Barry Hall

Barry Hall

Introduction and Early Life

Barry Hall is a professional Australian Rules footballer and currently plies his trade with the Western Bulldogs Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). He was born on February 8, 1977 in Broadford, Victoria region of Australia. He currently weighs about 104kg and is about 1.94 metres tall. He plays in the forward position and wears jersey number 28 for the Western Bulldogs football club. Big Bad Barry has played for a number of clubs in the AFL before joining Western Bulldogs. Prior to starting a football career, he was known to enjoy martial arts and boxing.

Early Football Career

Barry Hall had set out at an early age of twelve years to pursue a career in boxing after moving to Melbourne. He was reported to have converted his fathers garage to a makeshift boxing gym for his practise. He later went ahead to win a state title in his early teenage years and by the time he was fifteen years; he was reported to have fought about fifteen fights. The young Barry was full of energy as a young man and he also had the curiosity to try his hands on other things especially sports that fascinated him. This led him to venture into football too after it was evident that he was a good talent for the game. He ended up playing for Murray Bushrangers football club at the junior level. He was part of the clubs team that competed in the TAC Cup. It was during this competition that he was identified by talent scouts and this influenced Barry to concentrate on pursuing a professional career in football and of course these talents facilitated his draft into the AFL.

Professional (AFL) Football Career

Barry was drafted in the 1995 season as pick number nineteen of the national AFL draft by the St. Kilda Football Club. He eventually made his debut into the AFL in 1996. He was a good replacement for Tony Lockett who had moved to the Sydney Swans in the previous season. He had a long stay at St. Kilda football club playing for the club from 1996 to 2001. He achieved some record feats at the club during his stay there and his game had also improved tremendously from what it was when he was first recruited. He was the leading goal kicker for the club in the 1999 and 2001 seasons. He played a total of 88 games for the club and kicked a total of 144 goals. He was reported to have left as a result of salary and earning disagreements.

Hall moved from playing for St Kilda to the Sydney Swans football club, where his performance further soared to heights that amazed the Swans supporters and to some extent Hall himself. He was the leading goal kicker at the club for every season till the 2009 season. He was named as the winner of the clubs Best and Fairest Award in 2004 as well as being named in the All Australia Team. He improved tremendously in the following season of 2005 after he kicked 80 goals for the season, and was second in the Coleman Medal. He went ahead to make the All Australia Team list in 2005 and 2006 seasons. He also captained the Sydney Swans team to the 2005 AFL grand final premiership.

With such a long and successful career Barry has several awards to his name. In 2008, he won the Paul Roos Award as the best player in the finals. He kicked his 600th career goal in a game against Western Bulldogs in round 10 of the 2009 season. It was later announced during the 2009 season that Hall will be moving to Western Bulldogs. He has been playing for Western Bulldogs to date. He has several laurels to his name, and he has announced his intention to retire at the end of 2011 season. Hall also has a lot of controversy surrounding his personality both in the media, and among football fans.