So, I had a crack at entering this competition in an attempt to scab a free trip to America and failed miserably.
The gimmick was that you had to write about the 2022 AFL World Cup, which was improbably being defender by Japan who had rolled Australia in the previous final. Fat chance but I'll do anything for free flights. There were a bunch of other things you had to include but obviously didn't throw enough fanciful futuristic gimmicks to make the top three.
Therefore I post it here for posterity, and just in case the absolutely farcical scenario in which
Please also note that a) it was supposed to be this long and wasn't just me waffling again and b) it was written before $cully had totally dicked us and become a hated figure so I was at least nice enough to give him the chance to come back to Melbourne after he'd finished rolling around in cash a'la Scrooge McDuck. I was going to change all references to him in this to Trengove for posting here but that killed one of the key gimmicks so stuff it, just imagine a big dollar sign whenever his scabby name comes up.
Anyway, ready? I think I rolled myself by writing like a news story instead of a first person wankfest. Come on I even took the obligatory cheap shot at soccer that they were dying for.
Standing in the centre square of the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the first time Casey Martin, the captain of the Team Canada Wolfpack, admits that he's got a major concern about Saturday's World Rules opening match against Australia - and it's not the prospect of playing in front of more than 90,000 locals.
"You guys don’t worry me" he says, "Nothing an Australian crowd can bring will match The Game".
In Canada the match which the Toronto Vipers midfielder and his teammates won through to their first World Rules is destined to always be known simply as "The Game". Five goals behind the heavily favoured Argentina during the last quarter of February’s match the brilliant midfielder played a last quarter for the ages, racking up fifteen possessions and kicking three goals including the one that gave his side the lead deep into the last quarter.
"The noise was incredible" says Martin, "when I went back to take my kick you couldn't even hear yourself think". It didn’t matter, the ball flew through post high and the surprise packet quarter finalists of the inaugural 2018 World Rules were out. Canada had booked a ticket to Australia along with their fellow North/South American Zone qualifiers the United States and Brazil.
So if the prospect of lining up in front of 90,000 people in the opening match of one of the biggest sporting events in the world isn’t concerning Casey Martin then what is troubling the man who has just led his side to the North American Football League premiership?
"Tom Scully" he says half smiling, half wincing. "I've never played against anybody like him before". The Canadian captain is concerned, and not without some justification because at 2.10pm tomorrow afternoon he might be standing shoulder to shoulder with the three time premiership captain and dual Brownlow Medallist in the centre of the game’s most famous venue.
"[Canadian coach John Paul] Lafitte hasn’t told me where I’ll be playing yet, but they’ve got so many stars he’s only one of 22 worries for us” Martin says.
Scully might be one man of 22 in the Australian starting line-up tomorrow but he is the best and will prove the hardest for the Canadians to stop. The professional game in North America has come a long way in the last decade but even the greatest teams in their league would be lucky to have the combined talent of one Tom Scully.
Casey Martin could be called the Tom Scully of the American league. Both men were voted the best player in their competition last year, and both ended the season holding a premiership cup above their heads.
Scully’s triumph came near the same spot where Martin stands today, his third since returning to the Demons from Greater Western Sydney. His best on ground performance just days after being named Brownlow Medallist for the second time stamped him as the dominant player of the modern era.
Named captain of Australia for the first time during this year’s mid-season series against New Zealand and South Africa, Scully is desperate to atone for his performance in the 2018 World Rules Final where he managed just six touches after half time of Australia’s shock 15.10.100 to 14.14.98 loss to Japan. It remains the greatest upset in the history of international football.
While it was Jack Riewoldt who missed the goal after the siren to hand the Samurais the inaugural championship Scully was uncharacteristically quiet, blanketed by the ace Japanese stopper Taro Tsjumoto who was snapped up by the Fremantle Dockers immediately afterwards.
One of the earliest converts to the international expansion of the game when it began in earnest in 2013, the Japanese have gone from strength to strength since then and now have nine players plying their trade with AFL sides. 2021 Brownlow Medal runner-up Tsjumoto is the most high profile, but the mosquito fleet of running players developed in Japan during the four years before their shock triumph in front of 101,200 fans four years ago, are primed for the fight of their life to defend the cup.
The reaction in Australia to the loss was a united grief never before seen in the 160 years since the first game of what would ultimately become one of the world’s most popular sports.
International expansion of the sport had been slow during the 150 years after Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College first clashed on the grounds outside where the MCG now stands. New Zealand fielded a team in the first interstate carnival, but the game soon dropped away across the Tasman and it took until 1963 for Melbourne and Geelong to travel to North America and play exhibition matches for a US audience. Two matches drew just 5000 fans between them and it was another quarter of a century before Australian Football was played in North America again. A short lived international series in the 80’s failed to capture the imagination of overseas fans and the game returned to being a purely domestic pursuit.
The game’s international profile was given an unexpected boost at the end of the 2011 season when American ruckman Shae McNamara was axed by Collingwood. Unable to break into their dual premiership sides he was thrown a lifeline by Gold Coast and within a year had established himself as one of the biggest stars of the competition. He will coach the American side in this year’s cup.
American cable television picked up on McNamara’s incredible story, and within a year their league which had spent 20 years on the very outer fringes of US sports was thriving. The competition, which until that point had been strictly amateur, was suddenly enjoying high rating TV coverage in the absence of major sports which were undergoing lengthy player lockouts.
The money which flowed into the international game after the success of the North American Football League’s first full televised season saw the game explode in popularity across Europe and gave the AFL a chance to invest heavily into the Pacific region and Africa. Ongoing scandals in the world of soccer gave the game a further boost in countries where the original ‘world game’ was so popular just a few years ago.
Casey Martin remembers the first time he ever saw a game. “I grew up in Hamilton, Ontario” he says, “I was 13-years-old when the game really exploded in North America. Half way through watching my first TV game I was online trying to find a team in my area to play this magnificent new game with. Hamilton is a big hockey and Canadian Football town so there were no existing teams. Luckily for me I wasn’t the only guy at my school who wanted to play so we started a team and hooked up some matches against kids from Toronto”.
The teenagers would alternate between playing games in the neighbouring cities and Martin’s big break came when his future international teammate Alex Franks was signed to play for the Vipers youth team two years later. Asked if he could recommend any other young Canadians for the team Franks’ first suggestion was Martin and the rest is history. The two broke into Toronto’s senior squad within a year and were appearing regularly on international television before their 18th birthdays.
Longtime teammates both domestically and in the international side, Martin and Franks were among the players who suffered an upset loss to Mexico in the first qualifying stage of the North/South America Zone for the 2018 event. A win would probably have seen them on their way to Australia, but the defeat meant that the powerhouse United States were instead joined by Argentina, who defeated Mexico in the final round of qualifiers, and Brazil.
Denied the chance to showcase their skills in front of the world in the 2018 tournament the Canadians missed an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of Tsjumoto and American Ricky Sanderson in winning an AFL contract.
Both Martin and Franks have had their chances to become the first Canadian to play in the AFL since rugby convert Mike Pyke appeared with Sydney more than a decade ago, but with league sides sniffing around at the end of last year the two made a pact to stay together until Toronto finally won a league championship.
A loss to the Las Vegas Power in the 2021 Preliminary Final ended their campaign one game short of a Grand Final but both men stuck fast on the deal. They were rewarded when the Vipers ran out easy winners against the Boston Demons in front of 45,000 people in the last month’s nationally televised championship game. Now if as expected they’re both drafted the two will be split up for the first time since they were 15-year-olds, so World Rules gives the friends a last chance to play together in the same club side before starting next year as enemies.
Seeded 15th in the tournament, the Canadians join Germany as the newcomers to the World Rules Finals. The Germans won the last spot in the Europe/Africa zone with a thumping victory over Nigeria in Dusseldorf just days before Martin and his side played their match against Argentina. Germany’s bottom seeding and subsequent match up against the Japanese in Group A might be seen by some as a blessing but the Canadians aren’t so concerned about facing up against the Aussies.
“Realistically we’re aiming for second in the group” says Lafitte, who recently won an extension to his contract with the Montreal Scorpions, “so I’m happy to be matched up against the side we know is the best in the world, not just the one that got lucky last time”. Laffite’s plan for the Wolfpack is for his troops to put in a confidence boosting performance against the Australians and set themselves up for the remaining group games.
The home side, despite their horror showing in the last final, will prove the toughest test of all. With Australian players featuring prominently in all the major leagues around the world the AFL side has the luxury of selecting from over 2000 professional players around the globe. John Paul Laffitte has just 150 players in the North American league and another 100 across Europe and Asia to choose from.
Still, that’s 250 more pros than anyone could have imagined them being able to field a decade ago. With a thriving junior system in Canada the numbers will only increase in years to come.
The Wolfpack have three matches to earn a place in the Quarter Finals but as Martin admits the chances of his side returning to the MCG in the World Rules Final on November 20 are slim so he intends to make the most of his first trip to the stadium. If as expected he is selected by the Magpies with the first selection in January’s International Draft, he’ll make many more appearances at the home of football.
“We’re going into this group as enormous underdogs” says the Canadian captain, “but if we can put in a four quarter effort against the Aussies then we go to Canberra six days later (against Papua New Guinea) knowing that we can match it against higher ranked sides”.
As we walk off the ground, down the race that leads deep into the Barassi (formerly Olympic) Stand, the greatest player that the Canadian game has ever seen asks us to pass on a message to one of the finest Australians to have ever pulled on the boots.
“Tell Tom I’ll see him on Saturday” he says “And tell him that the Wolfpack don’t back down from anybody”.
His coach slaps him on the back and laughs heartily. Confidence is not in short supply in the Canadian camp.
Canada play their remaining Group B games against Papua New Guinea in Canberra on Friday 21 October and India at Kardinia Park on Thursday 27 October.
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Saturday, 17 September 2011
Neeld In A Haystack
(Dear Herald Sun, please find above my entry for the 'obscure Neeld headlines competition'. You can keep the prize of a chicken dinner with Andrew Bolt).
When my usual Friday afternoon attempting to look busy was interrupted around 4pm yesterday by SEN announcing we were about to announce Mark Neeld as coach I was, it must be said, unmoved. Nothing against Mark, just that we'd spent the week being fed lies by both 'media' and actual clubs/coaches so why not another farcical rumour which didn't turn out to be true? After all, while Hutchy himself was leaping out from behind a hedge at St Kilda HQ on Thursday night to startle the Saints President, 'Hutchy Jr' Damian Barrett was assuring us that it was a Scott Burns/Neil Craig tag team who were poised to take the top job.
The week started with SportsNewsFirst, the Women's Weekly of AFL journalism, claiming that Ross Lyon was about to tell the players he was off to join us. Cue mainstream media (well, SEN at least) being sucked in and sending crews down there, presumably ignoring every red light between Richmond and Seaford in their haste to check a story attributed to 'sources', and which no actual news outlet had heard anything about. Needless to say (Neeldless? This is a golden day for headline writers and hack bloggers) it turned out to be such utter crap that when Ross the (ex-)Boss actually did walk out on them and join the Dockers on Thursday that not only had SNF never heard about it but he didn't even tell the players he was off until he was already singing heave ho while swinging a $cully style bag of cash over his shoulder.
So, we'd already been told to piss off by Clarko, Malthouse is (for now) holding firm on not coaching anywhere next year, we missed Lyon because he was engaged in arguably unethical shenanigans behind his club's back, Scott Burns had been annointed as the winner by the alleged "newsbreaker" and now SEN - the home of following up wild rumours floated by drunken talkback callers - is saying that less than 24 hours after Garry Lyon had said that we were "very close" to announcing a coach that it was about to happen. On a Friday. What ever happens on Friday?
News media, you can see why we might very well have been confused. With the Harvey Heave-Ho Debacle still less than 24 hours old it seemed too ludicrous that we'd add to the chaos by naming our coach while poor Mark was still trying to work out what the hell had happened to him (O RLY?). Add to that the fact that the only men who hadn't been named as contenders for the job were Paul Feltham, Dean Bailey and Jock McHale and it was hard to take it seriously.
But there was some air of credibility about it simply because Mike Sheahan broke the story. Now, Mike's not perfect but he's a damn sight less likely to put his name to an obscenely made up rumor than the twats desperately generating hits on their website so the ad revenue will mean they don't have to eat dog food for breakfast. And to Mike's credit it turned out to be true. Within a couple of hours Garry Lyon was on Triple M all but confirming it as a done deal without actually saying Neeld's name.
In the spirit of Michael Roberts going right over the top on the Footy Show and comparing Mark Harvey getting the boot to a) a tsunami and b) having cancer I'd like to compare the footy world since Monday to September 11, 2001. This can't end well but stick with me. The moment it became apparent that there was some serious terror action going down and not just some tit in a light plane who couldn't steer the news went into overdrive with every stupid rumor they could find and every tiny piece of information was bent and twisted into something much larger. Hundreds of planes were hijacked, car bombs were allegedly going off in major cities, Palestinians were holding the Moomba Parade to celebrate etc.. None of which actually turned out to be true. Only Americans would need to embellish the biggest terror disaster in history with additional activities just to keep people watching. Imagine if they'd had Twitter then? Chaos.
For once SEN weren't all that bad in their coverage of the switch, but even then they went through a 15 minute moment of doubt on either side of the 7pm news when they were convinced Rodney Eade was on a plane to Perth to sign on just because they couldn't get him on the phone. Still, once the ship was righted and they were on track they thumped the TV networks for coverage. Very much against my will I was watching X Factor half an hour later when BREAKING NEWS - ROSS LYON RESIGNS AT ST KILDA TO COACH FREMANTLE came crawling along the screen. 1bil for TV rights and they won't even break into a talent quest for five minutes? That's the future of TV sports broadcasting right there. At least dump an episode of Are You Being Served on 7TWO and cross for rolling coverage. I'd be happier to watch the antics of Mr Humphries than those of Ross Lyon but that's not the point.
So, with the paint barely dry on old Owl Eyes' tombstone in the west, and him mysteriously 'being on a plane to Melbourne' (which of course he actually wasn't) the plot thickened. Of course he wasn't coming to us as the process was already, according to Lyon at least (the media one), almost over by the time Harvey was knifed. But who knew what that meant for Eade/Burns/Neeld/etc.. Nobody was even sure who had been interviewed for our job. Burns/Neeld/?? Viney? Laidley? God knows.
In the end though it was Mike who got the scoop, and that's why he's a major football journalist and not writing tossed off 'Brad and Angelina to split' style tosh credited to friends, insiders and amazed fellow diners. Neeld was indeed to be the man with a press conference at midday Saturday. Mind you the way this week has gone I wouldn't have been surprised if the doors at AAMI Park had flung open to reveal Ken Judge standing there with a cheeky grin and another 'hilarious' gag about Hitler.
But the ex-Collingwood assistant it was, and the reaction from fans was as you'd expect mixed. Everyone wanted a 'name', but after missing out on Clarko and Lyon the 'names' were rapidly thinning out, and we were in danger of losing the man who was obviously the preferred candidate to either Adelaide or Footscray. Like it or not Malthouse wasn't coming, Mark Williams is quite happy being the real coach of GW$ and Eade/Laidley/pretty much everyone else represented just as much of a risk as a highly credentialed premiership assistant. As much as I would cracked an Ararat at the prospect of Laidley/Williams being involved just to fulfil my own sick footballing fantasies the appointment worked for me straight away without ever having heard the guy say a word.
Of course naysayers say nay. "It's another Dean Bailey!" they scream. And while like Bails, Neeld might not have had much of a playing career I think you may just be overlooking his vast experience as a senior coach at local level (and four straight premierships in a half decent country competition is nothing to be sneezed at) and his stint as TAC Cup coach of the Western Jets before he even got to Collingwood - where he was the right hand man of the bloke that everyone (including me) was desperate to get.
I'd go so far as saying that considering what we'd have to have paid to get Lyon - who we just assume is good because he's taken Riewoldt/Goddard/Dal Santo etc.. to two Grand Finals - I'm deliriously happy. Talk to me when Jay Van Berlo, Justin Bollenhagen and Freo are waving a premiership cup around - until then I think we can afford to go without paying him $cully money. I didn't give god knows how much money to Debt Demolition just to have us spunk it up the wall on the off chance that the only thing wrong with us is the coach.
Also, to all the talkback callers who were pontificating about what complete arseholes we were that we cried about $cully doing a runner and then tried to steal somebody else's coach. In the words of Alan Partridge, "Swivel". I don't expect any apologies from [Name] of [Suburb] will be forthcoming. Besides, the moment the compo came in was there anybody left wailing about the $2m turd leaving? Doesn't mean we have to like him though..
If you'd given me the option of the 'untried' assistants yesterday I'd probably have taken Burns just because he had a long career and was a captain but either way I'd be happy not to see all the hard work to get out of debt wasted by spending zillions on a 'name' coach. But now that I've watched Neeld in action at his press conference I'm even happier that we've gone for him. If you've been reading long enough you'll know that the one thing I've wanted ever since 2005 (and before) is a coach who is a bit of a psycho, and I think we've landed one here. In a good way of course, not someone whose floorboards need to be taken up in the search for bodies.
In between saying all the right things in his first press conference (and who else other than Mal Meninga doesn't?) he didn't crack a smile once. I love it. In his interview on the club's YouTube channel the only time he half raises a smirk for the first seven minutes of it is when his list of achievements as a coach was read out to him. I love this. You can tell he's driven, and although this mean a great deal doesn't coming from the guy who was convinced Dean Bailey would be a smashing success, I'm more than happy to back him 100% now and then go back and delete this post in five years time if it doesn't work out.
We all swoon when he says things like wanting us to become the 'hardest team to play against' in the competition, but we'll have to wait and see how he intends on achieving that. I'm happy to be along for the ride. If you wanted a coach who you'd heard of, and who you have happy memories of during their playing days, then bad luck but if you wanted somebody who is going to take no shite from his players and will hopefully do a great line in verbally destroying journalists in press conferences around the country then here's the good times, and here's the hill, let them roll. I also love the twitch in his left eye. He's just ticking every box for me to believe that one day we'll lose and he'll cut a swathe through the press conference with a chainsaw. He's as cold as ice, willing to hack and slice.
It's also confirmed that he'll get his own team to work with, and that's a big goodbye to Josh Mahoney, Bryan Royal, Scott West etc.. The good news though is that Todd Viney stays. Todd seems infinitely more jocular than the man who replaces him but there's no doubt they're both fierce competitors and will hopefully get on nicely. Get Jack Viney in there already.
So, I'm as happy as you can get with a new coach at the moment. Though you just don't know with football. Mark Harvey went into this year looking at top four, was still at least within visible range of it three months ago and now finds himself out of a job. Just don't spaz out and threaten to microwave your (unpurchased) membership just because we didn't hire some superstar. And if we go out and get rolled in Round 1 next year don't forward project three seasons, decide he's no good, start sulking and not show up for the rest of the year. It may work, it may not - that's footy. Have some faith that eventually the skies will open, and the god of football will finally point his gigantic cosmic finger at us to deliver what we've all been waiting most of our lives for. Could happen. Probably won't, but as long as we get a few good years of legitimate hope out of it then I'll be satisfied.
Now the question is whether there's any truth to the rumor that Neil Craig is going to be a 'senior assistant' to him. Doesn't look like the kind of guy who would enjoy having a gruff South Australian hovering over him, and I'm still not sure Craig can operate in a non-South Australian environment. Maybe we can keep him in an oxygen tent full of air sourced from Victor Harbour and unleash him at nights only to follow Cale Morton around, leaping out at him from the shadows in carparks and scaring him until he's an edgy killing machine.
Watch this space. Well don't watch this exact space. This is already one more post than I expected to write before the end of the year.
When my usual Friday afternoon attempting to look busy was interrupted around 4pm yesterday by SEN announcing we were about to announce Mark Neeld as coach I was, it must be said, unmoved. Nothing against Mark, just that we'd spent the week being fed lies by both 'media' and actual clubs/coaches so why not another farcical rumour which didn't turn out to be true? After all, while Hutchy himself was leaping out from behind a hedge at St Kilda HQ on Thursday night to startle the Saints President, 'Hutchy Jr' Damian Barrett was assuring us that it was a Scott Burns/Neil Craig tag team who were poised to take the top job.
The week started with SportsNewsFirst, the Women's Weekly of AFL journalism, claiming that Ross Lyon was about to tell the players he was off to join us. Cue mainstream media (well, SEN at least) being sucked in and sending crews down there, presumably ignoring every red light between Richmond and Seaford in their haste to check a story attributed to 'sources', and which no actual news outlet had heard anything about. Needless to say (Neeldless? This is a golden day for headline writers and hack bloggers) it turned out to be such utter crap that when Ross the (ex-)Boss actually did walk out on them and join the Dockers on Thursday that not only had SNF never heard about it but he didn't even tell the players he was off until he was already singing heave ho while swinging a $cully style bag of cash over his shoulder.
So, we'd already been told to piss off by Clarko, Malthouse is (for now) holding firm on not coaching anywhere next year, we missed Lyon because he was engaged in arguably unethical shenanigans behind his club's back, Scott Burns had been annointed as the winner by the alleged "newsbreaker" and now SEN - the home of following up wild rumours floated by drunken talkback callers - is saying that less than 24 hours after Garry Lyon had said that we were "very close" to announcing a coach that it was about to happen. On a Friday. What ever happens on Friday?
News media, you can see why we might very well have been confused. With the Harvey Heave-Ho Debacle still less than 24 hours old it seemed too ludicrous that we'd add to the chaos by naming our coach while poor Mark was still trying to work out what the hell had happened to him (O RLY?). Add to that the fact that the only men who hadn't been named as contenders for the job were Paul Feltham, Dean Bailey and Jock McHale and it was hard to take it seriously.
But there was some air of credibility about it simply because Mike Sheahan broke the story. Now, Mike's not perfect but he's a damn sight less likely to put his name to an obscenely made up rumor than the twats desperately generating hits on their website so the ad revenue will mean they don't have to eat dog food for breakfast. And to Mike's credit it turned out to be true. Within a couple of hours Garry Lyon was on Triple M all but confirming it as a done deal without actually saying Neeld's name.
In the spirit of Michael Roberts going right over the top on the Footy Show and comparing Mark Harvey getting the boot to a) a tsunami and b) having cancer I'd like to compare the footy world since Monday to September 11, 2001. This can't end well but stick with me. The moment it became apparent that there was some serious terror action going down and not just some tit in a light plane who couldn't steer the news went into overdrive with every stupid rumor they could find and every tiny piece of information was bent and twisted into something much larger. Hundreds of planes were hijacked, car bombs were allegedly going off in major cities, Palestinians were holding the Moomba Parade to celebrate etc.. None of which actually turned out to be true. Only Americans would need to embellish the biggest terror disaster in history with additional activities just to keep people watching. Imagine if they'd had Twitter then? Chaos.
For once SEN weren't all that bad in their coverage of the switch, but even then they went through a 15 minute moment of doubt on either side of the 7pm news when they were convinced Rodney Eade was on a plane to Perth to sign on just because they couldn't get him on the phone. Still, once the ship was righted and they were on track they thumped the TV networks for coverage. Very much against my will I was watching X Factor half an hour later when BREAKING NEWS - ROSS LYON RESIGNS AT ST KILDA TO COACH FREMANTLE came crawling along the screen. 1bil for TV rights and they won't even break into a talent quest for five minutes? That's the future of TV sports broadcasting right there. At least dump an episode of Are You Being Served on 7TWO and cross for rolling coverage. I'd be happier to watch the antics of Mr Humphries than those of Ross Lyon but that's not the point.
So, with the paint barely dry on old Owl Eyes' tombstone in the west, and him mysteriously 'being on a plane to Melbourne' (which of course he actually wasn't) the plot thickened. Of course he wasn't coming to us as the process was already, according to Lyon at least (the media one), almost over by the time Harvey was knifed. But who knew what that meant for Eade/Burns/Neeld/etc.. Nobody was even sure who had been interviewed for our job. Burns/Neeld/?? Viney? Laidley? God knows.
In the end though it was Mike who got the scoop, and that's why he's a major football journalist and not writing tossed off 'Brad and Angelina to split' style tosh credited to friends, insiders and amazed fellow diners. Neeld was indeed to be the man with a press conference at midday Saturday. Mind you the way this week has gone I wouldn't have been surprised if the doors at AAMI Park had flung open to reveal Ken Judge standing there with a cheeky grin and another 'hilarious' gag about Hitler.
But the ex-Collingwood assistant it was, and the reaction from fans was as you'd expect mixed. Everyone wanted a 'name', but after missing out on Clarko and Lyon the 'names' were rapidly thinning out, and we were in danger of losing the man who was obviously the preferred candidate to either Adelaide or Footscray. Like it or not Malthouse wasn't coming, Mark Williams is quite happy being the real coach of GW$ and Eade/Laidley/pretty much everyone else represented just as much of a risk as a highly credentialed premiership assistant. As much as I would cracked an Ararat at the prospect of Laidley/Williams being involved just to fulfil my own sick footballing fantasies the appointment worked for me straight away without ever having heard the guy say a word.
Of course naysayers say nay. "It's another Dean Bailey!" they scream. And while like Bails, Neeld might not have had much of a playing career I think you may just be overlooking his vast experience as a senior coach at local level (and four straight premierships in a half decent country competition is nothing to be sneezed at) and his stint as TAC Cup coach of the Western Jets before he even got to Collingwood - where he was the right hand man of the bloke that everyone (including me) was desperate to get.
I'd go so far as saying that considering what we'd have to have paid to get Lyon - who we just assume is good because he's taken Riewoldt/Goddard/Dal Santo etc.. to two Grand Finals - I'm deliriously happy. Talk to me when Jay Van Berlo, Justin Bollenhagen and Freo are waving a premiership cup around - until then I think we can afford to go without paying him $cully money. I didn't give god knows how much money to Debt Demolition just to have us spunk it up the wall on the off chance that the only thing wrong with us is the coach.
Also, to all the talkback callers who were pontificating about what complete arseholes we were that we cried about $cully doing a runner and then tried to steal somebody else's coach. In the words of Alan Partridge, "Swivel". I don't expect any apologies from [Name] of [Suburb] will be forthcoming. Besides, the moment the compo came in was there anybody left wailing about the $2m turd leaving? Doesn't mean we have to like him though..
If you'd given me the option of the 'untried' assistants yesterday I'd probably have taken Burns just because he had a long career and was a captain but either way I'd be happy not to see all the hard work to get out of debt wasted by spending zillions on a 'name' coach. But now that I've watched Neeld in action at his press conference I'm even happier that we've gone for him. If you've been reading long enough you'll know that the one thing I've wanted ever since 2005 (and before) is a coach who is a bit of a psycho, and I think we've landed one here. In a good way of course, not someone whose floorboards need to be taken up in the search for bodies.
In between saying all the right things in his first press conference (and who else other than Mal Meninga doesn't?) he didn't crack a smile once. I love it. In his interview on the club's YouTube channel the only time he half raises a smirk for the first seven minutes of it is when his list of achievements as a coach was read out to him. I love this. You can tell he's driven, and although this mean a great deal doesn't coming from the guy who was convinced Dean Bailey would be a smashing success, I'm more than happy to back him 100% now and then go back and delete this post in five years time if it doesn't work out.
We all swoon when he says things like wanting us to become the 'hardest team to play against' in the competition, but we'll have to wait and see how he intends on achieving that. I'm happy to be along for the ride. If you wanted a coach who you'd heard of, and who you have happy memories of during their playing days, then bad luck but if you wanted somebody who is going to take no shite from his players and will hopefully do a great line in verbally destroying journalists in press conferences around the country then here's the good times, and here's the hill, let them roll. I also love the twitch in his left eye. He's just ticking every box for me to believe that one day we'll lose and he'll cut a swathe through the press conference with a chainsaw. He's as cold as ice, willing to hack and slice.
It's also confirmed that he'll get his own team to work with, and that's a big goodbye to Josh Mahoney, Bryan Royal, Scott West etc.. The good news though is that Todd Viney stays. Todd seems infinitely more jocular than the man who replaces him but there's no doubt they're both fierce competitors and will hopefully get on nicely. Get Jack Viney in there already.
So, I'm as happy as you can get with a new coach at the moment. Though you just don't know with football. Mark Harvey went into this year looking at top four, was still at least within visible range of it three months ago and now finds himself out of a job. Just don't spaz out and threaten to microwave your (unpurchased) membership just because we didn't hire some superstar. And if we go out and get rolled in Round 1 next year don't forward project three seasons, decide he's no good, start sulking and not show up for the rest of the year. It may work, it may not - that's footy. Have some faith that eventually the skies will open, and the god of football will finally point his gigantic cosmic finger at us to deliver what we've all been waiting most of our lives for. Could happen. Probably won't, but as long as we get a few good years of legitimate hope out of it then I'll be satisfied.
Now the question is whether there's any truth to the rumor that Neil Craig is going to be a 'senior assistant' to him. Doesn't look like the kind of guy who would enjoy having a gruff South Australian hovering over him, and I'm still not sure Craig can operate in a non-South Australian environment. Maybe we can keep him in an oxygen tent full of air sourced from Victor Harbour and unleash him at nights only to follow Cale Morton around, leaping out at him from the shadows in carparks and scaring him until he's an edgy killing machine.
Watch this space. Well don't watch this exact space. This is already one more post than I expected to write before the end of the year.
Wednesday, 7 September 2011
Demonblog's 2011 End of Year Spectacular
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Doncaster Over 28's for the third annual Demonblog End Of Season Spectacular. Before any further ado let's cross to Moscow for our opening musical number.
Hi, my name is Supermercado. Thanks for joining us this morning, and let me tell you we invited a sparkling lineup of guests to present awards at this event.
From UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to Prime Minister of Iceland Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir and the guy from the Deep Heat ad they were all on board until mysteriously pulling out in the hours after the Geelong game. Ban Ki cited some conflict in Libya, Jóhanna stopped returning my calls and the Deep Heat coach rang to say he refused to be associated with such a shambolic brand as the MFC but did advise me to breathe.... from the core.
So, instead we asked one of Australia's most loved, and cheapest to book, entertainers to join us - although he would like to point out that he’s got commitments to the Frogsack tour at 8pm and if we’re not done by then he’s just going to walk out.
Ladies and Gentlemen, a man so offensive that if you put him on the AFL Match Review Panel nobody would be able to tell the difference I give you Mr. Rodney Rude.
[enters to muted applause]
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. And ladies, don't you hate it ladies when you work your arse off to finish last in order to draft the next big thing and two years later he ditches you for a million bucks a year to go to a softcock expansion team? I hate that.
Anyway trendsetters, this morning we're gathered to look back at what was a long, difficult and often traumatic season for the Melbourne Football Club. You know, just before the ball was bounced for the first time in Round 1 my grandfather said something to me....
[audience member] "How's your grandfather?"
Oh mate me grandfather's depressed, he's the last man alive who can remember Melbourne being a premiership side.
In fact he's depressed because he's just been in court for stealing two pies at the football. "Were you gonna eat the pies?" said the judge. "No your worship" said my grandfather, I was going to hollow them out and put them over me ears so I couldn’t hear that dickhead playing the trumpet.
But that's enough from you mate. Yeah I recognise you. I saw you outside Gate 1 before the Gold Coast game trying to slurp the Kaiser’s Sausage! So shut your mouth mucus and let's move on to our first award of the evening.
Like handing out an award for wicketkeeper of the year there's only so many contenders who can be in contention for being the number one ruckman in a team. That's why it took us five years to invent this award so we had to come up with retrospective winners for the first few seasons.
Anyway this season two men went to battle for this one, and despite a brief fortnight when the fool who runs this site prematurely declared Jamar the winner only for him to be over-run, the winner for the first time is in fact The Stefan Martin Experience.
2011 Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year
24 - Stefan Martin
16 - Mark Jamar
0 - Max Gawn, Jack Fitzpatrick
DNP - Robert Campbell, Jake Spencer
Honour Roll
2005 - Jeff White
2006 - Jeff White (2)
2007 - Jeff White (3)
2008 - Paul Johnson
2009 - Mark Jamar ($3)
2010 - Mark Jamar (2) ($1.50 fav)
2011 - Stefan Martin ($30)
Congratulations to the SME. And now a tribute to you, the Demonblog readership, as we name our commenter of the year. From that small but dedicated group of people who not only take the time to read the garbage that is spewed out here on a weekly basis but also to write good, bad and often abusive comments we have one standout this year.
Lyall St Kilda we congratulate you. Your rants deserve a blog of their own, and were this not a one man operation run out of a bank vault in Snowtown we'd hire you as a columnist.
However a special place will always be reserved in all our hearts for Anonymous who tore through place leaving comments of such baffling beauty that it’s hard to narrow it down to his top five..
Top 6 Anonymous Comments for Season 2011
1. This may sound a little strange but last night they were like the Hammersmith Flyover, fast, crowded and to the point. Those bobmers crashed down, see the bobmers crash down. (every time I see Essendon play now all I can think of is "see the bobmers crash down" - Mercado)
2. as the chris morris-armando ianucci invented character alan partridge would say they looked like cattle riding bikes from the air
3. after the 20 minute mark of the first quarter they only passed to Melbourne players when they couldn't find a couple of north players in the clear, I really hope there's no betting scandal, inexplicable difference to the first 20 minutes and the garradine swine of the last three quarters.
4. I'm All Right Jack is a 1959 British comedy film directed and produced by John and Roy Boulting from a script by Frank Harvey, John Boulting and Alan Hackney, based on the novel Private Life by Hackney. The film is a sequel to the Boulting's 1956 film Private's Progress, and Ian Carmichael, Dennis Price, Richard Attenborough, Terry-Thomas, and Miles Malleson all reprise their characters from the earlier film. Peter Sellers played one of his best-known roles, as the trade union shop steward Fred Kite, and won a Best Actor Award from the British Academy. The rest of the cast included many well-known British comedy actors of the time.
I am going to watch this on GEM in one hour's time hoping that Sellers uses the phrase "Garradine Swine", otherwise the last thirty years have affected my memory a little.
I predict we will demolish St.Kilda as the odds are against us and there is a lot of cash to win for a reasonable investment.
5. Mr Crossland, a german man, was dining with the Queen Mother when she stated "I always find beans so nourishing, do you grow beans in your native Germany, Mr Crossland" to which Mr. Crossland replied "shut up, don't you know I am a highly intelligent man?"
6. the dees have been twunted by a honda
Enjoy it while you can kids, anonymous comments are out the door next season. Sorry if that sounds rude but..
[audience member] "How rude are 'ya Rodney?"
Ohh not as rude as Melbourne's record against Victorian teams under Dean Bailey.
Shut up mate, I've seen you somewhere. I know where I saw you, you were hanging around Stephen Milne's house waiting for sloppy seconds! I'll be watching you mate.
But enough of that, at this moment I'm very pleased to welcome to the stage the man that the next award is named after. 43 games, 29 goals and one of the few pleasant things ever to come out of Moorabbin. Ladies and gentlemen a big Doncaster Venue 28 welcome for Jeff Hilton
2011 Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year
11 - Jeremy Howe
6 - Sam Blease, Luke Tapscott
4 - Michael Evans
1 - Tom McDonald
0 - Jack Fitzpatrick, Max Gawn, Daniel Nicholson
DNP - Lucas Cook, Troy Davis, Kelvin Lawrence, Cameron Johnston
Congratulations to Jeremy who joins a lengthy honour roll of players. One of whom even turned out to be good.
2005 - No players eligible.
2006 - Matthew Bate
2007 - Michael Newton
2008 - Cale Morton
2009 - Jack Grimes ($4 fav)
2010 - Tom Scully ($5)
2011 - Jeremy Howe ($30)
Wait, ladies and gentlemen. We've just got some breaking news through from Sydney. Tom $cully has agreed to join GWS, and the owners of Demonblog have taken the unprecedented step of stripping him of his 2010 award a'la Milli Vanilli at the Grammys.
And so say all of us Tom,
Lucky you'll have your millions of dollars to keep you warm at night. Let's try that honour board again.
2005 - No players eligible.
2006 - Matthew Bate
2007 - Michael Newton
2008 - Cale Morton
2009 - Jack Grimes ($4 fav)
2010 - [AWARD REVOKED]
2011 - Jeremy Howe ($30)
Much better.
Thanks Jeff, feel free to grab a floppy $5 hot dog on your way out care of our friends at Delaware North catering. And how appropriate that Tom will be playing at Skoda Stadium next year, because his knee is about as reliable as a Skoda.
Anyway, back to players who have decided on loyalty over fat bags of cash. Remember, Tom McDonald and Jack Fitzpatrick are still eligible to win next year’s award because they debuted in the last month of the season.
Speaking of young Tom McDonald I was talking to him just the other day. I said "Tom, you're not the first McDonald to play for this club. What McHappened to that other McBloke who used to play for this great McClub?" "McJunior!" he cried, "I never met the McLegend but everybody tells me it was a McFarce that he got forced out of the door by sacked McCoach at the end of last McSeason".
"You’re McRight!" I cried, "these McClowns wouldn’t know the 4.32 footy special to Glen Waverley was up 'em unless it tooted the horn. Who's going to be next!"
"Joel Macdonald isn't looking all that McSecure” he said. "That’s McBullshit!" I screamed back at him, “First Matthew McWarnock demands a trade and now you're trying to push the McMadman from the North out the door after him. That’s McMadness!"
"I know Rodney" he said, "but if I can somehow engineer him to get the McArse that means I'll probably play 20 games next season". And you don’t get better McLogic than that. Just then Anthony McDonald walked in the room and it got so bloody confusing I just let the whole thing go.
And now, on that note it's time for our next award. One where we pay tribute to the defenders, the men who have spent the last five years under the biggest siege since Hitler had a crack at Russia. Men whose feats of bravery and courage during this time are only matched by the thousand yard stares that they’ve developed from having been under attack for so long.
It's time to add another name to the honour roll of great backmen to have served this club. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome to the stage one of the most reported players in Melbourne Football Club history. 89 games, 8 goals, 12 matches suspended - a big hand for Mr. Marcus Seecamp.
2011 Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year
18 - James Frawley
15 - Colin Garland
14 - Joel Macdonald
11 - Jared Rivers
6 - Luke Tapscott, Sam Blease
3 - Jack Grimes
1 - Tom McDonald
0 - Matthew Warnock, Jamie Bennell, James Strauss
Congratulations Chip for becoming the first man ever to win this award three times in a row. We look forward to seeing his defensive work at the heart of this team for many years to come.
2005 - Nathan Carroll and Ryan Ferguson (shared)
2006 - Jared Rivers
2007 - Paul Wheatley
2008 - Matthew Whelan
2009 - James Frawley ($22)
2010 - James Frawley (2) ($3.50)
2011 - James Frawley (3) ($4)
And now, back to our glorious proprietor for a look at what we had to go through in 2011.
That was the season that was
Pre-Season Preview - In which I picked us to finish 7th before losing my nerve and changing to 11th by the time of the pre-season update post.
Intra-Club game
A day at the footy.. kinda (by Eskimo)
In which Eskimo cast the first eye of the season over our squad and discovered that at least we could win when we played against ourselves.
NAB Cup Round 1 vs Adelaide/Port Adelaide
THE STREAK
In which we snapped our near ten year filth record at Football Park by winning two glorified practice matches under baffling rules against sides who turned out to be not very good at all in the end.
NAB Cup Quarter Final vs Essendon
Keep Feeling (Agitation)
In which we turned out another in a long line of garbage performances at Docklands and contrived to make Essendon fans feel so good about themselves that they gave a standing ovation to the coach for winning a pre-season match.
Practice Match vs Brisbane
Let the good times roll
In which we lost to early wooden spoon contenders at a 95% empty Princes Park and my blood pressure went through the roof.
Round 1 vs Sydney
It's a weird and wonderful world
In which we were 73 points worse off than our last start against the Swans at the MCG but nobody cared because we still pocketed two points.
Round 2 vs Hawthorn
National Shite Day
In which a premiership contender turned up and put us back in our box with brutality. The sound of expectations bursting nearly deafened large sections of the crowd.
Round 3 vs Brisbane
Cute, Fluffy and not even slightly Ruthless
In which we welcomed the winless Lions to the MCG and faced an almighty struggle to beat them. Better than the practice match at least. Also in which my talkback radio rant about perceived misuse of Jack Watts ended up in the Finey's Final Siren promo, nearly causing me to crash my car on Bay Street, Port Melbourne when hearing it for the first time.
Round 4 vs Gold Coast
Advanced, Forthright, Insignificant
In which I travelled to the Gabba to watch us flog a bunch of 14-year-old rookies and go home disappointed despite winning by 90 points.
Round 5 vs Nobody
In which we sportingly had the bye for the Easter long weekend and I went to Omeo.
Round 6 vs West Coast
Spaghetti Western
In which expectations unfairly raised based on two wins against rubbish teams were burst for a second time when the Eagles unsportingly refused to let us get the ball inside 50 for most of the night. Cue Dean Bailey Media Frenzy pt. 1
Round 7 vs Adelaide
Crisis Management 101
In which the First Media Frenzy was buried in a shallow grave care of a thumping, runaway victory over hapless interstate visitors. Also in which an injury free first six weeks of the season ended and an era of black death style plague was ushered in.
Round 8 vs North Melbourne
Shit Sandwich
In which we belied the injury crisis and played like we were good for a quarter before it all went horribly wrong. Juice Newton seen having the time of his life for the first 20 minutes before regular service was resumed. Injury crisis got worse.
Round 9 vs St Kilda
If you tolerate this your children will be next
When we played the Saints back into form after their horror start to the season. A late flurry of junktime goals made it look more respectable than it otherwise deserved to be. Injury crisis continued to get worse.
Round 10 vs Carlton
Zombie Nation
In which we set up to try and go into quarter time at nil-all and it suprisingly didn't work. Channel Seven executives kill themselves en masse at what we did to their ratings, and in a rare show of solidarity the media supports them by launching Bailey Frenzy II.
Round 11 vs Essendon
Violent Mood Swings
In which Bailey Frenzy II ended in the same timeframe as the original. The wobbling Bombers were put to what counts as the sword for us, yet somehow managed to end the season having beaten Geelong and making the finals. Not that it did them much good. We could have been thrashed just as convincingly by the Blues if we'd finished 8th.
Round 12 vs Collingwood
One Hit Wonders
In which we were briefly teased a 2010 style performance before the inevitable thrashing at the hands of the reigning premiers. We'd almost beaten them twice the year before you know..
Round 13 vs Fremantle
Rollercoaster of Love
In which an injury riddled Dockers side gave us cheek for a half before folding like a house of cards and being thrashed. Misguided excitement suddenly injected back into the supporter base.
Round 14 vs Richmond
Let them burn and we shall all clap our hands
In which we won what was billed as an "early Elimination Final" and suddenly started to think we were a chance of making the finals. Both sides would provide little or nothing of interest for the next month and a half and they'd eventually finish above us.
Round 15 vs Footscray
Dog Day Aftermath
In which we went into a Friday night as favourites, against a side on their knees, ready to consolidate our place amongst the challengers for eight. And were royally thrashed. Another week, another shit team played back into form.
Round 16 vs Nobody
In which we got a week to stew on the fiasco against the Dogs whilst simultaneously shitting ourselves at the prospect of losing to Port.
Round 17 vs Port Adelaide
The thriller in (conditions resembling) Manilla
In which we pocketed big bucks for selling our home game to Darwin and managed to hold on against the worst team in the land despite having to hold quarter breaks in a room usually used to store meat.
Round 18 vs Hawthorn
The light at the end of the tunnel (is the light of an oncoming train)
In which our "month from hell" started in poor fashion. Still, didn't matter because as long as we won our last three we'd made the finals. As long as we didn't totally lose the plot by getting thrashed in Geelong at least..
Round 19 vs Geelong
'In the dark times will there be singing? Yes, there will be singing about the dark times
In which I said "oh dear" and took the V-Line train home with a look of abject shock. This time the Bailey Frenzy lasted about 18 hours and ended up with him getting the boot. Somehow this result won the CEO a contract extension. Work that out.
Round 20 vs Carlton
Bloodsport for all
In which we donned novelty headbands in honour of a new coach and saw another shambolic performance against a quality side.
Round 21 vs West Coast
Shaky minus ladder
In which the game that before the season seemed to be our best chance to get a win at Docklands suddenly became another excuse for a good team to tee off on us. Ricky Petterd's mum featured heavily in the post match dissections.
Round 22 vs Richmond
Be strong, it's almost over
In which we finally managed to lose a game by under a million points. Sadly it was against one of our fellow rubbish teams and absolutely ended any slight mathmatical hope we had of making the eight. Why did we still have any hope?
Round 23 vs Gold Coast
It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again
In which we went far too close to losing to the Queensland Under 18's than you'd like and stayed in the race for a 9th placed finish. Coincidentally the same day that everybody said "why in god's name would you have a top 9?"
Round 24 vs Port Adelaide
Viney's Final Siren
In which we helped welcome football back to the Adelaide Oval by allowing Port to avoid the wooden spoon to the joy of 25,000 yokels and the general despair of my neighbours who had to hear all about it while inanimate objects were smashed.
Thank god that's over. Now back to our host...
Y'know, the other day I got a letter asking me to renew my membership. I wrote back and said "you can do what a duck can’t do, stick your bill up your arse". But even in these dark times there have been some players who have given us joy with their performance. There are also quite a lot who got votes just because we had to hand out five every week.
And so that brings us to the most prestigious award in Australian Rules Football. Like the Brownlow, Norm Smith and Coleman Medals added together, multiplied by the Bluey Truscott and divided by the Liston Medal, it’s time to add another name to the honour roll of great footballers.
And to present this award it gives me the greatest pleasure to welcome the man who you, dear Demonblog readers and sympathisers, helped bring back to prominence by making the day in his honour one of the highest trending topics on Twitter. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Allen Jakovich.
[crowd rises for a five minute standing ovation]
"Even though the club shafted me by not making me one of the 150 Heroes, and even though they've shut up shop on the Hall Of Fame so that I can never be inducted I'm more than happy to be here today presenting the 7th edition of the medal struck in my honour way back in 2005.
There's been a lot of water under the bridge since then, and the six men who have lifted this award have had six seasons ranging from magnificent, to pretty good, to just better than the rubbish he was playing alongside.
So this morning, to a man who wore my jumper number as a kid I say congratulations to Brent Moloney on your victory. After party is on Fitzroy Street."
Brent Moloney is unable to be here today, the owners of Demonblog would like to accept the medal on his behalf. We'll put it alongside the other six that have never been claimed.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal
35 - Brent Moloney
32 - Colin Sylvia
27 - Jordie McKenzie
24 - Stefan Martin, Jack Watts
18 - James Frawley
16 - Mark Jamar, Jack Trengove
15 - Colin Garland
14 - Joel Macdonald
11 - Ricky Petterd, Jared Rivers, Jeremy Howe (WINNER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year), Nathan Jones
10 - Jordan Gysberts
8 - Brad Green
6 - Luke Tapscott, Lynden Dunn, Sam Blease
5 - Rohan Bail
4 - Michael Evans, Tom $cully
3 - Matthew Bate, Clint Bartram, Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah
2 - Neville Jetta
1 - Addam Maric, Tom McDonald
Thanks Jako, and you know Jako I was just hanging around Chapel Street the other day, sipping lattes and checking out the action when I pivoted a bit and who did I see. Another ex-Demon forward, Brad Miller! "Brad!", I said "What's your season been like?"
"Well I’ve got some good news and bad news for you" he said, pulling a copy of the league ladder out of his pocket.
"The bad news is that my team finished one spot above yours on the ladder".
“That is bad" I said "What's the good news?”
“Well Rodney, see my wife Pia?”
I said "yeah!"
He yelled "The good news is I'm rooting her" and leapt onto the Route 78 tram.
Anyway, that's it. The night's over. You can piss off home.
But first I'd like to sing a song that I just came up with. Ready? Here we go.
"I wrote a letter to Chris J**d. I put the address Crunt, Carlton. He got it."
That's all I know of that one. Now, we're finishing the night with good old fashioned Aussie limericks. Who’s got one? Come on up.
There once was a coach from Port Power
The draft for good players he would scour
He played forwards down back
Til the place was off track
Now we’ll never be a superpower"
"There once was a day in Geelong
With everything that could went wrong
The coach got the sack
Schwab was asked to come back
And nobody sang the theme song"
There was a young star named Tom
Who took to the game with aplomb
We rorted the draft
Then he gave us the shaft
Now we hope his career will bomb"
Goodbye tax dodgers, see you again next year.
Hi, my name is Supermercado. Thanks for joining us this morning, and let me tell you we invited a sparkling lineup of guests to present awards at this event.From UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to Prime Minister of Iceland Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir and the guy from the Deep Heat ad they were all on board until mysteriously pulling out in the hours after the Geelong game. Ban Ki cited some conflict in Libya, Jóhanna stopped returning my calls and the Deep Heat coach rang to say he refused to be associated with such a shambolic brand as the MFC but did advise me to breathe.... from the core.
So, instead we asked one of Australia's most loved, and cheapest to book, entertainers to join us - although he would like to point out that he’s got commitments to the Frogsack tour at 8pm and if we’re not done by then he’s just going to walk out.
Ladies and Gentlemen, a man so offensive that if you put him on the AFL Match Review Panel nobody would be able to tell the difference I give you Mr. Rodney Rude.
[enters to muted applause]
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. And ladies, don't you hate it ladies when you work your arse off to finish last in order to draft the next big thing and two years later he ditches you for a million bucks a year to go to a softcock expansion team? I hate that. Anyway trendsetters, this morning we're gathered to look back at what was a long, difficult and often traumatic season for the Melbourne Football Club. You know, just before the ball was bounced for the first time in Round 1 my grandfather said something to me....
[audience member] "How's your grandfather?"
Oh mate me grandfather's depressed, he's the last man alive who can remember Melbourne being a premiership side.In fact he's depressed because he's just been in court for stealing two pies at the football. "Were you gonna eat the pies?" said the judge. "No your worship" said my grandfather, I was going to hollow them out and put them over me ears so I couldn’t hear that dickhead playing the trumpet.
But that's enough from you mate. Yeah I recognise you. I saw you outside Gate 1 before the Gold Coast game trying to slurp the Kaiser’s Sausage! So shut your mouth mucus and let's move on to our first award of the evening.
Like handing out an award for wicketkeeper of the year there's only so many contenders who can be in contention for being the number one ruckman in a team. That's why it took us five years to invent this award so we had to come up with retrospective winners for the first few seasons.
Anyway this season two men went to battle for this one, and despite a brief fortnight when the fool who runs this site prematurely declared Jamar the winner only for him to be over-run, the winner for the first time is in fact The Stefan Martin Experience.
2011 Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year
24 - Stefan Martin
16 - Mark Jamar
0 - Max Gawn, Jack Fitzpatrick
DNP - Robert Campbell, Jake Spencer
Honour Roll
2005 - Jeff White
2006 - Jeff White (2)
2007 - Jeff White (3)
2008 - Paul Johnson
2009 - Mark Jamar ($3)
2010 - Mark Jamar (2) ($1.50 fav)
2011 - Stefan Martin ($30)
Congratulations to the SME. And now a tribute to you, the Demonblog readership, as we name our commenter of the year. From that small but dedicated group of people who not only take the time to read the garbage that is spewed out here on a weekly basis but also to write good, bad and often abusive comments we have one standout this year.
Lyall St Kilda we congratulate you. Your rants deserve a blog of their own, and were this not a one man operation run out of a bank vault in Snowtown we'd hire you as a columnist.
However a special place will always be reserved in all our hearts for Anonymous who tore through place leaving comments of such baffling beauty that it’s hard to narrow it down to his top five..
Top 6 Anonymous Comments for Season 2011
1. This may sound a little strange but last night they were like the Hammersmith Flyover, fast, crowded and to the point. Those bobmers crashed down, see the bobmers crash down. (every time I see Essendon play now all I can think of is "see the bobmers crash down" - Mercado)
2. as the chris morris-armando ianucci invented character alan partridge would say they looked like cattle riding bikes from the air
3. after the 20 minute mark of the first quarter they only passed to Melbourne players when they couldn't find a couple of north players in the clear, I really hope there's no betting scandal, inexplicable difference to the first 20 minutes and the garradine swine of the last three quarters.
4. I'm All Right Jack is a 1959 British comedy film directed and produced by John and Roy Boulting from a script by Frank Harvey, John Boulting and Alan Hackney, based on the novel Private Life by Hackney. The film is a sequel to the Boulting's 1956 film Private's Progress, and Ian Carmichael, Dennis Price, Richard Attenborough, Terry-Thomas, and Miles Malleson all reprise their characters from the earlier film. Peter Sellers played one of his best-known roles, as the trade union shop steward Fred Kite, and won a Best Actor Award from the British Academy. The rest of the cast included many well-known British comedy actors of the time.
I am going to watch this on GEM in one hour's time hoping that Sellers uses the phrase "Garradine Swine", otherwise the last thirty years have affected my memory a little.
I predict we will demolish St.Kilda as the odds are against us and there is a lot of cash to win for a reasonable investment.
5. Mr Crossland, a german man, was dining with the Queen Mother when she stated "I always find beans so nourishing, do you grow beans in your native Germany, Mr Crossland" to which Mr. Crossland replied "shut up, don't you know I am a highly intelligent man?"
6. the dees have been twunted by a honda
Enjoy it while you can kids, anonymous comments are out the door next season. Sorry if that sounds rude but..
[audience member] "How rude are 'ya Rodney?"
Ohh not as rude as Melbourne's record against Victorian teams under Dean Bailey.Shut up mate, I've seen you somewhere. I know where I saw you, you were hanging around Stephen Milne's house waiting for sloppy seconds! I'll be watching you mate.
But enough of that, at this moment I'm very pleased to welcome to the stage the man that the next award is named after. 43 games, 29 goals and one of the few pleasant things ever to come out of Moorabbin. Ladies and gentlemen a big Doncaster Venue 28 welcome for Jeff Hilton
2011 Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year
11 - Jeremy Howe
6 - Sam Blease, Luke Tapscott
4 - Michael Evans
1 - Tom McDonald
0 - Jack Fitzpatrick, Max Gawn, Daniel Nicholson
DNP - Lucas Cook, Troy Davis, Kelvin Lawrence, Cameron Johnston
Congratulations to Jeremy who joins a lengthy honour roll of players. One of whom even turned out to be good.
2005 - No players eligible.
2006 - Matthew Bate
2007 - Michael Newton
2008 - Cale Morton
2009 - Jack Grimes ($4 fav)
2010 - Tom Scully ($5)
2011 - Jeremy Howe ($30)
Wait, ladies and gentlemen. We've just got some breaking news through from Sydney. Tom $cully has agreed to join GWS, and the owners of Demonblog have taken the unprecedented step of stripping him of his 2010 award a'la Milli Vanilli at the Grammys.
And so say all of us Tom,
Lucky you'll have your millions of dollars to keep you warm at night. Let's try that honour board again.
2005 - No players eligible.
2006 - Matthew Bate
2007 - Michael Newton
2008 - Cale Morton
2009 - Jack Grimes ($4 fav)
2010 - [AWARD REVOKED]
2011 - Jeremy Howe ($30)
Much better.
Thanks Jeff, feel free to grab a floppy $5 hot dog on your way out care of our friends at Delaware North catering. And how appropriate that Tom will be playing at Skoda Stadium next year, because his knee is about as reliable as a Skoda.Anyway, back to players who have decided on loyalty over fat bags of cash. Remember, Tom McDonald and Jack Fitzpatrick are still eligible to win next year’s award because they debuted in the last month of the season.
Speaking of young Tom McDonald I was talking to him just the other day. I said "Tom, you're not the first McDonald to play for this club. What McHappened to that other McBloke who used to play for this great McClub?" "McJunior!" he cried, "I never met the McLegend but everybody tells me it was a McFarce that he got forced out of the door by sacked McCoach at the end of last McSeason".
"You’re McRight!" I cried, "these McClowns wouldn’t know the 4.32 footy special to Glen Waverley was up 'em unless it tooted the horn. Who's going to be next!"
"Joel Macdonald isn't looking all that McSecure” he said. "That’s McBullshit!" I screamed back at him, “First Matthew McWarnock demands a trade and now you're trying to push the McMadman from the North out the door after him. That’s McMadness!"
"I know Rodney" he said, "but if I can somehow engineer him to get the McArse that means I'll probably play 20 games next season". And you don’t get better McLogic than that. Just then Anthony McDonald walked in the room and it got so bloody confusing I just let the whole thing go.
And now, on that note it's time for our next award. One where we pay tribute to the defenders, the men who have spent the last five years under the biggest siege since Hitler had a crack at Russia. Men whose feats of bravery and courage during this time are only matched by the thousand yard stares that they’ve developed from having been under attack for so long.
It's time to add another name to the honour roll of great backmen to have served this club. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome to the stage one of the most reported players in Melbourne Football Club history. 89 games, 8 goals, 12 matches suspended - a big hand for Mr. Marcus Seecamp.
2011 Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year
18 - James Frawley
15 - Colin Garland
14 - Joel Macdonald
11 - Jared Rivers
6 - Luke Tapscott, Sam Blease
3 - Jack Grimes
1 - Tom McDonald
0 - Matthew Warnock, Jamie Bennell, James Strauss
Congratulations Chip for becoming the first man ever to win this award three times in a row. We look forward to seeing his defensive work at the heart of this team for many years to come.
2005 - Nathan Carroll and Ryan Ferguson (shared)
2006 - Jared Rivers
2007 - Paul Wheatley
2008 - Matthew Whelan
2009 - James Frawley ($22)
2010 - James Frawley (2) ($3.50)
2011 - James Frawley (3) ($4)
And now, back to our glorious proprietor for a look at what we had to go through in 2011.
That was the season that was
Pre-Season Preview - In which I picked us to finish 7th before losing my nerve and changing to 11th by the time of the pre-season update post.
Intra-Club game
A day at the footy.. kinda (by Eskimo)
In which Eskimo cast the first eye of the season over our squad and discovered that at least we could win when we played against ourselves.
NAB Cup Round 1 vs Adelaide/Port Adelaide
THE STREAK
In which we snapped our near ten year filth record at Football Park by winning two glorified practice matches under baffling rules against sides who turned out to be not very good at all in the end.
NAB Cup Quarter Final vs Essendon
Keep Feeling (Agitation)
In which we turned out another in a long line of garbage performances at Docklands and contrived to make Essendon fans feel so good about themselves that they gave a standing ovation to the coach for winning a pre-season match.
Practice Match vs Brisbane
Let the good times roll
In which we lost to early wooden spoon contenders at a 95% empty Princes Park and my blood pressure went through the roof.
Round 1 vs Sydney
It's a weird and wonderful world
In which we were 73 points worse off than our last start against the Swans at the MCG but nobody cared because we still pocketed two points.
Round 2 vs Hawthorn
National Shite Day
In which a premiership contender turned up and put us back in our box with brutality. The sound of expectations bursting nearly deafened large sections of the crowd.
Round 3 vs Brisbane
Cute, Fluffy and not even slightly Ruthless
In which we welcomed the winless Lions to the MCG and faced an almighty struggle to beat them. Better than the practice match at least. Also in which my talkback radio rant about perceived misuse of Jack Watts ended up in the Finey's Final Siren promo, nearly causing me to crash my car on Bay Street, Port Melbourne when hearing it for the first time.
Round 4 vs Gold Coast
Advanced, Forthright, Insignificant
In which I travelled to the Gabba to watch us flog a bunch of 14-year-old rookies and go home disappointed despite winning by 90 points.
Round 5 vs Nobody
In which we sportingly had the bye for the Easter long weekend and I went to Omeo.
Round 6 vs West Coast
Spaghetti Western
In which expectations unfairly raised based on two wins against rubbish teams were burst for a second time when the Eagles unsportingly refused to let us get the ball inside 50 for most of the night. Cue Dean Bailey Media Frenzy pt. 1
Round 7 vs Adelaide
Crisis Management 101
In which the First Media Frenzy was buried in a shallow grave care of a thumping, runaway victory over hapless interstate visitors. Also in which an injury free first six weeks of the season ended and an era of black death style plague was ushered in.
Round 8 vs North Melbourne
Shit Sandwich
In which we belied the injury crisis and played like we were good for a quarter before it all went horribly wrong. Juice Newton seen having the time of his life for the first 20 minutes before regular service was resumed. Injury crisis got worse.
Round 9 vs St Kilda
If you tolerate this your children will be next
When we played the Saints back into form after their horror start to the season. A late flurry of junktime goals made it look more respectable than it otherwise deserved to be. Injury crisis continued to get worse.
Round 10 vs Carlton
Zombie Nation
In which we set up to try and go into quarter time at nil-all and it suprisingly didn't work. Channel Seven executives kill themselves en masse at what we did to their ratings, and in a rare show of solidarity the media supports them by launching Bailey Frenzy II.
Round 11 vs Essendon
Violent Mood Swings
In which Bailey Frenzy II ended in the same timeframe as the original. The wobbling Bombers were put to what counts as the sword for us, yet somehow managed to end the season having beaten Geelong and making the finals. Not that it did them much good. We could have been thrashed just as convincingly by the Blues if we'd finished 8th.
Round 12 vs Collingwood
One Hit Wonders
In which we were briefly teased a 2010 style performance before the inevitable thrashing at the hands of the reigning premiers. We'd almost beaten them twice the year before you know..
Round 13 vs Fremantle
Rollercoaster of Love
In which an injury riddled Dockers side gave us cheek for a half before folding like a house of cards and being thrashed. Misguided excitement suddenly injected back into the supporter base.
Round 14 vs Richmond
Let them burn and we shall all clap our hands
In which we won what was billed as an "early Elimination Final" and suddenly started to think we were a chance of making the finals. Both sides would provide little or nothing of interest for the next month and a half and they'd eventually finish above us.
Round 15 vs Footscray
Dog Day Aftermath
In which we went into a Friday night as favourites, against a side on their knees, ready to consolidate our place amongst the challengers for eight. And were royally thrashed. Another week, another shit team played back into form.
Round 16 vs Nobody
In which we got a week to stew on the fiasco against the Dogs whilst simultaneously shitting ourselves at the prospect of losing to Port.
Round 17 vs Port Adelaide
The thriller in (conditions resembling) Manilla
In which we pocketed big bucks for selling our home game to Darwin and managed to hold on against the worst team in the land despite having to hold quarter breaks in a room usually used to store meat.
Round 18 vs Hawthorn
The light at the end of the tunnel (is the light of an oncoming train)
In which our "month from hell" started in poor fashion. Still, didn't matter because as long as we won our last three we'd made the finals. As long as we didn't totally lose the plot by getting thrashed in Geelong at least..
Round 19 vs Geelong
'In the dark times will there be singing? Yes, there will be singing about the dark times
In which I said "oh dear" and took the V-Line train home with a look of abject shock. This time the Bailey Frenzy lasted about 18 hours and ended up with him getting the boot. Somehow this result won the CEO a contract extension. Work that out.
Round 20 vs Carlton
Bloodsport for all
In which we donned novelty headbands in honour of a new coach and saw another shambolic performance against a quality side.
Round 21 vs West Coast
Shaky minus ladder
In which the game that before the season seemed to be our best chance to get a win at Docklands suddenly became another excuse for a good team to tee off on us. Ricky Petterd's mum featured heavily in the post match dissections.
Round 22 vs Richmond
Be strong, it's almost over
In which we finally managed to lose a game by under a million points. Sadly it was against one of our fellow rubbish teams and absolutely ended any slight mathmatical hope we had of making the eight. Why did we still have any hope?
Round 23 vs Gold Coast
It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again
In which we went far too close to losing to the Queensland Under 18's than you'd like and stayed in the race for a 9th placed finish. Coincidentally the same day that everybody said "why in god's name would you have a top 9?"
Round 24 vs Port Adelaide
Viney's Final Siren
In which we helped welcome football back to the Adelaide Oval by allowing Port to avoid the wooden spoon to the joy of 25,000 yokels and the general despair of my neighbours who had to hear all about it while inanimate objects were smashed.
Thank god that's over. Now back to our host...
Y'know, the other day I got a letter asking me to renew my membership. I wrote back and said "you can do what a duck can’t do, stick your bill up your arse". But even in these dark times there have been some players who have given us joy with their performance. There are also quite a lot who got votes just because we had to hand out five every week.And so that brings us to the most prestigious award in Australian Rules Football. Like the Brownlow, Norm Smith and Coleman Medals added together, multiplied by the Bluey Truscott and divided by the Liston Medal, it’s time to add another name to the honour roll of great footballers.
And to present this award it gives me the greatest pleasure to welcome the man who you, dear Demonblog readers and sympathisers, helped bring back to prominence by making the day in his honour one of the highest trending topics on Twitter. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Allen Jakovich.
[crowd rises for a five minute standing ovation]
"Even though the club shafted me by not making me one of the 150 Heroes, and even though they've shut up shop on the Hall Of Fame so that I can never be inducted I'm more than happy to be here today presenting the 7th edition of the medal struck in my honour way back in 2005.
There's been a lot of water under the bridge since then, and the six men who have lifted this award have had six seasons ranging from magnificent, to pretty good, to just better than the rubbish he was playing alongside.
So this morning, to a man who wore my jumper number as a kid I say congratulations to Brent Moloney on your victory. After party is on Fitzroy Street."
Brent Moloney is unable to be here today, the owners of Demonblog would like to accept the medal on his behalf. We'll put it alongside the other six that have never been claimed.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal
35 - Brent Moloney
32 - Colin Sylvia
27 - Jordie McKenzie
24 - Stefan Martin, Jack Watts
18 - James Frawley
16 - Mark Jamar, Jack Trengove
15 - Colin Garland
14 - Joel Macdonald
11 - Ricky Petterd, Jared Rivers, Jeremy Howe (WINNER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year), Nathan Jones
10 - Jordan Gysberts
8 - Brad Green
6 - Luke Tapscott, Lynden Dunn, Sam Blease
5 - Rohan Bail
4 - Michael Evans, Tom $cully
3 - Matthew Bate, Clint Bartram, Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah
2 - Neville Jetta
1 - Addam Maric, Tom McDonald
Thanks Jako, and you know Jako I was just hanging around Chapel Street the other day, sipping lattes and checking out the action when I pivoted a bit and who did I see. Another ex-Demon forward, Brad Miller! "Brad!", I said "What's your season been like?""Well I’ve got some good news and bad news for you" he said, pulling a copy of the league ladder out of his pocket. "The bad news is that my team finished one spot above yours on the ladder".
“That is bad" I said "What's the good news?”
“Well Rodney, see my wife Pia?”
I said "yeah!"
He yelled "The good news is I'm rooting her" and leapt onto the Route 78 tram.
Anyway, that's it. The night's over. You can piss off home.
But first I'd like to sing a song that I just came up with. Ready? Here we go.
"I wrote a letter to Chris J**d. I put the address Crunt, Carlton. He got it."
That's all I know of that one. Now, we're finishing the night with good old fashioned Aussie limericks. Who’s got one? Come on up.
There once was a coach from Port PowerThe draft for good players he would scour
He played forwards down back
Til the place was off track
Now we’ll never be a superpower"
"There once was a day in GeelongWith everything that could went wrong
The coach got the sack
Schwab was asked to come back
And nobody sang the theme song"
There was a young star named TomWho took to the game with aplomb
We rorted the draft
Then he gave us the shaft
Now we hope his career will bomb"
Goodbye tax dodgers, see you again next year.
Sunday, 4 September 2011
Viney's Final Siren
Nothing is ever easy around this place. You know that, I know that and the city of Adelaide certainly knows that because they've been taking the piss out of us every time we've gone then for a decade. Still, even if you started to doubt it as the game got closer surely you thought somewhere, deep in the far recesses of your Melbourne Supporter Depression Syndrome addled brain that this was going to be the day we'd finally do the right thing in South Australia.
First and foremost Port have been utterly shite this year. We were hardly convincing in beating them in Darwin but that was easy to put down to the conditions. Secondly it wasn't being played at Football Park where we might have won some Wobbies World glorified practice matches under invented rules earlier in the year but realistically hadn't fired a shot at for a decade (Chell, if you're still reading I'll save you the blushes of yet another round of talk about THAT goal in '01, suffice to say it's still the best thing to happen in that city since white settlement).
A + B = four points right? Far too easy an equation. I couldn't work out whether or not the fact that they were still a chance of avoiding the spoon helped us or not. Bad news for us that the only good thing the introduction of the new teams has produced, the devaluing of 'winning' the spoon, turned out to be our downfall in the end. As profitable as rorting the draft turned out to be (in getting Trengove and two kids courtesy of the $cully Bequest) it must be nice to actually want your team to avoid the humiliation of finishing last instead of punting it home like the last 100m of the Cox Plate.
For more evidence of why we couldn't possible lose, see also Port's shattering fadeout against the Bombers last week. If that had of been us the whole place would have gone into meltdown and we'd have showed up the next week and copped nine goals to nil in the first quarter. That's what you'd expect out of Port given that they've spent most of the year doing exactly that but of course today they decide to be spurred onto victory in front of a crowd featuring 10,000 people who haven't been to a game all season but decide to turn up just because the match wasn't being played at the Bulgarian government constructed concrete jungle at Westlakes.
You'd have thought that getting away from Football Park would have helped us, considering the absolute spasticity that strikes the entire club the moment we walk through the door of the place but sadly it turned out moving the game to Adelaide Oval didn't help us in the slightest. In fact if you're the sort of person who believes in crowd atmosphere having any bearing on things it probably condemned us. The presence of 29,000 toothless simpletons and bearded ex-dock workers (who Channel Seven insisted on highlighting repeatedly when they weren't bouncing the camera angles around like an episode of NYPD Blue) certainly didn't hurt them in the umpiring stakes.
But you know what, being rorted by umpires who are too scared that some filth is going to smash the windows of his car doesn't come close to explaining why today was so disappointing. I'd love to say things about how GC's wooden spoon and pick four is just another one of their concessions from the AFL, but despite some of the most baffling decisions ever, an umpire who couldn't bounce the ball straight and wasn't even being taken seriously by Port players by the end, we could have and should have still won today - and that's what makes this even more of a dog vomit heavy slopfest than it would have been otherwise.
How's that set of circumstances that would catapult us into the finals looking now? Smash Richmond, smash Gold Coast, smash Port, get knocked out by Carlton. Seemed logical enough but clearly didn't take into account the massive smell of fish that's coming off this club at the moment. It's a shattered lump of a place and unless we either land the coaching or playing free agent signing of the year I'll be open mouth gobsmacked if we don't lose 5000 members. One thing you can be pleased with is that surely this year the AGM is going to be more of a chair throwing battle royale than a gigantic sporting circle jerk like it has been every other year in recent times.
The worst thing is that if I look at our team on paper I'm still convinced they're not that bad, but you're talking to the guy who went into '08 thinking '07 was an abberation that would be corrected en route to an '09 flag tilt. For all the negativity on here maybe I'm not actually critical enough about our playing list? Or maybe they're decent enough in isolation but can't put it together as a team? Maybe somebody shagged a witch during the 1964 Grand Final post match celebrations?
Tell you what I am critical about and that's the inability of this club to win the centre clearances when it really matters. I know that there's no mystical formula that you can apply to suddenly start dominating - or you'd probably be playing a Qualifying Final this week - but for god's sake is there any danger next year that we might at least attempt to put the brakes on other clubs winning out of there so easily? I don't care if they have to lock it up for ten bounces but the amount of times this season that we've won a tap and had it go straight to an opposition player who roosts it forward is a disgrace. Jamar had 40 taps today - between Moloney, Jones and McKenzie we would have had a mere handful of quality clearances.
And there's the problem. 40 taps to Jamar, dominating Brogan and Lobbe in the air and all of Moloney, Jones and McKenzie being amongst our best players but almost every centre bounce, or secondary bounce, saw Port winning the ball. Their massive ineptitude saved us from the sort of total disaster that would have occured if we'd played like that against a good club - and with their slightly vaunted key forwards doing nothing it was the best invitation you'll ever get to steamroll somebody. And we cocked it up.
Butcher, the new Darren Cuthbertson, did absolutely nothing and will probably have to stay at Port now that he's been exposed as a flash in the pan. Ironically he wasn't alone, all their tall forwards were well held (at least until Westhoff dicked us in the last quarter) but that didn't stop them scoring goals while we were botching chance after chance down the other end. Not that our talls were doing much either - Watts and Green barely touched it in the first half and by the time Howe got into the game he spent 20 minutes being ripped off by the tossers who were umpiring.
We might have been in a better place at half time if we'd taken half the chances we'd been offered to run away with it. Don't forget that in the end the difference in the Port game was the first quarter and Emo Maric going off his nut with crumb (doesn't that seem like a long time ago?). We could have done with some legitimate crumb today but it's seemingly still not the done thing at this club - please address this at the draft table for god's sake. As much as I loved seeing Howe snap one around his body that's an additional bonus, not what should be happening every week.
As it was the ball was leaking out of our forward line as soon as it went there - thanks to Port for finally deciding to try forward pressure six months into the season - and even when we did have chances we were muffing them. At the other end they had guys booting torps after the siren. If I'd shaken a magic 8 ball at that point it would have come back ALL SIGNS POINT TO NO.
It was not a day to be Sam Blease. In a year where the "profile in the paper" curse has taken out half the squad (and Daniel Nicholson has never been the same again) it seems that the Rising Star nomination curse has taken another a victim - and it's got The Gizz twice in two years so it's a potent bastard. Poor kid was absolutely pox. It didn't help that he got dropped head first onto a cricket pitch but he was already heading towards a shocker. Eventually got subbed out with five frees against and one behind where he could probably have handed off for a goal. Watch today's tape once and burn it kid, last week was where it's at. Probably doesn't play Round 1 next year but there's a big future there - especially if Grimes necks himself 20 minutes into the season again. Viney said he had a migraine in the press conference, I hope that came from being poleaxed on centre wicket and wasn't there before the game because if so he should either not have played or come on as sub.
Tell you who I did like in the first half - Matthew Bate. Never thought I'd say that again but he was good in the middle and handy around the ground. Drifted away in the second half but for the first time it became apparent how he's been managing to rack up 25+ touches in the VFL so often. I've got a soft spot for Old Bate, and even though he faded away in the second half I hope we keep him - he's never the answer to our chronic issues in the middle of the ground but he could definitely do something off half forward if given a decent chance and not shuffled in and out of the side and played as sub every second week. Still don't know why he got the boot after being one of the few people to come out of the Geelong debacle with any credit but who am I to argue with this mighty football club.
Poor old Sad Panda Morton saw another 50k slashed off his 'wait until the end of the year' contract price. He was pretty good in the first quarter to be fair, and I could have almost worked him into my votes at that point for want of five good players but from then on he was almost completely unsighted other than a couple of hamfisted efforts late in the game. Keep him (under suicide watch) for next season if he's keen but if [new coach] doesn't make his first act to go over and start shaking him vigourously and screaming in his face I'll be very disappointed. Also feel free to sign up a sponsorship with KFC and force feed him some of those burgers where the bun is replaced with pieces of chicken.
Another thing that shit me up the wall about today, and helped contribute as much to our demise as farce umpiring, rubbish forward structure and getting killed out of the centre, is the amount of times the Port players were allowed to run free to take a kick or a handball 20m clear of an opponent. Most of the time they cocked it up because they are not actually any good (I know the feeling) but give them enough chances and they're going to eventually score. Seems like we've been here before in the last five years? About 50 times to be precise.
Meanwhile at the other end we've got Jack Fitzpatrick playing the worst debut game since Isaac Weetra and Tom McDonald hitting the post with one of the shonkiest kicks at goal ever seen on the Australian mainland. McDonald was ok down back, and I'm certainly not expecting him to kick set shots but can anyone explain how Fitz booted five for Casey last week? I know they were slaughtering Preston and even I might have got on the end of one if I'd stayed out there long enough but his kicking style is heinous. It was almost Spencil-esque the way he looked down for an eternity before putting ball to boot, and usually spraying it. Good on him getting a goal in the end but in the spirit of playing at the Adelaide Oval all I will say is Michael Clark.
I'm not putting him in the Weetra/Bode division yet but I'd rather not see him in the ones again until at least halfway through next year. Inauspicious doesn't quite cover it. Why was he playing anyway? Ok he kicked five last week but surely if there was going to be a third tall played we owed it to MAXIMUM GAWN to give him another go. Would have been the perfect time to start Jamar at FF. Don't tell me we're trying to make up for the karma of destroying Casey's finals chances a couple of years ago by removing all of our players by letting them keep Max this week (and fat lot of good that did against the other Port) instead of giving him another vital hitout against AFL players.
A point down at half time and you might of thought it couldn't get any worse. After all we'd ridden the sham umpiring, our own chronic lack of structure, the COMPLETE AND UTTER REFUSAL TO KICK TO A LEAD AT ANY TIME EVER and some absolute skill howlers to be just a point behind. When Jones got that first goal my blood pressure dropped from STROKE IMMINENT to STROKE LIKELY, before going all the way up to AMY WINEHOUSE when they got it straight out of the middle and goalled thirty seconds later. Half a decade of Melbourne style football summed up right there.
In the massive list of things I'm sick to death with at this club second only to not being able to kick-in properly (and didn't "Viney's Vacuum" prove to be the biggest one hit wonder since Tommy Tutone?) is when we spend what seems like hours (and often is) struggling to create a goal and then the other side go straight down the other end from the bounce and boot one without raising a sweat. Then to really rub it in they added another four without even the slightest hint of perspiration. It was almost like we were playing somebody half decent.
In the middle of this madness Howe was denied a mark that would get paid every other day of the week but that was about as good as it got because they were carving us at stoppages, running free all over the place and kicking goals at will.
It's at this point that, confronted with yet another Channel 7 shot of some codger in the crowd and Bruce McAvaney's 93rd anecdote about what happened to Glenelg in the 1968 SANFL Grand Final that I might have punched buggery out of a couch. For the first time. At the end of the game it still had dints in it but don't worry dear owner of said couch they seemed superficial and should even out eventually. All the structural damage was to my hand. Only Trengove's goal at the end saved me from total despair. And wasn't it good to hear the umpire call the Port Adelaide variety "Trengrove". Sack the man immediately. Send Tim Watson with him for calling our one "James". Abusing Bruce would be like killing Bambi but even he managed to call Dan Nicholson at some point despite him being in another state.
We managed to stage a brief revival in the first few minutes of the last quarter but from there on it was pure shambles. Garland's attempt to take on Westhoff and the subsequent dropping the ball decision (surely not holding the ball considering there wasn't a tackle) said it all about the way we're going at the moment. Next thing you know we're four goals down and the sound of people trying to bend their membership repeatedly so that it will snap in half starts to echo across the Melbourne metropolitan area.
Another belated comeback made it half interesting for a minute or so but we'd left it too late. Port avoided the spoon, we continued to be utter shite west of Bordertown and the Melbourne Football Club managed to turn the knife in the collective backs of their fans one last time before shutting up shop. What will the players do if they can't tweet about how disappointed they are, pledging to do better next time?
Bailey would have been at home pissing himself laughing in front of the TV. You have to laugh. Unless you're busy scaring the neighbours by screaming abuse at the top of your voice. I reckon I topped this guy's performance today. Thank god there was nobody there to record it.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Brent Moloney
4 - Jordie McKenzie
3 - Jack Trengove
2 - Matthew Bate
1 - Nathan Jones
Apologies to Martin, Howe, Bail, Jamar, Rivers and Frawley.
Final Leaderboard
Congratulations to Beamer who stormed to victory with an undisputed BOG, removing any danger of a 3, 2 or 1 vote performance and the requisite teeth gnashing and guilt about having him narrowly win, lose or draw the most tainted award in AFL Footy. Beware sir, there's a reason nobody has ever won it twice - ask Green what it did to him this year.
Frawley holds on for back-to-back wins in the Seecamp while Howe takes advantage of Blease's horror afternoon and Tapscott's green vest to hang on to the Hilton in his own right.
A word too for McKenzie who managed to finish just seven votes shy in third despite missing most of the first half of the season. Clearly there's a fetish at play here so expect him to poll well next season too.
35 - Brent Moloney (WINNER: Allen Jakovich Medal for Player of the Year)
32 - Colin Sylvia
27 - Jordie McKenzie
24 - Stefan Martin (WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year), Jack Watts
18 - James Frawley (WINNER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
16 - Mark Jamar, Jack Trengove
15 - Colin Garland
14 - Joel Macdonald
11 - Ricky Petterd, Jared Rivers, Jeremy Howe (WINNER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year), Nathan Jones
10 - Jordan Gysberts
8 - Brad Green
6 - Luke Tapscott, Lynden Dunn, Sam Blease
5 - Rohan Bail
4 - Michael Evans, Tom Scully
3 - Matthew Bate, Clint Bartram, Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah
2 - Neville Jetta
1 - Addam Maric, Tom McDonald
Coaches Corner
There was always something unnerving about Viney coming out on the back of a battling win against the (eventual, thanks to us, sorry about that) wooden spooners and saying that he was considering changing his mind and applying for the job full time. Maybe wait and see if you can beat the worst (eventually second worst, thanks to us, sorry about that) team in the competition first?
It's hardly fair on him that he's been handed a gigantic steaming turd and been told to polish it but when he said from day one that he didn't want the job at the end of the year everyone was willing to sit back and let him go, with the understanding that he'd do his best and stand back at the end of the year.
Surely the job application was put through the shredder this afternoon and he gladly goes back to being the Development Coach (though given that we've gone backwards this year it's anybody's guess how much development is actually taking place) instead of formally applying and almost certainly being rejected. Given the absolute carnage that I'm convinced will be occuring with our assistant coaches when the new guy (whoever he may be) comes in he should probably be happy just to stay.
Not to say he wouldn't be a fine coach with a stable, non-mental playing group and the benefit of a pre-season but at the moment unless everybody else both experienced and senior assistants tell us to get stuffed I don't want to take the chance.
Unless it was some sort of rort in the road to springing Malthouse from the Pies, then I'm for it.
As for who it will actually be who bloody knows. Won't be Lyon (either of them), almost certainly won't be Laidley or Williams, probably won't be Eade and I'll eat my hat if Malthouse somehow manages to get out of the Westpac Centre and to another club without Eddie having him assassinated first. Whoever it is they're going to have a whale of a time trying to sort this mess out.
Ironically tonight I was flicking through the book about the Daniher brothers at somebody else's house, and naturally turning straight to the page marked in the index as MELBOURNE FOOTBALL CLUB it had Cam Schwab attempting to lure Neale to Melbourne only for the then Freo assistant coach to say he wasn't sure because the club was a shambles on and off the field. All was well that ended well, but 14 years later what's changed? Different shambleses, same vibe - and there's no Jeff White + absurd salary cap rorts coming over the horizon to save us next season.
Scull and Crossbones
Take your dirty money and piss off. In a season of unwanted distractions that saga has ranked only slightly below Baileygate in unbalancing us. I hope all the players who were carted out to testify what a fine upstanding citizen he was who, Abraham Lincoln style would never tell a lie, get the chance to belt him once each when we play them next year.
Of course if he comes out tomorrow and announces he's signed the above paragraph might disappear. But wouldn't you be slightly peeved if he put us through that whole year and then just signed anyway? Good thing it's not going to happen thanks to GWS being given the blank cheque from heaven to spend whatever they like, and they don't turn out to get value for money then who cares just go back to the league and ask for another handout.
Just don't take him on any pre-season tours of China in case he sooks it again. And Tom, if you're reading don't come out and say you were thinking of staying until some knob on the internet wrote mean things because we all know that will be an epic lie and [I think that's quite enough of this segment - legal department]
Was it worth it?
In that it gives me something to seethe about for six months yes. Also good for draft picks, but really how desperate are we to be thinking that going four picks in the higher in the mid teens is going to help us?
Final Thoughts
So for the seventh time we come to the end of the Demonblog season - and for the fifth in a row it's tinged with disappointment and/or outright depression. Thanks to all the readers, the commenters, the lurkers, the Twitterers, people who took an 'active interest' in the ads and all the opposition fans who come on here just to piss themselves laughing about what a shambles we are. To be fair I'd probably still be writing this as therapy even if nobody was reading but it's nice to know somebody else has half an interest.
If you're not entirely sick of the whole thing and wanting to forget it ever happened there'll be the annual year in review post on here sometime in the next week and I'll get around to doing a full update on Demonwiki as well.
After that actual posts will be scarcer than a Melbourne centre clearance so keep an eye on Twitter for any wildcard updates around trade week, the coaching change or the drafts and we'll get back into it with gusto again next year.
It's certainly been interesting...
First and foremost Port have been utterly shite this year. We were hardly convincing in beating them in Darwin but that was easy to put down to the conditions. Secondly it wasn't being played at Football Park where we might have won some Wobbies World glorified practice matches under invented rules earlier in the year but realistically hadn't fired a shot at for a decade (Chell, if you're still reading I'll save you the blushes of yet another round of talk about THAT goal in '01, suffice to say it's still the best thing to happen in that city since white settlement).
A + B = four points right? Far too easy an equation. I couldn't work out whether or not the fact that they were still a chance of avoiding the spoon helped us or not. Bad news for us that the only good thing the introduction of the new teams has produced, the devaluing of 'winning' the spoon, turned out to be our downfall in the end. As profitable as rorting the draft turned out to be (in getting Trengove and two kids courtesy of the $cully Bequest) it must be nice to actually want your team to avoid the humiliation of finishing last instead of punting it home like the last 100m of the Cox Plate.
For more evidence of why we couldn't possible lose, see also Port's shattering fadeout against the Bombers last week. If that had of been us the whole place would have gone into meltdown and we'd have showed up the next week and copped nine goals to nil in the first quarter. That's what you'd expect out of Port given that they've spent most of the year doing exactly that but of course today they decide to be spurred onto victory in front of a crowd featuring 10,000 people who haven't been to a game all season but decide to turn up just because the match wasn't being played at the Bulgarian government constructed concrete jungle at Westlakes.
You'd have thought that getting away from Football Park would have helped us, considering the absolute spasticity that strikes the entire club the moment we walk through the door of the place but sadly it turned out moving the game to Adelaide Oval didn't help us in the slightest. In fact if you're the sort of person who believes in crowd atmosphere having any bearing on things it probably condemned us. The presence of 29,000 toothless simpletons and bearded ex-dock workers (who Channel Seven insisted on highlighting repeatedly when they weren't bouncing the camera angles around like an episode of NYPD Blue) certainly didn't hurt them in the umpiring stakes.
But you know what, being rorted by umpires who are too scared that some filth is going to smash the windows of his car doesn't come close to explaining why today was so disappointing. I'd love to say things about how GC's wooden spoon and pick four is just another one of their concessions from the AFL, but despite some of the most baffling decisions ever, an umpire who couldn't bounce the ball straight and wasn't even being taken seriously by Port players by the end, we could have and should have still won today - and that's what makes this even more of a dog vomit heavy slopfest than it would have been otherwise.
How's that set of circumstances that would catapult us into the finals looking now? Smash Richmond, smash Gold Coast, smash Port, get knocked out by Carlton. Seemed logical enough but clearly didn't take into account the massive smell of fish that's coming off this club at the moment. It's a shattered lump of a place and unless we either land the coaching or playing free agent signing of the year I'll be open mouth gobsmacked if we don't lose 5000 members. One thing you can be pleased with is that surely this year the AGM is going to be more of a chair throwing battle royale than a gigantic sporting circle jerk like it has been every other year in recent times.
The worst thing is that if I look at our team on paper I'm still convinced they're not that bad, but you're talking to the guy who went into '08 thinking '07 was an abberation that would be corrected en route to an '09 flag tilt. For all the negativity on here maybe I'm not actually critical enough about our playing list? Or maybe they're decent enough in isolation but can't put it together as a team? Maybe somebody shagged a witch during the 1964 Grand Final post match celebrations?
Tell you what I am critical about and that's the inability of this club to win the centre clearances when it really matters. I know that there's no mystical formula that you can apply to suddenly start dominating - or you'd probably be playing a Qualifying Final this week - but for god's sake is there any danger next year that we might at least attempt to put the brakes on other clubs winning out of there so easily? I don't care if they have to lock it up for ten bounces but the amount of times this season that we've won a tap and had it go straight to an opposition player who roosts it forward is a disgrace. Jamar had 40 taps today - between Moloney, Jones and McKenzie we would have had a mere handful of quality clearances.
And there's the problem. 40 taps to Jamar, dominating Brogan and Lobbe in the air and all of Moloney, Jones and McKenzie being amongst our best players but almost every centre bounce, or secondary bounce, saw Port winning the ball. Their massive ineptitude saved us from the sort of total disaster that would have occured if we'd played like that against a good club - and with their slightly vaunted key forwards doing nothing it was the best invitation you'll ever get to steamroll somebody. And we cocked it up.
Butcher, the new Darren Cuthbertson, did absolutely nothing and will probably have to stay at Port now that he's been exposed as a flash in the pan. Ironically he wasn't alone, all their tall forwards were well held (at least until Westhoff dicked us in the last quarter) but that didn't stop them scoring goals while we were botching chance after chance down the other end. Not that our talls were doing much either - Watts and Green barely touched it in the first half and by the time Howe got into the game he spent 20 minutes being ripped off by the tossers who were umpiring.
We might have been in a better place at half time if we'd taken half the chances we'd been offered to run away with it. Don't forget that in the end the difference in the Port game was the first quarter and Emo Maric going off his nut with crumb (doesn't that seem like a long time ago?). We could have done with some legitimate crumb today but it's seemingly still not the done thing at this club - please address this at the draft table for god's sake. As much as I loved seeing Howe snap one around his body that's an additional bonus, not what should be happening every week.
As it was the ball was leaking out of our forward line as soon as it went there - thanks to Port for finally deciding to try forward pressure six months into the season - and even when we did have chances we were muffing them. At the other end they had guys booting torps after the siren. If I'd shaken a magic 8 ball at that point it would have come back ALL SIGNS POINT TO NO.
It was not a day to be Sam Blease. In a year where the "profile in the paper" curse has taken out half the squad (and Daniel Nicholson has never been the same again) it seems that the Rising Star nomination curse has taken another a victim - and it's got The Gizz twice in two years so it's a potent bastard. Poor kid was absolutely pox. It didn't help that he got dropped head first onto a cricket pitch but he was already heading towards a shocker. Eventually got subbed out with five frees against and one behind where he could probably have handed off for a goal. Watch today's tape once and burn it kid, last week was where it's at. Probably doesn't play Round 1 next year but there's a big future there - especially if Grimes necks himself 20 minutes into the season again. Viney said he had a migraine in the press conference, I hope that came from being poleaxed on centre wicket and wasn't there before the game because if so he should either not have played or come on as sub.
Tell you who I did like in the first half - Matthew Bate. Never thought I'd say that again but he was good in the middle and handy around the ground. Drifted away in the second half but for the first time it became apparent how he's been managing to rack up 25+ touches in the VFL so often. I've got a soft spot for Old Bate, and even though he faded away in the second half I hope we keep him - he's never the answer to our chronic issues in the middle of the ground but he could definitely do something off half forward if given a decent chance and not shuffled in and out of the side and played as sub every second week. Still don't know why he got the boot after being one of the few people to come out of the Geelong debacle with any credit but who am I to argue with this mighty football club.
Poor old Sad Panda Morton saw another 50k slashed off his 'wait until the end of the year' contract price. He was pretty good in the first quarter to be fair, and I could have almost worked him into my votes at that point for want of five good players but from then on he was almost completely unsighted other than a couple of hamfisted efforts late in the game. Keep him (under suicide watch) for next season if he's keen but if [new coach] doesn't make his first act to go over and start shaking him vigourously and screaming in his face I'll be very disappointed. Also feel free to sign up a sponsorship with KFC and force feed him some of those burgers where the bun is replaced with pieces of chicken.
Another thing that shit me up the wall about today, and helped contribute as much to our demise as farce umpiring, rubbish forward structure and getting killed out of the centre, is the amount of times the Port players were allowed to run free to take a kick or a handball 20m clear of an opponent. Most of the time they cocked it up because they are not actually any good (I know the feeling) but give them enough chances and they're going to eventually score. Seems like we've been here before in the last five years? About 50 times to be precise.
Meanwhile at the other end we've got Jack Fitzpatrick playing the worst debut game since Isaac Weetra and Tom McDonald hitting the post with one of the shonkiest kicks at goal ever seen on the Australian mainland. McDonald was ok down back, and I'm certainly not expecting him to kick set shots but can anyone explain how Fitz booted five for Casey last week? I know they were slaughtering Preston and even I might have got on the end of one if I'd stayed out there long enough but his kicking style is heinous. It was almost Spencil-esque the way he looked down for an eternity before putting ball to boot, and usually spraying it. Good on him getting a goal in the end but in the spirit of playing at the Adelaide Oval all I will say is Michael Clark.
I'm not putting him in the Weetra/Bode division yet but I'd rather not see him in the ones again until at least halfway through next year. Inauspicious doesn't quite cover it. Why was he playing anyway? Ok he kicked five last week but surely if there was going to be a third tall played we owed it to MAXIMUM GAWN to give him another go. Would have been the perfect time to start Jamar at FF. Don't tell me we're trying to make up for the karma of destroying Casey's finals chances a couple of years ago by removing all of our players by letting them keep Max this week (and fat lot of good that did against the other Port) instead of giving him another vital hitout against AFL players.
A point down at half time and you might of thought it couldn't get any worse. After all we'd ridden the sham umpiring, our own chronic lack of structure, the COMPLETE AND UTTER REFUSAL TO KICK TO A LEAD AT ANY TIME EVER and some absolute skill howlers to be just a point behind. When Jones got that first goal my blood pressure dropped from STROKE IMMINENT to STROKE LIKELY, before going all the way up to AMY WINEHOUSE when they got it straight out of the middle and goalled thirty seconds later. Half a decade of Melbourne style football summed up right there.
In the massive list of things I'm sick to death with at this club second only to not being able to kick-in properly (and didn't "Viney's Vacuum" prove to be the biggest one hit wonder since Tommy Tutone?) is when we spend what seems like hours (and often is) struggling to create a goal and then the other side go straight down the other end from the bounce and boot one without raising a sweat. Then to really rub it in they added another four without even the slightest hint of perspiration. It was almost like we were playing somebody half decent.
In the middle of this madness Howe was denied a mark that would get paid every other day of the week but that was about as good as it got because they were carving us at stoppages, running free all over the place and kicking goals at will.
It's at this point that, confronted with yet another Channel 7 shot of some codger in the crowd and Bruce McAvaney's 93rd anecdote about what happened to Glenelg in the 1968 SANFL Grand Final that I might have punched buggery out of a couch. For the first time. At the end of the game it still had dints in it but don't worry dear owner of said couch they seemed superficial and should even out eventually. All the structural damage was to my hand. Only Trengove's goal at the end saved me from total despair. And wasn't it good to hear the umpire call the Port Adelaide variety "Trengrove". Sack the man immediately. Send Tim Watson with him for calling our one "James". Abusing Bruce would be like killing Bambi but even he managed to call Dan Nicholson at some point despite him being in another state.
We managed to stage a brief revival in the first few minutes of the last quarter but from there on it was pure shambles. Garland's attempt to take on Westhoff and the subsequent dropping the ball decision (surely not holding the ball considering there wasn't a tackle) said it all about the way we're going at the moment. Next thing you know we're four goals down and the sound of people trying to bend their membership repeatedly so that it will snap in half starts to echo across the Melbourne metropolitan area.
Another belated comeback made it half interesting for a minute or so but we'd left it too late. Port avoided the spoon, we continued to be utter shite west of Bordertown and the Melbourne Football Club managed to turn the knife in the collective backs of their fans one last time before shutting up shop. What will the players do if they can't tweet about how disappointed they are, pledging to do better next time?
Bailey would have been at home pissing himself laughing in front of the TV. You have to laugh. Unless you're busy scaring the neighbours by screaming abuse at the top of your voice. I reckon I topped this guy's performance today. Thank god there was nobody there to record it.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Brent Moloney
4 - Jordie McKenzie
3 - Jack Trengove
2 - Matthew Bate
1 - Nathan Jones
Apologies to Martin, Howe, Bail, Jamar, Rivers and Frawley.
Final Leaderboard
Congratulations to Beamer who stormed to victory with an undisputed BOG, removing any danger of a 3, 2 or 1 vote performance and the requisite teeth gnashing and guilt about having him narrowly win, lose or draw the most tainted award in AFL Footy. Beware sir, there's a reason nobody has ever won it twice - ask Green what it did to him this year.
Frawley holds on for back-to-back wins in the Seecamp while Howe takes advantage of Blease's horror afternoon and Tapscott's green vest to hang on to the Hilton in his own right.
A word too for McKenzie who managed to finish just seven votes shy in third despite missing most of the first half of the season. Clearly there's a fetish at play here so expect him to poll well next season too.
35 - Brent Moloney (WINNER: Allen Jakovich Medal for Player of the Year)
32 - Colin Sylvia
27 - Jordie McKenzie
24 - Stefan Martin (WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year), Jack Watts
18 - James Frawley (WINNER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
16 - Mark Jamar, Jack Trengove
15 - Colin Garland
14 - Joel Macdonald
11 - Ricky Petterd, Jared Rivers, Jeremy Howe (WINNER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year), Nathan Jones
10 - Jordan Gysberts
8 - Brad Green
6 - Luke Tapscott, Lynden Dunn, Sam Blease
5 - Rohan Bail
4 - Michael Evans, Tom Scully
3 - Matthew Bate, Clint Bartram, Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah
2 - Neville Jetta
1 - Addam Maric, Tom McDonald
Coaches Corner
There was always something unnerving about Viney coming out on the back of a battling win against the (eventual, thanks to us, sorry about that) wooden spooners and saying that he was considering changing his mind and applying for the job full time. Maybe wait and see if you can beat the worst (eventually second worst, thanks to us, sorry about that) team in the competition first?
It's hardly fair on him that he's been handed a gigantic steaming turd and been told to polish it but when he said from day one that he didn't want the job at the end of the year everyone was willing to sit back and let him go, with the understanding that he'd do his best and stand back at the end of the year.
Surely the job application was put through the shredder this afternoon and he gladly goes back to being the Development Coach (though given that we've gone backwards this year it's anybody's guess how much development is actually taking place) instead of formally applying and almost certainly being rejected. Given the absolute carnage that I'm convinced will be occuring with our assistant coaches when the new guy (whoever he may be) comes in he should probably be happy just to stay.
Not to say he wouldn't be a fine coach with a stable, non-mental playing group and the benefit of a pre-season but at the moment unless everybody else both experienced and senior assistants tell us to get stuffed I don't want to take the chance.
Unless it was some sort of rort in the road to springing Malthouse from the Pies, then I'm for it.
As for who it will actually be who bloody knows. Won't be Lyon (either of them), almost certainly won't be Laidley or Williams, probably won't be Eade and I'll eat my hat if Malthouse somehow manages to get out of the Westpac Centre and to another club without Eddie having him assassinated first. Whoever it is they're going to have a whale of a time trying to sort this mess out.
Ironically tonight I was flicking through the book about the Daniher brothers at somebody else's house, and naturally turning straight to the page marked in the index as MELBOURNE FOOTBALL CLUB it had Cam Schwab attempting to lure Neale to Melbourne only for the then Freo assistant coach to say he wasn't sure because the club was a shambles on and off the field. All was well that ended well, but 14 years later what's changed? Different shambleses, same vibe - and there's no Jeff White + absurd salary cap rorts coming over the horizon to save us next season.
Scull and Crossbones
Take your dirty money and piss off. In a season of unwanted distractions that saga has ranked only slightly below Baileygate in unbalancing us. I hope all the players who were carted out to testify what a fine upstanding citizen he was who, Abraham Lincoln style would never tell a lie, get the chance to belt him once each when we play them next year.
Of course if he comes out tomorrow and announces he's signed the above paragraph might disappear. But wouldn't you be slightly peeved if he put us through that whole year and then just signed anyway? Good thing it's not going to happen thanks to GWS being given the blank cheque from heaven to spend whatever they like, and they don't turn out to get value for money then who cares just go back to the league and ask for another handout.
Just don't take him on any pre-season tours of China in case he sooks it again. And Tom, if you're reading don't come out and say you were thinking of staying until some knob on the internet wrote mean things because we all know that will be an epic lie and [I think that's quite enough of this segment - legal department]
Was it worth it?
In that it gives me something to seethe about for six months yes. Also good for draft picks, but really how desperate are we to be thinking that going four picks in the higher in the mid teens is going to help us?
Final Thoughts
So for the seventh time we come to the end of the Demonblog season - and for the fifth in a row it's tinged with disappointment and/or outright depression. Thanks to all the readers, the commenters, the lurkers, the Twitterers, people who took an 'active interest' in the ads and all the opposition fans who come on here just to piss themselves laughing about what a shambles we are. To be fair I'd probably still be writing this as therapy even if nobody was reading but it's nice to know somebody else has half an interest.
If you're not entirely sick of the whole thing and wanting to forget it ever happened there'll be the annual year in review post on here sometime in the next week and I'll get around to doing a full update on Demonwiki as well.
After that actual posts will be scarcer than a Melbourne centre clearance so keep an eye on Twitter for any wildcard updates around trade week, the coaching change or the drafts and we'll get back into it with gusto again next year.
It's certainly been interesting...
Sunday, 28 August 2011
It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again
Well, we made it. I'm well aware that there's another game to be played, but let's be entirely serious nobody will have any interest whatsoever in the game against Port, so that was the defacto last game of the season. We've made the end of the year without being carted off to a mental hospital. We've gone from hope to disappointment three or four times, taken a detour through utter despair and somehow managed to get another win before the end of the year despite having the wonkiest imaginable run to the finish line.
It goes without saying that had we somehow contrived to lose today that there would have been absolute murder. Maybe not at the ground where interest in going embarassingly off chops is usually reserved for a handful of nutters (and to those people, we salute you) but in the media, on talkback radio and - god forbid - the internet it would have been slaughter. Imagine the nutters on the Facebook page, there would have been enough bizarre comments to keep you going until next season.
But thankfully by virtue of the fact that we were playing a team with an average age of 15, who featured a second game full back with absolutely no idea what he was doing, a rugby player who has half an idea and a full forward who was there as a favour to his brother we got over the line. This despite them fumbling and bumbling around for four quarters and giving us every opportunity to smash them. Somehow despite all this, and the fact that we would have smashed them three months ago with eight minutes left we were still a chance of throwing away a five goal lead at three quarter time.
In true MFC fashion it couldn't just be a simple, comfortable run away drought breaking win against the 16th best side in the competition. Like that guy in the Hawaiian Ironman who lost the ability to run and wobbled over the line like a jellyfish we couldn't have been any less convincing if we tried.
It was always going to be dangerous, they've got kids not only playing for a spot in the team but a spot on the list - and nobody expected them to win so they could afford to play fearlessly. We were suddenly thrust into the unfamiliar role of red hot favourites after two months of being belted by all and sundry with only a battling win against notorious slappers Port Adelaide to show for it. Disaster loomed. If the enthusiasm of 3/4 of their team playing on the MCG for the first time carried too long we were every chance of dropping our bundle and having a nervous breakdown.
Now here's where it gets truly tragic. Forget the result, the chance of being the worst Victorian team or the possibility of dropping back to the foot of the Laughing Stock League for the third time this season, I wasted $10 on one last crack at my five year odyssey to finally correctly bet on the first goalkicker in an MFC match. This was no time to start mucking around and having Tom McNamara at 250-1 so I plumped for the favourite for the first time ever. Jurrah @9's it was. Hey big spender.
Green did his bit to keep it interesting by kicking off with a captain's point before some Gold Coast idiot missed a sitter to keep it alive. Eventually after ten minutes of garbage that you'd be shattered to watch at a suburban game we went from one end to the other in 2010 Baileyball-esque swashbuckle fashion and Watts hit the Jurrahcane with a pass to leave him with a shot that he'd kick nine times out of 10. And of course this was the one he missed.
Another glorious failure, and so we enter the 2012 season with the closest I've ever got being an "Any Other Player" (Lynden Dunn pre-shambolic mo) at $3.20 in 2008 before they started ripping off idiots like me and putting all the players on the board. Remember when I said that I'd given up gambling? Of course that didn't happen because I've got no will power, but you'll be pleased to know it's contained to the footy only and I'm not spending nights playing obscure Asian games involving dice and dominoes in sleazy gambling dens.
Despite the fact that we were continuing the theme of the season in being bashed to death in centre clearances we still managed to kick the first three. So far so good but how many dropped marks did we have in the forward line in the first quarter? Made a mockery of my theory that as long as we could get the ball forward that we'd be right. Cue the Fev bandwagon exploding all over the shop. Probably didn't help that Howe was the sub and they lost their nerve on having Tapscott down there after ten minutes. At least ol' bucket hands Howe can be reliably expected to hold a mark over his head which is more than you can say for any of our other forwards today. May he never wear a silly green vest again.
I'll be the last person to refuse an invitation to climb aboard the Brad Green Caravan of Character Assassination, but no doubt he had an absolute mare of a first quarter and 28 minutes of the second. Before he kicked that goal at the end of the first half I was thinking "oh god, here we go again". Despite my irrational (at times) support it did look odd when he was trying to lead for Bartram's set shot despite being about 11 metres away. We all know Clint can't kick a set shot to save himself but I would have thought expecting him to squeeze a pass to the top of the square with that degree of accuracy was probably the lesser option. He missed of course, but at least he scored which is I'm sure more than we would have got if he'd tried a dinky little pass. No doubt the umpires would have called play-on anyway.
Ahh the umpires. It's late enough in the year that I can ignore my own principles and whinge about them. I wasn't aware that in addition to ripping off every second pick in the 2010 draft and being allowed an uncontracted player from each club that they were also entitled to a truckload of mystifying decisions during their first visit to the MCG. What about the one where the Suns guy jumped into the SME in the ruck contest and pushed him out of the way with the ball nowhere near either of them and still somehow managed to end up getting the free himself? Or any of the 57 baffling ruck infringements, 55 of them which went the other way. I'm surprised Jamar didn't belt one of the umpires a'la Phil Carmen by the end it was such a farce. It evened out a bit in the end but my god feel free to have half a crack at getting it right sometime. Realistically I don't even blame the umpires most of the time, the league keeps asking them to make interpretations based on rules that change every two weeks it's no wonder that they're inconsistent and we look down on them.
I did enjoy McNamara getting away with kicking Harley Bennell in the shins and dropping a fist on him a'la Macho Man Randy Savage in the last quarter. Made up for some of the rorts we were on the end of earlier, especially considering we were right on the verge of cocking it up when he did it. Best inadvertent attack on a sports ground since Zola Budd took Mary Decker out in the 1984 Olympics 3000m Steeplechase final.
After ten minutes of stalemate and another ten of our natural hackery not allowing us to capitalise on their youthful ineptitude we finally got away in the last few minutes. It really was almost the worst game you've ever seen in your life. The guys from the Chinese AFL International Cup side who were watching on must have fancied themselves to be the next Yao Ming and get drafted by us if that was the sort of competition they had - and I think they finished behind Vatican City and Ray's Tent City in that competition.
To be fair we weren't all that bad when we got our hands on the ball, other than the usual slop that we've been serving up for years, and they even appear to have devised the most likely looking system for kickouts that we've had in a decade. The problem was that when the ball went the other way they had players spread out everywhere, running around on their own. It was like we had 18 x Daniel Ward out there, running around 30m off their opponents trying to pick up cheap kicks. The only person who was going anywhere near an opponent was Bartram who was doing a half decent job on Ablett, but good luck stopping that guy without the aid of heavy sedatives or pepper spray.
Run out of the backline was good courtesy of the super impressive, and bloody quick, Blease plus Garland, Frawley and McDonald (good debut, more against real teams please) and for once we were getting it inside 50 more than the opposition but good luck finding a target in a one-on-one, and good luck not having it haemorrhage straight out the middle after every centre bounce. Get the second one right next year or don't even bother showing up for Round 1.
Until Green turned his opponent inside out and marked for his first goal to end a horror half - and springboard himself into a good performance in the end - it was starting to look potentially very, very ugly. For all their failings as a nursery club for talented children Gold Coast have been a good contested possession and good clearance side all year and they killed us on both fronts.
Needless to say there was more than a hint of nervousness amongst the assembled faithful - and the middle deck of the Ponsford was the most overwhelming MFC landslide I've ever seen apart from the guy behind me cheering Gary Ablett on for Supercoach purposes - but the most startling announcement came from my mum who stood up at half time, announced that she'd had enough of football and was leaving. Poor woman managed to make it through almost five years of garbage before finally snapping. That's one less member in 2012 then... "If I don't come next year they'll probably be good" she said as I went in the other direction to stuff my face with the Kaiser's Sausage at half. Interestingly the third quarter almost proved her right at the first available opportunity so maybe I won't try to convince her to come back.
Speaking of the greatest food outlet in footy history I spoke to the Kaiser himself (not, sadly, Franz Beckenbauer) and he said they "should" be there next season. I must admit that in the presence of the great man himself I became a bit of a sweating fanboy. To be in the presence of the greatest caterer in footy history was slightly overwhelming. It crossed my mind to try and steer him towards this page to try and set up a potential sponsorship deal. But when am I going to eat the freebies before 2012? If they could roll their van up outside the Casino at least I could go over the road for a Classic Hot Krainer special sometimes. If you're going to a finals game do youself a favour and lash out $7 for one, I can confidently predict that you will not be disappointed. Unless you're a vegetarian, then you'll get bugger all out of the experience.
Anyway, enough of the Kaiser. Until he Googles himself and we cut a deal anyway. Or we draft a player with a German name and he instantly acquires the nickname. The ok thing about today was that we had players who could have contributed more. Get Watts, Trengove and god forbid Morton into the game, find somebody for Jamar to direct his 39 hits at and play Howe from the first bounce and it's (on paper) instantly better. Still, that's the Melbourne Football Club experience for you - when it all clicks it's glorious, the other 97% of the time it's bloody awful but it always looks good on paper. If you hold it up to a mirror upside down and squint.
The third quarter was certainly worthy. Green got his second in a row and the Experience took the piss out of Bock to kick his second (though I had horrible visions of his dinky little kick crashing straight into the post) and GC couldn't get their hands on it. All of a sudden we were winning out of the middle, using it well and the advantage they had when they got the ball and had 17 spare players wasn't there. So basically as long as we don't let the other team get the ball we'll win. Not exactly the tactical basis to lay an assault at the finals on.
The only downside was Jurrah killing himself in a marking contest - but still taking the shot despite clearly having just stuffed his shoulder, which is the dictionary definition of hungry - but he's got plenty of time to get better. If there's any upside to it at least Howe will get to play four quarters next week and maybe, just maybe my triple threat ruck fiesta might get a run.
Possibly my favourite bit of the quarter, with apologies to Garland bombing a goal from 50m out, was Nifty Nev Jetta running at Harbrow, telling him to piss off and pushing straight through to kick a goal. He wasn't near our best today but I loved seeing him in the middle, I might have a Nev fetish but I'm dying to see him cement a spot in the team. Only 11 touches, but six tackles and things just seem to happen when he's around. Now that I've supported him he will now almost certainly either get traded or never play another good game again.
It looked like the natural order of the world had been restored when we went into the last quarter five goals in front but nothing comes simply to this club. Sad thing is that the side we were playing today, a corporate creation of the league pitched to unborn children and filthy turncoats who change teams in adulthood, will almost certainly win the flag before we will. Everyone will. Gold Coast, GWS, New Zealand, Fitzroy, Ray's Tent City.
No surprises either considering they've been given every advantage just on the off chance that a few thousand people in Queensland and a few Victorians who are trying to be wacky will support the game. Here's hoping that they shed a few players off the list when they're forced to return to normal numbers and that a few of the kids who fall off the back of the truck with AFL experience turn out to be good and that we may nab some decent ones. The other option is to hang around Collingwood on hard rubbish collection night and grab anything they put out on the nature strip as unwanted. The only problem there is that you'll either end up with a Nathan Djekerra who is no good without being surrounded by superstars or Simon Buckley who wasn't much chop to start with.
Before the game I had a feeling that it would end up too close for comfort, and in the last quarter the premonition came true. Just when you thought we'd run away from them, and despite the fact that we kicked the sealer about three times in 30 minutes, the little bastards kept coming at us and with absolutely no ability to lock the ball in the middle of the ground it was only inexperienced bumbling that stopped them from running right over the top of us.
First Ablett did the Ponsford Takeaway when he pickpocketed Rivers to gave Nathan a charity goal. Not so bad. Then Howe comes on and kicks a goal and we seal it for the first time. Cue four in a row by the Suns, absolute hysteria from the kids and turncoats in their cheersquad and collectively tightened sphincters of the other 21,000 people in the ground.
I refused to let myself believe we could possibly cock it up from there, but when the fourth one went in I started clearing a space in my mental horrors wing for a spot alongside the Chris Sullivan Line game and Geelong. They went forward again when it was 17 points the difference, and thank god the umpiring rorts swung around and let McNamara get away with his unprecedented attack on Bennell 40m out as good as directly in front, because if that had gotten back to under two goals there could have been an utter tragedy on the cards.
Thank god then for Jeremy Howe, the man who must never be the substitute again, who booted the second sealer and Moloney who got the third. Talk about relief, the prospect of another low moment avoided and the knowledge that we don't have to leave the house to watch this crap again before next February/March. Some people might take an interest in the annual September exhibition series which other teams play in but I'll be turning my interest to the really important things like getting a new coach, flogging some players at trade week and ruining some more athletic young men's careers by drafting them.
I've never celebrated a win less, and the match did throw up as many questions as it did solutions but looking at it rationally a few hours after the fact I think as long as we beat Port next week then we've done as well as possible out of the fortnight and can go into the off-season conning ourselves that happiness is just around the corner.
What I loved today was Sam Blease and Tom McDonald playing fearlessly with five games total experience. Do it again against good teams and I'll get properly excited but when you compare them to a Cale Morton who just looks terrified every time he runs out on the field, it furthers my theory that the Sad Panda is a mentalist who needs to go onto Prozac. He did have ten touches at 90% efficiency today, but he did it all with a look on his face like he was on his way to get a lethal injection. Cheer up son, you're living the dream.
Blease is just so quick through the ground and uses it really well by foot. I love the way he takes people on and runs through the middle of the ground. Who knows where he fits into our Best 21+1 next year against Tapscott and Grimes but I'm thrilled with the start of his career. Took long enough to get him out there, but well worth the wait.
Also pleasantly surprised by Bennell's last fortnight. Yet again, do it against some good teams and we'll be off to the races but there's no doubt he can do a job storming out of the backline and through the middle of the ground. Probably hasn't helped him that he's been sub three times and has been thrown forward at times but at least he's done enough to show he might provide something of quality next season.
McNamara wasn't in the best, but I was thrilled to see him get another name. Also really happy to see him in the middle at times as well. He looked wonky in the first half but when he settled into the game and calmed his nerves he used the ball quite well by foot. Deserves another run at it next week. Never going to be a superstar but could be handy as a depth player in the future.
So, for those of us not going to the Adelaide Oval next Sunday that's the difficult part of season 2011 over. For those of you who are going feel free to throw a 600ml bottle of coke at the umpires for me.
Somehow I managed to achieve the dubious achivement of seeing every minute of every game in Victoria (+ one in Brisbane to really make a mockery of the year) this year. Didn't that sound like a good idea in February? Will go for it next year but there's no way that three years in a row I can somehow manage to avoid any absolutely critical engagements at the same time that there's a game on.
Sooner rather than later some bastard is going to get married or worse at 1.10 on a Sunday, and the worst thing is that it will almost certainly be somebody with a connection to the other half because most of my family stopped inviting me to things after I ditched the family reunion to go to a practice match at Princes Park.
For god's sake can you all please encourage your friends and family to have weddings, funerals and birthday parties outside of footy season? Some of us don't want to be the one huddled in a corner checking scores or in the car listening to the radio - we just don't want to be there at all.
Anyway, season nearly over. Have the penultimate votes. While we're on the topic I was at the loosest end ever on Friday and did something I've been meaning to do for about three years, going back through the old Demonblog reports to make sure that the end of season leaderboards tallied with the actual week by week votes. To nobody's surprise they didn't and this year was the only one that didn't have at least some minor error. 2005 was an absolute disgrace, clearly because I didn't expect Demonblog to live very long. The only major change that came out of it was that Ricky Petterd lost his half share of the 2007 Hilton Medal because I'd given him one vote too many. Poor guy. In case you care a full run down of the year by year votes are in a spreadsheet here. Stats nerds go off your nut. The rest of you shake your heads in dismay.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Sam Blease
4 - Colin Garland
3 - Nathan Jones
2 - Brent Moloney
1 - Tom McDonald
Apologies to Green, Jamar, Frawley, Bartram, Trengove, Bennell and Howe (per capita).
Leaderboard
So, we're a little clearer about the destination of some of the awards. Moloney draws to within striking distance of the big win, the Experience delivers one of the biggest upsets in history to capture his first Stynes medal, Garland stays within touch of Frawley in the Seecamp and Blease temporarily delays Jeremy Howe's Hilton Medal victory lap by ensuring he can at least tie for it if he scores maximum votes next week.
32 - Colin Sylvia
30 - Brent Moloney
24 - Stefan Martin (WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year), Jack Watts
23 - Jordie McKenzie
18 - James Frawley (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
16 - Mark Jamar
15 - Colin Garland
14 - Joel Macdonald
13 - Jack Trengove
11 - Ricky Petterd, Jared Rivers, Jeremy Howe (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
10 - Jordan Gysberts, Nathan Jones
8 - Brad Green
6 - Luke Tapscott, Lynden Dunn, Sam Blease
5 - Rohan Bail
4 - Michael Evans, Tom Scully
3 - Clint Bartram, Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah
2 - Neville Jetta
1 - Addam Maric, Matthew Bate, Tom McDonald
Crowd Watch
21,000? If that was 100% correct and unaltered I'll eat my "I saw Mark Jamar kick five goals" hat. Where were they keeping the other 6,000? Won't complain considering it probably saved us from paying a "shit crowd" fine but come on, save the rorts for Metricon Stadium where they'll believe anything.
No interest whatsoever from the people sitting around me. A worrying sign was the kid of 7 or 8 sitting in front of me in a Melbourne jumper who when the Suns theme song came on he started belting it out in full voice. Ours came on and he sit there looking disgruntled. There's a kid who has been railroaded into following us by the parents, doesn't enjoy losing and will almost certainly chuck us for the Suns if we don't start winning before they do. Hope the parents refuse to let him watch them on TV for being stupid.
Next Week
I wouldn't be surprised if Fox Sports decide to show International Cheese Rolling instead, but just in the case the game doesn't get cancelled my changes would be;
IN: Fitzpatrick, Bail
OUT: Jurrah (inj), Scully (out of courtesy to his future employers)
Of course we're still enjoying the Cloud Cuckoo Land fantasy that Scully is going to stay so maybe Morton instead? I'm happy to keep the Panda next year based on the fact that not signing a contract mid-season will see us get him at a rock bottom price if he doesn't walk out. Still, he needs therapy.
I see no need to bring back Davey based on the Richmond game, but I suppose they will just to keep the peace. Let's just hope he turns up to have a crack instead of getting sooky la la and belting somebody if it doesn't go well. I'll be filthy if they ditch any of Bennell, McNamara or Jetta to fit him in. Bennell has had his best two games of the year in the last two weeks, T.Mac deserves a second go and I'm gagging to see Jetta in the middle again.
Hopefully Port go even further off the rails after throwing away a near certain win against Essendon. Unfortunately for us if they'd won they'd have almost certainly avoided the spoon (unless Gold Coast beat Hawthorn anyway..) and might have totally given up and played every kid with a name like a porn star (Mitch Banner! Jarrod Redden!) on their list + Dean Brogan. Now they'll probably try and beat us. Here's hoping the South Australia curse ends at Football Park and doesn't extend to the Adelaide Oval.
Next year
Based on what I saw today I don't see how we possibly challenge the top eight next year, but consider that Sylvia, Davey, Bail, Grimes and Petterd will be back and that there's a lot of time for psychotherapy between now and next March and you never know what could happen. Don't cite West Coast as an example though, it's madness to try and compare us to where they were at.
What I want them to go out and get is a brute midfielder who can take the heat off Moloney (and to a lesser degree Jones, McKenzie, Trengove, Sylvia,Scully) but good luck finding one of those anywhere.
You've got to be realistic about how many players can be traded/delisted/walk out for big bucks in one year but I'm fairly certain we've seen the last of Warnock, Bate, Maric, Scully and Newton. I have no idea whether Campbell and McNamara automatically get a second year on the rookie list and then there's question marks over THE CELEBRATOR, Dunn, Morton and Sylvia (who we all hope is putting pen to paper as we speak).
That's ten players with AFL experience - five of whom are almost certain to be elsewhere next year - and the only reason I'm not throwing The Spencil in is that I know he's contracted next year. I wouldn't be surprised if we delisted Newton and Campbell, lost Scully to the V>Lines and traded Warnock/Bate/Maric for whatever we can get. Perhaps then THE CELEBRATOR and The Spencil get delisted and redrafted as rookies? As long as we don't neck ourselves and miss out on some decent players in the rookie draft just to clear two spaces on our senior list.
Green and the Stefan Martin Experience are also out of contract and haven't signed up yet. Who knows what happens if a new coach rocks up and Green gets the arse as captain? He might just tell us to piss off and walk out. Then there's the Experience who Richmond would be off their nut not to try and convince to join them for free. I don't want him to go, mainly because it will absolutely confirm that anyone who is my favourite player will never have a great career with this club, but with Jamar and Gawn signed, sealed and delivered we're never going to be able to fit all three of them in so something's going to have to give, if not this year then next year.
Is it too controversial to say that I'd rather try and rip Richmond off into paying over the odds for Jamar and keep the other two? I love The Russian but he's had one great season and two half decent seasons - the other two could be a ruck combo for years, he's got two or three years left in him and might never reach the same heights as last year ever again. Fitzpatrick and The Spencil as the backups. Wouldn't be a popular decision but I'd rather not lose Martin - who lets be fair has only had one good season in the ruck himself - and then have to find a replacement for Jamar in two years time.
Coaching Corner
Apparently Viney has done a Gillard and softened on his "I'll never put my hand up for the top job" pledge. No thanks. I want him there, and I want him to be a big part of whatever the new coaching team is but other than busting out a killer kick-in routine which worked once what's he done so far to make you think he's the man? Hopefully he was misquoted because I'd hate for him to go for it and not get it.
I think we're getting closer and closer to ending up with another untried coach, and subsequently killing the Demonblog/Farceblog cosponsored Choco Williams #chokeyourselfwithatie hashtag dream, which is fine as long as it's somebody who has worked under the best. If we're not going to get Malthouse, and Buckley doesn't want to pull the Victoria Park Screwjob on Eddie and walk out to join us and leave Mick in charge, then I'll take Neeld or Watters without argument.
Somebody give me a run down of who the other next big thing assistants are. Brenton Sanderson? Simon Goodwin? Who else. Whoever it is they'll have to bring a brand new lineup of assistants, because Scott West will go back to Footscray and if Royal/Mahoney are there next year we're collectively on drugs as a club.
Problem is that trade week is about two weeks after the Grand Final, so unless they either get an under the table assurance from Malthouse that he's found a clause in his contract to get out of Collingwood and coach elsewhere, we really have to have somebody in place by then don't we? Even the James Hird hatchet job on Matthew Knights was done by the end of September last season.
So when do we start interviewing? We wouldn't be the first team to snatch an assistant coach during the finals series (remember Bailey managing to miss Port's '07 Grand Final farce by being appointed our coach? Last good thing that ever happened to him) but if we leave it until Collingwood play in the Grand Final and find out we can't get Mick then it'll be a death race to try and get somebody in there before trade week. It's not like we're going into the week with no interest, we're players in it this time no matter how small fry the goods on offer are. Does Viney just show up and start wheeling and dealing in the hope that what he does will fit into a new coach's plans?
So unless there's been a secret nod/wink/handshake deal done somewhere that will deliver Malthouse to Melbourne under the "False Messiah" plan then give up and try to nick one of his assistants instead. See also Ross Lyon. No bloody danger Paul Roos sadly. I wouldn't neck myself if Eade walked through the door but I'd hardly be ripping party poppers and getting his name tattooed down my arm.
Whoever it is I hope they're ready to yell at people. Hopefully including journalists, fans and opposition players. If they could possibly do a bit of this too that would be great.
Moving Violations
Seems that by the time the accursed 2012 season starts I'll have shifted homes again, and so it's farewell to that casual walk along the Yarra from Southbank and the furious trudge home responding to abusive tweets from insane North supporters.
And so we put the Southbank season in the same basket as the Camberwell season (2007), the Richmond seasons (2008/09) and the Cheltenham season (2010) and let's agree that not only do I move houses too much but that it's time we fired up and started winning again. Absurdly the next move after that is already lined up, so the Lower Plenty season has one shot to get it right before the 2013 shift to St Kilda and what will be the eighth - and we hope final - home of Demonblog Towers.
Disclaimer: This constant shifting is not in any way due to legal reasons or due to having grassed on a major crime syndicate. It's just staggering mismanagement of my own life.
Was it worth it?
For the (potentially misguided) belief that Blease will be a star yes. For Tom McDonald, for Jeremy Howe and for Nifty Nev being played in the middle yes.
For creating encouraging thoughts about the future maybe not.
Also worth it because I saw somebody play wearing #55, which is by my count the highest number I've seen anyone wear in a game I've been at since the heyday of Ashley McIntosh rocking #53 for the Eagles and Jamie Elliot wore #54 for Fitzroy. Congratulations Nathan Ablett, you won a premiership to end the first phase of your career and gave me a statistical oddity to end the second.
Final Thoughts
Port can dodge the spoon if they win next week. Have your FARCE placards ready in front of the TV on Sunday. If you don't boot the screen in first.
What time does 2012 start?
It goes without saying that had we somehow contrived to lose today that there would have been absolute murder. Maybe not at the ground where interest in going embarassingly off chops is usually reserved for a handful of nutters (and to those people, we salute you) but in the media, on talkback radio and - god forbid - the internet it would have been slaughter. Imagine the nutters on the Facebook page, there would have been enough bizarre comments to keep you going until next season.
But thankfully by virtue of the fact that we were playing a team with an average age of 15, who featured a second game full back with absolutely no idea what he was doing, a rugby player who has half an idea and a full forward who was there as a favour to his brother we got over the line. This despite them fumbling and bumbling around for four quarters and giving us every opportunity to smash them. Somehow despite all this, and the fact that we would have smashed them three months ago with eight minutes left we were still a chance of throwing away a five goal lead at three quarter time.
In true MFC fashion it couldn't just be a simple, comfortable run away drought breaking win against the 16th best side in the competition. Like that guy in the Hawaiian Ironman who lost the ability to run and wobbled over the line like a jellyfish we couldn't have been any less convincing if we tried.
It was always going to be dangerous, they've got kids not only playing for a spot in the team but a spot on the list - and nobody expected them to win so they could afford to play fearlessly. We were suddenly thrust into the unfamiliar role of red hot favourites after two months of being belted by all and sundry with only a battling win against notorious slappers Port Adelaide to show for it. Disaster loomed. If the enthusiasm of 3/4 of their team playing on the MCG for the first time carried too long we were every chance of dropping our bundle and having a nervous breakdown.
Now here's where it gets truly tragic. Forget the result, the chance of being the worst Victorian team or the possibility of dropping back to the foot of the Laughing Stock League for the third time this season, I wasted $10 on one last crack at my five year odyssey to finally correctly bet on the first goalkicker in an MFC match. This was no time to start mucking around and having Tom McNamara at 250-1 so I plumped for the favourite for the first time ever. Jurrah @9's it was. Hey big spender.
Green did his bit to keep it interesting by kicking off with a captain's point before some Gold Coast idiot missed a sitter to keep it alive. Eventually after ten minutes of garbage that you'd be shattered to watch at a suburban game we went from one end to the other in 2010 Baileyball-esque swashbuckle fashion and Watts hit the Jurrahcane with a pass to leave him with a shot that he'd kick nine times out of 10. And of course this was the one he missed.
Another glorious failure, and so we enter the 2012 season with the closest I've ever got being an "Any Other Player" (Lynden Dunn pre-shambolic mo) at $3.20 in 2008 before they started ripping off idiots like me and putting all the players on the board. Remember when I said that I'd given up gambling? Of course that didn't happen because I've got no will power, but you'll be pleased to know it's contained to the footy only and I'm not spending nights playing obscure Asian games involving dice and dominoes in sleazy gambling dens.
Despite the fact that we were continuing the theme of the season in being bashed to death in centre clearances we still managed to kick the first three. So far so good but how many dropped marks did we have in the forward line in the first quarter? Made a mockery of my theory that as long as we could get the ball forward that we'd be right. Cue the Fev bandwagon exploding all over the shop. Probably didn't help that Howe was the sub and they lost their nerve on having Tapscott down there after ten minutes. At least ol' bucket hands Howe can be reliably expected to hold a mark over his head which is more than you can say for any of our other forwards today. May he never wear a silly green vest again.
I'll be the last person to refuse an invitation to climb aboard the Brad Green Caravan of Character Assassination, but no doubt he had an absolute mare of a first quarter and 28 minutes of the second. Before he kicked that goal at the end of the first half I was thinking "oh god, here we go again". Despite my irrational (at times) support it did look odd when he was trying to lead for Bartram's set shot despite being about 11 metres away. We all know Clint can't kick a set shot to save himself but I would have thought expecting him to squeeze a pass to the top of the square with that degree of accuracy was probably the lesser option. He missed of course, but at least he scored which is I'm sure more than we would have got if he'd tried a dinky little pass. No doubt the umpires would have called play-on anyway.
Ahh the umpires. It's late enough in the year that I can ignore my own principles and whinge about them. I wasn't aware that in addition to ripping off every second pick in the 2010 draft and being allowed an uncontracted player from each club that they were also entitled to a truckload of mystifying decisions during their first visit to the MCG. What about the one where the Suns guy jumped into the SME in the ruck contest and pushed him out of the way with the ball nowhere near either of them and still somehow managed to end up getting the free himself? Or any of the 57 baffling ruck infringements, 55 of them which went the other way. I'm surprised Jamar didn't belt one of the umpires a'la Phil Carmen by the end it was such a farce. It evened out a bit in the end but my god feel free to have half a crack at getting it right sometime. Realistically I don't even blame the umpires most of the time, the league keeps asking them to make interpretations based on rules that change every two weeks it's no wonder that they're inconsistent and we look down on them.
I did enjoy McNamara getting away with kicking Harley Bennell in the shins and dropping a fist on him a'la Macho Man Randy Savage in the last quarter. Made up for some of the rorts we were on the end of earlier, especially considering we were right on the verge of cocking it up when he did it. Best inadvertent attack on a sports ground since Zola Budd took Mary Decker out in the 1984 Olympics 3000m Steeplechase final.
After ten minutes of stalemate and another ten of our natural hackery not allowing us to capitalise on their youthful ineptitude we finally got away in the last few minutes. It really was almost the worst game you've ever seen in your life. The guys from the Chinese AFL International Cup side who were watching on must have fancied themselves to be the next Yao Ming and get drafted by us if that was the sort of competition they had - and I think they finished behind Vatican City and Ray's Tent City in that competition.
To be fair we weren't all that bad when we got our hands on the ball, other than the usual slop that we've been serving up for years, and they even appear to have devised the most likely looking system for kickouts that we've had in a decade. The problem was that when the ball went the other way they had players spread out everywhere, running around on their own. It was like we had 18 x Daniel Ward out there, running around 30m off their opponents trying to pick up cheap kicks. The only person who was going anywhere near an opponent was Bartram who was doing a half decent job on Ablett, but good luck stopping that guy without the aid of heavy sedatives or pepper spray.
Run out of the backline was good courtesy of the super impressive, and bloody quick, Blease plus Garland, Frawley and McDonald (good debut, more against real teams please) and for once we were getting it inside 50 more than the opposition but good luck finding a target in a one-on-one, and good luck not having it haemorrhage straight out the middle after every centre bounce. Get the second one right next year or don't even bother showing up for Round 1.
Until Green turned his opponent inside out and marked for his first goal to end a horror half - and springboard himself into a good performance in the end - it was starting to look potentially very, very ugly. For all their failings as a nursery club for talented children Gold Coast have been a good contested possession and good clearance side all year and they killed us on both fronts.
Needless to say there was more than a hint of nervousness amongst the assembled faithful - and the middle deck of the Ponsford was the most overwhelming MFC landslide I've ever seen apart from the guy behind me cheering Gary Ablett on for Supercoach purposes - but the most startling announcement came from my mum who stood up at half time, announced that she'd had enough of football and was leaving. Poor woman managed to make it through almost five years of garbage before finally snapping. That's one less member in 2012 then... "If I don't come next year they'll probably be good" she said as I went in the other direction to stuff my face with the Kaiser's Sausage at half. Interestingly the third quarter almost proved her right at the first available opportunity so maybe I won't try to convince her to come back.
Speaking of the greatest food outlet in footy history I spoke to the Kaiser himself (not, sadly, Franz Beckenbauer) and he said they "should" be there next season. I must admit that in the presence of the great man himself I became a bit of a sweating fanboy. To be in the presence of the greatest caterer in footy history was slightly overwhelming. It crossed my mind to try and steer him towards this page to try and set up a potential sponsorship deal. But when am I going to eat the freebies before 2012? If they could roll their van up outside the Casino at least I could go over the road for a Classic Hot Krainer special sometimes. If you're going to a finals game do youself a favour and lash out $7 for one, I can confidently predict that you will not be disappointed. Unless you're a vegetarian, then you'll get bugger all out of the experience.
Anyway, enough of the Kaiser. Until he Googles himself and we cut a deal anyway. Or we draft a player with a German name and he instantly acquires the nickname. The ok thing about today was that we had players who could have contributed more. Get Watts, Trengove and god forbid Morton into the game, find somebody for Jamar to direct his 39 hits at and play Howe from the first bounce and it's (on paper) instantly better. Still, that's the Melbourne Football Club experience for you - when it all clicks it's glorious, the other 97% of the time it's bloody awful but it always looks good on paper. If you hold it up to a mirror upside down and squint.
The third quarter was certainly worthy. Green got his second in a row and the Experience took the piss out of Bock to kick his second (though I had horrible visions of his dinky little kick crashing straight into the post) and GC couldn't get their hands on it. All of a sudden we were winning out of the middle, using it well and the advantage they had when they got the ball and had 17 spare players wasn't there. So basically as long as we don't let the other team get the ball we'll win. Not exactly the tactical basis to lay an assault at the finals on.
The only downside was Jurrah killing himself in a marking contest - but still taking the shot despite clearly having just stuffed his shoulder, which is the dictionary definition of hungry - but he's got plenty of time to get better. If there's any upside to it at least Howe will get to play four quarters next week and maybe, just maybe my triple threat ruck fiesta might get a run.
Possibly my favourite bit of the quarter, with apologies to Garland bombing a goal from 50m out, was Nifty Nev Jetta running at Harbrow, telling him to piss off and pushing straight through to kick a goal. He wasn't near our best today but I loved seeing him in the middle, I might have a Nev fetish but I'm dying to see him cement a spot in the team. Only 11 touches, but six tackles and things just seem to happen when he's around. Now that I've supported him he will now almost certainly either get traded or never play another good game again.
It looked like the natural order of the world had been restored when we went into the last quarter five goals in front but nothing comes simply to this club. Sad thing is that the side we were playing today, a corporate creation of the league pitched to unborn children and filthy turncoats who change teams in adulthood, will almost certainly win the flag before we will. Everyone will. Gold Coast, GWS, New Zealand, Fitzroy, Ray's Tent City.
No surprises either considering they've been given every advantage just on the off chance that a few thousand people in Queensland and a few Victorians who are trying to be wacky will support the game. Here's hoping that they shed a few players off the list when they're forced to return to normal numbers and that a few of the kids who fall off the back of the truck with AFL experience turn out to be good and that we may nab some decent ones. The other option is to hang around Collingwood on hard rubbish collection night and grab anything they put out on the nature strip as unwanted. The only problem there is that you'll either end up with a Nathan Djekerra who is no good without being surrounded by superstars or Simon Buckley who wasn't much chop to start with.
Before the game I had a feeling that it would end up too close for comfort, and in the last quarter the premonition came true. Just when you thought we'd run away from them, and despite the fact that we kicked the sealer about three times in 30 minutes, the little bastards kept coming at us and with absolutely no ability to lock the ball in the middle of the ground it was only inexperienced bumbling that stopped them from running right over the top of us.
First Ablett did the Ponsford Takeaway when he pickpocketed Rivers to gave Nathan a charity goal. Not so bad. Then Howe comes on and kicks a goal and we seal it for the first time. Cue four in a row by the Suns, absolute hysteria from the kids and turncoats in their cheersquad and collectively tightened sphincters of the other 21,000 people in the ground.
I refused to let myself believe we could possibly cock it up from there, but when the fourth one went in I started clearing a space in my mental horrors wing for a spot alongside the Chris Sullivan Line game and Geelong. They went forward again when it was 17 points the difference, and thank god the umpiring rorts swung around and let McNamara get away with his unprecedented attack on Bennell 40m out as good as directly in front, because if that had gotten back to under two goals there could have been an utter tragedy on the cards.
Thank god then for Jeremy Howe, the man who must never be the substitute again, who booted the second sealer and Moloney who got the third. Talk about relief, the prospect of another low moment avoided and the knowledge that we don't have to leave the house to watch this crap again before next February/March. Some people might take an interest in the annual September exhibition series which other teams play in but I'll be turning my interest to the really important things like getting a new coach, flogging some players at trade week and ruining some more athletic young men's careers by drafting them.
I've never celebrated a win less, and the match did throw up as many questions as it did solutions but looking at it rationally a few hours after the fact I think as long as we beat Port next week then we've done as well as possible out of the fortnight and can go into the off-season conning ourselves that happiness is just around the corner.
What I loved today was Sam Blease and Tom McDonald playing fearlessly with five games total experience. Do it again against good teams and I'll get properly excited but when you compare them to a Cale Morton who just looks terrified every time he runs out on the field, it furthers my theory that the Sad Panda is a mentalist who needs to go onto Prozac. He did have ten touches at 90% efficiency today, but he did it all with a look on his face like he was on his way to get a lethal injection. Cheer up son, you're living the dream.
Blease is just so quick through the ground and uses it really well by foot. I love the way he takes people on and runs through the middle of the ground. Who knows where he fits into our Best 21+1 next year against Tapscott and Grimes but I'm thrilled with the start of his career. Took long enough to get him out there, but well worth the wait.
Also pleasantly surprised by Bennell's last fortnight. Yet again, do it against some good teams and we'll be off to the races but there's no doubt he can do a job storming out of the backline and through the middle of the ground. Probably hasn't helped him that he's been sub three times and has been thrown forward at times but at least he's done enough to show he might provide something of quality next season.
McNamara wasn't in the best, but I was thrilled to see him get another name. Also really happy to see him in the middle at times as well. He looked wonky in the first half but when he settled into the game and calmed his nerves he used the ball quite well by foot. Deserves another run at it next week. Never going to be a superstar but could be handy as a depth player in the future.
So, for those of us not going to the Adelaide Oval next Sunday that's the difficult part of season 2011 over. For those of you who are going feel free to throw a 600ml bottle of coke at the umpires for me.
Somehow I managed to achieve the dubious achivement of seeing every minute of every game in Victoria (+ one in Brisbane to really make a mockery of the year) this year. Didn't that sound like a good idea in February? Will go for it next year but there's no way that three years in a row I can somehow manage to avoid any absolutely critical engagements at the same time that there's a game on.
Sooner rather than later some bastard is going to get married or worse at 1.10 on a Sunday, and the worst thing is that it will almost certainly be somebody with a connection to the other half because most of my family stopped inviting me to things after I ditched the family reunion to go to a practice match at Princes Park.
For god's sake can you all please encourage your friends and family to have weddings, funerals and birthday parties outside of footy season? Some of us don't want to be the one huddled in a corner checking scores or in the car listening to the radio - we just don't want to be there at all.
Anyway, season nearly over. Have the penultimate votes. While we're on the topic I was at the loosest end ever on Friday and did something I've been meaning to do for about three years, going back through the old Demonblog reports to make sure that the end of season leaderboards tallied with the actual week by week votes. To nobody's surprise they didn't and this year was the only one that didn't have at least some minor error. 2005 was an absolute disgrace, clearly because I didn't expect Demonblog to live very long. The only major change that came out of it was that Ricky Petterd lost his half share of the 2007 Hilton Medal because I'd given him one vote too many. Poor guy. In case you care a full run down of the year by year votes are in a spreadsheet here. Stats nerds go off your nut. The rest of you shake your heads in dismay.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Sam Blease
4 - Colin Garland
3 - Nathan Jones
2 - Brent Moloney
1 - Tom McDonald
Apologies to Green, Jamar, Frawley, Bartram, Trengove, Bennell and Howe (per capita).
Leaderboard
So, we're a little clearer about the destination of some of the awards. Moloney draws to within striking distance of the big win, the Experience delivers one of the biggest upsets in history to capture his first Stynes medal, Garland stays within touch of Frawley in the Seecamp and Blease temporarily delays Jeremy Howe's Hilton Medal victory lap by ensuring he can at least tie for it if he scores maximum votes next week.
32 - Colin Sylvia
30 - Brent Moloney
24 - Stefan Martin (WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year), Jack Watts
23 - Jordie McKenzie
18 - James Frawley (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
16 - Mark Jamar
15 - Colin Garland
14 - Joel Macdonald
13 - Jack Trengove
11 - Ricky Petterd, Jared Rivers, Jeremy Howe (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
10 - Jordan Gysberts, Nathan Jones
8 - Brad Green
6 - Luke Tapscott, Lynden Dunn, Sam Blease
5 - Rohan Bail
4 - Michael Evans, Tom Scully
3 - Clint Bartram, Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah
2 - Neville Jetta
1 - Addam Maric, Matthew Bate, Tom McDonald
Crowd Watch
21,000? If that was 100% correct and unaltered I'll eat my "I saw Mark Jamar kick five goals" hat. Where were they keeping the other 6,000? Won't complain considering it probably saved us from paying a "shit crowd" fine but come on, save the rorts for Metricon Stadium where they'll believe anything.
No interest whatsoever from the people sitting around me. A worrying sign was the kid of 7 or 8 sitting in front of me in a Melbourne jumper who when the Suns theme song came on he started belting it out in full voice. Ours came on and he sit there looking disgruntled. There's a kid who has been railroaded into following us by the parents, doesn't enjoy losing and will almost certainly chuck us for the Suns if we don't start winning before they do. Hope the parents refuse to let him watch them on TV for being stupid.
Next Week
I wouldn't be surprised if Fox Sports decide to show International Cheese Rolling instead, but just in the case the game doesn't get cancelled my changes would be;
IN: Fitzpatrick, Bail
OUT: Jurrah (inj), Scully (out of courtesy to his future employers)
Of course we're still enjoying the Cloud Cuckoo Land fantasy that Scully is going to stay so maybe Morton instead? I'm happy to keep the Panda next year based on the fact that not signing a contract mid-season will see us get him at a rock bottom price if he doesn't walk out. Still, he needs therapy.
I see no need to bring back Davey based on the Richmond game, but I suppose they will just to keep the peace. Let's just hope he turns up to have a crack instead of getting sooky la la and belting somebody if it doesn't go well. I'll be filthy if they ditch any of Bennell, McNamara or Jetta to fit him in. Bennell has had his best two games of the year in the last two weeks, T.Mac deserves a second go and I'm gagging to see Jetta in the middle again.
Hopefully Port go even further off the rails after throwing away a near certain win against Essendon. Unfortunately for us if they'd won they'd have almost certainly avoided the spoon (unless Gold Coast beat Hawthorn anyway..) and might have totally given up and played every kid with a name like a porn star (Mitch Banner! Jarrod Redden!) on their list + Dean Brogan. Now they'll probably try and beat us. Here's hoping the South Australia curse ends at Football Park and doesn't extend to the Adelaide Oval.
Next year
Based on what I saw today I don't see how we possibly challenge the top eight next year, but consider that Sylvia, Davey, Bail, Grimes and Petterd will be back and that there's a lot of time for psychotherapy between now and next March and you never know what could happen. Don't cite West Coast as an example though, it's madness to try and compare us to where they were at.
What I want them to go out and get is a brute midfielder who can take the heat off Moloney (and to a lesser degree Jones, McKenzie, Trengove, Sylvia,
You've got to be realistic about how many players can be traded/delisted/walk out for big bucks in one year but I'm fairly certain we've seen the last of Warnock, Bate, Maric, Scully and Newton. I have no idea whether Campbell and McNamara automatically get a second year on the rookie list and then there's question marks over THE CELEBRATOR, Dunn, Morton and Sylvia (who we all hope is putting pen to paper as we speak).
That's ten players with AFL experience - five of whom are almost certain to be elsewhere next year - and the only reason I'm not throwing The Spencil in is that I know he's contracted next year. I wouldn't be surprised if we delisted Newton and Campbell, lost Scully to the V>Lines and traded Warnock/Bate/Maric for whatever we can get. Perhaps then THE CELEBRATOR and The Spencil get delisted and redrafted as rookies? As long as we don't neck ourselves and miss out on some decent players in the rookie draft just to clear two spaces on our senior list.
Green and the Stefan Martin Experience are also out of contract and haven't signed up yet. Who knows what happens if a new coach rocks up and Green gets the arse as captain? He might just tell us to piss off and walk out. Then there's the Experience who Richmond would be off their nut not to try and convince to join them for free. I don't want him to go, mainly because it will absolutely confirm that anyone who is my favourite player will never have a great career with this club, but with Jamar and Gawn signed, sealed and delivered we're never going to be able to fit all three of them in so something's going to have to give, if not this year then next year.
Is it too controversial to say that I'd rather try and rip Richmond off into paying over the odds for Jamar and keep the other two? I love The Russian but he's had one great season and two half decent seasons - the other two could be a ruck combo for years, he's got two or three years left in him and might never reach the same heights as last year ever again. Fitzpatrick and The Spencil as the backups. Wouldn't be a popular decision but I'd rather not lose Martin - who lets be fair has only had one good season in the ruck himself - and then have to find a replacement for Jamar in two years time.
Coaching Corner
Apparently Viney has done a Gillard and softened on his "I'll never put my hand up for the top job" pledge. No thanks. I want him there, and I want him to be a big part of whatever the new coaching team is but other than busting out a killer kick-in routine which worked once what's he done so far to make you think he's the man? Hopefully he was misquoted because I'd hate for him to go for it and not get it.
I think we're getting closer and closer to ending up with another untried coach, and subsequently killing the Demonblog/Farceblog cosponsored Choco Williams #chokeyourselfwithatie hashtag dream, which is fine as long as it's somebody who has worked under the best. If we're not going to get Malthouse, and Buckley doesn't want to pull the Victoria Park Screwjob on Eddie and walk out to join us and leave Mick in charge, then I'll take Neeld or Watters without argument.
Somebody give me a run down of who the other next big thing assistants are. Brenton Sanderson? Simon Goodwin? Who else. Whoever it is they'll have to bring a brand new lineup of assistants, because Scott West will go back to Footscray and if Royal/Mahoney are there next year we're collectively on drugs as a club.
Problem is that trade week is about two weeks after the Grand Final, so unless they either get an under the table assurance from Malthouse that he's found a clause in his contract to get out of Collingwood and coach elsewhere, we really have to have somebody in place by then don't we? Even the James Hird hatchet job on Matthew Knights was done by the end of September last season.
So when do we start interviewing? We wouldn't be the first team to snatch an assistant coach during the finals series (remember Bailey managing to miss Port's '07 Grand Final farce by being appointed our coach? Last good thing that ever happened to him) but if we leave it until Collingwood play in the Grand Final and find out we can't get Mick then it'll be a death race to try and get somebody in there before trade week. It's not like we're going into the week with no interest, we're players in it this time no matter how small fry the goods on offer are. Does Viney just show up and start wheeling and dealing in the hope that what he does will fit into a new coach's plans?
So unless there's been a secret nod/wink/handshake deal done somewhere that will deliver Malthouse to Melbourne under the "False Messiah" plan then give up and try to nick one of his assistants instead. See also Ross Lyon. No bloody danger Paul Roos sadly. I wouldn't neck myself if Eade walked through the door but I'd hardly be ripping party poppers and getting his name tattooed down my arm.
Whoever it is I hope they're ready to yell at people. Hopefully including journalists, fans and opposition players. If they could possibly do a bit of this too that would be great.
Moving Violations
Seems that by the time the accursed 2012 season starts I'll have shifted homes again, and so it's farewell to that casual walk along the Yarra from Southbank and the furious trudge home responding to abusive tweets from insane North supporters.
And so we put the Southbank season in the same basket as the Camberwell season (2007), the Richmond seasons (2008/09) and the Cheltenham season (2010) and let's agree that not only do I move houses too much but that it's time we fired up and started winning again. Absurdly the next move after that is already lined up, so the Lower Plenty season has one shot to get it right before the 2013 shift to St Kilda and what will be the eighth - and we hope final - home of Demonblog Towers.
Disclaimer: This constant shifting is not in any way due to legal reasons or due to having grassed on a major crime syndicate. It's just staggering mismanagement of my own life.
Was it worth it?
For the (potentially misguided) belief that Blease will be a star yes. For Tom McDonald, for Jeremy Howe and for Nifty Nev being played in the middle yes.
For creating encouraging thoughts about the future maybe not.
Also worth it because I saw somebody play wearing #55, which is by my count the highest number I've seen anyone wear in a game I've been at since the heyday of Ashley McIntosh rocking #53 for the Eagles and Jamie Elliot wore #54 for Fitzroy. Congratulations Nathan Ablett, you won a premiership to end the first phase of your career and gave me a statistical oddity to end the second.
Final Thoughts
Port can dodge the spoon if they win next week. Have your FARCE placards ready in front of the TV on Sunday. If you don't boot the screen in first.
What time does 2012 start?
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