Comedian Dave Hughes has been left with five broken ribs and a punctured lung after being battered during the AFL Legends game at Docklands on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Hughes, who was representing Victoria in the exhibition match, was crunched early on by former West Coast premiership player Andrew Embley, and then was the target of a few playful jabs from Daniel Gorringe and Mitch Robinson.<\/p>\n
The 54-year-old, who was the oldest player to participate in the game, played out the contest before being rushed to hospital later in the night by his wife due to persistent pains.<\/p>\n
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“The Andrew Embley incident, Hodgey kicked it to me, I dropped the chest mark \u2026 and Embley came in from the side, and that was the first collision that, I believe, was the ribs,” Hughes told 92.9 Triple M Breakfast with Xav & Katie.<\/p>\n
Embley, the Norm Smith Medal winner from the 2006 AFL grand final, offered his apologies to Hughes after the hit.<\/p>\n
“I just want to say that I am so sorry for my little thump on you last night that has obviously caused so much damage, you look so sore right now,” he said.<\/p>\n
“How brave were you, big fella, to continue with the game?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hughes came off second best following a series of bumps while representing Victoria in the exhibition match. (Getty Images: AFL Photos\/Dylan Burns)<\/p>\n
“I’m thinking of you. Rest up and again, mate, I’m so sorry that of course I’ve caused you to be having this very tough morning this morning.<\/p>\n
“Take care and I’ll send some flowers your way shortly.”<\/p>\n
Former Carlton and Brisbane forward Brendan Fevola, who was Hughes’s teammate on Victoria, said he was near the comedian when he got hurt.<\/p>\n
“I got real worried because \u2026 I went to pick him up off the ground and he couldn’t breathe. [Hughes said]: ‘I am in real pain. Don’t pick me up, let me get up myself,'” Fevola said on his own breakfast radio show on Fox.<\/p>\n
“I reckon that’s when it happened, he literally could not get up off the ground. [Hughes said]: ‘Don’t touch me, don’t touch me.’ He was lying there, a few people thought he was putting it on, but I thought he was in trouble.”<\/p>\n
Hughes’s body blows came after All-Stars coach, Hawthorn legend Shane Crawford, jokingly implored his team to rough up Hughes in a pre-match speech.<\/p>\n
“There is one player from the Vics that I have really earmarked, and it’s Dave Hughes,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I don’t care about the other players. They are all good players. They are old, they are slow. I want him [Hughes] to never put up his hand again [to play], so I want everyone to tackle him at some stage. And while he is down there, to really get into him.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comedian Dave Hughes has been left with five broken ribs and a punctured lung after being battered during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,74784,74788,64,63,55,9117,639,74786,3181,28567,74785,74789,3899,43471,74787,51375,588,85,13441,660],"class_list":["post-103549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-afl-legends-game","tag-all-stars","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australian-rules","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-broken-ribs","tag-coach","tag-comedian","tag-dave-hughes","tag-docklands","tag-injury","tag-pre-match-talk","tag-punctured-lung","tag-shane-crawford","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-target","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}