JUST GET OUT

What? WHAT? In a season where 90% of the teams in the competition have adopted extreme defensive tactics and scores have dropped to 1929 levels we've just scored 129 points and lost. Let's be entirely honest and admit that it's probably a good thing that I was at work today, and not at the MCG. I think I would developed a complex that would have taken a lifetime of therapy to expel.

Without the luxury of one of those jobs that allows you to sit there listening to the radio for 8hrs a day I was forced to rely on pissy mobile phone score updates and occasional calls to the ground for goalkickers and vibe. Didn't look bad at first, then it started to slide, then by half-time we were falling apart faster than Michael Jackson's face. Then during the third quarter, as I scrambled to find a computer or god forbid a radio to follow what was happening on the scores started to balance up again. Then every time I looked (which was, let's face it, every two minutes) we were closer, and closer until in completely unforseen circumstances we hit the front. Then after all that we copped three goals in a row in god knows how long and we were losing again. Suffice to say I was feeling quite confused about what was going on.

Finally, FINALLY I reached a radio just as the whole operation went down the god damn toilet. The first thing I heard was Jeff Farmer kicking his sixth, followed closely behind by his 7th. I cracked the shits - not only with the game but with the 'relaxed' (read: comatose) commentary style of the ABC - and went back to the AFL website when we were 5 goals down with seven or eight minutes left. Then somehow we got the margin back to 8 again. I was lost. If we'd won from there I might have broken down and cried despite not having any indication of what was going on for the preceding four quarters.

High spots appear to have included the performances of Jeff White and Brent Moloney and the goalkicking feats of Neitz, Robertson, and the man who has achieved the rare feat of being "much maligned" across two different clubs, Ben Holland.

The low point is obviously the fact that we conceded 22.11. If this leads to Nicholson returning I'll crack up.

To be honest I had a feeling it was going to happen. I picked Freo. Evidence follows,

Ticket Number 09 08153 04031 01169 04821
Product Footy Tips
Round Number(s) 506 - 506
Round Date(s) 01-MAY-2005 17:10 - 01-MAY-2005 17:10

Your Selected Teams

1. 1. CAR v HAW: CARLTON
2. 2. ADE v KAN: ADELAIDE
3. 3. MEL v FRE: FREMANTLE

And what of the Jeffrey Farmer question? I haven't seen any of the messageboards yet but I'm willing to guess that they're full of people whinging, moaning and declaring their undying hatred towards him. I disagree. Yes, he left us. And? Yes, he kicked the goal that sunk us against the Dockers in Perth a few years back. And? And yes he gave it to the crowd when he kicked a goal the last time they beat us at the MCG. Your problem? In a manly, butch and completely heterosexual fashion I still love the guy. Good luck to him, I'm not bearing any grudges.

So... next week. The "resurgent" Adelaide. They're doing a lot better than anyone, including me, expected them to and I'm still not yet convinced that we're the next big thing. I won't be there for that either - for gods sake somebody offer to write a match report or Big Footy will sack me and hire some 15-year-old called I_LUV_ROBBO_24 who writes posts that start with "OMG! I LUV ROBBO! ROFL!" and contain match analysis that involves the terms "wicked", "fully sick" and "LOL".

* Is that the biggest 'match report' ever built out of not having seen a second of the game? Could be a record.

Official changes

Speculation over. It's official.

IN: Holland, Moloney
OUT: Jamar (calf), Sylvia (ripening)

Now, in a wild turn of events I'm actually accepting this. I'm not sure where Jamar's dubious calf came from, and Jeff White is going to doing some serious rucking in his abscence but I understand that a different forward line setup is required for the MCG, as opposed to the SCG which is the size of a public park. You want more tall players, and let's face it Sylvia hasn't exactly set the world on fire yet - let him kill it in the 2nds for a week or two and then reissue, repackage and re-evaluate.

BUT if Holland is going to end up as the backup ruckman then god help us all. Surely we learnt our lesson about people who can't play the position with Nicholson's shithouse performance against Footscray? SURELY. Lucky that the Dockers don't have their usual ruckman who is about three stories tall.

What's going to happen? Absolutely no idea. Melbourne by 412 points with a 32 goal final quarter. Daniel Bell to kick 17. Cross your fingers and hope for the best. Unless you're a Dockers fan and then you can cram it.

Meanwhile, in news from across the cultural divide...

The big selection news for the Magpies ahead of Sunday's clash with St Kilda is the axing of Shane Woewodin.

The 2000 Brownlow Medallist was dismal against Essendon on Anzac Day and can't even win a place in the 25-man squad.

Poor Woey has jumped the shark. Maybe the Pies will trade him to a team where it's not socially unacceptable to wish him well. Something tells me he won't be back at Melbourne anytime soon.

The horror

I'll be at work during the Fremantle game on Saturday. Undoubtedly a bad thing, but given the horrific memories that surround this fixture it might be beneficial to my mental health to stay well away.

The scene: Friday June 4th, 1999. The Melbourne Cricket Ground, Jolimont.

For some reason I was there two hours before the game. Due to my declared abstinence from drinking intoxicating substances before or during AFL matches (for obvious reasons. Have you ever sat next to me? And how bad do you think I'd be if I was off my face?) and a lack of funding precluding me from hanging out in the Ponsford Stand TAB facilities, so along with a couple of other Friday night football fans I was sitting near the fence watching the Dockers warm up. Two young girls are standing there perving on Tony Modra and Clive Waterhouse (probably just Tony actually..) and call him over for a photo. Suddenly a camera is thrust into my hand and I'm commanded by these random women to take a picture of them posing with Modra. The coversation went a little bit like this,

Adam: "Ok now.. You two smile, and you [pointing finger] don't kick ten goals"
Plenty of laughter all around. Hillarity ensues etc..

The game begins.. Modra runs riot and drills his tenth right in front of where I was sitting. Absolutely shattering. We lost by 54 points, but I took consolation in the fact that surely he'd go into the post-match press conference and give me a massive mention. Something along the lines of "I'd like to thank the dumbass kid who told me not to kick ten for inspiring this huge bag", but he didn't even mention it. What a piece of trash.

It was bad enough that we'd been beaten by the 1999 Fremantle Dockers, a side that featured Mark Gale and Andrew Shipp just because they had nautical names, and all sorts of duds like Ashley Prescott. But to cop that sort of beating and not even get a mention for my prophetic comments to the matchwinner? Shattering.

Almost as bad as the time I told Shane Woewodin that he was going to win the Brownlow after Round 9, he issued a frantic denial and then failed to mention me in his acceptance speech. Let's be frank that was the reason I didn't go wild when we traded him to Collingwood - I was still bitter.

Changes

I have a vision...

IN: Moloney
OUT: Godfrey

Not that I entirely trust the match committee, and instead expect to see...

IN: Nicholson, Williams, Holland
OUT: Ferguson, Armstrong, Motlop

Given that Holland has kicked 11 goals in the last two weeks in the seconds I feel they're going to do something stupid and include him. If, god forbid, Neitz or Miller is unavailable then I'm all for it but he's rubbish unless he plays at CHF. You may say he's still rubbish then, but that would be extremely harsh.

I'm scared of playing Fremantle in Melbourne. No really. Even their theme song can't save it.

Stranger in a strange land

This report is coming to you courtesy of some dubious internet cafe in a suburb of Sydney that could be right next door to Dubbo for all I know. No idea where I am but there's a lot of pissed people wandering about.

Anyway the story of today, and if we're lucky the headline of tomorrow was: We came, we saw, we FUCKED THEM RIGHT UP. What a night in Sydney. So much drama, so many moments of rage and frustration.

There's not much to post about in the lead up - I woke at 4.30am, caught a flight that made my ear explode in the sort of pain I understand you'd suffer if you got stabbed repeatedly in the ear with a red hot screwdriver and piss-farted around the city for hours. Momentary chance meetings with Melbourne fans aside there was nothing wild enough to deserve posting.

I arrived at the SCG, watched the first half of the Wests/Parramatta NRL debacle in the TAB and then took up my rightful place under the scoreboard - where you can always see people going wild where a goal is kicked in the last quarter - and waited. As previously stated on here I've never travelled and seen one of my teams win. The count was two South Melbourne soccer loses and one each for Melbourne and Wests Tigers before tonight. Despite my piece of shit manouevre in tipping the Swans JUST in case I had confidence. When I looked up and saw Brad Miller lining up on Barry Hall my eyebrow may have lifted a little, but in the end it turned out to be a nice matchup.

We kicked the first three goals and it soon became apparent that I was sitting in the mother of all crowd spit-roasts. In front of me were the three teenage boys who didn't know who any of the players were and had the irriating habit of yelling "INTENTIONAL" every time the ball went out of bounds. Behind me were the stereotypical "clueless family" who not only didn't know who our players are, which is understandable even if they called Adem Yze "Adem Yoozie", but didn't know their own either. Now I'm not insinuating that the Swans fans aren't knowledgeable about the game, indeed it appeared that large chunks of the stadium were yelling and going ape at the appropriate moments, but I apparently had the misfortune of being sandwiched between about 15 people who didn't know what they were doing. The father figure of the Shambles Family behind me would constantly talk to himself and say things like "It's a goal! Oh no it's not" and then laugh in a manner absolutely 100% identical to that of Doctor Hibbert in the Simpsons. His wife and daughter effectively wrote the side off five minutes in the first quarter and just sat there questioning what was going on for the rest of it. "Why is that a free kick?" "WHAT A GOAL.. oh it's a point", "Is that a goal?" as the backmen are kicking out etc..

At this point I should mention that I have a love/hate relationship with people like the Shambles Family. I don't expect anybody to be an expert on the game - we all had to start somewhere after all. I don't expect them to know who our players are - if you put the Sydney Swans and the Montmorency Reserves in a line and ask me to arrange them into their correct sides I'd probably be an utter disgrace too. If they're jumping on the Swans bandwagon I suppose you can't even expect them to know who their players are either, but four quarters of "who's number 30?" directly into your right ear is enough to turn anyone into a homicidal maniac. The most infuriating thing about these people is that they don't take the game seriously enough for you to really rub it in when you knock them over. Same goes for the little shits in front, deep down they didn't care. It's like a night out at the opera to these people. How are you supposed to really hammer them? You can't, and maybe that's where the feud comes from. These people always leave you with unfinished business at the end of the night. They annoy the shit out of you for four quarters but were you to turn around and give them the mother of all sprays at the final whistle and direct a special version of the theme song with 10x more swearing directly into their faces they wouldn't even flinch.

More wonderful crowd behaviour from the knob sitting behind me who kept yelling out "Neitz! You're a bald wanker!", and was almost certainly the dumbfuck who yelled "Who's the coon playing on Barry?" The sad thing? There were actually sniggers for the racist slur. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK ADAM GOODES AND MICHAEL O'LOUGHLIN ARE THEN YOU CUNTS? I would have liked to go crazy about but I was on my own in the middle of a baying pack and the Irish woman sitting next to me was sinking bourbon and cokes at a rate so rapid I feared she'd die of alcohol poisoning in front of our eyes. Eventually, as the Swans started to hit back late in the third quarter I snapped and let rip. Sadly I messed it up. When you abuse somebody at a football match it's very important to choose your words correctly. I failed, but at the same time I succeeded.

Bogan: "YOU'RE A BALD WANKER NEITZ!"
Adam: "HOW MUCH HAIR HAS BARRY HALL GOT? WHAT DOES THAT MAKE HIM YOU FUCKSTICK?"

Silence. But I could tell my accidental slip into an insult that is best suited to the school playground had wounded me. Had I gone with fuckwit, cockhead, motherfucker or just the plain old fashioned IDIOT I might have got some support. Alas it was not to be. But Neitz was never taunted for his bald bonce again. And as somebody, possibly the same wank, yelled out "YOU SHOULD HAVE MERGED WITH HAWTHORN" I almost died. I don't expect any of them to have been there before 1996 but I'd at least expect that they understand that their club relocated once in 1982, almost went out of business in '87 and then were only saved from extinction by the AFL tipping a fortune in after the '92 season. But no, 29000 turn up to the SCG and suddenly they're league powerhouses. I could never have gotten the point of that argument over in a finger pointing and yelling scenario so I just bit my tongue. Sadly Mr. Shambles didn't and he just "HYUK HYUK"ed it up for the rest of the game.

So Russell Robertson took the mark of the year, Sydney sprayed shots left right and centre, Aaron Davey's pinpoint snap sealed the game and at the final siren I just leapt over seats and ran down towards the Melbourne massive in front of me. Sadly for some old Sydney man the song started just at the wrong time and he got a rousing "IT'S A GRAND OLD FLAG" in the ear. Another unbridled passion hall of fame moment.

More intimate details when I'm back in Melbourne. For now I have to find something to do until my 6.15am flight. Bizarrely enough as I walked past somebody earlier in the night they said "Is that Nick Daffy?" Now I look nothing like Nick Daffy but I'm flattered to be confused with celebrity, no matter how minor.

UPDATE - This place is starting to get tedious. What did I expect to do for seven hours after the game when I've lost the will to drink heavily? If I'd known at the time of booking my flights that Sydney Airport doesn't actually open until a certain time of the morning I think it's fair to say that I wouldn't have made the same plans.

From the mystery suburb I ended up at Star City where I said goodbye to my money in rapid fashion and then just randomly started walking. Somehow I ended up in the Compton section of Darling Harbour where I saw a woman violently puking, two guys smoking a cigarette that was NOT from the Benson and/or Hedges Family and a man performing what was possibly an indecent and offensive act on a woman in some bushes. I'd have given him a round of applause but I fear reprisals.

On that note I've been hanging out for one of these drive by shootings that's supposed to be all the rage here but so far there's been nothing. Disappointing. I think I'll just wait here for another couple of hours, the view is quite nice and I simply cannot walk any further.

UPDATE 2 - I did the votes, but they got wiped somehow.

5 - McLean
4 - Rivers
3 - Miller
2 - Johnstone
1 - Yze

-10 for the Shambles family.

Rejoice!

Melbourne vs Sydney
7.20pm, Saturday, Sydney Cricket Ground

In: Motlop (debut), Armstrong (remembered), Ferguson (back in rightful place)
Out: Bruce (shoulder), Heffernan (apathy), Nicholson (past expiry debate)

Every Day Is Like Sunday will be in attendance, but sadly due to increased world fears about terrorism in the airline industry the Premiership Liberation Front will be forced to remain at home. We hope this will not detract from festivities. A full report will follow, possibly written in an internet cafe in some dubious suburb of Sydney at 3am while I wait for my 6.15am flight home.

Hail to the chief!

Did I ever post about how much I loved and respected Peter Schwab in his time as Hawthorn coach? No, of course I didn't. But I should have,

I heart Schwabby...

After its first loss of the season on Sunday, Melbourne received some good news last night when a report against Brad Miller was dropped and Aaron Davey escaped without a suspension.

I officially kissed the ground when I saw that. But this doesn't make much sense,

Melbourne's livewire Davey was reprimanded for striking St Kilda veteran Justin Peckett, but with his good record, the incident activated less than the 100 points needed for a suspension.

It was also a relief for Miller that his report for rough conduct against Andew Thompson was dismissed.

The forward received a reprimand last week for a similar incident and would have faced a suspension had he been found guilty.

Injured Demon midfielder Cameron Bruce said his teammate would need to be more careful. "He probably has to watch himself a little bit. He's come under scrutiny a bit, but they've all been cleared and he's been given the green light," Bruce said.

"He's a really important player in terms of his ability to impact physically and that's his strength, so hopefully he can continue to do that and not get on the wrong side of the tribunal."

Miller's one looked worse to my uncultured eyes. Seemed much more dangerous, but what do I know? Might be a square up after the farcical Moloney decision last week.

More news on Saturday night's game as the week presses on. Now that we've scored a rival on the Footyblogs.com network I'm sure we'll able to present the Wayne "Moose" Henwood Memorial Cup to the winning side.