The Motivator

From today's Melbourne (Australia) Age newspaper:

Garry Lyon's [ex Aussie Rules player and now media identity] visit to New York saw him strike a chord with NFL kicker Mike Nugent over Thanksgiving Day turkey.

A guest at Ben Graham's house for Thanksgiving, Lyon met and spent the day with Nugent and asked him why punters and kickers never laid a tackle.

He told Nugent he would only see one Jets match while in town - against Houston - and joked he wanted something special.

Nugent produced just that - four field goals, including the second longest in franchise history, and a sensational tackle on kick-returner Dexter Wynn that had the whole stadium buzzing.

Nugent told a New York paper he hadn't played defence since high school, but he must have remembered enough to impress his teammates. "It wasn't just a tackle," Jets wide reciever Brad Smith said. "It was a great hit."

 

Aussies have a way of taking the mick out of someone that seems to fire people up. What that means is that most people would have been in awe of someone that played for the Jets, but an Aussie would be in there and go: "so you're the kicker? How many tackles have you had this season?", just to see if it would get a laugh or not. Lyon would know what kickers do in the NFL tackle wise, but he would pretend to play dumb to see if he could stir Nugent up. I dunno if that's what happend to Nugent against Houston, but if it did it worked.

We take the p*ss constantly, I do it myself all the time. It's a great coping mechanism, and probably the reason you see Ben Graham laughing or smiling during his JetsTV interviews. We don't go in for some of the emotional stuff you lot get into, and tend to take the p*ss out of whatever is going on.

All except the police of course: they are pretty much the same as you'll find over there.