Hey guys, welcome back to the True Footer YouTube channel. So continuing with our recent trend of having a look at some of the classic players of the AFL, I've decided to pick one of my favorite all-time players for you and go with Daniel Kerr. But for this one, I'm actually gonna put a little bit more effort into it because in my eyes, Daniel Kerr is honestly such a special player. It was arguably part of the greatest fab four of all time with Kerr, Cousins, Judd, and Cox running through the midfield. It was never really considered quite as good as Cousin Judd, but by today's standards, he would be one of the absolute best in the competition. Daniel Kerr was drafted with pick 18 in the 2000 AFL draft. And what I've always found fascinating is that Eagles took Andrew McDougall with their top five pick and let Kerr slide in their second real big. No disrespect meant Andrew McDougall, but that's pretty funny to me. His father, Roger Kerr, was also a pretty established football back in the 80s in the waffle. He played a fair amount of 44 East Free Manel and I believe some SA and FFL for poor Adelaide as well. I'm assured by my old man that he was a pretty damn good footballer himself. For those wondering, Kerr is actually of Anglo-Indian descent as his father, Roger, was actually born in Calcutta in India. It didn't take long for Daniel to actually crack into that Eagle side. He day booted before his 18th birthday. As you can imagine, it didn't take very long for him to make his market AFL level. In fact, in his first season, he took one of the absolute marketer year contenders. The Eagles were going through a pretty tough time as a club in Kerr's first season and it was the second season under Ken Judges' coach. As a result, they slipped to 14th and were able to draft Chris Judd with Pick 3 and thus the Cox, Kerr, Cousin's Judd, Dynasty was born. For me, what set Daniel Kerr apart from the other midfielder's was his toughness? He only stood at 178 centimetres and something like 80 kilos, but he was legitimately one of the toughest players on our list. In fact, he would regularly take on much bigger players than him. I'll never forget their contests with him on the boundary line at Fraser Gary if he tries to get around him and Kerr gets him absolute hole in the ball. But to contrast with his own toughness, Kerr also had this ridiculous ability to slow down time and get always get a handball away. He made beat to this day the best handballing inside mid I've ever seen. So not only could he win clearances like a much bigger midfielder, but his distribution was absolutely elite as well. For a little guy, he was exceptionally well-rounded. It's not as though his outside game was lacking either. I'm sure many Eagles fans will remember that dirty in 2003 where he kicked that goal of the year contender. I'll always remember that game for the fact that it was the first time I'd seen Free Man on Beat West Coast. So I'm kind of scarred, but it was absolutely amazing running goal. It really speaks to the desperation that Kerr played with Week in Week out. For me, the beauty of the Judd Cousins Kerr dynamic was the fact that they were all such different midfielder. You know, Judd, especially at the time was such a unique midfielder standing at nearly six foot three. His clearance ability and his speed away from the stopage was what set him apart. Kerr was a very balanced midfielder. He would win the ball inside but he could distribute really well to and get it on the outside as well. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we heard Cousins whose strength was his work rate and his ability to run all day. In fact, he was probably one of the greatest running midfielder's we've seen in a long time. There's always been this debate with Eagles fans about who was the best midfielder out of that group. For me, I've always found that debate quite silly. It's always been Chris Judd. Despite me talking up Kerr, Judd would regularly dominate the clearances and get tested possessions across the whole AFL. And the fact that he did it from such a young age makes it all the more impressive. I think for a lot of Eagles fans, they choose Cousins as their favorite because he was the one that stayed. Well, kind of stayed, obviously he got sacked but he never requested a trade. In my eyes, Judd was the best of three but the gap between Cousins and Kerr is pretty insignificant in my view. As well as things were going for Kerr on the field during the start of his career, things off the field were starting to go a bit wrong. As it's been well documented, the Eagles were going through their own culture crisis during that time, the club. And things really started to go downhill around 2002. Kerr and Ben Cousins didn't really get on and it was actually a brawl between the two at a Perth nightclub. Allegedly, Cousins had punched Kerr in the face early in the night and then at some point Kerr has pushed Cousins down the stairs, breaking his arm. Two years later, in 2004, Kerr was also charged with forging a fake medical prescription. Now Kerr obviously wasn't on his own in his regard but this sort of thing was very symptomatic of the dodgy culture that was developing at West Coast. It was about 2005 that the form of the midfielders would really take off. 2005 was really the first year that Kerr established himself as one of the best midfielders in the game. In 2005, he nearly caused an upset win in the Brown Lobe finishing just one vote behind his teammate, Cousins. In 2006, he came third and in 2007, he came second. When he considered the fact that Kerr was competing with Cousins, Judd and even more peripheral guys like Emily and Braun and Fletcher for votes, that made his ability to actually finish that high in the Brown Lobe so consistently, all the more impressive. I think his toughness was best typified by the fact that he played the 2005 Grand Final with a bust at ankle. In the following year, in 2006, Kerr also played with attached ligaments in his foot. As we all know, it was worth it, I guess, because in 2006, Kerr became a Premiership player. The Eagles beat the swans at the MCG to claim their third club flag. Kerr was an absolutely huge part of that Premiership win and I can still remember some of his desperate solo efforts in that game. And in the 07 Grand Final Replay, I will never forget his match winning, diving tackle on McVeigh in the dying seconds in the defensive half. As we would eventually find out, the better the football got, the worse, the off-field culture got at the club. Cousins would spend half of the 2007 season, actually in rehab in America for his drug addiction. As a result, Kerr had to shoulder even more of the midfield responsibility. And he performed beautifully. His disposal average actually jumped from 23 to 27 that year. Unfortunately, the off-field pressure would start to mount on Kerr in 07 as well. It was charged twice with a salt occasion bodily harm in two separate incidents in 07. Then, in the same year, the media actually got hold of phone recordings of Kerr organizing drugs with a convicted drug dealer. The phone recordings were actually from 2003, but as luck would have it, it wasn't reported on until 2007. Of course, all the off-field affairs were really too much for the club to handle and they buckled under the pressure. The Eagles went out in straight sets in 2007. Cousins was sacked and Judd requested a trade to Carlton. The club completely capitulated. There was a list rebuild, a sweeping culture change, mass sacking, and 2008 would become one of the lowest points in the club's history. To further the club's pain, Kerr would actually only manage 26 games in the next three seasons as he battled on various injuries. In 2010, Kerr actually tore his hamstring off the bone and was only able to play four games as the Eagles won the wooden spoon. There's always been an argument against Kerr which I find ridiculous. And that was that he couldn't quite handle the pressure once Judd and Cousins weren't playing in the same team. In the three down seasons between 08 and 2010 that the Eagles had, Kerr never played more than 11 games. In 2011 and 2012, when the Eagles finished fourth and fifth, Kerr played 16 and 24 games in each season. In 2013, he only managed 10 games and the Eagles stopped the 13th. The correlation isn't that strong, you know what I mean. I'm not saying he single-handedly carried the team, but there was clearly a relationship between the club's performance and whether or not Kerr was fit. Thing that I loved about Kerr post 2010 after he tore his hamstring off the bone was the fact that he was able to really, really invent the way he played. With his body so fragile, he couldn't rely on any gut running or his ability to cover the ground. But what he did do was double down the things that he was really good at. Winning the ball in the clearance, distributing it by hand, and there's ability to free up other midfielders. Even in his diminished capacity, the Eagles midfield at that time was so much more dynamic with him playing. Some of light Matt Pritt has always got the reputation for being an absolute clearance beast. And perhaps in numbers, he did have Kerr covered, but the quality of the clearance's Kerr won were absolutely unmatched. Even in his final seasons, he was kicking absolutely ridiculous goals too. At the end of the 2013 season, Kerr would hang up the boots. For me, he will be remembered as one of the absolute best, and the Eagles haven't had a midfielder like him since. Unfortunately, he's had a pretty tough time post retirement. In 2014, he was actually arrested for setting a home on fire in Lendolo and endangering people's lives. To his credit, he's opened up recently about his battle with methodiction and alcohol abuse. And apparently spend some of his time these days helping educate Aboriginal communities about the dangers of using these things. Kerr may not have had the best run of things off the field, but to be fair to him, there was a lot of nobility in someone learning from their own mistakes and trying to educate others to avoid making the same ones. What's obvious is that the Kerr family are absolute freaks of nature. For those who don't know, his sister Sam Kerr is one of the greatest female soccer players of all time. You can check out some of the amazing hires on YouTube. In the meantime, I'm kind of hoping the Eagles try and quarter really hard to join their AFLW team. For now, that's it. Thank you for watching, and I hope you enjoyed this different kind of video. If you enjoyed the format and would like to do other videos like this, let us know in the comments. If you're new to the channel, make sure you hit subscribe. We do all kinds of footy content and sometimes some cricket stuff as well. Thanks guys, I'll see you next time.