Michigan had nearly won the grind it out, defensive slugfest against their in-state rivals. However, a last-second botched punt sealed one of the worst endings you could ever imagine. Here’s some insight as to why it happened:
“In a sense, it was quite an innate reaction to still kind of kick it,” Chapman said. “Yeah, he probably should have jumped on it, but jumping on the ball is not what we do here. We pick it up and we move it forward by hand or foot. If the ball is on the ground and two teammates jump on you (in Australian rules football), it can be called holding the ball — I get penalized and you receive the ball because I didn’t attempt to get the ball out and continue the game on.” Weber State coach Jay Hill, who signed O’Neill from Australia, thought the same thing when he saw the Michigan-Michigan State ending.“If you watch Australian rules football, those guys are used to kicking with people draped over them in traffic,” Hill said. “My guess is his natural instincts took over and he thought he could get the kick off. They do that 20 times a game with something similar and it just didn’t go his way this time.”
Source: Michigan punter’s Australian rules past may have contributed to mishap – CBSSports.com
The point is not to linger on the defeat, Blue. We got blown out the past two seasons and we just wanted to prove we belonged on a real stage – and we did that. The polls reflect this, all we dropped was to #15. Let’s take the bye week to regroup and then keep playing great football!
………… you can see now that he tried to make a gutsy play…hats off to you mate!
“What he spoke about was in a sense he was glad it happened to him because he is mentally strong (enough) that he can handle it,” said Nathan Chapman, O’Neill’s trainer from Prokick Australia, in a phone interview Sunday. “What he’s disappointed about is when those comments could possibly go to someone else who’s possibly in a different mental state and it might be enough to tip them over the edge.
“We all want to move on from it. Maybe something else will happen quickly so we can move on. That’s what sport is. I’m sure there will be trivia questions about him for the next 100 years, and he’s fine. He’s a tough bloke.”