Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me

Or.. the night unbridled passion conquered all.

Three wins in a row. Unprecedented. Well, unprecedented in the last decade anyway. In 1994 we won the first six and made a Preliminary Final. In 2005 the sky is the limit. I don't want to get too excited early because we'll probably end up finishing with a 3-19 record if I do that. Cram the priority picks, I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. Halfway through the third quarter I actually let my mind wander for a second and thought "this is a Premiership side". These are exciting times.

Tonight's game? Well it followed a familiar pattern when in scenes reminiscent of last week's game against Footscray we flattened Geelong in the first quarter and ended resistance early in the second. They showed flashes throughout the next couple of quarters but a farcical standard of goalkicking ensured there would be no outrageous comeback and heart-stopping finish this time. From the first few seconds when a 50m penalty out of the centre gave Matthew Whelan (later injured..) the opening goal and screwed up everyone who'd had a first goalkicker bet at the TAB we always looked the better side.

With Brad Ottens unable to get anywhere near a ball and Kent "Wave of the Future" Kingsley looking lost not having Nathan Carroll line up on him for once they were never close. The number of set shots the Cats missed would have caused me to slash my wrists in the middle of the Ponsford Stand if it happened to us. Wave of the Future somehow managed to snag three goals before cocking up set shots left right and centre. The Jeff Hilton section erupted into a massive "YOU'RE SHIT AND YOU KNOW YOU ARE" after the last one, but received absolutely no support from the spectators surrounding us. Disappointing. Various other Geelong stooges missed piss easy shots. Thanks!

Embarrassing moment when Neitz kicked his third and the entire place went ape. Like a bandwagon supporter who had just come on board and was wondering what the rules were I sat there and asked "why is everyone going wild?" Oops. He's done fuck all in the first two weeks so it was good to see the captain running riot tonight against one of the best fullbacks in the competition. Here's to plenty more where that came from.

And thus we went into the final change almost eight goals to the good. When Colin Sylvia kicked what 'the kids' would refer to as an absolute ripper from 50 metres out the result was sealed. And it was then that the gimmick was born. You may remember this post. We promised further communications, and tonight they came live and in person. In a cursory tip of the hat to the tradition of the gold jacket pioneered by some Collingwood bogans the black balaclava was produced at the start of the quarter, with the announcement that it would go on the moment the match was sealed and stay on until security/police/ASIO forced me to remove it.

Neitz kicked his fifth, the crowd went wild and on it went. The official timer started. Suddenly I had been transformed. I was Mr. Unbridled Passion. Going wild at everything, mocking Wave of the Future as his career went down the toilet and celebrating Brad Ottens getting a kick. Suddenly there were no boundaries, and as people started to turn around and point I felt superhuman. This, my friends, is the beginning of a new culture. As the game slipped from mere "sizeable victory" to "colossal porking" the crowd started to ebb out. High fives were exchanged with Demon fans who were leaving for some reason but a few of the Geelong types felt they should say something despite the fact that their side was being touched up. The most creative was a "I'd cover my face if I was a Melbourne supporter too". Absolute hilarity. Traditional responses about looking at the scoreboard were uttered, even though you couldn't see a scoreboard from where we were. The best thing about playing Geelong is that they, like Footscray and Sydney fans, can't even mock you about not winning Premierships. They've got nothing.

The plan was formulated for the ultimate in throat shedding theme song renditions. When the siren went (or, given that you can't hear it in the Jeff Hilton section when the game was clearly over) I was to charge down the stairwell and go ballistic at the top of the steps. And it was done. Game over and I was out of my seat and charging down the steps. Big Ultimate Warrior style "shake" (it didn't move, the effect was there though) of the railings and just launch into the song. I turn around and nobody.. NOBODY.. is celebrating it. In fact there was shock and disgust. Beautiful. Halfway through the song, somewhere around THE TEAM OF THE RED AND THE BLUE some moderately old man walked directly into the wild dance zone and copped a minor inadvertent hip and shoulder. He let rip with some "watch where you're going" and when I ignored him I got the tap on the shoulder instead. Whilst simultaneously yelling "WHAT THE FUCK DO WE SING?" into his face I received the minor lecture about being in the way. Absolutely no reaction, just continued singing the song. Then it was over. No applause.. Nobody joining in the wild scenes. The Ponsford Stand is clearly a taste-free zone. The long walk back up to my seat was interspersed with more UBP moments. I thought that I'd gone that far and I had better make it worthwhile. Eyewitness reports state that the general mood of fans of both clubs was anti-balaclava. Fuck them, it was quality.

The controversial, Carlos the Jackal inspired, head-wear remained on as we left the ground. Straight past the cops with not even a tap on the shoulder and a check for outstanding warrants. Disappointing. Then it was into the car for out of window yelling along Swan Street. A particular highlight, in my opinion, was the yelling out of one word from the theme song to each group of people driven past. I'm aware that the whole thing is unbelievably childish - but at least it's unique. The night was finalised by a colossal fence run at East Richmond station as a Glen Waverley bound train pulled out of the station - Connex staff loved it at least.

Sadly despite my best efforts it appears that I didn't manage to get on TV, nobody's talking outrageous gimmickery on the forums (nice plug for the people who run this site eh?) and I seriously doubt the news photographers will have caught it. Visiting celebrity Collingwood supporter AMUL had a top idea for making sure the media coverage is forthcoming. Somehow sell out everything I hold dear, worm my way into the cheer squad and wait for somebody to waltz into an open goal and look to the crowd for the high-five. Would be all over the news.

51,000 strong crowd there tonight. That's quite nice, and an audience of millions watching Neale Daniher's brand of sexy football unfold on television. Even the Pope scandal (vote for the guy on the left) couldn't stop us from achieving our rightful place on Friday Night Football. Odds on that Eddie McGuire was shedding a tear at watching such an attractive performance just a day before Collingwood lose another game.

Demonblog.com Player of the Year votes.
5 - Cameron Bruce
4 - David Neitz
3 - James McDonald
2 - Ryan Ferguson
1 - Clint Bizzell

Apologies to Moloney, Robertson, Rivers and 3/4 of the other players on the park..

Minus to.. erm.. I'm happy overall. Ground negatives to the MCG for not bothering to put speakers in the bottom deck of the Ponsford. The plus points of not having to hear a second rate television 'celeb' crap on about Vodafone Fan Cam is being drowned out by not being able to hear the siren. Thankfully we've pissed it in twice this year but it will disasterous in a close fourth quarter.

Leaderboard
13 - Cameron Bruce
6 - Ryan Ferguson
5 - Brent Moloney
4 - Brad Green
3 - Aaron Davey, James McDonald
2 - Adem Yze, Brock McLean
1 - Jared Rivers, Russell Robertson, Clint Bizzell

End of season winner gets to be the next coach of Hawthorn.

Due to work commitments I've been rorted out of going to the St. Kilda game. If you'd like to provide a match report (you even get to hand out the votes and sledge my pissy match analysis skills. COME ON) please email or leave a comment. Otherwise I'll have to put up the match reports and give commentary on my dubious attempts to listen the game whilst supposedly working and nobody wants that.

Australian Football. We love you. Cross your fingers, your toes and anything else on your body that can conceivably be manipulated and hope for the best. We are a chance. Cameron Bruce for the Brownlow, David Neitz for the Coleman, Colin Sylvia for the Rising Star, Jeff White for Pope and Aaron Davey for Norm Smith Medallist and next Premier of Victoria.

Clearly, though, the gods were angry at my enthusiastic but morally dubious displays throughout the match as I got a lift home post-match only to be run into by a bunch of pissheads on St. Kilda Road. Mad whiplash action - if I die in the middle of the night it will be for a good cause. Give my 2005 membership to somebody who'll appreciate it and invite the following people to my funeral please.. Allen Jakovich, Phil Gilbert, John Howat, Darren Kowal and Jamie Shanahan. It's been emotional. Further communications as they come to hand.

Getting away with it

Games where we're expected to win comfortably scare me. You can't possibly celebrate anything other than a blockbusting win, and the prospect of a humilating loss and people whinging at you for the next week about how "you" wrecked their tipping is ever present. It was against this backdrop of potential disaster that we entered the Corporate Dome for Saturday's game against Footscray.



While I must say my attitude towards the Dome has softened in recent times (though I still flip everytime I see the Medallion Club ads) there were absolutely farcical scenes before the first bounce when, for reasons unknown to me as I was listening to something else at the time, Bob The Builder appeared on the boundary line and started acting the goat with the kids. His theme song even got a run, and whilst it might be better than the Port or West Coast themes it was still a bizarre thing to see before the bounce of a league game. First they take away the reserves, and now this.

Then, to add more fuel to the fire of my my poorly recieved "Ban The Cheer Squad" campaign our lot pulled this out,



For those of you who can't read the writing on it due to shithouse camera quality it says,

MELBOURNEfc
Passion, Skill, Deesire
Setting The Dome
On Fire

There should be an AFL official who gets to turn back banners if there's nothing interesting written on them. That message ranked neatly alongside "CHEER SQUAD DISCO. MAY 2nd" for motivational content. That said it may very well have had the same effect as piping the music from the Karate Kid into the dressing room pre-match as, after conceding (or "conceDEEING" as the cheer squad would probably have it) the first goal of the game we then kicked the next six to go into quarter time with a potentially match winning lead. Put the feet up then, sit back and watch the game unfold. And indeed it did, with the first eight minutes of the second quarter proving a training drill as the newly Robertson focused forward line ran riot whilst the captain sat on the bench. When the margin hit 9+ goals two thoughts entered my mind and desperately battled for supremacy,

The Angel: "Yeees. 100pt win. Cameron Bruce to kick nine. This will be great!"
The Devil: "Oh Jesus if we lose it from here I'm going to die. This could be one of the greatest comebacks ever"

For once the optimistic view won out. As we pressed forward again I pulled the phone out ready to make a "are you watching this?" phone call before thinking better of it. "Better wait for a few more goals to go in", I thought to myself. Then we gave away one of those useless free kicks because of bullshit macho posturing and the Bulldogs put their second on the board. There were more ironic cheers from our fans than celebratory ones from the Footscray ones. Which was nice because until then the crowd had gone nothing more than mild for anything we did.

Then I looked up and late addition Alistair Nicholson was in the ruck, turning back the clock to 1997. He couldn't play in the ruck then and he hasn't gotten any better since. The Bulldogs kicked another. And then another. We went goal for goal for the rest of the quarter and things were starting to get tense in the Jeff Hilton section (back row of the top deck of the Dome). For once half-time couldn't come fast enough.

Despite the fact that we were clearly the better side I was worried. Had they cracked the secret formula? Were we set for one of the biggest outrages in history? It started to look like it in the early minutes of the third quarter. We looked dead on our feet, which is NOT what I want to see in the third quarter against a side who had come from the clouds to win the week before. Sure they'd done it against Collingwood, which is like coming from behind to beat Montmorency, but it still proved they could do it. Luckily as the quarter wore on we started to assert our dominance again. God knows what happened, the ending was too tense for me to remember any details this many hours later. The result was a five goal to three quarter that saw us 33 points in front at the final break.

It's important at this point to say that I felt lucky to have been that far in front. The number of goalscoring opportunities that Footscray screwed up was amazing. Their three-quarter time score of 10.15 didn't take into account out the full, playing on and screwing it up, not making the distance and giving away pointless free kicks inside fifty. With a little more finesse they could very well have been within striking distance at this point, and the way we were rapidly falling apart faster than Michael Jackson's face that would have been disastrous. And then they totally ignored the fact that they were supposed to be dead and buried and came at us like a f'ing freight train anyway. My pattern of thought at each margin went something like this,

26pts: "If we get the next one we'll be right"
21pts: "Now we're in serious trouble"
15pts: "Oh shit we're fucked"

It was during this last one that I began pounding the living crap out of the seat in front of me. Blame the bruises on my right hand for the lateness of this report if you like, it's a better excuse than just being slack. Memories of that fateful day against Essendon in 1991 came flooding back to me again, and then I realised that I was sitting in exactly the same seat that I was in when we lost to North by a point in 2000 and I punched the seat so viciously that my hand pissed blood. As a precaution against destruction by unbridled passion and tantrum I stored everything I had with me safely under the seat next to me. It must be something to do with the lack of oxygen at that altitude, as I don't recall every violently assaulting any other inanimate object during a game in years.

I turned to the kid standing next to me and offered him friendly advice, I said "Mate, change teams now. Don't bother with this one. It will bring you nothing but heartache. It's not too late to pick another one". He just looked blankly. Poor kid, reminded me of myself at that age - I was just trying to help him out of a lifetime of heartbreak. He even started mimicking some of my unbridled passion antics, bashing the seat in front of him with his scarf and turning around and kicking the chair he had been sitting on immediately after I did likewise. Smart kid, he'll go far even if I was encouraging him to switch codes. The people sitting next to me became crucial just seconds later as a Bulldog (god knows who) picked up a loose ball inside fifty and snapped over his shoulder. I was off - just turning around and getting ready to throw a massive tantrum when I heard the kid's dad or whoever he was go "It's a point! It's a point!" Thank Christ for that, we would have been finished if the margin had gone below ten.

A couple of minutes later Cameron Bruce kicked the sealer and I went wild, jumping around like a mong and running over the kid and demanding that he threw the big high five. If that kid reads this in ten years time I'd like to apologise for ruining your life.

We then added another and it was in the bag. I sat back, relaxed and ruminated about how heartbreaking it would have been to throw such a colossal lead away. I would have pledged never to come back, and then gone next Friday night. Siren, and no throat shedding UBP rendition of the theme song - it just wasn't the day for it, I wanted to get the hell out of that place ASAP.

Make no mistake about it, Footscray aren't bad. I doubt their ability to make the eight but they're certainly better than bottom four quality. We on the other hand will not get away with such a lapse against Geelong next Friday night. For the sake of bandwagon jumping potential members we can't afford to get crushed on a high rating televised game.

Housekeeping matters...

Demonblog.com Player of the Year. 
Where I hand out votes on a whim, with no care for what real judges of the game are saying. Winner at the end of the season gets elected Pope of the Catholic Church.

5 - Cameron Bruce
4 - Brad Green
3 - Aaron Davey
2 - Brock McLean
1 - Russell Robertson

Credit to Adem Yze, Jared Rivers, Travis Johnstone and Clint Bizzell. Symbolic negative points to David Neitz and Alistair Nicholson.

Leaderboard

8 - Cameron Bruce
5 - Brent Moloney
4 - Ryan Ferguson, Brad Green
3 - Aaron Davey
2 - Adem Yze, Brock McLean
1 - Jared Rivers, Russell Robertson

Next game - Friday Night. Melbourne vs Geelong - Melbourne Cricket Ground at 7.40pm. BE THERE. The Premiership Liberation Front and I will be in the back of the bottom deck of the Ponsford. Look for the balaclava.

P.S - I did not leave posting this until Sunday just to get the website name angle over. Just so you know... Anyone who can fill in the blanks of the game please feel free to do so.

Q: Are we not men? A: We are Demons!

Until 6.15pm tonight I was still generally unconcerned with the 2005 AFL Premiership season. At that exact moment my stomach dropped, my heart rate went up at least 25% and I legitimately started to sweat. The bug had finally hit me again. Suddenly the prospect of hearing other supporters sing their club song in my general presence went from an uncomfortable prospect to a complete phobia.

The general mood of paranoia and suspicion didn't lighten when I arrived at the MCG to find queues a mile long, even for those of us with memberships and it took me a good 10 minutes of standing in line to even get in the door. Then I discovered that the bottom deck of the Southern Stand has suddenly become reserved tickets only, and for tonight the top deck was packed solid. I arrived at the top just in time for the second half of the Troy Broadbridge tribute. Now I may be the most cynical and bitter person alive but I can quite honestly say that even I had a tear in my eye by the time David Neitz appeared on the screen.



By the time they actually did the minutes silence (running the standard AFL length of 35 seconds - idiots), I had already gone back down the stairs, got a passout and moved all the way to the bottom deck of the Ponsford Stand. And given the amount of time between the tribute and the silence it turned out to be one of the more poorly observed ones I've ever seen. That's not to say it was deliberate, but I think at first when they announced for people to stand for a minutes silence and the national anthem people expected the anthem to come first and treated it with contempt accordingly. Then 20 seconds in everyone realised what was happening and shut up. I heard one peanut yell out "Go Demons" in the distance but the people around me were nothing more than respectful. Good for them.

The return to the Ponsford was nice. Back of the bottom deck is looking like the place to be this season, with a good view of the field and a nice television screen in front of you switched to the Channel 9/10/whoever coverage rather than the MCG scoreboard channel and their farcical advertisements, promotions, contests and Vodafone Fan Cams.

"What about the game?" I hear you scream. Well, I suppose we could mention that. It started nicely with Brent Moloney opening his account for the club with the first goal, but after that things started to turn a bit nasty as James Hird ripped us to shreds down the members side wing for the first 15 minutes.

Heffernan and Brown came and went but the Essendon captain was treating us like his personal bitch - until Cameron Bruce stepped in and laid the smack down in emphatic fashion. With Hird out of the game the Essendon dream started to unfurl rapidly as their Lloyd-less forward line struggled to do anything right. As I said before the game when I saw Damien Cupido lining up at full-forward "If we can't beat a team with him as their major goalkicking option we may as well pull the pin on the season now" and that's the way it turned out. He's still shite.

Scott Lucas bobbed up every now and then but the rest of them were handily subdued by a revitalised backline led, unpredictably, by Ryan Ferguson who mocked the fact that he hadn't played a league game for 18 months and marshalled the defence superbly. Ably assisted by the once more impressive Jared Rivers, and Matthew Whelan we looked better in that department than we have since the Ingerson/Seecamp/Shanahan dream team of 1998.

At this point I'd like to direct a colossal whinge towards two groups of people. One are the idiots who boo loudly when an opposition player rushes a behind yet applaud their own side doing it as if it's the greatest tactical manouever ever invented. I'm aware that being a one sided prick is what sports is all about but let's not go completely wild about it eh? The other are the female supporters who just let rip with blood curdling, high pitched, top of the voice screams whenever their team kicks a goal. I'm 100% for women in football, don't worry about that, but have some consideration for the rest of us. Football matches are tense enough on their own without the prospect of receiving a migraine headache because Aaron Henneman kicks a goal. Ladies, they're bringing your whole side down - I plead with you to indulge in heart to heart conversations with your fellow supporters and convince them to scream obscenities instead like the rest of us. Thank christ the one sitting next to us went to spread the love somewhere else in the second half.

After going into the first quarter two points behind the forward/midfield combination started to feed off the backline and added six goals to three to give us a 20pt lead at the long break. Another whinge about the 'new' MCG is that you can't hear the siren in the Ponsford. For the first three quarters it was only when the players voluntarily walked that you knew it was over. I was dreading the prospect of a close game where the final siren went without us knowing it, and having to gauge the reaction of the crowd and players to see what the hell had happened. Thankfully by the time we'd increased the margin by 19 points at 3/4 time it was clearly not to be.

Some of you may remember a game in 1991 when we led the Bombers by 41 at the last change, kicked the first goal of the last quarter and then somehow managed to lose by a point to a Gavin Wanganeen goal after the siren. I certainly do. Ever since that day I have been unable to relax until we are at least four goals in front at the 20 minute mark of the last quarter. It wasn't until Adem Yze kicked his 4th with 12 minutes left and the margin blew out to 40 that I relaxed.

With the result wrapped up long before the final siren all that was left was to let rip with the "Unbridled Passion" remix of the Melbourne theme song, complete with jumping up and down and fist pumping. Not one other person in my section was making any effort to sing it so everyone started looking at me instead. Legitimately embarrassing - this particular piece of performance art is meant to complement the more standard versions of the tune rather than eclipse them. Next game I'm putting the balaclava on, and we'll see what they think then.

In the end it turns out there was only 45,000 people there, which shocked the hell out of me because the place looked absolutely packed everywhere but the top of the Ponsford. I'd hate to think what it'll look like on Queens Birthday against Collingwood. We may even have to, gasp, sit next to one of their toothless fans.

Now for the first installment of the "Demonblog.com Player of the Year" - where I hand out the votes on a whim. You may disagree - but it doesn't matter.

5 - Brent Moloney
4 - Ryan Ferguson
3 - Cameron Bruce
2 - Adem Yze
1 - Jared Rivers

Credit to Brad Miller for marking anything that went near him. Russell Robertson was handy as well, doing some decent work in the field of harassing, blocking and scragging even when he wasn't picking up possessions. Guy Rigoni wasn't bad either for somebody who we've all written off on seven different occasions.

On the other hand Colin Sylvia was on the ground for ages and showed very little until the game was blown out in the last quarter, and Travis Johnstone did nothing until he gave it to the mutants in the Essendon cheersquad after kicking his goal. David Neitz continued his recent trend of going missing - which worries me greatly.

The final humiliation for Essendon fans came outside the ground as a harmless kick-to-kick ended with a chip pass going horribly astray and bouncing right underneath a Route 129 tram. There was a seconds silence as the entire stop turned around to see if we were about to witness a potential derailment scenario - then a giant CRUNCH echoed across the night sky as the ball was assimilated underneath with extreme prejudice. The tram stayed on the rails but the ball was never seen again - we presume it finally fell out somewhere around Exhibition Street. The poor Essendon bogan children were suitably sad. We just laughed.

Footy is back. For this week at least I am overjoyed. More news, views and reactions throughout the week. Next week - Melbourne vs Footscray, Saturday at Docklands. I like our chances...

Take a deep breath

We took on the worst non-Victorian side in the competition and won. If we hadn't I was ready to come on here and declare that the season was OVER already.

Final Score
Melbourne 16.15.111
Adelaide 12.14.86

Neitz and Davey, 4 goals each. Adelaide suffered a black death style injury crisis throughout the match. According to the BigFooty Adelaide Forum we were, in fact, 9 points down at 3/4 time. Then Brett Burton did his hamstring and they put the handbrake on. It didn't help because then Mark Stevens did his knee and we ended up running over the top. Now for Round One. I'm scared. Somebody hold me.

More updates, news and review as it comes to hand.

Qualifying session

That's it. The David Schwarz Memorial Oval in Lavington is now officially on the blacklist after taking it's latest victim.

Melbourne star midfielder Adem Yze's seemingly unstoppable run of appearances might have come to an end on Friday night after injuring his collarbone in the Demons' 10-point victory against St Kilda at Lavington.

Yze, who has played 187 successive games for his club, left the field in the third quarter after a collision with a St Kilda opponent.

The All-Australian player was taken to hospital following the match for scans and would e in serious doubt for Melbourne's opening round clash with Essendon in three weeks time.

"I just got hit," Yze said leaving the rooms. "It was a hip and shoulder ... it's pretty sore."

The Demons, who were without skipper David Neitz and Rising Star Jared Rivers, were impressive in the second half after trailing early in the match to a slick Saints outfit.

But it's not all bad news,

Trailing by seven points at three-quarter time, a six-goal to three final term for handed Melbourne an impressive victory, 14.9 (93) to 12.11 (83) in a high-standard affair.

Ex-Geelong midfielder Brent Moloney was the standout for his new club, kicking three goals and was a major catalyst for at least four others.

Ben Holland stood tall in attack during the final term, kicking three goals from three contested marks.

The search for our new player might have been over. I wonder if this guy is related to Brad Green?

Ben Green and Brad Miller caused the Saints headaches at half-forward while 2003 first round draft picks Brock McLean and Colin Sylvia were impressive.

Melbourne: 2.2, 5.4, 8.8, 14.9 (93)
St Kilda: 3.6, 6.7, 9.9, 12.11 (83)

Goals - Holland 3, Moloney 3, Green 3, Miller, Sylvia, Robertson, Bruce, Davey
Best - Moloney, Miller, McLean, Green, Sylia, Read
Crowd - 12,157 <-- Holy shit! People will want to move us to Lavington if we don't watch out.

Seasick, yet still docked

For the first time since that fateful one day in September the jumper was ON, the scarf was ON (although it didn't last long), the balaclava was just for show and league football in Melbourne was back. Well, something resembling league football anyway. 17,000 fans 'packed' into Australia's most overrated stadium for Wizard Cup Quarter Final action. My traditional feud with Yuppie Stadium continued as the first entrance to level three that I could find was wrapped up in the red and white tape so beloved at that ground with a sign indicating that the entire top level was closed. I don't want to say that the place is run like a brothel or anything but I walked around the next corner straight into the open third level where a couple of thousand people were already seated. Enough said. I can't stand the lower decks at that place, they do nothing for me and if you end up sitting above the Medallion Club you might end up having a nervous breakdown at the sight of people watching the golf as I did last season.

I sat down in my seat, two rows from the front, started taking deep breaths and telling myself that the game didn't count for much and it didn't matter what happened but as the first half wore on I started to sweat a little. I know that the backline was without Nicholson and Rivers, our two key defenders, but the ease with which Fevola and The Big Fat Ugly Kid (copyright Carlton fans - so don't write in) ripped the likes of Bell and Ferguson apart was outrageous. I'm aware that neither of them is being groomed to play key defensive roles for this season at least but I cringe at the thought of the "big" two of our already slightly wonky backline going down with long term injuries during the year. Could get ugly if today's two pronged Carlton attack was anything to go by. Bring back Chris Lamb - call up Bratislava, Slovakia or whatever European city he's touring now and ask him to come back as cover. Who could resist the urge to play alongside Justin Blumfield in another big Sandringham premiership? Sure this happens to me before every season but it was noticeable today - we were touched up like a 17-year-old on a ** ***** end-of-season trip.

The other worrying trend right across the game was inaccurate kicking for goal. It's been going on for a couple of years now but the number of set shots we missed today was painful. Even usually reliable suspects like Neitz (yes, he was actually out there) and Green were spraying it everywhere. There's nothing I hate more (well there is, and believe me you'll hear about it as the season goes on) than wasteful kicking at goal. I understand it if you're kicking from the carpark, 50 metres out on the boundary line - though even Phil Read managed to nail one of those against Essendon - but when you see professional players paid for little more than their ability to kick goals marking 30m out and just sneaking it in for a point you've got to wonder what's going on. I'd love to have a look at the goalkicking accuracy stats from the last five years, I doubt you'll find us in the top eight of any year. I've just walked in the door and turned on the replay to find our goalkicking labelled as "atrocious". How true. The backline was under siege but on several occasions they held up in the face of the Carlton barrage only to see the ball go down the other end of the ground and land in the hands of a forward who did his best to keep it as far away from the newly extended big sticks as possible. There's nothing more irritating than that. Of the goals we scored most were tap-ins from the goalsquare, then there was the Robertson one where the ball was clearly out of bounds from a smother before he snapped the 6 pointer. I have a stat I like to look at in these situations labelled "legitimate goals" - this is where we take out all the goals from dodgy free kicks, total flukes and opposition cockups and come up with a more accurate picture of things. On this soon to be famous statistic the Blues wiped the floor with us. They fully deserved their victory. I grew so bored during the halftime break as the Auskick kiddies ran around that I took a picture of my shoe.

Despite all this an air of calm came over me when I looked down to see Luke Williams run down the wing past me. I thought to myself that no match where he was on the ground could be considered that important. He even found time to have a shot at goal and miss it wildly like everybody else on the day. He did, lest we forget, play his greatest of 48 games at Optus Oval against the Blues in 2001 where he ran riot and we won by seven points. Today there was to be no repeat. Guy Rigoni would have been sitting in the dugout looking at what he's behind in the pecking order and silently shedding a tear. I'm sure Peter Walsh's trade to Port Adelaide had a lot to do with him wanting to return to SA but I'm not convinced he still isn't better than a few players on our list.



At three-quarter-time, and 31 points behind, I ironically called for a repeat of the 2000 finals series where we had ripped out a comeback from a similar position and I almost threw up in the top deck of the Ponsford Stand (RIP). For the first eight minutes of the quarter the Demons duly delivered and by the halfway mark of the final term we were within a goal. The tide turned again when Carlton kicked a 9point goal and it looked as if the big steal was dead, but when Brent Moloney struck back with a Jesus Christ Supergoal of his own (the aftermath of which is pictured above) the dream lived. Even I, the most strident of pre-season pessimists was starting to get excited at the prospect of a blockbusting come-from-behind victory that would set our season up. Then Carlton lifted again and put the game away. We got back to within ten points in the final couple of minutes but the end result was fairly well signposted by this time. When the only prospect of a win lies with a player kicking a 9 point goal, being poleaxed after the kick and getting another shot at goal you know the horse has already bolted.

James McDonald, Nathan Brown, Brock McLean and Russell Robertson came out of it with credit. Paul Johnson wasn't bad, and Moloney did alright. Bruce and Bizzell were average at best. It's hard to assess those at the lower end of the depth chart in games like this as they're off and on the ground every ten seconds. Jeff White was AWOL for most of the game and I tended to notice Mark Jamar more often. It's fair to say that David Neitz and Aaron Davey were amongst the more disappointing performers on the day. Brad Miller did nothing up forward and ended up in the backline.

As outrageous as it may sound I have some doubts about the future of Neitz. His second half of last season was nothing special and he had the sort of performance today that would see a lesser man sent back to the 2nds. Is this unnecessary panic so early in the season? Perhaps it is, but you can't deny that we need to develop more tall goalkicking options; it became painfully obvious when trialled in the spot late last year that Brad Green will never be it and I think, despite his adventures in the backline today, that Miller is far better suited at CHF. There's some talk of Nick Smith but it's hard to judge on the ten minutes of total game time he enjoyed during his brief stay in the senior side at the end of 2003.

Colin Sylvia may very well be the next messiah but he's yet to show anything in league football. Feel free to think like I do and believe that none of your previous Jesus/Allah saviour types ever performed any miracles in their first two seasons either - but then again they weren't coming back from Osteitis Pubis. The pointless 50m penalty he gave away when we were starting to get on top in the last quarter was absolute rubbish - completely unnecessary and as much as I love players who double as complete pricks I'd rather they keep it to squirrel grips in the pack and casual elbows into the genitals during boundary throw-ins than flattening players who had just legitimately outmarked them in direct view of the umpire.

On the other side Carlton looked impressive at times. I'm still working on my predicted end of season ladder but I've got to give them some credit on their performances so far, even against the Essendon 2nds last week, and put them in the running for a finals spot. Lance Whitnall played out of his skin, though admittedly he wasn't against much. It will interesting to see how he goes throughout the rest of year. That's about as much comment as you're going to get on opposition teams on this site. There's a Carlton blog coming soon - I'm sure they'll have more to say about their club than I ever will. The only thing I will say is that the tactic of giving the cheersquad placards with a phone number on it to ring for memberships was a bit of a failure. Given that it's the kind of tactic that the poverty-line clubs like us would stoop to it was disappointing to see one of the "big four" break it out. I suppose it was designed to show up to the tightarses sitting at home and wavering on whether to buy a membership or not but it looked pretty ordinary in person. One step up from waving a sign with nothing but a sponsor name on it, a'la West Coast fans and Hungry Jacks, but not by much.

So we lost and another crack at the 2nd biggest title in the game is over. I'm not too depressed. As far as second string championships go it hardly ranks against winning the FA Cup or the European Football Championships. Would have nice to see some glory for the first time in god knows how long but yet again it's not to be. Instead of playing Footscray at Telstra Dome next week we'll probably line up against the West Australian Regional Under 13's in Bunbury instead. Roll on Round One - I wouldn't say I was overly enthusiastic after that showing but there's no telling until the legitimate stuff begins.In fact I didn't take any offence at the result until I walked into a supermarket on my way home only for a checkout chick to run from behind the counter and ask me what the score was. "Carlton by 10", I said. She pumped her fists and celebrated loudly before noticing that I hadn't actually bought anything yet and hardly looked amused. "Sorry", she said unconvincingly, and walked off. How depressing.

Enter Spaanderman

Llane Spaanderman that is. One of the crack Brisbane Lions 3rd's troops that came, saw and were flogged by Melbourne in Cairns last night. We looked pretty impressive at times but you had to take into account the fact that we had an almost full-strength squad and Brisbane were missing half their Premiership players and were probably no better than last year's Richmond second best side.

Like the town-oaf of football reporting that I am I missed the entire first quarter travelling back from a soccer road-trip to Frankston. Didn't appear that I'd missed much, and in a happy coincidence just as I walked in the door and turned the television on we started to run riot and put the Brisbane Under 12's to the sword. To be honest I couldn't take the footballing equivalent of 20/20 cricket seriously enough to fully concentrate on it for the full four three quarters. It was only when I turned around and saw Tiffany Cherry on my television that I really started to thank Fox Footy for the bounty they had provided for us.

By three-quarter time the margin had extended to 52 points and, despite the best efforts of the commentary team to keep interest in the game by going ballistic when the Lions kicked a couple of early goals, there was to be no heroic comeback by the Children of the Gabba. And thank god for that - the last thing I need is some indication that we're going to spend the whole season throwing away leads in the last quarter a'la 2003.

And thus the televised training drill ended. There were certainly encouraging signs but given the opposition I'd prefer to wait until next week and start to gauge performance against a real side - or Carlton.

Final score:
Brisbane: 0.7.11 (53)
Melbourne: 3.10.11 (98)
9pt Goals: Wheatley 2, Bruce
6pt Goals: Robertson 4, McLean 2, Yze 2, Bruce, Neitz

Sunday will be at Telstra Dome next Sunday for a full report on our match against the toothless bogans or the toothless bogans. I'll be high up in the top deck casting a critical eye on the fans, the stadium and maybe even the game if you're lucky.