https://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au The complete history of Australia's greatest sporting club Tue, 30 Jan 2024 23:13:09 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.21 https://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/one-hit-wonders-mark-orval/ Tue, 22 Aug 2017 23:05:48 +0000 https://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/?p=12400 Sun in 1989, he insisted he would fight on. “If I gave it away now, I’d be forgotten in a month, whereas Collingwood will go on forever,” Orval said. “Daics told me: ‘Don’t give in, keep going’ and I intend to. Daics has been through it too (a run of injuries), though not quite as serious as I’ve had.” Orval travelled to various medical experts around the country seeking advice, with countless surgeries to try and strengthen the navicular joint. “The specialist says the fracture has healed and right now, it feels like I could run a marathon,” he said in 1989. “But it only gets sore again if I train on it three or four times a week.” The frustration was two-fold. He was one of the more popular members of the playing group. He was also part of Matthews’ plan going forward – and there is little doubt he would have at least been right in the mix to be a part of Collingwood’s drought-breaking first premiership in 32 years in 1990. Instead, he was on the sidelines still. By the middle of 1991, one newspaper said his left foot looked as if it had been put “repeatedly through a butcher’s mincer”. He had had as many surgeries as senior games played. He conceded at the time: “I don’t think many blokes have gone through this much … (but) the club’s been terrific and my teammates have been great.” “They’re always right behind me, but it gets to the stage where, mentally, it drains the shit out of you. I’ve trained so much it feels like I’ve played 1000 games. “It keeps getting to the stage where I’m ready to pull the boots on and it happens again.” The one question he wanted answered, he couldn’t get. “I just want to know how good I can be”. He added: “Maybe if I had played the full year in 1988, I could have turned out to be no good and the club could have flicked me. I just don’t know … but I want to.” Nobody who saw him play that day against Essendon thought he was “no good. His foot, more than his talent, had been the problem. He was delisted at the end of 1991, when he was not yet 24. But, fortunately, he wasn’t lost to the club. Orval would go on to serve on the past players’ executive for a time, and remains a popular former Magpie. He would even offer Essendon champion James Hird some advice when he went through his own navicular issues, which almost derailed his career. Better still, the fame that eluded him at Collingwood came in a very different guise. He would emerge with internet fame in recent years with the Angry Dad posts his sons Dylan and Mitchell turned into an online sensation. The pranks turned out to be exceptionally popular, and one of their Facebooks pages had more than 200,000 likes. Dylan also spent time at Collingwood as part of the VFL list in 2014, and would later be rookie-listed by Adelaide. If anyone deserved that change in fortune, it was Mark Orval. If fate had been kinder to him, he wouldn’t be a one-hit wonder; he could have been one of the club’s genuine stars. But, given what happened, at least we saw what he was capable of in that final round game against Essendon back in 1987.  ]]>