Page 583 - History of Parkside Football Club (1897-2017) Editied Version Completed_optimized

Parkside Football Club 1897/2017

In 2011, Grey Morris conducted a great interview for NT News (Northern Territory).

ROSS NAPOLI would give anything to kick a football again

By Grey Morris

“The Waratahs premiership player has been confined to a wheelchair since his spine was damaged in
a freak collision in a 1999 football match in Melbourne.

The former Collingwood and Essendon-listed player was injured when he spun out of a pack with the
ball and ran into someone’s knee.

Now 38 and a Darwin resident, Napoli has read with interest the big increase in the number of free
kicks being awarded in football for head-high contact.

That is up 30 per cent on last year in AFL ranks and 50 per cent on 2009 to a whopping 12.4 per
game.

Players are being warned not to duck their heads in tackles and thereby curbing the danger of long
term injury.

Ross Napoli (2011)

“I was probably hit 10 times harder in footy and come out of those incidents with nothing,” Napoli
said when recalling the ’99 collision.

“I didn’t duck or anything. It was really a freak occurrence where, unfortunately, I was in the wrong
spot.

Once a Parksider, Always a Parksider