The real Josh Mahoney is standing up

Despite being one of Port Adelaide's most consistent performers, Josh Mahoney is still looking for respect in the football world. Nick Mockford has a look at why.

The ball comes in long to the Port Adelaide forward line, and Tredrea brings it to ground in the contest. Who’s there at his feet, reading the play a half step ahead of everyone else? Is it one of the Burgoyne brothers? Chad Cornes? The newest Power sensation in Danyle Pearce might be your best bet. Or you could phone a friend, but chances are he’d gloss over this bloke as well.

I’ll give you a clue who’s there, always there, using footy smarts to get on top of his opponent and an inexplicable anonymity to get under the guard of opposition coaches. He’s played for two previous AFL clubs and he was the final selection in the 2004 preseason draft.

The answer is Josh Mahoney, and after watching him kick six to sink the Saints on Monday night, it still baffles me how he doesn’t get his fair dues around the league.

It seems a delisting is like a red wine stain on one’s permanent record; no matter how much good you do afterwards, the stain will always be visible, reminding people of the past. Mahoney continues to be a vital cog of experience in a transitional Port Adelaide system, not to mention a premiership player in 2004, yet he’s still regarded as a ‘dud’ in many quarters.

Maybe if he’d been delisted by Brisbane a few years ago or North Melbourne in the late nineties would people give him a second chance. Instead, they think; this bloke has been canned by two ordinary footy sides. That immediately sets off the warning bells to the armchair fan, who uses this as indisputable proof that the player can’t cut it. A second chance? If you’re lucky. A third chance? No way josé.

Of course, if Tyson Lane, Collingwood’s compensation for giving Mahoney the flick, had turned out to be a valuable player, then it would probably be different. If you’re traded for a gun, your value increases as well, regardless of what happens from thereon after. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case, and Mahoney also cops the second armchair theory: If you’ve been swapped for a dud, then chances are you’re a dud too. Otherwise why would you have been traded in the first place?

Despite all of this, Mahoney has continued to show the same quality that was his greatest asset as a junior at the Western Jets; his courage. To go through two clubs and be thrown back into the VFL in this day and age is an almost certain recipe for the end of one’s career, especially at the age of twenty-six. The Power took a flier on him after toiling away with the Bendigo Bombers, and from round six until the 2004 Grand Final, Mahoney didn’t lose his spot. He still hasn’t.

Of course, I have no blood history to Josh, nor am I a Power supporter. I’m not particularly fond of him either after his performance in the Elimination Final versus my beloved Kangaroos last September. So what inspired me to write this? Watching him continually embarrass St Kilda’s backline with superior football smarts, I commented to a friend of mine: “I can’t believe Josh Mahoney continues to get overlooked by opposition defenders, he is a super little player.”

Well, if you’re this far into the article, you probably know what his response was, but I’ll tell you anyway.

“He’s a dud.”

Of course this friend of mine is a Kangaroos supporter too, and puts down Mahoney’s four goals in that horrific final purely to playing on an average opponent, as he did the six kicked against the Saints. It really does beg the question though: how many times does a player have to perform before it is less about who his opponent is and more about his own quality?

Since joining the Power, Mahoney has kicked another two bags of four goals in addition to the two aforementioned performances. He has provided a dangerous foil for Tredrea, lurking across half forward, daring opponents to give him a run at the football. For a small player, he is a fantastic mark, and his defensive pressure across half forward is second to none. It’s the job Byron Pickett was recruited to play, yet it’s Mahoney who is one of the first names picked every week, while Pickett has moved on.

If there was a moral to all of this, it would no doubt be to not judge a book by it’s former covers, but realistically, that’s never going to happen. Just like the sheet is never going to be looked upon in its better days before the clumsy drunk spilt the wine. In short, it’s just human nature to compile a dossier on one’s past and continue to refer to it. Mahoney is no different.

But, every goal he kicks, every mark he takes and every tackle he lays in the forward line will make Port fans happier with Mark Williams’ foresight, and hopefully make more and more people live in the present.

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