Back to life, back to reality

Well, let's be honest that was one of the stupider footballing expeditions I've ever taken. Sleeping in a car in Brisbane was one thing, and we all remember how five hours in Adelaide airport almost caused a nervous breakdown but think for a minute what I expected to achieve by going to Geelong today. We were always going to get smashed, it was always going to be freezing cold - and possibly raining - and the ground was undoubtedly going to be filled with a majority of Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel lookalikes missing at least one row of teeth. In the end we managed to avoid getting completely destroyed, and the projected Hurricane Bertha rain failed to come, but everything else ticked the boxes as you'd expect. And there was further comical suprises. Got a 16 game membership? Well get it out and have a look at what it says on the back. "Admits to 11 home games & 5 Vic away games". Now, the last time I looked we don't play any away games in Echuca or Stawell so they must be referring to Geelong. Apparently not. The card wouldn't scan and I was told that it wasn't a "designated Melbourne away game". So not only were we going to get tonked but I got to pay $20 for the privelege. How joyful. Any chance the club could let us know what is and what isn't a 'designated' game? Changing the wording on the back of the card might help as well. Unless it was just some sort of "milk the visitors" ploy by Geelong. You decide. Inside and it was much as you'd expect. I hadn't been on the terraces in Geelong for a few years after scoring seats from a Geelong fan the last couple of times we'd played there. Nothing has changed. There are still a lot of interesting units wandering around down there. My favourite was the guy in a duffle coat that had the official AFL #29 on the back. Speaking of fashion they were having some sort of 150th birthday celebrations which involved every single person in the ground supposedly putting a giant white garbage bag on so they could take an aerial photo and flog it at the club shop for $10 a crack. As I walked in one of the of the people handing them out tried to give me one. I politely declined and she was genuinely shocked. "But it's a whiteout" she said. I just shrugged and pointed to my Melbourne jumper. What the hell do I care? Luckily for them the white garbage bag uptake rate was huge. I'd say 95% of the Geelong fans in my area put their dignity to one side and went for the white look. Even more interestingly once the photo had been taken they all left them on. Threat of rain notwithstanding I think that people were genuinely enjoying it. Was white, thin and crinkly the massive fashion statement that the people of Corio have been calling out for? And if you think that's strange then consider the fact that most of the people undercover kept them on as well. They're a different sort of human that's for sure. The game itself can get stuffed. We lost the toss and had to kick into a 5 goal wind in the first quarter and if it wasn't all over before that it was then. Not surprisingly a team that has won more games this year than we have in three found it easier to score with a wild breeze than we did against it. The first ten minutes wasn't too bad. We were getting beaten all over the ground but managing to keep it respectable on the scoreboard. Despite that you could see we were in big trouble when Matthew Bate had a ping from 45m and despite doing everything right couldn't make the distance. They went down the other end, kicked a goal and opened the floodgates. 7 goals to zip at quarter time and it had the hallmarks of something ugly if we didn't get it right in the second. Reminded me a bit of the Casey/Frankston game last week when the Dolphins didn't get a goal in the third quarter with a fierce wind and went on to get hammered in the last term kicking into it. We at least broke even in the second, though Geelong were hardly playing at 100% themselves. Bate and Jurrah were at lively in a forward line that was doing little or nothing else, Jamar was beating their 12th line ruck combo but not getting it to our players and Moloney and Grimes were fighting hard in the middle. Robertson, Bruce, McLean, McDonald etc.. were hardly seen. Jones killed Ablett in the first quarter but couldn't hold him in the second and he started to run riot. Racked up 40 disposals for the day despite spending plenty of time at full-forward. Shows how well we were going. After kicking four last week Petterd barely went near the forward line - what a wonderful world. It could have gotten very ugly in the third quarter. Having copped seven without reply into the breeze in the opening quarter what were we supposed to think was going to happen an hour later when the Cats had really gotten into the game? Surprisingly though we were pretty good. Kicked a couple of goals, did some decent things around the ground and managed to hold them from totally destroying us. In fact it was going surprisingly well early on when we had three goals in a row before Hawkins got a mystifying free kick just for lifting his fat arse into the air and his gimme goal put them back on track. Fourth quarter? Don't ask me, I went home. Shamefully the earliest I've walked out since we got tonked by St. Kilda three or four years ago. Sounded alright on the radio but I'd rather be warm in a car listening to SEN than freezing my norks off on a terrace with bumpkins listening to history's worst football coverage on K-Rock. Them Nothing I saw today convinced me that they're going to win the flag. We dragged them down to our level a bit, and the return of Steve Johnson would be handy, but what's going on with Mooney and Hawkins? Have two people ever benefitted more from playing like trash in a great team? I don't think Hawkins would even get a game for us at the moment. He's in the Juice Newton Club for people who have novelty nicknames that get them more publicity than they deserve. Murder on the Airwaves Yes, K-Rock. What was I thinking not getting an AM radio to take so I could listen to SEN? Instead I subjected myself to the ugliest and least informative commentary of all time. Should have known what I was getting myself in for right off the bat when the first ad I heard was for Wombat Gully Plant Farms.. with Jamie and Ruth. What the hell? What happened to Chris and Marie? Can you really franchise out the idea of being a lavender, plant raising 'couple'. What a wonderful world we live in. Err, anyway. Then there's the Andrew Bews, Tim McGrath and some other freaks coverage. Absolutely abysmal. I don't know if you've ever listened to them but let me tell you that any of us could walk straight into that commentary box and fit right in. You don't need to know anything about game itself. Hell even I could do it and this site proves that I don't know squat. Actually it'd be a good fit, you only need to know how to call one set of players and don't have to add any tactical analysis whatsoever. Being completely biased to the 'home team' is understandable. You're looking after business in a one team town, but I can't understand why you'd listen to them even if you were a Geelong fan. The only obvious reason to tune in was to find out what was happening at the other end of the ground - and even then I'm not confident they were getting it right considering the amount of players they called wrong down our end. Quoth my own post on Big Footy regarding their ludicrous attempts at explaining why Melbourne were such a bad side, In their token attempts to justify why they thought we'd lose by 120 points one of the idiots gives the following analysis which I'll paraphrase Senior players aren't good enough (randomly Green, Bate and Rivers are the ones they name which makes no sense whatsoever) and they're deliberately playing for themselves and cutting the youngsters out of it to save themselves. I take it they saw Robertson got dropped once for not chasing and came to that conclusion. Ridiculous names to drop and ludicrous analysis from people who admittedly have no idea what's going on at our club. I don't know why you'd even bother pretending to analyse anyone else when the whole point of your coverage is to talk about the home town team. When Bate had his first shot on goal he was "almost directly in front" for god's sake (for the record he was almost standing on the number 50). It's a sad indictment on them that last year when they had John Barnes as the special comments man he was more informative than their entire team today combined - and he's about as useful a communicator as Damien Monkhorst. Just stick to verbally fellating Hawkins for getting a kick and playing 'hillarious' sound effects you arseholes. Almost made Rex Hunt seem entertaining. Ironically the K-Rock van outside the stadium had the slogan "Saving you from crap radio" on it. Makes you wonder what other criminally bad stations they have there. At one point that retard Bews tried to claim that we were getting a better run from the umpires because we were so shit. That was the point where I had to stop listening or I'd lose the plot. It's a shame they're too pov to have an SMS open line like a real station because I had two phones (I'm neither a drug dealer or a doctor) and was ready to go coco-bananas on both of them just abusing these washed up ex-footballer hacks and their shitful town. There were comedy sound effects during the quarter-time 'analysis' for god's sake. Awful. Simply awful. I'd voluntarily sit through a Hunt/Schwarz/Blight/Walls commentary team for twelve hours straight than listen to that half ever again. Speaking of media coverage I see Channel 10 had Kellie Underwood doing their call. Never heard her commentate so I'm not going to give any sort of analysis there but am I right in predicting there's going to be an avalanche of talkback/internet angst about it? The usual ludicrous claim levelled at female callers is that they don't understand the game because they've never played it. Which is fine if you remember those great sides of the 80's where Mike Sheahan got the tap to Quarters who roosted it long in the forward line for Eddie McGuire to take a big grab on Anthony Hudson's head. Now, Caroline Wilson we know is full of shit but it's got nothing to do with her gender. Just look at Patrick Smith - you don't need to be female to be an ignorant [Snip! - Legal Ed] Do you think the netball fraternity have the same issues with Luke Darcy? Crowd Watch Today was pretty much what I'd expected going to Adelaide before it turned out that Port fans were the most boring people ever born. Having all the fans of one side in one section with a smattering of opposition supporters and you get to see average humans enjoying the advantage of majority rule. I just can't imagine most of the Colac Tractor Driver faction that were present yelling out the same stupid comments if the crowd were 50/50. Which is a shame, because we'd all like to see a few more quality brawls in the stands. Personally I don't care, yell out whatever you like if it floats your boat but if you're going to do it at a Melbourne/Freo game with 9 people around you then at least have the coconuts to do it when you're in the middle of 30,000 Essendon fans at Etihad. God knows why you'd bother to read this if you weren't a Melbourne fan anyway, but replace with appropriate examples if you support somebody else. There are, of course, the people who do just spray random shit for four quarters no matter what the game is. In reality they should probably all be thrown on a large bonfire, but due to their commitment to not just doing cheap comic work when they've got the numbers in the crowd I'm going to support them. Where's that float in the VB ad? We want "PEOPLE WHO MAKE IDIOTS OF THEMSELVES FOR 22 ROUNDS" and we want them now. Possibly in front of a firing squad. I imagine the same thing would happen if we were in the majority. It's just human nature to be cockheads on masse. Hence why I'm never putting my hands up to sit in the reserved seats. Not only do you run the risk of being plonked next to a goofball for the entire season but I should think you'd probably lose faith in your own supporters after about five minutes. 2009 Allen Jakovich Medal Not much in the way of deserved votes here, but you've got to give them to somebody. 5 - Moloney 4 - Bate 3 - Morton 2 - Jurrah 1 - Grimes Apologies to Bartram, Dunn, Frawley, Green, Jamar, Jones, Petterd. Leaderboard Oh look it's a co-leader at the top. The way Davey is going he's got no chance. We called Steven Brassell at Luxbet for his odds for the winner. Unfortunately he told us to piss off so we just made our own up, $2.30 - Moloney $5 - Davey, Sylvia $7.50 - Green, Bruce $11 - Jones $12 - Bate, McLean $100 - Jamar $200 - Martin, Frawley Jamar will walk the Strawbs O'Dwyer in a major upset, and Frawley, Rivers and Grimes are battling hard for the Seecamp. Just a reminder that Martin has been disqualified from Seecamp contention due to not playing the majority of his football as a defender. Grimes could take home the defender of the year gong but still lose Rookie of the Year with Jurrah having picked up plenty of votes recently and both Cheney and Bennell still within striking distance. I'm also sending Moloney straight to the top of my 2010 captaincy market. Giving it to his ex-supporters after kicking a goal when we're a million points down is the clincher. 23 - Brent Moloney, Aaron Davey 18 - Colin Sylvia 16 - Brad Green 15 - Cameron Bruce 13 - Matthew Bate, Nathan Jones 12 - Stefan Martin, Brock McLean, Mark Jamar (LEADER: Strawbs O'Dwyer Medal for Ruckman of the Year) 10 - James Frawley (LEADER: 2009 Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year) 9 - Jared Rivers 8 - Jack Grimes (LEADER: 2009 Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year), Cale Morton 7 - Liam Jurrah, Brad Miller 5 - Matthew Warnock, Kyle Cheney, Russell Robertson 4 - Jamie Bennell 3 - Matthew Whelan 2 - James McDonald, Paul Johnson 1 - Lynden Dunn Choose Your Own Trade Adventure What would you swap for Tom Hawkins, a) An empty chip wrapper b) A used $5 MCG hot dog without mustard c) The Ark of the Covenant d) Darren Cuthbertson e) None of the above I swear Brad Miller will sit down to watch the replay tonight and throw a brick at his television. He must wonder how somebody worse than he is keeps playing for a side in the top 2 while he's getting interviewed by Phil Cleary on the ABC. Lottery Fever Has anyone ever won anything out of the Melbourne FC lotto syndicate? I certainly haven't, and I've been giving them my money all year. It claims that anything you win will get mailed to you. I'm suggesting that somebody is pocketing my $16 somewhere and sending out numbers they made up. Procedural Announcements With the tankfest and the necessary dropping of all wins after the next one I've completely lost interest in this season. For that reason we need guest reporters for the Richmond and Fremantle games. Usually I refuse to do any sort of work on the weekends during footy season no matter how lucrative but during the Freo game I'm taking the money and running. And I'll only be there for half - maybe three quarters - of the Tigers match due to foolishly agreeing to go to the Australian Premier of Inglorious Basterds at 4pm that day. Do I not deserve to see some horrendous violence that isn't of the scoreboard variety? Comment, email me (supermercado at demonblog.com) or give us some twitter @demonblog if you want to put your hand up. Otherwise there will be ¾ of reportage from one game, anything I notice from listening to the radio on the other and a top 5 taken from the post-match BigFooty votes thread. Save us from the threat of democracy and put your hand up. Next Week Sydney in Canberra. Well, they'll beat us. What else do you need to know? They're not much chop compared to the last few years but can you honestly see us getting up? And for god's sake I don't care if I've got his number on my jumper or not but can we play Martin in the 2's so he can work on being a forward? He did alright in the ruck today - often against slop chip-in ruckmen like Hawkins - but 0 kicks, 6 handballs says it all really. He's a freaking defender, and if you're going to try and convert him into something else don't do it against the best team in the competition. Gah. Final Thoughts The City of Greater Geelong has just joined Queensland on my list of places to avoid going back to. Postscript I'm sure there are a lot of normal people in Geelong. All of them stayed home today.