Gerard Healy

[Rob-bloods]

Healy was great player for the Swans who teamed well as a brilliant ball carrier/runner with Williams getting in amongst it and dishing it out. He does not stand out to me as a gutsy player, but I do not mean in any way he was soft. He was a great kick and my recollection is he had one season where he kicked over 50 goals.

He seems a conceited man, extremely opinionated even by footy talk show standards and I find his attitude towards the Swans is rather strange.

Hafey incidentally detests him, I must suppose due to his politicing when T Shirt Tom was axed.

[cressakel]

Originally posted by Rob-bloods
Healy was great player for the Swans who teamed well as a brilliant ball carrier/runner with Williams getting in amongst it and dishing it out. He does not stand out to me as a gutsy player, but I do not mean in any way he was soft. He was a great kick and my recollection is he had one season where he kicked over 50 goals.

He seems a conceited man, extremely opinionated even by footy talk show standards and I find his attitude towards the Swans is rather strange.

Hafey incidentally detests him, I must suppose due to his politicing when T Shirt Tom was axed.

But let's not forget he led the movement to get rid of Hafey, which set the club back ten years, and he retired from the game at 28 or 29 with a little piddly broken wrist ( which translated as knowing the Swans were f*&@#d financially and ladder wise ) and has never come back to the club bar the TOTC night and when the Swans made the PF in 1996.

Healy won the Brownlow in 1986 on the back of Barry Mitchell and Greg Williams' spoon feeding of the ball to him. If not for Williams, who was THE ultimate user of the ball by hand and foot with outstanding vision, Healy would not have come close to winning three B & F's and a Brownlow while at the Swans.

Healy was very very aloof ( read: up himself ) at the TOTC, but he is a very good commentator and analyst of the game.

I still can't get around the fact that he left the game at 28 with a broken wrist and therefore have only minimal respect for the man compared with the likes of true heart & soul Bloods like Round, Carter, Carroll, Stevie Wright ( my favourite Blood ), Bayes and Kelly.

By the way, Healy never kicked over 50 goals at the Swans, but he did kick 78 goals for Melbourne in the early eighties - which annoyed Jacko greatly as he kicked over 70 himself but reckoned he could have kicked a ton but for Healy's ( and Jacko's ) selfishness !!

[swansrule100]

on the couch he seems to be a swans supporter a lot of the time.. always brings them up... least when i watch..

i agree with a few people who said he probably errs to far because he doesnt want to seem one eyed... or perhaps u only remember the bad things he said

[swansrule100]

Originally posted by cressakel


Healy won the Brownlow in 1986 on the back of Barry Mitchell and Greg Williams' spoon feeding of the ball to him. If not for Williams, who was THE ultimate user of the ball by hand and foot with outstanding vision, Healy would not have come close to winning three B & F's and a Brownlow while at the Swans.

williams won the brownlow in 1986

healy won it in 1988

[Diego]

[i]Originally posted by cressakel
Healy won the Brownlow in 1986

Not a fan I see, but get your dates right.
Dipper and diesel won it in 86.

[EMJ]

Healy we can't hear on radio in Sydney. No idea what he says about us there.
Never has he stood up for the Swans. His commentary was not supportive.
Schwass was and sometime he is the one that stick up for us on white line fever.
Gerard's comments during Bulldogs game doesn't help us.
On the Couch he is overrun by Sheehan etc and drops Swans comments.
One day we will make it on White Line Fever etc.

Wish we got more footy shows than the Foxtel ones - too much bias for C'wood, E'don time and time again.

[cressakel]

Originally posted by Diego
Not a fan I see, but get your dates right.
Dipper and diesel won it in 86.

It's Monday......

I knew 1986 seemed not right, thanks for the correction !!

P.S. Never a fan when players jump the Swans ship, even Greg Williams and Barry Mitchell. Although Williams was great to watch whoever he was playing for, as he HATED Essendon with a passion and always detroyed the Bombers by hand ( ball and fists ) and feet.

[Damien]

Healy also won the Players Association award in 1988, so I don't think he won it on the back of anyone.

Geez Cressakel...Healy was a fantastic player for our club, I am amazed that you can simply suggest he was weak in his reasoning for retiring.

BTW - We didn't win one final under Hafey. So how his demise set us back 10 years I will never know.

Somehow I think financial mismanagement and lack of interest from fans after the money had run out had more to do with it.

Blaming G.Healy for setting us back 10 years is almost the most stupid thing I have ever read on here.

[NMWBloods]

So, Healy won the Swans' B&F 3 times because of Williams and made the All Australian equivalent sides while he was still at Melbourne because of Williams? He had a badly broken wrist that never properly healed - I can understand why he decided to call it quits, rather than play for another year or two and destroy his wrist forever.

[cressakel]

Originally posted by NMWBloods
So, Healy won the Swans' B&F 3 times because of Williams and made the All Australian equivalent sides while he was still at Melbourne because of Williams?

Yep about Williams and never watched Healy at Melbourne ( virtually every game started at 2.10pm on a Saturday ) to judge whether he got the pill himself and therefore didn't know if he was All-Australian at Melbourne - which I find highly unlikely.

He had a badly broken wrist that never properly healed - I can understand why he decided to call it quits, rather than play for another year or two and destroy his wrist forever.

At the time there was all manner of injury management to look at in regard to his broken wrist, but Healy wanted to go back to Melbourne to complete his physiotherapy degree and to head into the media.

Healy didn't play the year after his wrist injury, but the following year the papers got wind of Healy playing local footy for Edithvale/Aspendale, which set off a chain reaction of clubs interested in drafting him at 31 - particularly Collingwood if I remember correctly....

[Tooth Fairy]

Didn't he have chronic groin problems as well? I kind of remember that being the case

[Rob-bloods]

One of the best quotes ever from Dermie was when he was discussing Jimmy Stynes remarkable injury tolerance, and one of the many, many injuries he carried whilst playing ?hey wasn?t that the injury that ended Healy?s career?.

Incidentally, my next favourite quote from the Frankston Mouth was ?Paul Roos, the only guy who played 350 games without picking up a man?...

[NMWBloods]

Originally posted by cressakel
At the time there was all manner of injury management to look at in regard to his broken wrist, but Healy wanted to go back to Melbourne to complete his physiotherapy degree and to head into the media.

Not an unreasonable decision to make, particularly if you have a chronic injury.

Healy didn't play the year after his wrist injury, but the following year the papers got wind of Healy playing local footy for Edithvale/Aspendale, which set off a chain reaction of clubs interested in drafting him at 31 - particularly Collingwood if I remember correctly....

Yep - Collingwood was chasing him, but as I recall he decided that his wrist wouldn't hold up at VFL level and declined to make a comeback.

[cressakel]

Originally posted by NMWBloods
[B]Not an unreasonable decision to make, particularly if you have a chronic injury.


Yep - Collingwood was chasing him, but as I recall he decided that his wrist wouldn't hold up at VFL level and declined to make a comeback.

Believe me, a wrist is not chronic. It would be understandable if Paul Kelly bowed out years before he did due to any one of the 33 operations he had throughout his career, but the King played on until 33 years of age. At the end, Kelly had a worn out body of a 39 year old. Whereas, Healy was 28/29 with no previous major injuries, but with the mindset of a payout from the club ( due to contractual obligations ), a poor on and off field future, a nearly completed degree to finish and an early start to a media career ( which wouldn't have made any difference at 28, 32 or 36 - the media loved him ! ).

Healy decided to take the above mindset instead of completing his degree in Sydney, overcoming the wrist injury with expert medical advice, trying to lead the club out of onfield defeats and therefore setting the young players on the right path to success and fulfilling his contractual obligations.

Maybe Healy should have gone into the media earlier and did his degree without playing obligations when he broke a fingernail ( the pinky ) when he was 23 - as it is very obvious to you that hand injuries are very serious !! Give me spell !

[NMWBloods]

Originally posted by cressakel
Believe me, a wrist is not chronic.

Anything can be chronic. Archer's hand is a chronic injury for example. He chooses to play through it, but at what cost to his hand later in life?