Capital Punishment

What a cruel way to watch a game. Waking up two minutes into the first quarter (yes, it was that sort of day) and having to go to work twenty minutes into the third. Just farcical. Thankfully we'd already done North over by this point and it would have taken an epic collapse to undo our good work until then. So what did we do? Almost have an epic collapse. You haven't lived until you've sat there watching the AFL website while you're supposed to be listening to one briefing or another and seeing the opposition score clocking over at speed. I was almost out the door to my car to listen to the game on the radio, until I realised it wasn't even on the radio. Idiot.

The first 3/4 were delightful though. We were clearly a much better side all over the park and were it not for the icerink style surface that led to players falling on their arses every 30 seconds I feel we would have put North to the sword a lot earlier than we did.

The downside to not seeing the pre-match show became obvious when a minute or two after I turned the TV on I saw Chris Heffernan running around. Panic set in. He didn't end up playing too badly but I would have preferred Brock there any day of the week.

What else happened? F'ed if I know. I didn't really feel too much tension throughout the event but as we've previously discussed that's the only advantage to not being at the game. Ground looked full for once but that's got a lot to do with the fact that Fox Footy bought 10000 tickets and handed them out to anyone who wanted them. Hopefully the people of the ACT will have been excited at seeing R. Robertson going ballistic and will purchase memberships accordingly.

I did lose the plot momentarily at one point of the commentary. When Brad Green soccered through his goal in the 2nd quarter and we got the obvious "he once tried out for Manchester United!" angle. Am I the only one who's sick to death of that line? Clinton Grybas not only delivered that, in a direct infringement on Eddie McGuire's copyright to say it, but he also pointed out (in a cosmopolitan "we love all sports" fashion) that "Manchester United could have done with some of that this season". Some of what? If that had been a soccer shot it would have sailed over the crossbar by a mile. LAZY commentary. Clinton, I await your response.

Demonblog.com Player of the Year VOTES

5 - Brad Green
4 - Russell Robertson
3 - Nathan Brown
2 - Cameron Bruce
1 - Paul Wheatley

LEADERBOARD (updated later..)

17 - Cameron Bruce
12 - Travis Johnstone, Brad Green
9 - Brock McLean
8 - Russell Robertson
7 - Adem Yze
6 - Ryan Ferguson
5 - Brent Moloney, Jared Rivers
4 - Clint Bizzell
3 - Aaron Davey, James McDonald, Brad Miller, Nathan Brown
1 - Russell Robertson, Colin Sylvia, Alistair Nicholson, Paul Wheatley

Next week? Collingwood on Queens Birthday. Now this is an interesting one because even when we do win it we don't do it with ANY authority whatsoever, and now that they've actually decided to win again I won't be going in with as much confidence as two months ago. On some of the passages of play today we're good enough to beat anyone in this competition (West Coast included... 2pt win against Richmond my arse) but sometime we look completely average as well. I'm starting to think that we're a certainty for the top 4 but I can't get excited any further than that at the moment.

Your comments/analysis/dissection please. I think I need a guest columnist who will write match reviews that actually discuss the match. Apply within.