The power of the mind From the book, From Brilliant and Broke to Inspired and Abundant, by Andrew Jobling
We had a goal and we worked hard to develop a mindset of success. The result was that everyone improved in their performances,
established where their weaknesses lay and began to improve on them. by Allen Aylett
I
n the 1950s I was selected to play for a VFL club at a time when zoning had just been introduced.
The metropolitan area was divided into areas and potential players were taken into a club based on the area in which they lived. So if you were born in Brunswick, like I was, you were in the North Melbourne zone. I had no choice but to play with the North Melbourne Football Club, whether I liked it or not. Ironically I was an Essendon supporter and lived just a couple of streets away from the Essendon Football Club zone. All players, whether metropolitan or country, were zoned in this way to a particular club. I started playing with North
Melbourne in the boys league as a teen. Then, at 17 years of age in the 1952 season, I was selected for the North
Melbourne Football Club’s first game of the season to play my inaugural senior game. Luckily, it was against Carlton, not Essendon!In my second year at senior level I was still 17 and had one year to go at University High School. I played that full year with North Melbourne and the following year, 1953, I was admitted to Melbourne University Dental School to start my five-year university course — while still playing football. Of course, that is not done these days because the players now are professional athletes and full-time footballers. In my day, players needed to have a full-time career outside of the sport. I was fortunate to have a successful
football life over 13 years. I played 220 games when it was only 18 games per season. During 1958, the centenary year of football, I was awarded the Tassie
Medal for the most outstanding player in the series. In 1964, at 30 years of age, I broke
a bone in my hand. Bearing in mind that, by this stage, I had graduated as a dentist and I had my own dental practice, it was time for me to make a hard decision, as I couldn’t work as a dentist with a couple of broken bones in my hand! However, after missing about three
or four games, I came back to finish the season. In the very first game I came back, I broke my left wrist. That was virtually the end of my career — I was taken off the ground and the doctors were injecting morphine into my body. One of the sporting reporters attending the game, who was a very good friend of mine, asked, “Is this the end? Is this the end?”It turned out that that
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