Crusty Demons of Shite

Disclaimer - I care not for most of what happened today, and I'm not even going to try and fake it

Well, that was a waste of a public holiday. Sure, on a day where it's pissing down constantly there aren't that many other options but couldn't we have collectively found something better to do with our day? If the crowd was anything to go by, it seems many did. Bollocks to theories about the weather, if we'd been winning there would have been another 15k there. Don't believe me? 78,000 people in 2006 says otherwise. We've lost the once a year crowd. Damn. Nice if they didn't come back.

Anyway, the game. We were 50 points down three minutes into the second quarter without having kicked a goal. Enough said. I'd somehow managed to get roped into the Cheer Squad first goalkicker prize just by walking past. God knows what the prize was but the fact that we were almost 9 goals down and I was still punting Brock McLean home was purely farcical. Sadly it wasn't the only moment of high farce in the first quarter - a complete inability to match up on any opposition player, the most one-dimensional forward line structure in history and Paul farking Johnson full stop were worse.

Once again there was a complete lack of crumb. What's new? Down at the other end the Pies were crumbing everything. It was only Didak's attempts to kick stupid Motlop-esque goals instead of kicking drop punts that saved us on a couple of occassions. Apparently Dick was doing well. I would never have guessed except for the woman sitting behind me who kept yelling out DICK! DICK! DICK! every time he went near the ball.

Meanwhile nothing has shit me more this year than the number of times an opposition forward will take a mark inside, or just outside, 50 and be able to kick short to a teammate. It's going to happen a few times every week but we're copping it multiple times every freaking game. The backline is still doing well, even though they were clearly beaten today, but at least get the simple things right.

It started pissing down in the second quarter and we were all set to find out how good we are at playing in the wet. Answer - not very. Comical slip and slide bullshit from all involved. Congrats to the players who decided that playing dinky little sexy football in the defensive 50m was a good idea. A couple of goals early on dragged it back to respectability temporarily but it didn't last long. Quite frankly we were shit and even if I remembered what was going on I wouldn't waste your time and mine writing about it.

One interesting moment was Harry O'Brien getting pinged for the biggest holding the ball in history AND giving himself up only for the umpire to wave play on. Cue a Pies goal. Get fucked.

Robertson was an interesting one. He responsed to criticism about his chase and defensive pressure by.. err.. chasing and putting on defensive pressure but I still fail to be impressed. It's not his fault that they kick it to him EVERY F**KING TIME, making it easy for the opposition to chop it off, but he's got to stop trying to milk free-kicks every ten seconds. Somehow he's getting away with it but that says more about the stupidity of the umpires than anything else. The two kicks he missed at the end were fairly damning. I doubt he'll get dropped again anytime soon but there must be questions about his spot next year, especially if Jurrah fires up when he gets a game later in the season.

Jamar was dominant in the ruck. Shame nobody could get near it when it hit the deck. Consider how Fraser stooged the Johnson/Spencer combination in Round 2 with how he was stitched up today. The last two weeks must represent the best fortnight of his career. At one point I even thought he was going to crack the magical 5 kick mark so we could all get our t-shirts made.

Then there was Watts. Serviceable performance from a debutant, but for god's sake could we put any more pressure on the poor kid? I understand the frenzy during the week because clearly we were trying to get people to come through the gate (oh come on), but did we have to have him on camera every five seconds before the first bounce as well? Will get better, hopefully well removed from the media and club wankfest.

The one bonus feature of the day was when Sylvia kicked the goal at the end from outside 50m and I won the Name a Game DVD off SEN for being the first caller. No need for them to know that I wasn't even listening at the time and just knew to call from memory of listening to other games. I chose R21, 1993 - Jakovich and Lovell go crazy against Richmond on route to a 120 point win. Happy days. Happy days.

Speaking of Mr. Jakovich, here's some votes we prepared earlier.

2009 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes

5 - Colin Sylvia
4 - Mark Jamar
3 - Nathan Jones
2 - Jack Grimes
1 - Aaron Davey

Apologies to Moloney, Bruce and Bate.

Leaderboard

Davey wrests the lead back at the halfway mark, but the last month has all been Sylvia. Also in the last two games Mark Jamar has recieved 8 votes - before those games he'd scored 1 in his career. A big welcome to the leaderboard to J. Grimes for his first votes as well.

19 - Aaron Davey
18 - Brent Moloney
13 - Colin Sylvia
13 - Nathan Jones
11 - Brad Green
8 - Brock McLean, Jared Rivers, James Frawley (CO-LEADERS: 2009 Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year), Mark Jamar (LEADER: Strawbs O'Dwyer Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
7 - Brad Miller, Cameron Bruce, Stefan Martin
6 - Cale Morton
5 - Kyle Cheney (LEADER: 2009 Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year), Matthew Bate,
4 - Matthew Warnock, Jamie Bennell
3 - Ricky Petterd, Russell Robertson, Matthew Whelan
2 - James McDonald, Jack Grimes
1 - Lynden Dunn

Crowd Watch
I would have bet anything that Jones would have got booed by the filth elements of the Collingwood fanbase. Certainly none where I was sitting, but that's probably because - as usual - I was stuck in the middle of a bunch of kids.

Tank Talk
Does anyone seriously think we're going to win more than four games this year even at 100%? Winning two games would be nice. West Coast (MCG), Port (MCG), Richmond (MCG) and Fremantle (MCG - do you see a trend?) are really the only realistic chances we have for the rest of the year and would need to win the lot to 'avoid' the precious top two picks.

Kasey Korner
Jurrah and Dunn amongst the best - though not if you read the drug assisted 'bests' in the paper - and Miller not terrible in doing most of his best work in junktime. Casey won in a decent performance but there wasn't much to write home about, Werribee were fairly awful. Jake Spencer wasn't too bad, he's got to be a chance of tipping out Johnson soon. If you're gagging for football in the split round they're playing Preston at Princes Park on Saturday.

Next Week
Mercifully absolutely nothing. A glorious week off from this grim season before facing Essendon at Docklands in our one and only Friday night game in two weeks. With Ryder getting suspended and the rest all injured they have precisely zero ruckmen. With Jamar having dominated in the ruck in the last two weeks I expect that this means he will go absolutely coco bananas in the middle. However this will mean absolutely nothing when they cut us to shreds around the ground.

Final Thoughts
John Anthony looks like an alien.