but rather for speed and all-round ability. There was not the specialisation which in these times has made football so uninteresting compared with the years gone before. "Ruck" itself is a modern term. They were all followers in the eighties, but at the present rate of progress, it won't be long before they will be classed as plain wolves.

The remedy lies either in the elimination of the ruck shepherd or in a different method of throwing the ball in. Obviously, this league cannot of itself alter the game, but in the interim, it is up to it to see that a certain situation having been created, it is its duty to minimise as far as possible its evil effects.