Go You Little Horse

This blog entry is named in honour of my brother who loves piss-takers and hates shit-talkers and, who used to say 'Go, you little horse' after that Simpsons episode. It is one of his terms of approval, hence, 'Buckley, he's such a little horse'. My brother has always maintained that I know absolutely fuck all about footy, so he probably doesn't agree with the blog entry...

I've been so despondent about the Daniher news that I actually find myself reading The Herald Sun in an attempt to get more information about it, so I shouldn't be surprised if things go from bad (reading that fascist paper in the first place) to worse. According to an article in The Herald Sun, Gerard Neesham, a mate of Riley's, says that anyone who thinks 'playing record is relevant' is an idiot. He would; he only played nine AFL games. Interestingly, he has a corresponding coaching record at AFL level; he won 32 from 88 games. But my favourite bit of the article is where he makes an analogue between being an AFL coach and being a horse trainer. He points out that you don't need to have ridden a horse to be a good trainer.

Arguing by analogue is stupid because you ask the audeince to form an opinion, not based on experience, common sense or even theory, but rather by drawing a conclusion from a gratuitous generalization about something completely unrelated. However, this particular analogue doesn't even do that. The analogue would be right (if pointless) if we were talking about training jockeys; that is the example of doing the thing yourself in order to be able to teach others. (And as it turns out, I'm pretty sure most jockeys are taught by people who, at some stage in their lives, have ridden horses.) In fact, the proper version of his analogue for this situation would be that horse trainers have to spent time as horses competeting in races in order to be a good horse trainer. Actually, we would ask that of horse trainers (at the AIS anyway) if we possibly could.