late Neale Daniher <\/a>at the MCG, I think this one might not end as a lot of people would like it,\u201d he said. <\/p>\nReferencing notable icons such as Leigh Matthews, Betty Cuthbert, Don Bradman and Kevin Bartlett, who was the most recent figure to be immortalised outside the G in 2017, Elliott said every athlete with a statue could be considered \u201cthe best of their generation\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll of the 16 odd statues we currently have are of people who first and foremost achieved sporting greatness on the G \u2013 one of the best footballers of their generation, the best cricketers, and the best athletes.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing about Neale Daniher was that he did not achieve the sporting greatness required.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not to denigrate him in any way, just playing in the VFL back in the day or the AFL today already means you\u2019re one of the best footballers going around.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the statues are not for players who are OK or pretty good, they\u2019re for the absolute best of the best. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is off the MCG website \u2014 the statues reinforce the association between the elite sportsmen and sportswomen who have competed here in the stadium the rejoiced in their performance … the word elite is important.<\/p>\n
\u201cShould we change the rules about statues around the MCG and include Neale Daniher, less for his own playing and coaching career and more for his work with FightMND?\u201d.<\/p>\n
Elliott\u2019s comments come as a rollcall of AFL greats and footballers who played under Daniher call for a statue as an enduring legacy to the Aussie trailblazer. <\/p>\n
Although the path between Birrarung Marr and the MCG has already been named Daniher\u2019s Way in honour of his fundraising efforts, proposals are mounting for the beloved figure to be immortalised in bronze. <\/p>\n
MCC chief executive Stuart Fox said: \u201cNeale Daniher was such a remarkable person and we appreciate that people want to continue to honour him \u2013 a sentiment we share as ground manager of the MCG.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile statues surrounding the MCG are approved based on an athlete\u2019s display of sporting excellence specific to the stadium, we recognise Neale\u2019s significant impact in other ways.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"3AW radio host Tom Elliott has rejected calls for a Neale Daniher statue outside the MCG, arguing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-697372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697372","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=697372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}