Frank Burge - The Man and His Playing Style

The Man and His Playing Style

At 93 kg and equally effective anywhere in the forwards from lock to prop, he had the speed of a back to complement his strength and an anticipation that made him a support player without peer. He was a teetotaller who was way ahead of his time in observing a strict diet, he used coaching concepts familiar in modern sports psychology and upheld an all-year training regime that continued right through the long Sydney summer off-season.

The Heads/Middleton reference quotes his colleague and former University rival Dick O'Brien who said on Burge's death in 1958: "May I say, as Anthony did of Caesar: his life was gentle, the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world "This was a man" '.

Read more about this topic:  Frank Burge

Famous quotes containing the words man, playing and/or style:

    “When a man grows old his joy
    Grows more deep day after day,
    His empty heart is full at length
    But he has need of all that strength
    Because of the increasing Night
    That opens her mystery and fright.”
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    “When as the rye reach to the chin,
    And chopcherry, chopcherry ripe within,
    Strawberries swimming in the cream,
    And school-boys playing in the stream;”
    —George Peele (1559–1596)

    “The difference between style and taste is never easy to define, but style tends to be centered on the social, and taste upon the individual. Style then works along axes of similarity to identify group membership, to relate to the social order; taste works within style to differentiate and construct the individual. Style speaks about social factors such as class, age, and other more flexible, less definable social formations; taste talks of the individual inflection of the social.”
    —John Fiske (b. 1939)