Football
A star half-forward with St Patrick's College, he trained with Richmond Football Club in the 1943 pre-season, and was placed on their supplementary list at the start of the 1943 season.
He played intermittently for Richmond's Second Eighteen; and, in 1946, he was released by Richmond to the Belgrave Football Club in the Mountain District Football Association.
In 1949, in a semi-finals match on 17 September 1949, in which he kicked nine goals for Belgrave, he was knocked out during the match. He thought nothing of the injury and, thinking it was just concussion, he sought no additional medical treatment. On 4 October, he collapsed at work, and was hospitalized. At the hospital, it was discovered that he had fractured his skull (the second time that he had fractured his skull in his football career). He immediately retired from football, having set the goal-kicking record of 152 goals in a single season.
He was not fit enough to resume cricket until 29 October 1949; and the consequences of this severe head injury were such that he suffered from severe headaches from time to time for the rest of his life; and, very often, he had to take special headache powders in order for him to be able to play cricket.
Read more about this topic: Jack Hill (cricketer)
Famous quotes containing the word football:
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“In this dream that dogs me I am part
Of a silent crowd walking under a wall,
Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit,
All moving the same way.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty’s torch. In football you run over somebody’s face.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)