Style
| "PRATT WAS GREATEST GOAL-KICKER Pratt is my choice because he could almost do the impossible. Often he flew for the ball from almost an impossible position— perhaps on the outside of three players, and then, with an amazing twist of his body, he appeared to get his hands to the ball at an angle of 45 degrees. |
Pratt was averse to weights training, believing that it took away from the athleticism required to play football. Instead, he trained with professional sprinters, which he believed helped him as it built his initial acceleration (essential to any footballer) and aided his kicking accuracy.
His contemporaries were full of praise for his exploits:
- South Melbourne teammate Laurie Nash once wrote of Pratt; "He was the greatest high mark I have ever seen. How he didn't kill himself in some of his marking efforts I will never know."
- Richmond legend Jack Dyer wrote that it would be difficult to convey Pratt's greatness to future generations of football fans who had not been privileged to see him in action.
- Three-time Brownlow Medal winner Dick Reynolds of Essendon wrote that Pratt was the best forward he had seen, saying that "none rivalled the greatness" of Pratt, adding that he was a master of judgement and long kicking. Of his high-marking skills, Reynolds recalled that Pratt " be waist-up over the whole bloomin' pack sometimes, then he'd almost slide over the top of the squad, swing around over the pack and as he came down you'd think he'd break his neck, but lucky for him he knew how to fall and roll like a cat so he didn't hurt himself."
- Jack Regan, Collingwood's champion full-back of the 1930s, said that, in all of his years playing senior VFL football, Pratt was his most difficult opponent, and that he stood out from all the other full-forwards he had played against: "The greatness of Pratt apart from his brilliant marking and fine kicking was his determined ground play. When beaten for the mark he would dash for the ball like a terrier".
- In the opinion of the former West Australian champion rover Johnny Leonard, who had been the captain coach of South Melbourne in 1932 (he played 12 VFL games with South Melbourne in 1932), Pratt was a champion: "I think Pratt was the most freakish footballer I ever saw. He was more freakish than Ted Flemming, and that's saying something. He had a heart as big as a grandstand and stood up to heavy punishment as well as risking a broken neck in his phenomenal leaps for the ball. He was a great footballer".
Read more about this topic: Bob Pratt
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behoves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c’est l’homme, what is likely to happen if l’homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”
—Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)
“Where there is no style, there is in effect no point of view. There is, essentially, no anger, no conviction, no self. Style is opinion, hung washing, the calibre of a bullet, teething beads.... One’s style holds one, thankfully, at bay from the enemies of it but not from the stupid crucifixions by those who must willfully misunderstand it.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“If the British prose style is Churchillian, America is the tobacco auctioneer, the barker; Runyon, Lardner, W.W., the traveling salesman who can sell the world the Brooklyn Bridge every day, can put anything over on you and convince you that tomatoes grow at the South Pole.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)