(Geelong) Road To Nowhere

So, welcome to season 2008. Are you depressed yet? Well, the good news is that I'm here to tell that we might have been well and truly touched up by Geelong at Kardinia Park yesterday but we were almost 50 points better against them than Port Adelaide managed in the Grand Final. Therefore we are the second best team in the competition. Yes!

Complete horseshit I know, but the story of yesterday's game is clearly more one of an absolutely sensational team, with a huge spread of senior players available toying with an already inferior squad lacking most of it's leadership group and half a dozen crucial players. Scoreline aside we weren't entirely embarassing today, and once you throw (deep breath please)..

Neitz, McLean, Rivers, Davey, Bruce, Wheatley, Carroll, Miller (I suppose..) etc.. etc.. back into the mix we already look like a better side. Maybe not top 8, but definately not the bottom of the harbour style performance that the score might have indicated.

A game review? Must I? I spent more time with my head in the record trying to work out who the hell half of our players were.

Paul Prymke Plate for Pre-Season Playing Performance (!?) Votes

5. Buckley
4. Jones
3. Valenti
2. Garland
1. Sylvia

Votes for other pre-season games will be as awarded by the newspapers, unless I'm actually there and then I'll make the decision. God forbid we play an intra-club anytime soon I'll hand out some votes there as well and make this well and truly confusing.

ZOMGer Watch
Well, now that both the Philthy and Byron Watch's are redundant we need somebody else to focus on. Unfortunately Zomer is unlikely to feature in more than a handful of matches this year so it's going to be a bit of a waste.

Crowd Watch
Early in the week the AFL, those bastions of truth and fairness in reporting, told us that the game was rapidly selling out and that we'd better buy tickets in advance to avoid disappointment. Sounded like a massive scam to me, and indeed it was. 10,000 people "packed" the ground to watch their returning heroes in their first post-Grand Final run out. Let's assume there were a thousand MFC fans, a thousand Cats fans from elsewhere, and 500 neutrals. That means that 7500 of 160,000 locals got down to the game. Wonderful stuff. Support the game. Harked back to the glory days of the late 90's when they were going down the tubes at a million miles an hour and were all set to join Pyramid and the Geelong Supercats in the list of local icons that had gone tits up financially.

Some twat behind us kept yelling "wooden spoon! wooden spoon!" every time we cocked something up. Amazing how after forty years of mediocrity people start to get cocky after they win once. I want to win once so I can be a complete bastard as well.

Next Week: Cairns for the NAB Regional Challenge. Did you know that there are "Regional Challenge" games being played at Princes Park? Who knew that Carlton's rubbish form over the last few years had turned so many people off that we have to go on a mission to reintroduce the game to the people of Parkville. Meanwhile given that we're the club who are pioneering an international student membership, and so many of them live in the area why can't we play there?

Maybe they're planning to add another few teams on top of the Gold Coast Goast and West Sydney Wankfest in a few years? The Cairns Crunts might be in the mix along with the Port Moresby Pedos. I can't wait.

Next season: We could be a contender! This season, however, we are going to be flotsam. Get used to it.