I'm a lifetime subscriber to the "by any means necessary" theory of football. History will show we beat the Lions by 11 points, the ladder shows we got four points and unless there's the biggest calamity on the face of the earth next Sunday we'll go into the bye week 2-1-1 and right in the mix. Let the good times roll eh? Cancel your September holidays? Maybe not. By Any Means Necessary is a great slogan for Malcolm X and t-shirts but it's what happens next that makes the difference.
I can't have been the only person who spent the quarter time break today on the verge of going absolutely off my nut. The metaphorical cat had not only been kicked it was being fitted with a series of explosive devices and within seconds of being hurled at the ground in the direction of the huddle. There was something seriously rotten happening out there, and in retrospect it reminds me of the Adelaide game last year where we were utter toilet for the first half before papering over the gaping cracks by running over the top of them in the end. I remember sending a string of angsty text messages that day about how awful our forward structure was - a year on and what's changed?
Put the putrid umpiring to one side for a second, and I know that might be hard to do after Dunn was on the end of the THE WORST DECISION IN THE HISTORY OF FOOTBALL which gifted them one of their five opening goals, and ask yourself what in the name of dutch buggery we were doing in that first quarter? I'd sit down and watch it again to work it out but it would make me gouge my eyes out with a fork. From the moment Jurrah missed his second shot on goal we were pure shite, unable to win anything significant out of the middle, bombing it into the forward line with precious little care, attention or attempt to find a lead. Down back Matthew Bate's talented twin brother Todd Banfield was doing what he wanted with the defenders all playing behind their opponents and getting carved. It was a recipe for disaster straight off of the new "100 YEARS OF ABYSMAL MFC DEBACLES" DVD.
The Lions, on the other hand, were playing out of their skins. It's no surprise either, we've seen it a billion times over the years both coming from and going against us. Remember being three goals up against Geelong in R3 2008 starting 30-1 underdogs after we'd been fingered in the crack for the first fortnight of the season? That's what happens when a superior side (and the difference in superiority that day outweighed today's by a factor of 10 MILLION) doesn't start at their best and the humiliated team which has been beaten from pillar to post in the media all week starts like a house on fire. The difference between a good team and a mediocre team is how long you let the upstarts stay in control before gunning them down - and more importantly whether they really put the foot on the throat once you're on top. We did one but not the other and it leaves us neatly slopping around at our natural place as the best of the teams who are nowhere near good enough to challenge for the premiership. I'm not going to turn yet but all the conditions are there for a massive mid-season turn a'la that horrific Friday night against the Cats in '03 if we don't sort out some of the problems in this side.
History is littered with insignificant wins like today. In fact have a hundred odd seasons worth of them. It's better than another draw - and that was well on the cards - and infinitely better than a loss but what's it leading towards? Did you see anything today that you can fast forward two years and see us contending for a flag? Moloney, Davey, Jamar and Green will either be just going or gone by then, Morton and Watts are going nowhere fast by the looks of it and having the likes of Frawley, Trengove, Tapscott, Jurrah et al going crackers isn't going to help if the famous "bottom six" of our best 22 (as we all hope it will be again by then) is as shit as Carlton's is now. Players come and go from nowhere and that's about all I'm pinning our future hopes of success on at the moment. Coaches come from places a bit more prominent than Parts Unknown but you can dream about a Malthouse or Paul Roos showing up next season - either of them would spit at the minimum wage we could offer.
But enough of the 2013 premiership season, back to today. Am I the only one who was absolutely flabbergasted that they went through that flag hoisting rubbish again? I've got a very small tolerance for that sort of stuff before cultural cringe kicks in at the best of times but was almost ok with it after Round 1 due to the presence of J. Stynes and the fact that it was a one off. Now they've decided that they're going to do it at every home game. Oh the shame, the horrible, gnawing shame tearing my soul apart. They even did it at the end of the game. I love the new logo and I'm a big fan of the way they're trying to bring historical, traditional angles back into the club by reintroducing old school style mascots (as much as one can be for the idea of mascots anyway) but this is the ugliest idea around. It might even be worse than the Hawthorn recovering junkies goalkicking competition.
Correct me if I'm wrong but the only other time we've ever raised flags in the centre of the MCG would have been after the 12 times we won a premiership. WE HAVE WON NOTHING NOW. WIN SOMETHING AND THEN RAISE THAT EVERY WEEK. Might have sounded like a magnificent idea in some "blue sky session" but it's embarassing to the people actually sitting in the stands. I never thought the idiot in the velvet jacket and his trumpet would last this long so don't expect it to go anywhere soon but when opposition fans point out the obvious then there is absolutely nothing you can say (although if it's a Port, Freo, Bulldogs, Gold Coast or St Kilda fan you might get away with mocking their lack of success) other than to agree that it is a stupid concept and that we are opening ourselves up to ridicule by doing it.
The fact that they also did it after the game was nearly lost in the euphoria (?) of us getting out of jail in epic fashion, but the sight of the marketing department running out onto the field with it and desperately to get the thing to raise and show some life with absolutely no breeze to speak of was so farcical the footage of it deserves to go into any future MFC Hall of Fame.
How overrated is the idea of pre-match entertainment anyway? You could almost pay them credit for trying something different unlike the other clubs who just play the same video packages over, and over, and over again but we do that as well. They must have had that ad with Barassi yelling (and thanks for helpfully labelling him RON BARASSI as if anybody in the crowd doesn't know who he is) about 25 times.
I'd quite happily sit there in dead silence or listening to Video Ezy ads a'la the early 90's but if we have to give in to marketing departments (and believe me I'm not going for the Bill Hicks anti-marketing dollar here, I work in one myself) how about going back to playing classic games - it's not like we haven't had a couple of corkers at the 'G against the Lions in recent times, or god forbid they could throw an old Fitzroy or Bears game on for something different. Another options would be to rustle up ten (minimum) highlights packages and play them randomly. Don't run them all the same week, throw a few in here, a few there and give the punters some actual footballing buzz rather than acid jazz trumpet and semaphore demonstrations.
The only man to come out of the first term with any credit - and by christ after that flag rubbish I'm surprised they didn't do a Jobe Watson style sitdown protest - was Gysberts. He's the Giz, and he's awesome. That kid is not going anywhere except straight into our starting lineup unless he gets hurt, and after four games is already showing up Morton as a potential massive waste of potential and a #4 draft pick. Get Champion Data on the phone and tell me how many hard-ball gets, contested possessions and clearances The Giz has had in four games compared to Morton in 51. Cale has had some stunning games (West Coast '08 anybody?) but even in other games where he's had 30+ touches he's hardly been damaging with most of them coming across half-back. Besides, what do possessions mean in this era anyway? Jamie Shanahan would have been getting 15 in today's game.
The next couple after him in the draft haven't exactly set the world alight, but right now the only thing that is keeping my faith alive is the fact that Sylvia has taken seven years to become a gun. Unfortunately he has a touch of the crunt about him that Cale most certainly does not.
Tell you where I thought he looked like he was about to do some damage - Round 9, 2009 against Geelong at Kardinia Park. We served up a steaming pile of the brown stuff that day, and I froze my tits off but with absolutely nobody else looking likely to do anything he went forward for three goals. They were all when the game was well and truly lost (from late in the third quarter onwards) but at least it proved he could kick them. Do you think he's been seen near a forward line since? Instead of racking up cheap touches as a loose man in the backline during the last couple of weeks of 2010 when our season was stuffed they could have tried something new and sent him forward, but conservatism always seems to win out under this regime.
No matter where he's at in the grand scheme of things Morton was horrid today. I felt bad for him at first because he was the sub (bah) but nothing he did once he shed the council worker's vest worked. Maybe he needs time to get into the game, maybe he's a bit too poncy to come into a match when the heat is on and look comfortable. Either way the Catch 22 is that he's surely not going to end up in the starting team on a showing like that. Grimes is doing what he did a couple of years ago ten times better, Morton has never shown any aptitude for getting into the centre bounce scramble and nobody's got any interest in giving him a run in the forward line so I'm going to suggest he's going to be spending time down as Casey with Fev until somebody gets hurt and allows him back in. Conversely they could take the chance of him cutting the children of the Gold Coast to shreds next week and play him on the field from the start - just the kind of arrogant, disrespectful manoeuvre that should see us suffer a shock loss.
Don't know why I'm so surprised that they're too scared to give him a decent run forward, after all Jack Watts is barely allowed to go inside 50 despite having been drafted ostensibly as a forward. Everyone wants a Riewoldt (Nick) style up-and-down the ground dominator but for god's sake is there any danger that they could play him down there for four quarters one day instead of making him looking stupid in the middle of the ground. He was lining up as a wingman at times today for god's sake. He's about as far from a Lance Franklin as I am but take note from Mad Old Clarko, Franklin ended up on a wing last night when the Hawks were taking the piss out of Richmond, not from the first bounce. When you're at Champion Data getting Morton's stats find me the amount of times Watts has entered the forward 50 this season.
Did Bailey drop something on the ground and miss that cracking pack mark he took against the Hawks last week? Ok he hasn't got the huge body yet which allow him to treat guys like Merrett with contempt in one-on-one contests but who does on our list? Not the Stefan Martin Experience (bless him, the most improved player on our list by a country mile), who is an acceptable second option but far more use around the ground. Not Jurrah who is a great mark and a great man but better flying from behind a pack or in from the side. Maybe Jamar, but we can't afford to have him down forward for very long when he's dominating in the middle.
The absurd lack of crumbers within the same postcode of contests in our forward 50 aside, what does Watts have to do to get a shot at playing out of the general region of FF and having people kick at him. Other than the fact that we only kick to players on the lead once or twice a game. There's plenty of time later to teach him to centre balls in the corridor without fucking it up if we really need to but bloody hell can we at least try and use him as offensive weapon first? He's being made to look stupid at the moment with what they've got him doing - people were cheering when he was subbed off for christ sake - but what he has brought to the table is good tackle and good chase. In the first quarter today when our forward pressure (as the kids say) was absolutely putrid and the ball was flying in and out of our forward 50 for no reward it could have done with somebody down there with a big(ish) body willing to chase and harass. Instead he was wandering around halfway to bloody Brunton Avenue tackling people on the half-back flank. It's shithouse. Write letters. Start Facebook groups. Ring SEN and try to get on amongst all the St Kilda fans slashing their wrists.
Also pressing my buttons today was the powderpuff reaction to Raines' hard tag on Davey. Everyone knows Flash goes to water when you go ultra-negative on him, and it's going to happen every week from now until the end of time unless The Giz, Trengove, Scully etc.. can take the heat off him. So while he was copping hell today where were the other players to step in and give Raines a slap? There was a bit of unconvincing push and shove but how about somebody shows some modicum of support for him? Every time Flash went off the ground Raines went with him, bumping him and generally being just the sort of ordinary human that we desperately need to introduce into our side, but only once did somebody run over and let him know that Davey had back-up. Credit to The Jurrahcane who ran from halfway down the ground to give him a bump and show his teammate some support. We have a lot of angry players, and one world class emo, but where are the legitimate enforcers?
It wasn't The 'Cane who started the revival, but he was certainly in the cockpit for it. We were only holding on courtesy of Nick Carter lookalike Jack Redden missing an absolute sitter just before the siren, but when Sylvia won it straight out of the middle and landed it on THE CELEBRATOR (I love writing that again) for the first goal after about ten seconds we were back into it - almost criminally given the lack of interest or structure in the first half. Of course they then went up the other end and kicked the next two goals to put us back in our place again. Then, cometh the hour cometh the cult figure - Jurrah got three more for the quarter including two epic bombs from outside 50 - on either side of The Giz adding to his great first half with a well taken set shot goal. All of a sudden it was half-time and we were not only back in it, it looked like we were going to run over the top and smash them. Quelle surprise as the French might say if they weren't busy suing the Lions for stealing their national anthem and using it as a theme song.
When Jurrah got his fifth seconds into the third quarter to put us in front (PB!) and Jamar started the quarter on six kicks it looked like records were going to tumble left, right and centre but as the rain came the game turned into even more of a horrendous slopfest than it was and we let the Lions in for two goals to steady their rapidly sinking the ship. The second in particular was putrid, The Russian - in his only non-goalkicking cock-up of the day - went up for a mark in the defensive goalsquare that he would usually snaffle with his eyes closed and dropped it for Luke Power to kick a goal. Just one of many times today that two or three players flew for the same mark in our backline and spoiled each other or messed it up - major issue that needs fixing. Otherwise defense was pretty good from quarter time onwards.
Thank god then for Jack Grimes who navigated through the storm to boot a rare goal and Sylvia who got one as well. By the time the sun started shining again and Bennell got his goal we were seemingly home. It certainly would have taken a series of ever expanding Fukushima style failures to see us throw away a 16 point lead against a side who had given their best but had hit the wall. Naturally what then followed was a quarter of us trying to give the game away on an ornate antique platter.
They got the first goal but that was no problem, because down the other end Aussie marked 20m out directly in front and was going to kick the goal to put them away. He missed. Played a good game for somebody who looked about 25% fit, certainly better than anything poor old Emo Maric offered up in the first fortnight of the season. Worth persisting with, works well with Jurrah and brings the pressure. Maybe if we'd lost I'd not have been as charitable... Then Trengove could have had one but got chased down and Green missed a shot that he would have eaten for breakfast last year - he spent more time up forward today and thank god for that but he's still had very little impact this year.
Two goals the difference with five minutes to play and I was so nervous about potential lawsuits coming out of this post that I started trying to reason with myself that two draws equalled a win so it was actually A GOOD THING. It's not, it's shithouse but you get like that in desperate situations. It was the sporting equivalent of the guy trapped under the rock cutting his own arm off. Lucky then that after they got the margin back to a goal AND cleared it from the centre we somehow ended up with it down the other end where Moloney roosted it towards the square and allowed Jurrah to shephard it through for the winner. The get out of jail card was well and truly slapped down on the table and we held on to win with the glorious sight of the Experience rampaging down the Southern Stand wing in the final seconds to cap it off.
After first half performances which landed somewhere dead in the middle of "ordinary" and "shithouse" Rivers and Jones played incredible second halves. I still think Jones is in the departure lounge to Casey when Scully is ready to come back but what a third quarter he played. Just like Moloney he kicks like he's got a wooden leg when he's trying to go to a target 40m away but in close he couldn't be beat. Then there was Rivers who was on fire in 2004 fashion with some cracking contested marks. Jamar and Moloney were good for four quarters and Jurrah for two and and a half, but those guys had everything to do with us getting on top and staying there. Kudos gentlemen, KUDOS.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
I struggled to split the top three in this. They've all got their claims to BOG status. Jamar almost got downgraded for his overnight loss of goalkicking accuracy (don't forget that until last week he was the most accurate kick on goal of any player with more than 50 scoring shots from 1987 onwards #statmybitchup) but look at the rest of his stats - 11 clearances and 19 of his 23 possessions contested. What a warrior. The only downside to the whole thing was that he didn't top his kicks PB and was stuck on seven throughout the last quarter. The spontaneous Soviet celebrations will have to wait at least one more week.
Moloney was bloody good again too. His kicking is still suspect but if you had a clearance machine with elite disposal skills you've probably got the Brownlow Medallist so I'll take one of a half out of the two thanks very much. Plenty of his kicks were wild hoofs from the centre but at least he was getting the hands on it to have a chance of hoofing it. I get nervous when he winds up kicking it anywhere near the defensive 50 but out of the centre he's a gem, and there's rarely been a greater day for the Psychic Friends Connection with Jamar. Long live the PFC.
5 - Mark Jamar
4 - Brent Moloney
3 - Liam Jurrah
2 - Jared Rivers
1 - Nathan Jones
The greatest of apologies to Martin and Gysberts who deserved votes but are squeezed out by the rigid restrictions of the voting system. Second division apologies to Bail, Green, Frawley, Grimes, Wonaeamirri, Bennell and I'll stop there before half the side is named.
Leaderboard
9 - Brent Moloney
8 - Colin Sylvia
7 - Mark Jamar (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
6 - Luke Tapscott (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year and Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
3 - Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah
3 - Colin Garland
2 - Rohan Bail, Jared Rivers
1 - Stefan Martin, Nathan Jones
Crowd Watch
Surprisingly quiet on the nutter front today, though some 'disturbed individual' did yell something at me along Southgate Promenade. No idea what, I had headphones in. I expect he was as big a Dees fan as the bloke who stands at Kew Junction dancing for the enjoyment of motorists.
Next Week
I went and watched the Gold Coast/Footscray game yesterday, more for historical purposes than any kind of advanced scouting for next week. Long story short we have everything that is required to beat them and beat them comfortably next week as long as we bring all the pressure that wasn't there in the first quarter today. They didn't look too bad when allowed to link up and run with the ball but when pressured marks were going down, kicks were flying everywhere, handballs were missing their targets. They're all 13-years-old, what was our excuse for the last four years?
They had absolutely no forward line and Lake ran off them effortlessly in a way that should having Frawley penciling in three Brownlow votes right now and despite the defence being one of their alleged strong points the Dogs cut them up on the lead going inside 50 time and time again. Shame we don't appear to ever kick to a leading player so it probably won't work as well for us. Imagine if we had a Barry Hall, he'd spend all his time on the half-back flank.
Campbell Brown getting himself rubbed out won't hurt, but we should have stomped them even if he was there. It's the first time they've played a non-rock solid finals contender so they'll surely fancy their chances of springing an upset at home. I'm not totally discounting the prospect either but that's more part of the traditional MFC defense mechanism of setting the standards remarkably low so that you're either not disappointed or are right. Last time we started such an overwhelming favourite? Probably only thing in the same ballpark would have been the second time we played wooden spoon bound Carlton in '06.. and lost. Well there's an omen for you.
Demonblog will be reporting live and exclusive from The Gabba along with the other 27 fans in attendance. The only other two times I've been to the Gabba I got on the E's with some random freak in a pub the first time before witnessing a financial transaction involving a lot of $50 notes and pillow case size bag of grass and then the next time I slept in a car like a bloody tramp after forgetting to book a hotel room so don't be concerned if you don't hear from me for a few days after the match. If we lose don't even bother coming back because I'll be in the custody of the Queensland cops doing the Andrew Krakouer handcuffs gesture.
Was it worth it?
A win is a win is a win.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Sunday, 3 April 2011
National Shite Day
It's a good thing I now live 35 minutes walk from the MCG instead of five because at the final siren tonight I was ready to come on here and just unleash the biggest torrent of abuse at everything football related.
If you go back and look at some of the most darkest and disturbed posts of the last few years most of them came during 08/09 when I was home, trudging glumly down Punt Road and abusing people who asked "who won" out of cars, before the bile had a chance to settle. Also didn't help that we were a god awful slopfest over those two years, one that was lucky not to be throw out of the league for being a waste of space.
But we always had 'the future' to look forward to. Everyone was about 13-years-old, there were draft picks to come and if we could just rort the draft enough we'd have two picks at the top end of the table to go on top of a #4 and #1 that we'd already racked up through sheer legitimate ineptitude.
Fast forward a few years and we're still waiting for "the future" to come to realisation. Imagine how many times Richmond fans have thought that they were seconds away from being the next big thing and ask yourself if you could cope with that happening to us.
We toughed it out against Sydney last week when they could have run away from us early, and if you listen to the footy media their win over Essendon today means that they've beaten the winner of the next 20 premierships so who knows what it actually meant. What I know is that on the day we were dragged over the line by Moloney and his 300 centre clearances plus the tiring Swans botched handling of the dreaded sub rule. More than once we were exposed for pace by Sydney but they stuffed it up and we nearly pinched it.
There were good signs out the yin-yang but the deficiences were there as well. It's no good hiding behind the "we're a young team" tag any more. Half the teams in the competition are 'young teams' but it doesn't seem to do too badly for them because the kids are surrounded by quality players who bring their A-Game every week and protect their inexperienced teammates. We've got Sylvia and Jamar consistently performing, another level of guys like Moloney and Davey flitting in and out and another entirely of 50+ game players who are either giving us nothing or can't even get a game (Matthew Bate - where are they now?).
I'd love to have Brad Green in the category of people who are there week in, week out - and last year only Jamar but challenge him as our most consistently good, but I have no idea what he's supposed to be doing this year. Seems to me like the poor bastard is having barely any impact on games whatever it is. Looks good when he goes forward once or twice a game, why can't we leave him there? We actually played with some sort of forward targets in the first half tonight and it worked - would there be any harm in having him down there most of the game? He's a good user of the ball but surely, SURELY we have other players we can use around the ball with confidence while he goes forward and kicks another 50 goals for the year?
Maybe not - for a team who have drafted midfielders galore for the best part of the last five years we sure don't look to have too much in reserve in the centre. Scully obviously wouldn't hurt, until he dicks us and goes off to the V>Line uniform team, and McKenzie would at least throw some grunt and tackling pressure in. Then there's Morton who is more chance of winning the Melbourne Cup aboard Phar Lap than he is of ever being an in-and-under player - which is fine as long as he can be a dangerous fancy outside player, and he's only shown brief flashes of that so far. A nation awaits.
We've seen some utter garbage over the last few years but the performance of today's midfield in the third quarter was something to behold. Your nominations in the comments please but I'd rate it the worst quarter we have played since the Friday night against Geelong when they were 53-0 up at quarter-time (and lest we ever forget the bizarre range of goalkickers from that night). Poor Jamar just had to keep contesting knowing that no matter what he did the Hawks would hoover the ball up off the deck and go forward unchallenged. Only Sylvia showed any resistance to the rampaging Hawthorn beast. Everyone else went missing, and while you can give some of them the benefit of the doubt of an off day there are others who are just nowhere near it at the moment.
But did we make any changes to our centre structure? If we did they must have been subtle because it looked to me like a case of concede a couple of points, finally cop a goal, have it go back to the centre and be tapped straight into the hands of a Hawks player who pumps it forward to repeat the process again. Amazing isn't it how often we are victims of the same thing over and over and over again in a game? It looked to me like the only thing we did to try and stem the rampant beast was for the entire team to stack the backline and try to keep them at bay - at about the six goal mark it should have been clear that this wasn't going to work. As usual there were multiple opposition players running around without anybody near them, but when we got the ball nobody could find a loose player unless they were going across the ground or backwards.
Let's rewind to the start though, because there's about 15 minutes when we were suddenly looked like world beaters and that deserves to be committed to writing lest we all - myself particuarly - forget it ever takes place in the midst of all the angst about how we played three-quarters of an hour of schoolyard footy.
Be entirely honest, you know that we were lucky to even be in the game after the first ten minutes, let alone within striking distance. Roughhead got his customary charity goal courtesy of the Federal "Children Who Survived Abortions" Act of 1989 and they cut us up for the first few minutes, missing just enough to keep it interesting. It wasn't looking good from the kick-ins either, they had us covered down field and had clearly done their maths on the amount of times Grimes/Tapscott/Davey kick to themselves before disposing of it because they were all over that little play. First the entire league works out we always kick it to Jamar near the boundary and now this?
Suddenly we kick three goals in a row, the Hawks are 1.8 and we're in front. Made absolutely no sense. My highlight of the goals was the Watts pack mark. It was a quality grab considering that Jones should never have kicked it at him in a million years considering he had three Hawks standing around him. Would be nice if we could see JW as a marking target inside 50 more rather than trying to do finesse things on the wing that he's not all that good at - but that's just crazy talk, who am I to tell trained football professionals what to do? It was about the only time he was allowed inside 50 all day anyway but what a mark.
The truth of the matter was that the Hawks were killing us everywhere but on the scoreboard, we grabbed the lead off them on the break but it was all misleading in the context of the game. It wasn't entirely unsustainable, after all we've had worse starts and gone onto win before (a long time before) so if you'd got the lead despite being beaten up all around the ground so much the better but it wasn't a true indication of where we were at in the first quarter.
Considering the way we'd played for the first ten minutes, and the fact that they'd had 10 scoring shots to four I was more than satisfied to go in a point behind. Who would have thought that we were going to see a quarter of absolutely liquid football.
The Hawks had their issues with injury during the quarter but it hardly explained the way we cut them up for the first twenty minutes. We were killing them out of the middle, Franklin was doing all his work 70m from goal instead of where he could actually do some damage, everyone forgot Bruce was even playing and by christ we were actually kicking to targets. When Jamar took that huge mark I nearly unfurled a banner that read "THAT'S HOW YOU DO IT". When Trengove (not sure how to take his game) snapped that goal and we were 27 points in front I was still in no way confident that we were going to win but at least it gave us the sort of buffer which should have meant we played until at least half the last quarter with a fighting chance of victory.
Problem was that for all the freewheeling excitement of our period of dominance the moment Bateman got that goal - with the worst kick I've seen go through since Nathan Carroll's helicopter at Telstra Dome - the game completely turned on its head. Like a switch had been flicked off we stopped running again and should have copped another goal straight after Bateman the goose hadn't kicked it out on the full from 20m out. Half-time came just at the right time for us - or so it seemed anyway - because all of a sudden after we'd played perfect, cavalier football which slashed them to ribbons for 20 minutes they were about to run right over the top of us. Plenty of time to regroup and come back for the third quarter eh? You'd have thought so.
Then there was Cyril Rioli biffing Nathan Jones. We've all thought about doing it but nobody ever has before. No matter what Bruce McAvaney might froth over him Cyril's always struck me as a bit of a wanker and today was no exception. Looked fairly tame from where I was, and when Jones went down at first I thought he'd thrown a big Hayden Ballantyne style fake to try and milk the free kick. Even having seen the replays it still looks a bit pissweak, he must have just caught Jones completely out of the blue and winded him. Give them both a week so they can think about what they've done.
Of course the grand revival had to start with Bruce of all people. I thought it was a bit uncharitable to boo him on one of the rare occasions that he got a touch in the first half, but a'la Shane Woewodin's first game against us he retrospectively justified it by acting like a tit when he kicked the goal. Nothing new for us, we've been watching him be responsible for opposition goals for three years what's the difference if he's wearing a poo brown jumper with an angry chicken on it?
Problem was that they were missing set shots galore and were completely unable to clear it. Eight/nine/ten point plays have never been so popular. Petterd got a steadier at the other end - and you know when you're kicking steadiers at the 10m mark of the third term you're in trouble - and he could have had another soon after but from the moment he missed onwards we were dead. Nifty Nev Jetta stuffed up a mark at the 50m mark and allowed them to goal and the avalanche was on.
Unfortunately for all their pre-season form neither Jetta or Maric have done anything earth shattering in the last fortnight. Jet was ok in the first half but what about a hint of some of those blockbuster tackles from the Lions practice match? Or is it just that Brisbane are so terrible they let him do it - and still beat us by five goals. Joyful. Keep that in mind next week when you're hurling pieces of brick at the team bus as it pulls out of the MCG under police guard.
Maric hasn't even had the luxury of a half decent quarter. Tonight I'm being even more emo than he usually is but there's no argument that he's bombed massively in the last two weeks. It didn't really make any sense for him to be sub but you could hardly give him the boot entirely after his form earlier in the year or risk him self immolating in the middle of Casey Fields. I suspect that with the way we completely fell apart and lost run in the third quarter that they'll go with a midfielder in the stupid bib next week. Gysberts if I get my way.
One thing I noticed with Maric, and it's got nothing to do with his surly demeanour for once, was that when the two sides came back after half-time he wasn't involved in the drills the rest of the team was doing and was kicking around with some runner/trainer instead. What sort of way is that to run a team? Conversely Jordan Lewis was right in the mix with his teammates - stupid bib and all - and why not? You're all teammates for god's sake, it's not like they're somehow separate from the rest of the group because they haven't been out there since the first bounce. Obviously wasn't his choice to do it, no matter how much of a boon it would be for his stereotype as a depressed teenage loner, but whoever decided that he shouldn't be involved with the rest of the group needs a slap.
The backline went to shit a bit in the end but it's no bloody wonder when the poor bastards were forced to defend for 45 minutes straight. Luke Tapscott is magic and I don't begrudge him an OOF and a botched kick across the goalmouth because he'd been under siege with barely a break for almost an hour - in his second game. Never dropped his head, never stopped going hard for it or gave up. Could be the next Jared Rivers - looked good for a season, looked ok for a season, looked shite for a season, was injured the rest of the time - for all I know but at the moment he's got such an ironfisted grip on the Rookie Of The Year award that it would take Jeremy Howe or Lucas Cook having a second half of the year worthy of the great Jakovich himself to pinch it.
Same goes for Grimes in a more Gysberts-style school drama captain and all around good guy way. When you're called upon to defend a million inside 50's (and I'd love to say how many but the ever informative AFL website is currently showing not a single player stat - because it's shit) then you're going to cock things up and they're going to kick goals. Best look further upfield and ask your teammates why they're letting it come down there every fifteen seconds. At times it actually was every fifteen seconds.
Frawley was rustier than a Latvian submarine early on but that's no knock on him, after all he hadn't played a single game this year before tonight. Not even a cheap intraclub where he got to stitch up some rookie list hack. Considering where he was coming from he got a lot better as the game went on and should be absolutely firing in a few weeks time. Garland was good as well but in a case of the fickle finger of fate jamming itself deep into our eyeball and poking around he's done something indeterminate to his knee and is either out for a week or a year depending on who you listen to. Isn't life wonderful? I'll be shattered if it's the latter because he was one of the big success stories of last season - and if we're going to cop 75 inside 50's to 35 again (thank god for Twitter, providing the stats where THE LEAGUE ITSELF CANNOT BE BOTHERED) I'd much rather have him down there than Macdonald, Warnock or McNamara. Even the Stefan Martin Experience has proven himself too valuable around the ground to go back permanently - and I never thought I'd write that.
The last quarter was just junk time from start to end. Everyone was stuffed, our sub was adding nothing to the run and Hawthorn lost interest. Always seems to happen when they play us for some reason. We did a handful of nice things - including actually kicking a goal or two - but the sting was well and truly out of it. The only interest left was whether anybody in the backline would collapse from the weight of having carried their teammates for so long. Just to recap we suffered 75 inside 50's and neither Franklin nor #2 member of the Chernobyl Child Society (#1 ticketholder is Mitch Robinson) Roughhead kicked a bag. Just stop and think about that for a second if you're intending on bagging our defenders for their job today.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Luke Tapscott
4 - Colin Sylvia
3 - Jack Grimes
2 - Rohan Bail
1 - Stefan Martin
Apologies in no rational order to Bartram, Davey, Garland, Green and Jamar.
Leaderboard
8 - Colin Sylvia
6 - Luke Tapscott (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year and Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
5 - Brent Moloney
3 - Jack Grimes
3 - Colin Garland
2 - Mark Jamar (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
2 - Rohan Bail
1 - Stefan Martin
Crowd Watch
Very bizarre activities in the top deck of the Ponsford tonight. A couple of old men with old tyme transistors radios held to the ear at right angles (don't their arms get sore?) showing complete ignorance of the invention of headphones thirty years ago, some underdressed norgs-out women who must have died of hypothermia later in the game and a kid who I conceded must have been somewhat special because he was wearing a lumberjack flannel shirt, a case of teenage bumfluff so severe it made Dunn look normal and at half time was spotted donning one of those comedy wigs with the tassels.
But the most baffling performance of the evening came from the young couple sitting next to us. They spent the whole first half canoodling to the point where I wanted to yell "I think he's gonna pork her" a'la National Lampoon's European Vacation. Young love and all that, good on them but then it gets properly sinister. It's not quite going along the same path as that famous video of the couple shagging in the Sydney Football Stadium but it's not far from.
Bored shitless during the break I casually glance towards them over the top of my comrade Adam 2 and the young lass has her phone out openly and proudly scrolling through clearly homemade shots of herself in the buff. Being the gentleman I am I looked away immediately and instead engaged 2.0 to turn around have a look. He confirmed that she was indeed scrolling through shots of herself with the baps out in some suburban livingroom. Incredible. Would have been great to be the guy sitting behind her, he would have been having the time of his life. One of the stranger things I've ever seen at a game I must admit, and was roughly the only good thing to occur from the 20 minute mark of the second quarter onwards.
Also worth noting is the shambolic Hawthorn pre-match "entertainment". Was it the game that ruined our finals hopes last year (which is laughable considering what followed) where there was a goalkicking competition consisting entirely of recovering drug addicts? Maybe it was Richmond. Either way it was bizarre to see microphones shoved into people's faces asking them what they'd (allegedly) gone cold turkey on shortly before they tried to drill one from 30m out on an angle to win cash and prizes (and gee, I wonder how long it took for that cash to be exchanged for goods somewhere out the back of Grey Street?).
Today's thrilling offering featured a bunch of members lined up to try and win some indeterminate prize by picking random keys off a table and trying to open a box. As far as dynamic and exciting competitions went it was below "local mayor spins wheel at school fete" level. About four people in somebody's key opened the box and the other six contestants were told to piss off.
Then in what must be the most cringeworthy thing since we raised the non-premiership flag to the acid jazz stylings of old mate in his velvet jacket last week the Hawks players ran out with #1's on their training jackets to "represent the fans" (buckets of vomit nearly followed that announcement) and then proceeded to tear them off and run to the fence to hand them out to the fans. Sadly for the cavalcade of kids - and god damn it I hope they were all kids - who ran from everywhere to get to the fence as if the Black Thunder had shown up and was giving out bottles of Pepsi Max and copies of New Weekly the very nature of the gimmick was that there were only 21 to give out (amusingly the sub couldn't take his off because he had his council worker vest on over it) and so they all did death defying runs down the steps of the bottom deck only to end up empty handed.
Wouldn't you be shattered not to get your hands on a genuinely sweat stained item from David Hale? Yes, you'd just be gutted. Even worse if you got it and it had bits of synthetic hair all over it. Watch out for about 15 of them to be offered on Ebay tomorrow.
The final insult was when the scoreboard tried to get a HAW! THORN! chant going with a pre-recorded video only to be greeted with absolute silence by their devoted fans. If it's a choice between velvet jacket hitting bum notes in the Superman theme or this kind of crack induced marketing garbage then I'll never bag the trumpeteer again.
Do people really need to be entertained? We really haven't come very far since the Hyde Street Primary School brass band used to patrol the boundary line at half-time at the Western Oval or the time an elephant randomly showed up at Arden Street.
Kampaign Korner
Yesterday I realised that nobody other than Jobe Watson, Mick Malthouse and myself cares about the sub rule when I rang up SEN to go bananas about it and was followed by two other callers who vigorously disagreed (i.e nigh on abused) me for being against it. Fancy trying to start a people's rebellion and finding out the people aren't actually interested - now I know how Tony Abbott feels.
So, the #no2subrally is cancelled. I give up. Let's just roll over, swallow the lies and take it up the keister from the league while we wait for their next brainwave built on manipulated statistics. I pledge not to go on about it anymore lest I end up being the football equivalent of Andrew Bolt and Climate Change - a zealous nutbag hectoring people about something they don't actually care about.
Just remember, will you be the person who says "When they came to take the fourth interchange player I didn't cry out, when they came to bring in the 9 point goal I didn't cry out" etc.. etc..?
Casey Corner
They won with Gysberts, Evans and Wonaeamirri prominent in the midfield - and in Wona's case surprise surprise that they can't just enjoy a good thing and leave him forward - but the most terrifying thing was Juice booting five. We've not heard the last of him yet I fear.
I'm not going to swing the axe yet in this week's game of Fantasy Selection Committee. Garland goes out with his injury and is, I suppose, replaced by Macdonald. Maric takes his March Champion award back to the VFL to try and get a kick before having another crack at it and I'll bring Gysberts in start as sub (grrr, no wait I'm taking it seriously now like a good little sycophant) and give us some life in the midfield coming off the bench.
Jones and Jetta survive but go into final warning territory. Knowing my luck they'll probably name The Spencil again and this time it won't be a carefully constructed, early April's Fool gag like it was last Thursday night.
Next Week
Surely there's no possible way that we can lose to Brisbane. It's possible but it just could not happen. There's no way they could put a spurt like the Hawks did in their wildest dreams at the moment, but I'll tell you what if we do something contrive to lose I'll come on here and go absolutely troppo. The post might have to go through the Demonblog legal department for the all clear to make sure I don't get sued.
It's a blessing and a curse for Bailey and Co to be playing the Queensland comedy clubs over the next fortnight because in all seriousness we should end up 2-1-1 and be right back in the mix, hopefully with some structure and confidence about the place, but if we don't there's going to be rioting in the streets and effigies being burnt.
I'm bulk buying petrol and unused effigies from Indian cricket fans just in case.
Final thoughts
"Don't take it to heart" said a patronising opposition supporter on Twitter tonight, completely missing the point of my antics on here for the last six years and two weeks. Sound advice, unlikely to ever be followed.
If you go back and look at some of the most darkest and disturbed posts of the last few years most of them came during 08/09 when I was home, trudging glumly down Punt Road and abusing people who asked "who won" out of cars, before the bile had a chance to settle. Also didn't help that we were a god awful slopfest over those two years, one that was lucky not to be throw out of the league for being a waste of space.
But we always had 'the future' to look forward to. Everyone was about 13-years-old, there were draft picks to come and if we could just rort the draft enough we'd have two picks at the top end of the table to go on top of a #4 and #1 that we'd already racked up through sheer legitimate ineptitude.
Fast forward a few years and we're still waiting for "the future" to come to realisation. Imagine how many times Richmond fans have thought that they were seconds away from being the next big thing and ask yourself if you could cope with that happening to us.
We toughed it out against Sydney last week when they could have run away from us early, and if you listen to the footy media their win over Essendon today means that they've beaten the winner of the next 20 premierships so who knows what it actually meant. What I know is that on the day we were dragged over the line by Moloney and his 300 centre clearances plus the tiring Swans botched handling of the dreaded sub rule. More than once we were exposed for pace by Sydney but they stuffed it up and we nearly pinched it.
There were good signs out the yin-yang but the deficiences were there as well. It's no good hiding behind the "we're a young team" tag any more. Half the teams in the competition are 'young teams' but it doesn't seem to do too badly for them because the kids are surrounded by quality players who bring their A-Game every week and protect their inexperienced teammates. We've got Sylvia and Jamar consistently performing, another level of guys like Moloney and Davey flitting in and out and another entirely of 50+ game players who are either giving us nothing or can't even get a game (Matthew Bate - where are they now?).
I'd love to have Brad Green in the category of people who are there week in, week out - and last year only Jamar but challenge him as our most consistently good, but I have no idea what he's supposed to be doing this year. Seems to me like the poor bastard is having barely any impact on games whatever it is. Looks good when he goes forward once or twice a game, why can't we leave him there? We actually played with some sort of forward targets in the first half tonight and it worked - would there be any harm in having him down there most of the game? He's a good user of the ball but surely, SURELY we have other players we can use around the ball with confidence while he goes forward and kicks another 50 goals for the year?
Maybe not - for a team who have drafted midfielders galore for the best part of the last five years we sure don't look to have too much in reserve in the centre. Scully obviously wouldn't hurt, until he dicks us and goes off to the V>Line uniform team, and McKenzie would at least throw some grunt and tackling pressure in. Then there's Morton who is more chance of winning the Melbourne Cup aboard Phar Lap than he is of ever being an in-and-under player - which is fine as long as he can be a dangerous fancy outside player, and he's only shown brief flashes of that so far. A nation awaits.
We've seen some utter garbage over the last few years but the performance of today's midfield in the third quarter was something to behold. Your nominations in the comments please but I'd rate it the worst quarter we have played since the Friday night against Geelong when they were 53-0 up at quarter-time (and lest we ever forget the bizarre range of goalkickers from that night). Poor Jamar just had to keep contesting knowing that no matter what he did the Hawks would hoover the ball up off the deck and go forward unchallenged. Only Sylvia showed any resistance to the rampaging Hawthorn beast. Everyone else went missing, and while you can give some of them the benefit of the doubt of an off day there are others who are just nowhere near it at the moment.
But did we make any changes to our centre structure? If we did they must have been subtle because it looked to me like a case of concede a couple of points, finally cop a goal, have it go back to the centre and be tapped straight into the hands of a Hawks player who pumps it forward to repeat the process again. Amazing isn't it how often we are victims of the same thing over and over and over again in a game? It looked to me like the only thing we did to try and stem the rampant beast was for the entire team to stack the backline and try to keep them at bay - at about the six goal mark it should have been clear that this wasn't going to work. As usual there were multiple opposition players running around without anybody near them, but when we got the ball nobody could find a loose player unless they were going across the ground or backwards.
Let's rewind to the start though, because there's about 15 minutes when we were suddenly looked like world beaters and that deserves to be committed to writing lest we all - myself particuarly - forget it ever takes place in the midst of all the angst about how we played three-quarters of an hour of schoolyard footy.
Be entirely honest, you know that we were lucky to even be in the game after the first ten minutes, let alone within striking distance. Roughhead got his customary charity goal courtesy of the Federal "Children Who Survived Abortions" Act of 1989 and they cut us up for the first few minutes, missing just enough to keep it interesting. It wasn't looking good from the kick-ins either, they had us covered down field and had clearly done their maths on the amount of times Grimes/Tapscott/Davey kick to themselves before disposing of it because they were all over that little play. First the entire league works out we always kick it to Jamar near the boundary and now this?
Suddenly we kick three goals in a row, the Hawks are 1.8 and we're in front. Made absolutely no sense. My highlight of the goals was the Watts pack mark. It was a quality grab considering that Jones should never have kicked it at him in a million years considering he had three Hawks standing around him. Would be nice if we could see JW as a marking target inside 50 more rather than trying to do finesse things on the wing that he's not all that good at - but that's just crazy talk, who am I to tell trained football professionals what to do? It was about the only time he was allowed inside 50 all day anyway but what a mark.
The truth of the matter was that the Hawks were killing us everywhere but on the scoreboard, we grabbed the lead off them on the break but it was all misleading in the context of the game. It wasn't entirely unsustainable, after all we've had worse starts and gone onto win before (a long time before) so if you'd got the lead despite being beaten up all around the ground so much the better but it wasn't a true indication of where we were at in the first quarter.
Considering the way we'd played for the first ten minutes, and the fact that they'd had 10 scoring shots to four I was more than satisfied to go in a point behind. Who would have thought that we were going to see a quarter of absolutely liquid football.
The Hawks had their issues with injury during the quarter but it hardly explained the way we cut them up for the first twenty minutes. We were killing them out of the middle, Franklin was doing all his work 70m from goal instead of where he could actually do some damage, everyone forgot Bruce was even playing and by christ we were actually kicking to targets. When Jamar took that huge mark I nearly unfurled a banner that read "THAT'S HOW YOU DO IT". When Trengove (not sure how to take his game) snapped that goal and we were 27 points in front I was still in no way confident that we were going to win but at least it gave us the sort of buffer which should have meant we played until at least half the last quarter with a fighting chance of victory.
Problem was that for all the freewheeling excitement of our period of dominance the moment Bateman got that goal - with the worst kick I've seen go through since Nathan Carroll's helicopter at Telstra Dome - the game completely turned on its head. Like a switch had been flicked off we stopped running again and should have copped another goal straight after Bateman the goose hadn't kicked it out on the full from 20m out. Half-time came just at the right time for us - or so it seemed anyway - because all of a sudden after we'd played perfect, cavalier football which slashed them to ribbons for 20 minutes they were about to run right over the top of us. Plenty of time to regroup and come back for the third quarter eh? You'd have thought so.
Then there was Cyril Rioli biffing Nathan Jones. We've all thought about doing it but nobody ever has before. No matter what Bruce McAvaney might froth over him Cyril's always struck me as a bit of a wanker and today was no exception. Looked fairly tame from where I was, and when Jones went down at first I thought he'd thrown a big Hayden Ballantyne style fake to try and milk the free kick. Even having seen the replays it still looks a bit pissweak, he must have just caught Jones completely out of the blue and winded him. Give them both a week so they can think about what they've done.
Of course the grand revival had to start with Bruce of all people. I thought it was a bit uncharitable to boo him on one of the rare occasions that he got a touch in the first half, but a'la Shane Woewodin's first game against us he retrospectively justified it by acting like a tit when he kicked the goal. Nothing new for us, we've been watching him be responsible for opposition goals for three years what's the difference if he's wearing a poo brown jumper with an angry chicken on it?
Problem was that they were missing set shots galore and were completely unable to clear it. Eight/nine/ten point plays have never been so popular. Petterd got a steadier at the other end - and you know when you're kicking steadiers at the 10m mark of the third term you're in trouble - and he could have had another soon after but from the moment he missed onwards we were dead. Nifty Nev Jetta stuffed up a mark at the 50m mark and allowed them to goal and the avalanche was on.
Unfortunately for all their pre-season form neither Jetta or Maric have done anything earth shattering in the last fortnight. Jet was ok in the first half but what about a hint of some of those blockbuster tackles from the Lions practice match? Or is it just that Brisbane are so terrible they let him do it - and still beat us by five goals. Joyful. Keep that in mind next week when you're hurling pieces of brick at the team bus as it pulls out of the MCG under police guard.
Maric hasn't even had the luxury of a half decent quarter. Tonight I'm being even more emo than he usually is but there's no argument that he's bombed massively in the last two weeks. It didn't really make any sense for him to be sub but you could hardly give him the boot entirely after his form earlier in the year or risk him self immolating in the middle of Casey Fields. I suspect that with the way we completely fell apart and lost run in the third quarter that they'll go with a midfielder in the stupid bib next week. Gysberts if I get my way.
One thing I noticed with Maric, and it's got nothing to do with his surly demeanour for once, was that when the two sides came back after half-time he wasn't involved in the drills the rest of the team was doing and was kicking around with some runner/trainer instead. What sort of way is that to run a team? Conversely Jordan Lewis was right in the mix with his teammates - stupid bib and all - and why not? You're all teammates for god's sake, it's not like they're somehow separate from the rest of the group because they haven't been out there since the first bounce. Obviously wasn't his choice to do it, no matter how much of a boon it would be for his stereotype as a depressed teenage loner, but whoever decided that he shouldn't be involved with the rest of the group needs a slap.
The backline went to shit a bit in the end but it's no bloody wonder when the poor bastards were forced to defend for 45 minutes straight. Luke Tapscott is magic and I don't begrudge him an OOF and a botched kick across the goalmouth because he'd been under siege with barely a break for almost an hour - in his second game. Never dropped his head, never stopped going hard for it or gave up. Could be the next Jared Rivers - looked good for a season, looked ok for a season, looked shite for a season, was injured the rest of the time - for all I know but at the moment he's got such an ironfisted grip on the Rookie Of The Year award that it would take Jeremy Howe or Lucas Cook having a second half of the year worthy of the great Jakovich himself to pinch it.
Same goes for Grimes in a more Gysberts-style school drama captain and all around good guy way. When you're called upon to defend a million inside 50's (and I'd love to say how many but the ever informative AFL website is currently showing not a single player stat - because it's shit) then you're going to cock things up and they're going to kick goals. Best look further upfield and ask your teammates why they're letting it come down there every fifteen seconds. At times it actually was every fifteen seconds.
Frawley was rustier than a Latvian submarine early on but that's no knock on him, after all he hadn't played a single game this year before tonight. Not even a cheap intraclub where he got to stitch up some rookie list hack. Considering where he was coming from he got a lot better as the game went on and should be absolutely firing in a few weeks time. Garland was good as well but in a case of the fickle finger of fate jamming itself deep into our eyeball and poking around he's done something indeterminate to his knee and is either out for a week or a year depending on who you listen to. Isn't life wonderful? I'll be shattered if it's the latter because he was one of the big success stories of last season - and if we're going to cop 75 inside 50's to 35 again (thank god for Twitter, providing the stats where THE LEAGUE ITSELF CANNOT BE BOTHERED) I'd much rather have him down there than Macdonald, Warnock or McNamara. Even the Stefan Martin Experience has proven himself too valuable around the ground to go back permanently - and I never thought I'd write that.
The last quarter was just junk time from start to end. Everyone was stuffed, our sub was adding nothing to the run and Hawthorn lost interest. Always seems to happen when they play us for some reason. We did a handful of nice things - including actually kicking a goal or two - but the sting was well and truly out of it. The only interest left was whether anybody in the backline would collapse from the weight of having carried their teammates for so long. Just to recap we suffered 75 inside 50's and neither Franklin nor #2 member of the Chernobyl Child Society (#1 ticketholder is Mitch Robinson) Roughhead kicked a bag. Just stop and think about that for a second if you're intending on bagging our defenders for their job today.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Luke Tapscott
4 - Colin Sylvia
3 - Jack Grimes
2 - Rohan Bail
1 - Stefan Martin
Apologies in no rational order to Bartram, Davey, Garland, Green and Jamar.
Leaderboard
8 - Colin Sylvia
6 - Luke Tapscott (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year and Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
5 - Brent Moloney
3 - Jack Grimes
3 - Colin Garland
2 - Mark Jamar (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
2 - Rohan Bail
1 - Stefan Martin
Crowd Watch
Very bizarre activities in the top deck of the Ponsford tonight. A couple of old men with old tyme transistors radios held to the ear at right angles (don't their arms get sore?) showing complete ignorance of the invention of headphones thirty years ago, some underdressed norgs-out women who must have died of hypothermia later in the game and a kid who I conceded must have been somewhat special because he was wearing a lumberjack flannel shirt, a case of teenage bumfluff so severe it made Dunn look normal and at half time was spotted donning one of those comedy wigs with the tassels.
But the most baffling performance of the evening came from the young couple sitting next to us. They spent the whole first half canoodling to the point where I wanted to yell "I think he's gonna pork her" a'la National Lampoon's European Vacation. Young love and all that, good on them but then it gets properly sinister. It's not quite going along the same path as that famous video of the couple shagging in the Sydney Football Stadium but it's not far from.
Bored shitless during the break I casually glance towards them over the top of my comrade Adam 2 and the young lass has her phone out openly and proudly scrolling through clearly homemade shots of herself in the buff. Being the gentleman I am I looked away immediately and instead engaged 2.0 to turn around have a look. He confirmed that she was indeed scrolling through shots of herself with the baps out in some suburban livingroom. Incredible. Would have been great to be the guy sitting behind her, he would have been having the time of his life. One of the stranger things I've ever seen at a game I must admit, and was roughly the only good thing to occur from the 20 minute mark of the second quarter onwards.
Also worth noting is the shambolic Hawthorn pre-match "entertainment". Was it the game that ruined our finals hopes last year (which is laughable considering what followed) where there was a goalkicking competition consisting entirely of recovering drug addicts? Maybe it was Richmond. Either way it was bizarre to see microphones shoved into people's faces asking them what they'd (allegedly) gone cold turkey on shortly before they tried to drill one from 30m out on an angle to win cash and prizes (and gee, I wonder how long it took for that cash to be exchanged for goods somewhere out the back of Grey Street?).
Today's thrilling offering featured a bunch of members lined up to try and win some indeterminate prize by picking random keys off a table and trying to open a box. As far as dynamic and exciting competitions went it was below "local mayor spins wheel at school fete" level. About four people in somebody's key opened the box and the other six contestants were told to piss off.
Then in what must be the most cringeworthy thing since we raised the non-premiership flag to the acid jazz stylings of old mate in his velvet jacket last week the Hawks players ran out with #1's on their training jackets to "represent the fans" (buckets of vomit nearly followed that announcement) and then proceeded to tear them off and run to the fence to hand them out to the fans. Sadly for the cavalcade of kids - and god damn it I hope they were all kids - who ran from everywhere to get to the fence as if the Black Thunder had shown up and was giving out bottles of Pepsi Max and copies of New Weekly the very nature of the gimmick was that there were only 21 to give out (amusingly the sub couldn't take his off because he had his council worker vest on over it) and so they all did death defying runs down the steps of the bottom deck only to end up empty handed.
Wouldn't you be shattered not to get your hands on a genuinely sweat stained item from David Hale? Yes, you'd just be gutted. Even worse if you got it and it had bits of synthetic hair all over it. Watch out for about 15 of them to be offered on Ebay tomorrow.
The final insult was when the scoreboard tried to get a HAW! THORN! chant going with a pre-recorded video only to be greeted with absolute silence by their devoted fans. If it's a choice between velvet jacket hitting bum notes in the Superman theme or this kind of crack induced marketing garbage then I'll never bag the trumpeteer again.
Do people really need to be entertained? We really haven't come very far since the Hyde Street Primary School brass band used to patrol the boundary line at half-time at the Western Oval or the time an elephant randomly showed up at Arden Street.
Kampaign Korner
Yesterday I realised that nobody other than Jobe Watson, Mick Malthouse and myself cares about the sub rule when I rang up SEN to go bananas about it and was followed by two other callers who vigorously disagreed (i.e nigh on abused) me for being against it. Fancy trying to start a people's rebellion and finding out the people aren't actually interested - now I know how Tony Abbott feels.
So, the #no2subrally is cancelled. I give up. Let's just roll over, swallow the lies and take it up the keister from the league while we wait for their next brainwave built on manipulated statistics. I pledge not to go on about it anymore lest I end up being the football equivalent of Andrew Bolt and Climate Change - a zealous nutbag hectoring people about something they don't actually care about.
Just remember, will you be the person who says "When they came to take the fourth interchange player I didn't cry out, when they came to bring in the 9 point goal I didn't cry out" etc.. etc..?
Casey Corner
They won with Gysberts, Evans and Wonaeamirri prominent in the midfield - and in Wona's case surprise surprise that they can't just enjoy a good thing and leave him forward - but the most terrifying thing was Juice booting five. We've not heard the last of him yet I fear.
I'm not going to swing the axe yet in this week's game of Fantasy Selection Committee. Garland goes out with his injury and is, I suppose, replaced by Macdonald. Maric takes his March Champion award back to the VFL to try and get a kick before having another crack at it and I'll bring Gysberts in start as sub (grrr, no wait I'm taking it seriously now like a good little sycophant) and give us some life in the midfield coming off the bench.
Jones and Jetta survive but go into final warning territory. Knowing my luck they'll probably name The Spencil again and this time it won't be a carefully constructed, early April's Fool gag like it was last Thursday night.
Next Week
Surely there's no possible way that we can lose to Brisbane. It's possible but it just could not happen. There's no way they could put a spurt like the Hawks did in their wildest dreams at the moment, but I'll tell you what if we do something contrive to lose I'll come on here and go absolutely troppo. The post might have to go through the Demonblog legal department for the all clear to make sure I don't get sued.
It's a blessing and a curse for Bailey and Co to be playing the Queensland comedy clubs over the next fortnight because in all seriousness we should end up 2-1-1 and be right back in the mix, hopefully with some structure and confidence about the place, but if we don't there's going to be rioting in the streets and effigies being burnt.
I'm bulk buying petrol and unused effigies from Indian cricket fans just in case.
Final thoughts
"Don't take it to heart" said a patronising opposition supporter on Twitter tonight, completely missing the point of my antics on here for the last six years and two weeks. Sound advice, unlikely to ever be followed.
Sunday, 27 March 2011
It's a weird and wonderful world
Clearly sensing my epic distress and potential for going the big V.O.M for the M.F.C in the seconds before the first bounce my mother was kind enough to bust out some sort of mysterious calming lozenge. Not sure it was entirely legal, and it may have been imported into the country next to somebody's large intestine, but what a day for it. I will be bringing that stuff into the country by the container load for the rest of the season.
Perhaps it wasn't the gear that calmed me down, perhaps it was the startling array of gimmicks that were going on before the match. There was Nick McCallum standing in Lionel Richie's spot interviewing David Neitz and replaying the footage of him destroying Luke McCabe's career over and over against like it was September 11, there was that poon in his velvet jacket playing acid jazz versions of the theme song and then for some reason we raised a flag as if we'd won a premiership.
For those of you who are have just entered the Australian mainland after being detained at Christmas Island I can assure you that we didn't win a premiership last season, the year before that or any time since I was negative 17 years old. So why act like we had? Hoisting the club flag is all very well and good but it's a poor subsitute for actual success. Not for the first - or last - time I suffered immense MFC cultural cringe from the whole exercise.
I'll tell you what I did like from the pre-match shenanigans and that was the sight of Jim Stynes looking in rude health. He shocks me every time. Pretty soon everybody who is diagnosed with cancer will be drinking a frothy beaker of their own emissions and whacking a tube up the chocbox while being filmed because it doesn't appear to have done him anything but good. If Jim wants to hoist flags like he's on an old time ship then I'll stand back and let him do it. If he wants to come around to my house and eat the contents of my fridge he can do that as well. If he wants to have a crack at Ms. Demonblog then... well he is a great man.
Playing the Swans in the first game was a blessing and a curse. They're a good side - let's not forget they missed playing in a prelim by five points - but not so good that we were going to get pounded (or bored into submission if the Saints were involved). BUT we were always going to judge ourselves harshly against when we smashed them last year. Hard to know how to take that performance in retrospect, we lasted another week on top of the world before falling to pieces and they stormed into the finals.
It pays to treat that game as an anomaly and ignore the way we treated them with contempt, and if today is held in isolation with nothing to judge it against bar our wonky pre-season, then I'm as happy as one can possibly be coming out of a game where you didn't win.
There were still some major issues, the first being that somebody we'd ended up sitting in front of one of those people who shows up at a game on their own and decides to talk to the people sitting around them. Sadly nobody else was sitting around him so we copped the whole thing. "Look at how big Jesse White has gotten" he turned around and said before the opening bounce. "Oh yeah, huge" I replied despite absolutely zero idea/interest as to what White looks like or what number he is. To make it clear that I wasn't there for random chit chat with the public I proceeded to put headphones in. Didn't stop him but at least on the third or fourth time I had to take the 'phones out and ask him to repeat he got the idea that we weren't going to end the day as Facebook friends.
On-field there were issues as well. Early on it looked like nobody had any interest in getting within the same postcode as Adam Goodes, the likes of Davey/Moloney/Jones couldn't get near it and it was abundantly clear that our forward line structure was, and is, still flawed.
The poor Jurrahcane could barely get a decent kick towards him for the first half, Emo Maric was being all depressed and - frankly - not very good (in a performance befitting any player who has suddenly found me calling them my favourite) and Green was spending most of his time up the ground. It's no wonder that we had to rely on so many goals coming out of the midfield, but that's not an issue as long as you can keep it up - certainly doesn't hurt Collingwood to have a wide spread. If you can somehow conjure two goals out of Simon Buckley (3 in 21 games for us) then you're operating on a different plane to the rest of the competition.
We were getting killed out of the middle but I refuse point blank to accept that it was Jamar's fault. More like he was doing everything right and nobody else could get near it. Luckily Moloney clicked into gear and played in an incredible second half out of the centre, because early on it looked like we were going to walk meekly to our deaths.
Eventually Davey and Jones got themselves into it as well as the game went on thank christ, but neither of them was dominant and Flash somehow managed to get himself reported for some half arsed bump on a charge that will be rapidly withdrawn or thrown out by the MRP.
When we went two goals down at the start I began to sweat up a bit. The combination of Goodes doing as he liked and the domination of the Swans out of the centre rendered all the medicinal remedies in the world absolutely useless as visions of a heinous first round massacre where we kicked three goals started to flash before my eyes. After all we've cocked up the first game before - every year for the last five years in-fact.
Somehow we managed to hang with them until quarter time. Dunn snapped one of his arse/ridiculous facial growths for our first and 30 Seconds To Maric made his key contribution for the day by throwing a handball over the top to Green before Sylvia got himself into the game with a hefty roost from outside 50. Not more than a few minutes before Col, recipient of a classic media beat-up to start his year, had tried to do the unselfish thing and pass to Jurrah inside 50 but it wasn't the right option. When he won the free kick the next time directly in front he realised that he's thumped goals from exactly the same spot at the City End before and went back to bang one through from two steps inside the centre square.
From there on we just seemed to be just that little bit behind them and unlikely to roll back the deficit. Sure, we were absolutely fisted by the umpires in the first quarter but there was still a cavalcade of dumb decisions going inside 50 and Swans players running around on their own with nobody near them at the other.
On the upside the Stefan Martin Experience was playing out of his skin from one end to the other and Tapscott was enjoying the best R1 debut from a Demon since Kyle Cheney in '07, but I was just waiting for Jamar to fall apart from the grind of playing a lone hand in the centre. The SME only took a couple of centre bounces but he more than justified his spot in the starting 21 with end-to-end football that would be never be described as "slashing" a'la Brad Green but did exactly what it was supposed to do.
He didn't do much when he went forward (which was no use for those of us who had backed him @ 87-1 for the first goal) but that was ok because down back he was exactly the player who made me throw him number onto my jumper two years ago and cop two years of shit for it. He held marks, he threw his body around and he generally used the ball well. There was one time that he tried to kick across the ground and bounced it off his ankle but the sort of day he was having he got away with it. I've got my concerns that he can do it every week, but as far as a second big man there just in case it all goes wrong for the Russian he'll do me nicely at least until we work out whether Robert Campbell is ever going to play a match or Max Gawn and his gigantic metal teeth start causing damage.
Tapscott was exactly as I'd have wanted him to be based on what I'd seen of him in the pre-season. It's all well and good to be hitting perfect 50m passes out of the backline against Brisbane at Princes Park in front of 27 people but it doesn't mean you're going to be any good when it comes to the crunch. I once saw Isaac Weetra play a half decent match in Bendigo and we all know how that ended. But Tappy, owner of the biggest neck since James Frawley, was sublime. He took contested marks, he threw tackles, he hit targets and deep in the last quarter he flattened the irritating Rhys Shaw. Also please note that it was his gigantic roost into the goalsquare in the last quarter that ended up delivering the goal for Green which put us ahead. I'm in love.
The difference between Cheney getting maximum votes in his debut and Tappy's performance today was that the Brock Lesnar lookalike just racked up a million touches in a shit team because everyone he was playing with was utterly useless. Tapscott might not get maximum votes because he had many times better players around him today but his performance screamed star. Getting nominated for Rising Star in the first round is the hardest time of the year to get it because there are about 200 people debuting but he'd have to at least come under consideration. Shut the gate on the Jeff Hilton Rookie Of The Year award because he's probably won it already.
At half-time, as a future Melbourne draftee gave up interest in the Little League game and sat down in the forward pocket while the game went on around him, it seemed fairly clear to me that the key to us getting on top of them was to shut down Goodes and get some love in the forward line. Watts did a couple of nice things, but not a great deal else and Jurrah was still crying out for some decent service. We couldn't risk Jamar down there for more than a few minutes at a time and both Davey and Jetta were doing too much elsewhere to throw them down there.
We got one of the two, so I guess a draw is a fair enough result. Dunn and Jurrah added another couple between them but it was the midfield who kicked the goals to drag us back into it. The Swans skipped away early but Garland did an epic shutdown job on Goodes from half-way through the quarter to all but take him out of the match. When Moloney, all of a sudden the greatest clearance player ever born, walked through the half the Swans list both past and present to kick a long goal it looked like we were back into it but as would happen so many times for the day - and for the last decade - we ruined all the good work of battling to kick a goal by letting them go straight out of the centre and boot one at the other end.
When the margin blew out to the best part of four goals nearing the end of the quarter I was prepared for the worst. It took that magic run and goal from Bennell to drag us back into it - an early contender for Goal of the Year, which doesn't count for much right now - and give us some chance of nicking it in the last quarter.
Neither team had used their sub yet (and just writing that makes my skin crawl) and we pulled the trigger first by handing the Maric the red vest and razor blades and bringing Petterd on. They stuck with sitting Seaby on an exercise bike, just waiting to unleash a fresh ruckman on Jamar when he reached physical rock bottom. Unfortunately for John Longmire he obviously hasn't seen the video of Jamar against Port and Collingwood last year when he single handedly carried the entire side over the line (or at least onto the line in the case of the Pies draw) and nearly died of exhaustion at the final siren. He is made of iron a'la Ivan Drago.
And what an impact Petterd had. The only shame was that we had to wait for three full quarters to elapse before he got an opportunity. Maybe it's a good thing for somebody so injury prone as he is and might extend his career by years but it's shit for football but more on that later. Ricky set up Dunn's first goal of the quarter and then had a shot of his own. Good start but his miss was the start of a cavalcade of blown opportunities to win. Watts, Jurrah, Green, Bennell and Jamar all missed gettable chances but at least Green and Jurrah made up for it by getting it right later on. I can accept the Russian missing his kick, even though it was from about 20m out directly in front to put us in front, because the poor bastard was probably about to pass out from exhaustion.
Thank god then, as we always say, for Brad Green. I'm not convinced having him further up the field is the best use of his talents but he was in the right place at the right time to slam through a six pointer after Tapscott's long bomb to the square. Even better considering he'd been off during the quarter after dislocating his finger. Luckily for him his legs managed to get on the same side of the goalpost after he soccered it through, because he was in serious danger of dislocating his testicles at one point when he got boot to ball in mid-air.
We were in front for the first time all day but every single Melbourne fan knows that trying to defend a lead with five minutes to go is almost the most nerve-wracking disastrous thing we can be involved with. Look at the Bulldogs game on Friday night last year, look at Queen's Birthday, seek urgent psychological treatment. The Swans were always going to go forward and we were treated to them battering us inside 50 for the last three minutes of the game. Reminded me a bit of the Brisbane '08 match where the Lions spent the last minute camped out in front of our goal waiting to stooge us before we got away with it courtesy of Aussie Wonaeamirri legging it up the Members side wing.
I honestly thought we were done for with the multiple bounces and throw-ins right in front of our goal. Our kick-ins had been ok all day (even if the second kick was often iffy) but you wouldn't stake your life on them clearing the ball effectively at any time. When the first point went through I instantly thought draw. We couldn't clear it after that and for some reason the Swans refused to force a point through to level the scores. They had so many opportunities, and knowing that they'd have 18 players waiting for us to cock-up the kickout it might have been a better option.
Eventually after what seemed like about two hours but was actually a minute they got the equalising point - and let me tell you while it was in mid-air there was no calming lozenge that could have kept my heartbeat down - and our last roll of the dice found Nifty Nev Jetta on the Southern Stand side wing with nobody in front of him. Discretion was the better part of valour and he ran down the clock for the draw.
I'll take it. Nobody likes hearing the MCG doing their 'hilarious' postmodern gag of playing No Second Prize after a tie but it could have been worse. We've got a decent platform to build on for the next few weeks and players to come back. Two points good, four points better, no points shithouse.
'Innovations' Central
So, now let's talk about these shithouse new rules.
I can at least see some benefit to the concussion rule. It seems heavy handed to just flat out ban people when they've passed every test known to man but at least you can argue it's for the welfare of the players. Forget the fact that men like Ron Barassi spent fifteen years getting punched in the head and have lived long, fruitful lives, forget the fact that the statistics that they pull out about NFL players having worse life expectancy than people who live in Swaziland and just go along with it to keep the medical fraternity happy.
I thought I heard somewhere that the doctors were the ones who wanted the new rule but it seems a bit of a slap in the face to them to suggest that they weren't looking after player welfare before. As they often do it was Hawthorn who stuffed it up for everybody by sending Jordan Lewis out there last year when he was wobbling around like a drunken sailor after being knocked out earlier in the game. That's the kind of situation where Uncle Andrew and his cast of idiots should be picking up the phone and asking questions of the club, not when Jarrad Waite suffers a pissy little bump that knocks him around for five minutes and leaves him unscathed and sitting on the bench doing nothing for the rest of the match.
And take your NFL examples and cram them. The whole point of that sport is for an offensive line of 300lb fat porkies to bump up against a defensive line of 350lb boombahs with the express goal of leaping on somebody and stopping them by any means necessary. Their whole sport is built on concussions - it's no wonder that some players end up with brains like Swiss cheese by the end of their career. That's not our game. Go and ring up the NRL and ask them to do scans on Martin Lang's head to see if a career of being the designated runner of the ball straight into the opposition has done him any wrong - they need rules on concussion more than we do.
But yes, you can at least say there's some sort of aspect of player's future welfare in it. So what about the football abortion that is the substitute rule? What exact purpose does - allegedly - putting the brakes on bench rotations via a sub serve? I can't believe we've actually been fed the line that they want to slow the game down to lessen the amount of injuries to players. Theory is that three interchange players mean less rotations therefore players are more tired and unable to cannon into each and cause injury.
To back this up a few reams of paper were waved about with some vague stats about injuries being on the rise. What pure and utter bollocks. If Demetriou/Anderson want to write their names in history they should either name something after themselves a'la politicians or do a Ross Oakley and kill a club (sorry, forget they already tried that once), not bring in poorly thought out 'innovations' based on the wonky interpretation of stats. Ask Jonathan Brown, Joel Selwood and Jason Porplyzia about how you don't have to wait until the last quarter to suffer a serious injury.
Ask Jay Schulz if there was less chance of him blowing his knee to the shithouse in the last quarter because he's not running as fast. While you're at it ask somebody what the purpose is of making the players who come off wear a garish red vest. It's not 1912, somebody is going to notice if a player who has officially been taken out of the game suddenly wanders back onto the field. Come to think of it there's no need for a vest for the starting sub either - are they suggesting that if Ricky Petterd had suddenly bounded off the bench fifteen minutes into the second quarter that we would have gotten away with it? It just makes no sense. Poor Jay doesn't know if he's going to be out for three weeks or the rest of the year but before anything else happens he has to strap a red vest on. Why? Was there some chance he might just run back out there? Surely Porplyzia had to try and pull one over his destroyed shoulder or risk the Crows copping a fine. It's bollocks.
Clubs won't cut down on interchanges just because they've got less players to choose from, they'll just move those three around more. And can we now expect that after three quarters of smashing each other to a pulp players are going to wilt in last quarters and cause games to limp to tedious, skill free conclusions? How exciting that's going to be, what a great advertisement for the game.
Just think about how many times you've seen a player knocked on his arse by a huge hit since they tightened the rules to demand mandatory execution of anybody who does a head high hit. How many times does it happen in the last quarter? Barely ever. The big hits and bumps are early or in the middle of a game, and how is that going to be affected by this rubbish rule?
The heavy handed, illogical interchange breach rules are one thing. The penalty outweighs the crime drastically in 99.9% of cases but it doesn't change the actual fabric of the game. This does and it's shithouse. Paul Roos is right in saying that we're the only game that is regressing to the rules of the past. When did you ever see a modern sport deliberately handicap itself so that its best aspects are downplayed? Not since the Marquis of Queensberry gloved the bare-knuckle boxers and they stopped having 100 round title fights has any major sport done so much to take the most attractive elements out of their game.
Does anybody have any confidence in the clowns who run this game? You could put NSW Labor in charge of the product they've got and it would make a fortune in broadcasting rights, what exactly is it that they do for their $2+ mil a year? I'd call on them to resign but nobody's giving up that sort of money to show up at work, put the feet up do a few speeches and tinker with the fabric of the sport every year.
And what are our brave friends in the media saying about this? Well if the pre-season previews in the newspapers and the commentary on Friday night's match are anything to go by they're hooking into a gigantic shit sandwich from the league and declaring it ice cream. "The sub has done its job" screamed McAvaney like the incredible sycophant that he is. As if any Channel 7 commentator is going to have the plums to come out and say something that the league have done is stupid when the broadcast rights are up for grabs - and there's no point expecting the print journos to do anything about it lest they get thrown off the gravy train and stop being invited to free lunches. When Dwayne "fucking" Russell almost blew an o-ring over Brent Macaffer coming on to kick a goal in the last quarter of the game on Saturday I almost kicked my television in.
Mark my words next thing they'll start mucking with the game to try and "encourage scoring". There's no doubt that St Kilda are playing football so boring that it would make fans of the early 1900's throw their hands up in the air and go off to die of cholera but we can't just alter the sport because we don't like the way it's being played. The Saints have, thank god, won fuck all and if there's any justice in the world their gameplan will be forgotten soon as they sink to the bottom of the ladder.
Now the Pies are the big thing and "frontal pressure" has achieved "moving forward" levels of ubiquity when people talk about footy but somebody's going to come up with a new way of playing the game before long and the sport will evolve. Funny that the Pies also kicked 25 goals the other day, we should dream that more people start playing like that.
And then our glorious CEO has the nerve to blame roadworks for terrible first round crowds. He's off his nut. Perhaps people don't want to pay good money to go out and watch the game stuffed around with? I'll be there no matter what but the idea of having highly trained, highly paid professional players sitting on the bench for the majority of a game doing nothing belongs in another sport. It's all well and good to say that the rules were in pre-1978 and nobody cared then, but back then players weren't professionals - they were boilermakers, plumbers and PE teachers who trained a couple of nights a week and showed up for a game on Saturday as a second career. It's not the same, we don't need it, do your duty and ring up talkback radio to hammer it and god forbid one day they might listen to the people and ditch it.
See, this is the kind of shit that people need to be organising rallies at Parliament House for. Forget climate change and Juliar let's piss off the sub rule. I'm going to ring up Alan Jones and tell him that there's an afternoon hanging around with burly footballers in it for him if he supports the cause.
*ahem* See you in the Supreme Court for Demetriou/Anderson/Russell vs Demonblog.
The only interest I had was the scoreboard being about five minutes behind on announcing the change but Petterd getting a polite round of applause despite the fact that he'd already been involved in two scoring plays by the time they said it.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Brent Moloney
4 - Colin Sylvia
3 - Colin Garland
2 - Mark Jamar
1 - Luke Tapscott
Substantial apologies to Grimes, Trengove and Martin + lesser degrees of apology to Davey (second half), Dunn, Bennell and Jetta.
Votes in the rookie, defender and ruckman category by the end of Round 1? We're living in an enlightened era.
Crowd Watch
Where were the nutbags? Nowhere near me. Apart from old mate in front who liked a chat and then started bothering me to find out how much time there was left every ten seconds at the end there were no foul mouthed housewives or flat out nutbags. We are officially boring.
Stat My Bitch Up - presented by Demon Wiki, where footy stat nerd dreams come true.
That was the first MFC draw in the opening round since Round 1, 1921 against Essendon at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Third I've been at (+1 Essendon/Brisbane match) and my second against the Swans (after Round 7, 1992).
When the Petterd/Maric swap went down it was the first permanent substitution of MFC players since Peter Keays and Graham Osborne were replaced by Colin Graham and Peter Johnston at three-quarter time in Round 22, 1977. How was it for you? I'd rather go back to 1977 than go through that rubbish again. Peter Keays probably walked off the ground, got in his car and went to work in a Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-through, Ricky Petterd on the other hand is a full time professional footballer and was seen doing sprints on the MCG turf. What a fuck up. Breathe son, just breathe.
Back on more palatable matters Dean Bailey has now coached the equal second most draws in MFC history along with three other men. No coach has had more than one draw in his career since Norm Smith racked up the all-time record of five.
Next Week
Hawthorn at the MCG in the Sunday graveyard slot. They're coming off a loss but I'm sure they'll still go in favourites. Good to see that star recruit Cam Bruce helped them on their way last night by giving two goals directly to the Crows. Hopefully Clarko loses completely - even more so - under the pressure of Kennett trying to tip him out and plays Bruce, Cheney and Paul Johnson.
Frawley might be back which should help deal with Franklin. He can replace Macdonald - permanently if we're lucky - but the only other change I want to make is that unless a miracle occurs, the world comes to its senses and we piss off the sub rule is to start Petterd and play the Emo off the bench.
Final Thoughts
So how do they separate us and the Swans on the ladder? Are we higher because of alphabetical order? And is Match Ratio going to earn a call-up again this year to reflect the return of the bye?
Footy is back. I'm not as distressed as I thought I might be.
Perhaps it wasn't the gear that calmed me down, perhaps it was the startling array of gimmicks that were going on before the match. There was Nick McCallum standing in Lionel Richie's spot interviewing David Neitz and replaying the footage of him destroying Luke McCabe's career over and over against like it was September 11, there was that poon in his velvet jacket playing acid jazz versions of the theme song and then for some reason we raised a flag as if we'd won a premiership.
For those of you who are have just entered the Australian mainland after being detained at Christmas Island I can assure you that we didn't win a premiership last season, the year before that or any time since I was negative 17 years old. So why act like we had? Hoisting the club flag is all very well and good but it's a poor subsitute for actual success. Not for the first - or last - time I suffered immense MFC cultural cringe from the whole exercise.
I'll tell you what I did like from the pre-match shenanigans and that was the sight of Jim Stynes looking in rude health. He shocks me every time. Pretty soon everybody who is diagnosed with cancer will be drinking a frothy beaker of their own emissions and whacking a tube up the chocbox while being filmed because it doesn't appear to have done him anything but good. If Jim wants to hoist flags like he's on an old time ship then I'll stand back and let him do it. If he wants to come around to my house and eat the contents of my fridge he can do that as well. If he wants to have a crack at Ms. Demonblog then... well he is a great man.
Playing the Swans in the first game was a blessing and a curse. They're a good side - let's not forget they missed playing in a prelim by five points - but not so good that we were going to get pounded (or bored into submission if the Saints were involved). BUT we were always going to judge ourselves harshly against when we smashed them last year. Hard to know how to take that performance in retrospect, we lasted another week on top of the world before falling to pieces and they stormed into the finals.
It pays to treat that game as an anomaly and ignore the way we treated them with contempt, and if today is held in isolation with nothing to judge it against bar our wonky pre-season, then I'm as happy as one can possibly be coming out of a game where you didn't win.
There were still some major issues, the first being that somebody we'd ended up sitting in front of one of those people who shows up at a game on their own and decides to talk to the people sitting around them. Sadly nobody else was sitting around him so we copped the whole thing. "Look at how big Jesse White has gotten" he turned around and said before the opening bounce. "Oh yeah, huge" I replied despite absolutely zero idea/interest as to what White looks like or what number he is. To make it clear that I wasn't there for random chit chat with the public I proceeded to put headphones in. Didn't stop him but at least on the third or fourth time I had to take the 'phones out and ask him to repeat he got the idea that we weren't going to end the day as Facebook friends.
On-field there were issues as well. Early on it looked like nobody had any interest in getting within the same postcode as Adam Goodes, the likes of Davey/Moloney/Jones couldn't get near it and it was abundantly clear that our forward line structure was, and is, still flawed.
The poor Jurrahcane could barely get a decent kick towards him for the first half, Emo Maric was being all depressed and - frankly - not very good (in a performance befitting any player who has suddenly found me calling them my favourite) and Green was spending most of his time up the ground. It's no wonder that we had to rely on so many goals coming out of the midfield, but that's not an issue as long as you can keep it up - certainly doesn't hurt Collingwood to have a wide spread. If you can somehow conjure two goals out of Simon Buckley (3 in 21 games for us) then you're operating on a different plane to the rest of the competition.
We were getting killed out of the middle but I refuse point blank to accept that it was Jamar's fault. More like he was doing everything right and nobody else could get near it. Luckily Moloney clicked into gear and played in an incredible second half out of the centre, because early on it looked like we were going to walk meekly to our deaths.
Eventually Davey and Jones got themselves into it as well as the game went on thank christ, but neither of them was dominant and Flash somehow managed to get himself reported for some half arsed bump on a charge that will be rapidly withdrawn or thrown out by the MRP.
When we went two goals down at the start I began to sweat up a bit. The combination of Goodes doing as he liked and the domination of the Swans out of the centre rendered all the medicinal remedies in the world absolutely useless as visions of a heinous first round massacre where we kicked three goals started to flash before my eyes. After all we've cocked up the first game before - every year for the last five years in-fact.
Somehow we managed to hang with them until quarter time. Dunn snapped one of his arse/ridiculous facial growths for our first and 30 Seconds To Maric made his key contribution for the day by throwing a handball over the top to Green before Sylvia got himself into the game with a hefty roost from outside 50. Not more than a few minutes before Col, recipient of a classic media beat-up to start his year, had tried to do the unselfish thing and pass to Jurrah inside 50 but it wasn't the right option. When he won the free kick the next time directly in front he realised that he's thumped goals from exactly the same spot at the City End before and went back to bang one through from two steps inside the centre square.
From there on we just seemed to be just that little bit behind them and unlikely to roll back the deficit. Sure, we were absolutely fisted by the umpires in the first quarter but there was still a cavalcade of dumb decisions going inside 50 and Swans players running around on their own with nobody near them at the other.
On the upside the Stefan Martin Experience was playing out of his skin from one end to the other and Tapscott was enjoying the best R1 debut from a Demon since Kyle Cheney in '07, but I was just waiting for Jamar to fall apart from the grind of playing a lone hand in the centre. The SME only took a couple of centre bounces but he more than justified his spot in the starting 21 with end-to-end football that would be never be described as "slashing" a'la Brad Green but did exactly what it was supposed to do.
He didn't do much when he went forward (which was no use for those of us who had backed him @ 87-1 for the first goal) but that was ok because down back he was exactly the player who made me throw him number onto my jumper two years ago and cop two years of shit for it. He held marks, he threw his body around and he generally used the ball well. There was one time that he tried to kick across the ground and bounced it off his ankle but the sort of day he was having he got away with it. I've got my concerns that he can do it every week, but as far as a second big man there just in case it all goes wrong for the Russian he'll do me nicely at least until we work out whether Robert Campbell is ever going to play a match or Max Gawn and his gigantic metal teeth start causing damage.
Tapscott was exactly as I'd have wanted him to be based on what I'd seen of him in the pre-season. It's all well and good to be hitting perfect 50m passes out of the backline against Brisbane at Princes Park in front of 27 people but it doesn't mean you're going to be any good when it comes to the crunch. I once saw Isaac Weetra play a half decent match in Bendigo and we all know how that ended. But Tappy, owner of the biggest neck since James Frawley, was sublime. He took contested marks, he threw tackles, he hit targets and deep in the last quarter he flattened the irritating Rhys Shaw. Also please note that it was his gigantic roost into the goalsquare in the last quarter that ended up delivering the goal for Green which put us ahead. I'm in love.
The difference between Cheney getting maximum votes in his debut and Tappy's performance today was that the Brock Lesnar lookalike just racked up a million touches in a shit team because everyone he was playing with was utterly useless. Tapscott might not get maximum votes because he had many times better players around him today but his performance screamed star. Getting nominated for Rising Star in the first round is the hardest time of the year to get it because there are about 200 people debuting but he'd have to at least come under consideration. Shut the gate on the Jeff Hilton Rookie Of The Year award because he's probably won it already.
At half-time, as a future Melbourne draftee gave up interest in the Little League game and sat down in the forward pocket while the game went on around him, it seemed fairly clear to me that the key to us getting on top of them was to shut down Goodes and get some love in the forward line. Watts did a couple of nice things, but not a great deal else and Jurrah was still crying out for some decent service. We couldn't risk Jamar down there for more than a few minutes at a time and both Davey and Jetta were doing too much elsewhere to throw them down there.
We got one of the two, so I guess a draw is a fair enough result. Dunn and Jurrah added another couple between them but it was the midfield who kicked the goals to drag us back into it. The Swans skipped away early but Garland did an epic shutdown job on Goodes from half-way through the quarter to all but take him out of the match. When Moloney, all of a sudden the greatest clearance player ever born, walked through the half the Swans list both past and present to kick a long goal it looked like we were back into it but as would happen so many times for the day - and for the last decade - we ruined all the good work of battling to kick a goal by letting them go straight out of the centre and boot one at the other end.
When the margin blew out to the best part of four goals nearing the end of the quarter I was prepared for the worst. It took that magic run and goal from Bennell to drag us back into it - an early contender for Goal of the Year, which doesn't count for much right now - and give us some chance of nicking it in the last quarter.
Neither team had used their sub yet (and just writing that makes my skin crawl) and we pulled the trigger first by handing the Maric the red vest and razor blades and bringing Petterd on. They stuck with sitting Seaby on an exercise bike, just waiting to unleash a fresh ruckman on Jamar when he reached physical rock bottom. Unfortunately for John Longmire he obviously hasn't seen the video of Jamar against Port and Collingwood last year when he single handedly carried the entire side over the line (or at least onto the line in the case of the Pies draw) and nearly died of exhaustion at the final siren. He is made of iron a'la Ivan Drago.
And what an impact Petterd had. The only shame was that we had to wait for three full quarters to elapse before he got an opportunity. Maybe it's a good thing for somebody so injury prone as he is and might extend his career by years but it's shit for football but more on that later. Ricky set up Dunn's first goal of the quarter and then had a shot of his own. Good start but his miss was the start of a cavalcade of blown opportunities to win. Watts, Jurrah, Green, Bennell and Jamar all missed gettable chances but at least Green and Jurrah made up for it by getting it right later on. I can accept the Russian missing his kick, even though it was from about 20m out directly in front to put us in front, because the poor bastard was probably about to pass out from exhaustion.
Thank god then, as we always say, for Brad Green. I'm not convinced having him further up the field is the best use of his talents but he was in the right place at the right time to slam through a six pointer after Tapscott's long bomb to the square. Even better considering he'd been off during the quarter after dislocating his finger. Luckily for him his legs managed to get on the same side of the goalpost after he soccered it through, because he was in serious danger of dislocating his testicles at one point when he got boot to ball in mid-air.
We were in front for the first time all day but every single Melbourne fan knows that trying to defend a lead with five minutes to go is almost the most nerve-wracking disastrous thing we can be involved with. Look at the Bulldogs game on Friday night last year, look at Queen's Birthday, seek urgent psychological treatment. The Swans were always going to go forward and we were treated to them battering us inside 50 for the last three minutes of the game. Reminded me a bit of the Brisbane '08 match where the Lions spent the last minute camped out in front of our goal waiting to stooge us before we got away with it courtesy of Aussie Wonaeamirri legging it up the Members side wing.
I honestly thought we were done for with the multiple bounces and throw-ins right in front of our goal. Our kick-ins had been ok all day (even if the second kick was often iffy) but you wouldn't stake your life on them clearing the ball effectively at any time. When the first point went through I instantly thought draw. We couldn't clear it after that and for some reason the Swans refused to force a point through to level the scores. They had so many opportunities, and knowing that they'd have 18 players waiting for us to cock-up the kickout it might have been a better option.
Eventually after what seemed like about two hours but was actually a minute they got the equalising point - and let me tell you while it was in mid-air there was no calming lozenge that could have kept my heartbeat down - and our last roll of the dice found Nifty Nev Jetta on the Southern Stand side wing with nobody in front of him. Discretion was the better part of valour and he ran down the clock for the draw.
I'll take it. Nobody likes hearing the MCG doing their 'hilarious' postmodern gag of playing No Second Prize after a tie but it could have been worse. We've got a decent platform to build on for the next few weeks and players to come back. Two points good, four points better, no points shithouse.
'Innovations' Central
So, now let's talk about these shithouse new rules.
I can at least see some benefit to the concussion rule. It seems heavy handed to just flat out ban people when they've passed every test known to man but at least you can argue it's for the welfare of the players. Forget the fact that men like Ron Barassi spent fifteen years getting punched in the head and have lived long, fruitful lives, forget the fact that the statistics that they pull out about NFL players having worse life expectancy than people who live in Swaziland and just go along with it to keep the medical fraternity happy.
I thought I heard somewhere that the doctors were the ones who wanted the new rule but it seems a bit of a slap in the face to them to suggest that they weren't looking after player welfare before. As they often do it was Hawthorn who stuffed it up for everybody by sending Jordan Lewis out there last year when he was wobbling around like a drunken sailor after being knocked out earlier in the game. That's the kind of situation where Uncle Andrew and his cast of idiots should be picking up the phone and asking questions of the club, not when Jarrad Waite suffers a pissy little bump that knocks him around for five minutes and leaves him unscathed and sitting on the bench doing nothing for the rest of the match.
And take your NFL examples and cram them. The whole point of that sport is for an offensive line of 300lb fat porkies to bump up against a defensive line of 350lb boombahs with the express goal of leaping on somebody and stopping them by any means necessary. Their whole sport is built on concussions - it's no wonder that some players end up with brains like Swiss cheese by the end of their career. That's not our game. Go and ring up the NRL and ask them to do scans on Martin Lang's head to see if a career of being the designated runner of the ball straight into the opposition has done him any wrong - they need rules on concussion more than we do.
But yes, you can at least say there's some sort of aspect of player's future welfare in it. So what about the football abortion that is the substitute rule? What exact purpose does - allegedly - putting the brakes on bench rotations via a sub serve? I can't believe we've actually been fed the line that they want to slow the game down to lessen the amount of injuries to players. Theory is that three interchange players mean less rotations therefore players are more tired and unable to cannon into each and cause injury.
To back this up a few reams of paper were waved about with some vague stats about injuries being on the rise. What pure and utter bollocks. If Demetriou/Anderson want to write their names in history they should either name something after themselves a'la politicians or do a Ross Oakley and kill a club (sorry, forget they already tried that once), not bring in poorly thought out 'innovations' based on the wonky interpretation of stats. Ask Jonathan Brown, Joel Selwood and Jason Porplyzia about how you don't have to wait until the last quarter to suffer a serious injury.
Ask Jay Schulz if there was less chance of him blowing his knee to the shithouse in the last quarter because he's not running as fast. While you're at it ask somebody what the purpose is of making the players who come off wear a garish red vest. It's not 1912, somebody is going to notice if a player who has officially been taken out of the game suddenly wanders back onto the field. Come to think of it there's no need for a vest for the starting sub either - are they suggesting that if Ricky Petterd had suddenly bounded off the bench fifteen minutes into the second quarter that we would have gotten away with it? It just makes no sense. Poor Jay doesn't know if he's going to be out for three weeks or the rest of the year but before anything else happens he has to strap a red vest on. Why? Was there some chance he might just run back out there? Surely Porplyzia had to try and pull one over his destroyed shoulder or risk the Crows copping a fine. It's bollocks.
Clubs won't cut down on interchanges just because they've got less players to choose from, they'll just move those three around more. And can we now expect that after three quarters of smashing each other to a pulp players are going to wilt in last quarters and cause games to limp to tedious, skill free conclusions? How exciting that's going to be, what a great advertisement for the game.
Just think about how many times you've seen a player knocked on his arse by a huge hit since they tightened the rules to demand mandatory execution of anybody who does a head high hit. How many times does it happen in the last quarter? Barely ever. The big hits and bumps are early or in the middle of a game, and how is that going to be affected by this rubbish rule?
The heavy handed, illogical interchange breach rules are one thing. The penalty outweighs the crime drastically in 99.9% of cases but it doesn't change the actual fabric of the game. This does and it's shithouse. Paul Roos is right in saying that we're the only game that is regressing to the rules of the past. When did you ever see a modern sport deliberately handicap itself so that its best aspects are downplayed? Not since the Marquis of Queensberry gloved the bare-knuckle boxers and they stopped having 100 round title fights has any major sport done so much to take the most attractive elements out of their game.
Does anybody have any confidence in the clowns who run this game? You could put NSW Labor in charge of the product they've got and it would make a fortune in broadcasting rights, what exactly is it that they do for their $2+ mil a year? I'd call on them to resign but nobody's giving up that sort of money to show up at work, put the feet up do a few speeches and tinker with the fabric of the sport every year.
And what are our brave friends in the media saying about this? Well if the pre-season previews in the newspapers and the commentary on Friday night's match are anything to go by they're hooking into a gigantic shit sandwich from the league and declaring it ice cream. "The sub has done its job" screamed McAvaney like the incredible sycophant that he is. As if any Channel 7 commentator is going to have the plums to come out and say something that the league have done is stupid when the broadcast rights are up for grabs - and there's no point expecting the print journos to do anything about it lest they get thrown off the gravy train and stop being invited to free lunches. When Dwayne "fucking" Russell almost blew an o-ring over Brent Macaffer coming on to kick a goal in the last quarter of the game on Saturday I almost kicked my television in.
Mark my words next thing they'll start mucking with the game to try and "encourage scoring". There's no doubt that St Kilda are playing football so boring that it would make fans of the early 1900's throw their hands up in the air and go off to die of cholera but we can't just alter the sport because we don't like the way it's being played. The Saints have, thank god, won fuck all and if there's any justice in the world their gameplan will be forgotten soon as they sink to the bottom of the ladder.
Now the Pies are the big thing and "frontal pressure" has achieved "moving forward" levels of ubiquity when people talk about footy but somebody's going to come up with a new way of playing the game before long and the sport will evolve. Funny that the Pies also kicked 25 goals the other day, we should dream that more people start playing like that.
And then our glorious CEO has the nerve to blame roadworks for terrible first round crowds. He's off his nut. Perhaps people don't want to pay good money to go out and watch the game stuffed around with? I'll be there no matter what but the idea of having highly trained, highly paid professional players sitting on the bench for the majority of a game doing nothing belongs in another sport. It's all well and good to say that the rules were in pre-1978 and nobody cared then, but back then players weren't professionals - they were boilermakers, plumbers and PE teachers who trained a couple of nights a week and showed up for a game on Saturday as a second career. It's not the same, we don't need it, do your duty and ring up talkback radio to hammer it and god forbid one day they might listen to the people and ditch it.
See, this is the kind of shit that people need to be organising rallies at Parliament House for. Forget climate change and Juliar let's piss off the sub rule. I'm going to ring up Alan Jones and tell him that there's an afternoon hanging around with burly footballers in it for him if he supports the cause.
*ahem* See you in the Supreme Court for Demetriou/Anderson/Russell vs Demonblog.
The only interest I had was the scoreboard being about five minutes behind on announcing the change but Petterd getting a polite round of applause despite the fact that he'd already been involved in two scoring plays by the time they said it.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Brent Moloney
4 - Colin Sylvia
3 - Colin Garland
2 - Mark Jamar
1 - Luke Tapscott
Substantial apologies to Grimes, Trengove and Martin + lesser degrees of apology to Davey (second half), Dunn, Bennell and Jetta.
Votes in the rookie, defender and ruckman category by the end of Round 1? We're living in an enlightened era.
Crowd Watch
Where were the nutbags? Nowhere near me. Apart from old mate in front who liked a chat and then started bothering me to find out how much time there was left every ten seconds at the end there were no foul mouthed housewives or flat out nutbags. We are officially boring.
Stat My Bitch Up - presented by Demon Wiki, where footy stat nerd dreams come true.
That was the first MFC draw in the opening round since Round 1, 1921 against Essendon at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Third I've been at (+1 Essendon/Brisbane match) and my second against the Swans (after Round 7, 1992).
When the Petterd/Maric swap went down it was the first permanent substitution of MFC players since Peter Keays and Graham Osborne were replaced by Colin Graham and Peter Johnston at three-quarter time in Round 22, 1977. How was it for you? I'd rather go back to 1977 than go through that rubbish again. Peter Keays probably walked off the ground, got in his car and went to work in a Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-through, Ricky Petterd on the other hand is a full time professional footballer and was seen doing sprints on the MCG turf. What a fuck up. Breathe son, just breathe.
Back on more palatable matters Dean Bailey has now coached the equal second most draws in MFC history along with three other men. No coach has had more than one draw in his career since Norm Smith racked up the all-time record of five.
Next Week
Hawthorn at the MCG in the Sunday graveyard slot. They're coming off a loss but I'm sure they'll still go in favourites. Good to see that star recruit Cam Bruce helped them on their way last night by giving two goals directly to the Crows. Hopefully Clarko loses completely - even more so - under the pressure of Kennett trying to tip him out and plays Bruce, Cheney and Paul Johnson.
Frawley might be back which should help deal with Franklin. He can replace Macdonald - permanently if we're lucky - but the only other change I want to make is that unless a miracle occurs, the world comes to its senses and we piss off the sub rule is to start Petterd and play the Emo off the bench.
Final Thoughts
So how do they separate us and the Swans on the ladder? Are we higher because of alphabetical order? And is Match Ratio going to earn a call-up again this year to reflect the return of the bye?
Footy is back. I'm not as distressed as I thought I might be.
Monday, 21 March 2011
Saturday, 12 March 2011
Pre-Season Update Corner
Having not seen a second of Friday's match, nor read anything more than a few snippets from reporters who were probably filing from the pub after fifteen bottles of red I'm not going to leap up and down on the panic button over our loss yet. In fact when the only contact you've got with a game is reading snatches of Twitter reports backwards at about 3am (nothing sinister was involved, let me assure you) then you might as well discount the whole thing as never having existed a'la the career of The Meese.
So, given that the media outlets can't even be bothered to provide five alleged best players I can only give four votes out for the PPPfPPP. Good thing it was already won.
Paul Prymke Plate for Pre-Season Performance votes
5 - Addam Maric
4 - Aaron Davey
3 - James Grimes
2 - Tom Scully
1 - Harry Crapper
Final Leaderboard
16 – Colin Sylvia (WINNER: PPPfPPP)
135 - Jack Grimes
11 - Addam Maric
8 - Mark Jamar
7 - Aaron Davey
6 - Neville Jetta
5 - Colin Garland
5 – Tom Scully
4 - Stefan Martin
4 – Rohan Bail
4 - Liam Jurrah
2 – James Strauss
1 – Jared Rivers
1 - Jack Watts
1 - Jack Trengove
1 - Luke Tapscott
So congratulations to Sylvia for winning the most meaningless award since the Michael Tuck Medal.
Still, how long ago does it does it feel since we assumed that we were the next big thing after winning in Adelaide? You'll have to wait another fortnight before discovering whether that meant anything at all, but the fact remains that we've not won a four quarter game of footy this year.
Not such a surprise in the pre-season, I don't have a full record of practice games over the last decade but I know from living it that our record is putrid.
It'll be interesting to see what happens if we get done against the Swans. Actually, scratch that I can tell you exactly what will happen and that's that there will be a meltdown of people trying to get him the sack. Assuming the result is respectable I won't be rushing to join them, but I still have recurring nightmares that Bailey is some Ali Dia style chancer who has no idea and has bluffed his way into the job. He certainly says all the right things, but he'll be saying them in a Centrelink interview if we turn out to be shite this year.
It's been a long time (well.. just over a month anyway) since my first speculative stab at betting markets, predicted ladders and a final 21 +1. The Demonblog Towers Commodore 64 has been busy processing the events of the last month (apart from last night which gave us nothing) and has come up with the following hastily cobbled together bollocks.
Demonblog's chosen 21+1
B: Tapscott, Warnock, Garland
HB: Grimes, Rivers, Bartram
C: Moloney, Scully, Trengove
HF: Sylvia, Green, Dunn
F: Maric, Jurrah, Petterd
Foll: Jamar, Jones, Davey
I/C: Watts, Bail, Jetta
Sub: Martin
EM: Macdonald, Gysberts, Spencer
IN: Maric, Jetta, Tapscott, Warnock, Bail
OUT: Frawley, Morton, McKenzie (inj), Macdonald (omit)
Some of these are a bit lucky. Warnock and Martin haven't shown squat during the pre-season but they're in out necessity. Maric and Jetta are the pre-season bolters and as far as I'm concerned we might as well play Tapscott now rather than Macdonald who has been pure toilet recently. This is wishful thinking anyway, Green has barely been near the forward line all pre-season and Bailey will probably play this starting 18 anyway;
B: Tapscott, Warnock, Garland, Grimes, Rivers, Bartram, Moloney, Scully, Trengove, Sylvia, Green, Dunn, Maric, Jurrah
F: Petterd
Foll: Jamar, Jones, Davey
Betting Markets
Allen Jakovich Medal for Player of the Year
Now it looks like Green is going to be played all over the place his odds have blown out, while the potential for a Jamar one-man show in the ruck has seen him fly into equal second favourite. Big movers (in the right) direction are Maric, Jetta, Garland, Tapscott and Cook with Jones, Rivers, Bate, Macdonald, McKenzie, Campbell and Gawn going the other way.
$3.50 - Colin Sylvia
$4 - Aaron Davey, Mark Jamar
$5 - Brad Green
$7 - Jack Grimes
$9 - Jack Trengove, Tom Scully, Liam Jurrah, Brent Moloney
$15 - Nathan Jones, James Frawley
$18 - Cale Morton, Ricky Petterd
$25 - Jared Rivers, Jack Watts, Lynden Dunn, Colin Garland
$35 - Jordan Gysberts, Addam Maric
$40 - Matthew Bate, Clint Bartram, Neville Jetta
$50 - Jamie Bennell
$60 - Joel Macdonald, Rohan Bail
$70 - Matthew Warnock
$80 - Jordie McKenzie, Austin Wonaeamirri, Luke Tapscott, James Strauss
$90 - Stefan Martin
$100 - Jake Spencer, Sam Blease
$150 - Lucas Cook
$300 - Jack Fitzpatrick, Michael Newton, Robert Campbell
$500 - Max Gawn, Tom McNamara, Jeremy Howe
$750 - Troy Davis, Tom McDonald
$1000 - Kelvin Lawrence, Daniel Nicholson, Michael Evans, Cameron Johnston
Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year
Given his earlier start to the year Grimes will probably get more votes than Frawley but he's every possible chance of being DQ'ed for playing too much in the midfield so beware. Martin and Bennell could also lose out on the multi-position rule.
$4 - Jack Grimes, James Frawley
$8 - Colin Garland
$10 - Jared Rivers
$12 - Matthew Warnock
$15 - Joel Macdonald, Jamie Bennell
$18 - ANY OTHER PLAYER
$35 - James Strauss
$40 - Stefan Martin, Tom McNamara
$1000 - NO ELIGIBLE PLAYER (No defenders get a vote)
Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year
Tapscott's pre-season form sees him strengthen his position as favourite, while Blease, Gawn and Fitzpatrick all lose ground for not having been seen. Still every chance that none of the players will get a vote and it will not be presented for only the second time in history.
$3.50 - Luke Tapscott
$8 - Lucas Cook
$15 - Sam Blease
$18 - NO ELIGIBLE PLAYER
$25 - Jack Fitzpatrick
$30 - Jeremy Howe
$40 - Max Gawn
$50 - Troy Davis, Tom McDonald
$100 - Kelvin Lawrence, Daniel Nicholson, Michael Evans, Cameron Johnston
Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year (Formerly the Strawbs O'Dwyer Medal)
Only injury can stop Jamar, and even then there's no guarantee that whoever replaces him will crack it for a vote. As with the defenders award Stef Martin is a danger of being ruled ineligible.
2011 market
$1.15 - Mark Jamar
$18 - Jake Spencer
$30 - Jack Fitzpatrick, Max Gawn, Robert Campbell, Stefan Martin
$40 - ANY OTHER PLAYER
$60 - NO ELIGIBLE PLAYER
Projected league ladder
I'm no longer confident that we're going to finish in the eight. Obviously more than happy to be proven wrong but I've tried optimism and I didn't much like it so being surprised will have to do.
1 - Collingwood
--- Daylight ---
2 - St Kilda
3 - Geelong
4 - Hawthorn
5 - Fremantle
6 - Footscray
--- making up the numbers ---
7 - Adelaide
8 - North Melbourne
9 - Sydney
10 - Carlton
11 - Melbourne
12 - Essendon
--- Treading water ---
13 - Port Adelaide
14 - Richmond
15 - West Coast
--- No chance ---
16 - Gold Coast
17 - Brisbane
See you in a fortnight for the depression session!
So, given that the media outlets can't even be bothered to provide five alleged best players I can only give four votes out for the PPPfPPP. Good thing it was already won.
Paul Prymke Plate for Pre-Season Performance votes
5 - Addam Maric
4 - Aaron Davey
3 - James Grimes
2 - Tom Scully
1 - Harry Crapper
Final Leaderboard
16 – Colin Sylvia (WINNER: PPPfPPP)
135 - Jack Grimes
11 - Addam Maric
8 - Mark Jamar
7 - Aaron Davey
6 - Neville Jetta
5 - Colin Garland
5 – Tom Scully
4 - Stefan Martin
4 – Rohan Bail
4 - Liam Jurrah
2 – James Strauss
1 – Jared Rivers
1 - Jack Watts
1 - Jack Trengove
1 - Luke Tapscott
So congratulations to Sylvia for winning the most meaningless award since the Michael Tuck Medal.
Still, how long ago does it does it feel since we assumed that we were the next big thing after winning in Adelaide? You'll have to wait another fortnight before discovering whether that meant anything at all, but the fact remains that we've not won a four quarter game of footy this year.
Not such a surprise in the pre-season, I don't have a full record of practice games over the last decade but I know from living it that our record is putrid.
It'll be interesting to see what happens if we get done against the Swans. Actually, scratch that I can tell you exactly what will happen and that's that there will be a meltdown of people trying to get him the sack. Assuming the result is respectable I won't be rushing to join them, but I still have recurring nightmares that Bailey is some Ali Dia style chancer who has no idea and has bluffed his way into the job. He certainly says all the right things, but he'll be saying them in a Centrelink interview if we turn out to be shite this year.
It's been a long time (well.. just over a month anyway) since my first speculative stab at betting markets, predicted ladders and a final 21 +1. The Demonblog Towers Commodore 64 has been busy processing the events of the last month (apart from last night which gave us nothing) and has come up with the following hastily cobbled together bollocks.
Demonblog's chosen 21+1
B: Tapscott, Warnock, Garland
HB: Grimes, Rivers, Bartram
C: Moloney, Scully, Trengove
HF: Sylvia, Green, Dunn
F: Maric, Jurrah, Petterd
Foll: Jamar, Jones, Davey
I/C: Watts, Bail, Jetta
Sub: Martin
EM: Macdonald, Gysberts, Spencer
IN: Maric, Jetta, Tapscott, Warnock, Bail
OUT: Frawley, Morton, McKenzie (inj), Macdonald (omit)
Some of these are a bit lucky. Warnock and Martin haven't shown squat during the pre-season but they're in out necessity. Maric and Jetta are the pre-season bolters and as far as I'm concerned we might as well play Tapscott now rather than Macdonald who has been pure toilet recently. This is wishful thinking anyway, Green has barely been near the forward line all pre-season and Bailey will probably play this starting 18 anyway;
B: Tapscott, Warnock, Garland, Grimes, Rivers, Bartram, Moloney, Scully, Trengove, Sylvia, Green, Dunn, Maric, Jurrah
F: Petterd
Foll: Jamar, Jones, Davey
Betting Markets
Allen Jakovich Medal for Player of the Year
Now it looks like Green is going to be played all over the place his odds have blown out, while the potential for a Jamar one-man show in the ruck has seen him fly into equal second favourite. Big movers (in the right) direction are Maric, Jetta, Garland, Tapscott and Cook with Jones, Rivers, Bate, Macdonald, McKenzie, Campbell and Gawn going the other way.
$3.50 - Colin Sylvia
$4 - Aaron Davey, Mark Jamar
$5 - Brad Green
$7 - Jack Grimes
$9 - Jack Trengove, Tom Scully, Liam Jurrah, Brent Moloney
$15 - Nathan Jones, James Frawley
$18 - Cale Morton, Ricky Petterd
$25 - Jared Rivers, Jack Watts, Lynden Dunn, Colin Garland
$35 - Jordan Gysberts, Addam Maric
$40 - Matthew Bate, Clint Bartram, Neville Jetta
$50 - Jamie Bennell
$60 - Joel Macdonald, Rohan Bail
$70 - Matthew Warnock
$80 - Jordie McKenzie, Austin Wonaeamirri, Luke Tapscott, James Strauss
$90 - Stefan Martin
$100 - Jake Spencer, Sam Blease
$150 - Lucas Cook
$300 - Jack Fitzpatrick, Michael Newton, Robert Campbell
$500 - Max Gawn, Tom McNamara, Jeremy Howe
$750 - Troy Davis, Tom McDonald
$1000 - Kelvin Lawrence, Daniel Nicholson, Michael Evans, Cameron Johnston
Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year
Given his earlier start to the year Grimes will probably get more votes than Frawley but he's every possible chance of being DQ'ed for playing too much in the midfield so beware. Martin and Bennell could also lose out on the multi-position rule.
$4 - Jack Grimes, James Frawley
$8 - Colin Garland
$10 - Jared Rivers
$12 - Matthew Warnock
$15 - Joel Macdonald, Jamie Bennell
$18 - ANY OTHER PLAYER
$35 - James Strauss
$40 - Stefan Martin, Tom McNamara
$1000 - NO ELIGIBLE PLAYER (No defenders get a vote)
Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year
Tapscott's pre-season form sees him strengthen his position as favourite, while Blease, Gawn and Fitzpatrick all lose ground for not having been seen. Still every chance that none of the players will get a vote and it will not be presented for only the second time in history.
$3.50 - Luke Tapscott
$8 - Lucas Cook
$15 - Sam Blease
$18 - NO ELIGIBLE PLAYER
$25 - Jack Fitzpatrick
$30 - Jeremy Howe
$40 - Max Gawn
$50 - Troy Davis, Tom McDonald
$100 - Kelvin Lawrence, Daniel Nicholson, Michael Evans, Cameron Johnston
Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year (Formerly the Strawbs O'Dwyer Medal)
Only injury can stop Jamar, and even then there's no guarantee that whoever replaces him will crack it for a vote. As with the defenders award Stef Martin is a danger of being ruled ineligible.
2011 market
$1.15 - Mark Jamar
$18 - Jake Spencer
$30 - Jack Fitzpatrick, Max Gawn, Robert Campbell, Stefan Martin
$40 - ANY OTHER PLAYER
$60 - NO ELIGIBLE PLAYER
Projected league ladder
I'm no longer confident that we're going to finish in the eight. Obviously more than happy to be proven wrong but I've tried optimism and I didn't much like it so being surprised will have to do.
1 - Collingwood
--- Daylight ---
2 - St Kilda
3 - Geelong
4 - Hawthorn
5 - Fremantle
6 - Footscray
--- making up the numbers ---
7 - Adelaide
8 - North Melbourne
9 - Sydney
10 - Carlton
11 - Melbourne
12 - Essendon
--- Treading water ---
13 - Port Adelaide
14 - Richmond
15 - West Coast
--- No chance ---
16 - Gold Coast
17 - Brisbane
See you in a fortnight for the depression session!
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Let the good times roll
So how's the feelgood factor going for you? If we'd had 25% more of the first team out there and turned in that sort of performance there would be riots in the street, maybe there still should be. Either way it's proof that last week was no fluke.
But before you bite down fully on the cyanide pill take the following into consideration;
a) Missing from the team today were Bartram, Frawley, Trengove, Morton, McKenzie, Grimes, Green, Garland, Jurrah and Davey. Who knows/cares who the Lions had missing other than Brown but I guarantee you they don't stack up to that group.
b) We are toilet in practice matches at the best of times.
Considering who wasn't there and the way that players who won't be anywhere near the park in Round 1 were given so much responsibility it's hard to know what to take out of today. My heart says that the Lions are so rubbish that we should beat them even with a second string side, my head says it matters not a toss what happened.
The reality is somewhere smack bang in the middle. The Lions are still awful, and they did everything in their power to hand us victory today. They were torching easy shots on goal at every opportunity and their field kicking for the first three quarters was rancid, but they still beat us by five goals.
It all started so well too. When the ball went straight out of the centre and down the throat of the Experience (not literally, that would be hideous) I thought we were in for a good day. The free at the top of the square almost sparked a melee in the stands when two guys couldn't decide whether he'd miss it or not. Looked touched off the boot to me, but it got full points so who am I to complain? The guy who backed him to kick it (and no, it wasn't me) gave a half-hearted "I TOLD YOU SO!" when it went in. Thankfully nobody was required to jump in and remind them that punching your fellow spectator in the head should be kept for the regular season only because I certainly wasn't going to be the person to do it.
Coming off the back of that goal we battered them for the first ten minutes, and any half decent team would have put them away there and then but nearly every time it went inside 50 we were either grossly outnumbered, didn't have a player in the same area code as where the kick landed or the Lions cleared it without even the hint of defensive pressure. Luckily for us they were stuffing it up whenever they finally did manage to go forward, and when Jetta did some kind of kung-fu mid-air kick to put us two goals in front so much the better.
Nifty Nev played a blinder of a first quarter. He was bloody good all day, but not only did he kick the goal he hit a couple of the best Whelan-esque tackles you would want to see. Him and Emo Maric have been the big stories of the pre-season and both of them did the job again today. Maric got three goals, zero smiles and even managed to get involve in a dust-up with one of the Brisbane players after his opponent told him that 30 Seconds to Mars were rubbish.
Even when Brisbane hit back to take the lead in the first quarter we still had them under control, but it was telling that both the Dunn and Sylvia goals came from long bombs because as the day went on it started to look like that's the only way we'd ever kick goals. Down the other end, how was the Rivers deliberate in the first quarter? Serves him right for not even trying to disguise it I reckon.
The second quarter was when it all started going wrong. Everyone's favourite tactic of playing the entire forward line inside the defensive 50 and kicking to empty space/opposition players was brought in, and gee didn't it lift the crowd? There was a surprising amount of people there for such a meaningless game but you could tell that the moment we started playing Stef Martin one out against three opponents as our entire forward line with not even a hint of crumb around the place half the people there were tempted to gouge their eyes out rather than sit there and watch it. Those who braved the one food outlet in the whole place had the right idea, standing for 30 minutes in the dank corridors of Princes Park is much more entertaining than watching us play.
The passage of play that said it all about the excitement level that that tactic brings to our game was after we copped a goal and from the centre bounce Jamar did a perfect Psychic Friends Connection tap to Moloney who then did what anybody else would in that situation and hoofed it forward expecting a mark or a contest. Instead he found Martin getting jumped on by three defenders and when the ball hit the deck it went straight back in the other direction without one other red and blue jumper getting within 20m of it.
That was from a centre bounce for god's sake. For most of the day that was the only time we had marking targets inside forward 50 so you can understand where Moloney was coming from. Must have been as big a surprise to him as anybody to see that his kick was completely wasted by the fact that Watts and Petterd were standing five metres in front of him.
Admittedly after Brisbane started getting on top we did start trying to kick to targets late in the quarter and both Maric and Watts got goals, but both were hefty bombs from outside 50 and the latter from a free. The actual attempts to spot a forward up front consisted of booting it high to a pack and hoping for the best which usually (i.e nearly always) didn't eventuate. Without Jurrah down there, and with Watts still getting into it, the only person even half likely to benefit from a tactic like that is Jamar - and what are you going to do without your only good fit ruckman for most of the game?
At the other end the Lions were picking targets easily, and whenever they stuffed the kick up - which was often - we were kind enough to provide another opportunity soon after. Apart from one moment of disaster in the first quarter when he kicked across goal and landed it straight on a Brisbane player for a goal Tapscott looked promising [UPDATE - It's since been suggested that this might have been Rivers. Whatever. They don't even look the same but I was sitting on ground level during the first quarter and therefore couldn't make out anything]. Promising and angry. His proper kicks going outside forward 50 were a thing of beauty. Thumping, violent roosts which more often than not hit a target. Strauss was alright in the first half too, but he was in the hands of trainers at one point and ended up getting subbed off in the second half.
The rest were pretty heinous though. Rivers couldn't get near an opponent and Joel Macdonald is in danger of winding up as the universal hate figure for our entire fanbase this year. He had another nightmare second half, conceding a goal with a terrible kick across field after having an hour to kick it to somebody (Dunn? I was too busy seeing my life flash before my eyes knowing he was going to stuff it up) and then a free-kick/50 combo in the last which cost us another one.
Warnock was only better in that he didn't concede as many howling turnovers or give away pointless free kicks but no matter how you slice it the fact is the world famous forward combination of Mitch Clark and Brent Staker were doing whatever they liked and it was only the fact that they're very ordinary at the best of times that saved us from a bigger beating. Had we given a decent combination the same latitude they'd have kicked 20 between them.
And ask yourself how they kept finding so much space inside 50 for these dinky little short chips and short passes. It feels like I've written the same thing so many times that it's almost equalled our botched kick-ins as a template feature of Demonblog. Whenever the ball crosses the centre-circle going the wrong way we seem to have the entire team behind it, but still when somebody takes a mark 50m out on a shite angle they're able to work it around to a better position or find somebody leading 30m out. Yet if they completely stuff it up, as Brisbane were want to do on so many occassions, one of our guys will pick the ball up, look forward, see nothing and just hit and hope that someone will run onto it.
I'm glad I wasn't the only person cracking the sads about it either. I sat in three different places during the day and every time there was one of these hit and hope slopfests going forward the people behind me collectively sighed. I'm not saying I want to go down swinging every week and play recklessly but the success/failure rate of the end-to-end Swashbuckle is about one in fifty. It worked once today when Maric got onto one in the last quarter, and as much as I like to see my new favourite player kick goals it was neatly balanced out about five minutes later when poor Rohan Bail had to hoof one forward where he found only Lions defenders. "What else was he supposed to do?" said the guy behind me. Absolutely correct. God help us if they start trying to dink it around in the midfield to give players the chance to run forward, that's got comedy bloopers written all over it.
By half time we were behind but I was still holding onto a sick, misguided belief that we were going to run over them. But who's running over anybody when you can't kick goals? Six in the first half is about three times what we usually manage but this was Brisbane, a team we actually finished above last year. We went through Kevin Rudd's entire term of office as Prime Minister without finishing above another team, it's something of a big deal to actually be better than them. Not to mention the fact that they were handing it to us on a plate, it was just that we weren't equipped to take it.
Shame then that Jamar got precious little support despite playing an absolutely mighty game in the centre with Brad Green-esque total football cameos at both ends of the field - often within the space of a minute. He was absolutely titanic (in the good sort of way before that ship ruined the word for everybody) but we were still getting thrashed out of the middle. I know they were experimenting with Bate on the wing (not so bad) and both Jetta and Bail in the middle at various times but it doesn't help that Moloney and Jones both still kick like Heather Mills-McCartney. Gysberts and Scully were ok without ever going ballistic, and Martin's ruck cameos were more than acceptable, but there's a lot that needs to be belted back into place - violently if necessary before the real games start.
We managed to stay within ten points of them for most of the quarter, but the problem was that every time we toiled to kick a goal they would go down the other end and do the same two minutes later with a distinct lack of toil. Watts, Petterd and Jamar (towering mark in the square, rare occassion that the big bomb actually worked - mainly because he has hands like plates) all got goals that dragged the margin back to ten but we could never get the next one and no surprises when the defensive shenanigans came that was the end of us and by three-quarter time it was 28 points.
The Spencil rucked much of the second half with Jamar up forward, down back and everywhere in-between. Was constantly getting beaten to the tap even when it looked like he had best position. If it's any consolation we'd just have stuffed it up anyway if he had managed to get first hands to it.
At least there was a bit of biff in the last quarter, especially when Bail decked the guy after he marked. Nothing really malicious, just failed to pull up in time after the mark and dropped him on his arse. Started a bit of a fracas though and I'm sure somebody will be donating money to the league this week for it.
Taken in it's entirety the day was purely garbage, the only consolation being that an enormous cyclone didn't tear through the ground and kill us all. For all the positives and excuses I'm still going into next week and Round One expecting the worst this year. At least if we are anyway decent it will be surprise.
2011 Paul Prymke Plate for Pre-Season Performance votes
5 - Mark Jamar
4 - Neville Jetta
3 - Addam Maric
2 - Colin Sylvia
1 - Luke Tapscott
Apologies to anybody who actually paid to watch this stuff. Next time we play at Princes Park just wave any old card at the people on the gate, they don't actually seem to care. Try your Blockbuster Video card and see how you get on.
Leaderboard
Assuming we're only playing one more of these garbage games then Sylvia wins without it going to preferences. Otherwise he might cop the big Al Gore and have victory stolen out of his hands.
16 – Colin Sylvia (WINNER: PPPfPPP)
10 - Jack Grimes
8 - Mark Jamar
6 - Addam Maric
6 - Neville Jetta
5 - Colin Garland
4 - Stefan Martin
4 – Rohan Bail
4 - Liam Jurrah
3 – Tom Scully
3 - Aaron Davey
2 – James Strauss
1 – Jared Rivers
1 - Jack Watts
1 - Jack Trengove
1 - Luke Tapscott
Fit In Or Frig Off Corner (incorporating Expansion Talk, Travel Central and Breakdown City, Arizona)
It's a tribute to the way the AFL have made an epic balls-up of the expansion process that yesterday Scully all but said he'd be staying around next year and it's hard to believe him. "I haven’t spoken to them", "I want to be a one club player", "I love the club" etc.. is wonderful but how about your signature please?
Like him from the X Files I want to believe, and I'm trying very hard to, but I still say we get jerked around like morons for the rest of the season before he takes the golden briefcase anyway. I won’t be holding his impending departure against him during the year or rigging the votes so he gets less than Juice Newton, but if he winds up wearing that horrible uniform next year then he'll enter the J**d Hall of Shame in my book. On the other hand if he re-signs, then I never doubted him for a second and will be furiously burning old posts to cover up the evidence.
Speaking of GC and GWS I'm dying to see just what sort of crowds these heartless franchises (and that’s exactly what they are) attract. Just wait until Gold Coast win the flag in four years and the victory parade down Cavill Avenue has 27 people throwing red and yellow streamers at Gary Ablett’s bald bonce. The least they could do is hold it during schoolies so at least the heaving 18-year-olds can be counted in the official attendance. Either way there’s no chance that even if the two sides have bigger combined trading losses than Barings Bank that the league are going to let them go to the wall. Every cent they’ve got will be thrown towards keeping them afloat, and if Demetriou has to take a slice out of his $2m salary to help them live well... No that's going too far.
It's ironic that the Bears started playing on the Gold Coast and nobody cared, now the Gold Coast are starting in Brisbane and achieving an almost equal level of disinterest. Sure, Queensland has plenty more to worry about right now than some footy side with one guy they’ve heard of, several cast-off hacks and a bunch of kids but let's see what happens when people actually have to turn up. I'll be at their second "home" game at the Gabba on April 27, so let's see what sort of turnout they get then. The first game has got curiosity value written all over it, but if they don't beat the Blues or – god forbid – get flogged it'll be interesting to see how many of their 'rabid' fans show up. There actually seemed to be a few people cheering them on in Perth last week, but that might have just been bitter Freo fans who just hate the Eagles.
During the week I got a slightly dubious email asking if I wanted to write about AFL venues for some American website. There was money involved but it's probably coming through a bank account in Kosovo so I'm going to have to politely decline, but just in case they are legit and are still reading here's my personal top five Princes Park/Optus Oval/MC Labor Park/whatever it's called this week moments;
1) My mum refusing to take me there for any reason as a kid. It was the MCG and Waverley or nothing, and even Waverley got the boot when you started having to pay an extra $5 on top of your train ticket to get the bus from Glen Waverley station.
2) Finally going there in 1999 when we played the Dogs and having some Footscray bogan threaten to belt me for reasons which I'm not still sure about. Suffice to say that for once it wasn’t actually my fault.
3) The epic comeback in the last quarter there during 2003 after which the season went completely tits up.
4) Almost throwing a ten goal lead away in the last quarter of the last premiership match at the joint while sitting in the outer as one of about 23 Melbourne fans in the stadium.
5) Finding a washing machine at the foot of a staircase when Casey played the Northern Bullants, then missing Mitch Robinson punching Rohan Bail in the head 50m off the ball because I was inspecting the "disabled seating" which featured actual seats, up a step and with a clearance of 10cm before the barrier. I was overjoyed to discover today that the washing machine was still there.
Today would rank somewhere between the time Myke Pike kicked a goal against us on the day that I ditched a family reunion to watch a practice match and the time that we had our work christmas party there (!?) and it was 40 degrees.
Next week
Is there any point trying to read the whims of the league when it comes to these novelty games? This game went from the Gold Coast to Melbourne to 1pm to 12pm in the space of about twenty minutes so don’t believe the first answer you’re given for next week.
Apparently it's either Hawthorn in Tasmania or Fremantle somewhere in WA depending on the result of the Semi Final tonight. Presumably it'll be the latter unless Collingwood completely lose interest in their game or are banned because Andrew Krakouer has been voted off Conviction Kitchen. Either way thank god it's interstate. Let somebody else watch this trash next week.
Final thoughts
Was it worth it? Well it was free at least.
But before you bite down fully on the cyanide pill take the following into consideration;
a) Missing from the team today were Bartram, Frawley, Trengove, Morton, McKenzie, Grimes, Green, Garland, Jurrah and Davey. Who knows/cares who the Lions had missing other than Brown but I guarantee you they don't stack up to that group.
b) We are toilet in practice matches at the best of times.
Considering who wasn't there and the way that players who won't be anywhere near the park in Round 1 were given so much responsibility it's hard to know what to take out of today. My heart says that the Lions are so rubbish that we should beat them even with a second string side, my head says it matters not a toss what happened.
The reality is somewhere smack bang in the middle. The Lions are still awful, and they did everything in their power to hand us victory today. They were torching easy shots on goal at every opportunity and their field kicking for the first three quarters was rancid, but they still beat us by five goals.
It all started so well too. When the ball went straight out of the centre and down the throat of the Experience (not literally, that would be hideous) I thought we were in for a good day. The free at the top of the square almost sparked a melee in the stands when two guys couldn't decide whether he'd miss it or not. Looked touched off the boot to me, but it got full points so who am I to complain? The guy who backed him to kick it (and no, it wasn't me) gave a half-hearted "I TOLD YOU SO!" when it went in. Thankfully nobody was required to jump in and remind them that punching your fellow spectator in the head should be kept for the regular season only because I certainly wasn't going to be the person to do it.
Coming off the back of that goal we battered them for the first ten minutes, and any half decent team would have put them away there and then but nearly every time it went inside 50 we were either grossly outnumbered, didn't have a player in the same area code as where the kick landed or the Lions cleared it without even the hint of defensive pressure. Luckily for us they were stuffing it up whenever they finally did manage to go forward, and when Jetta did some kind of kung-fu mid-air kick to put us two goals in front so much the better.
Nifty Nev played a blinder of a first quarter. He was bloody good all day, but not only did he kick the goal he hit a couple of the best Whelan-esque tackles you would want to see. Him and Emo Maric have been the big stories of the pre-season and both of them did the job again today. Maric got three goals, zero smiles and even managed to get involve in a dust-up with one of the Brisbane players after his opponent told him that 30 Seconds to Mars were rubbish.
Even when Brisbane hit back to take the lead in the first quarter we still had them under control, but it was telling that both the Dunn and Sylvia goals came from long bombs because as the day went on it started to look like that's the only way we'd ever kick goals. Down the other end, how was the Rivers deliberate in the first quarter? Serves him right for not even trying to disguise it I reckon.
The second quarter was when it all started going wrong. Everyone's favourite tactic of playing the entire forward line inside the defensive 50 and kicking to empty space/opposition players was brought in, and gee didn't it lift the crowd? There was a surprising amount of people there for such a meaningless game but you could tell that the moment we started playing Stef Martin one out against three opponents as our entire forward line with not even a hint of crumb around the place half the people there were tempted to gouge their eyes out rather than sit there and watch it. Those who braved the one food outlet in the whole place had the right idea, standing for 30 minutes in the dank corridors of Princes Park is much more entertaining than watching us play.
The passage of play that said it all about the excitement level that that tactic brings to our game was after we copped a goal and from the centre bounce Jamar did a perfect Psychic Friends Connection tap to Moloney who then did what anybody else would in that situation and hoofed it forward expecting a mark or a contest. Instead he found Martin getting jumped on by three defenders and when the ball hit the deck it went straight back in the other direction without one other red and blue jumper getting within 20m of it.
That was from a centre bounce for god's sake. For most of the day that was the only time we had marking targets inside forward 50 so you can understand where Moloney was coming from. Must have been as big a surprise to him as anybody to see that his kick was completely wasted by the fact that Watts and Petterd were standing five metres in front of him.
Admittedly after Brisbane started getting on top we did start trying to kick to targets late in the quarter and both Maric and Watts got goals, but both were hefty bombs from outside 50 and the latter from a free. The actual attempts to spot a forward up front consisted of booting it high to a pack and hoping for the best which usually (i.e nearly always) didn't eventuate. Without Jurrah down there, and with Watts still getting into it, the only person even half likely to benefit from a tactic like that is Jamar - and what are you going to do without your only good fit ruckman for most of the game?
At the other end the Lions were picking targets easily, and whenever they stuffed the kick up - which was often - we were kind enough to provide another opportunity soon after. Apart from one moment of disaster in the first quarter when he kicked across goal and landed it straight on a Brisbane player for a goal Tapscott looked promising [UPDATE - It's since been suggested that this might have been Rivers. Whatever. They don't even look the same but I was sitting on ground level during the first quarter and therefore couldn't make out anything]. Promising and angry. His proper kicks going outside forward 50 were a thing of beauty. Thumping, violent roosts which more often than not hit a target. Strauss was alright in the first half too, but he was in the hands of trainers at one point and ended up getting subbed off in the second half.
The rest were pretty heinous though. Rivers couldn't get near an opponent and Joel Macdonald is in danger of winding up as the universal hate figure for our entire fanbase this year. He had another nightmare second half, conceding a goal with a terrible kick across field after having an hour to kick it to somebody (Dunn? I was too busy seeing my life flash before my eyes knowing he was going to stuff it up) and then a free-kick/50 combo in the last which cost us another one.
Warnock was only better in that he didn't concede as many howling turnovers or give away pointless free kicks but no matter how you slice it the fact is the world famous forward combination of Mitch Clark and Brent Staker were doing whatever they liked and it was only the fact that they're very ordinary at the best of times that saved us from a bigger beating. Had we given a decent combination the same latitude they'd have kicked 20 between them.
And ask yourself how they kept finding so much space inside 50 for these dinky little short chips and short passes. It feels like I've written the same thing so many times that it's almost equalled our botched kick-ins as a template feature of Demonblog. Whenever the ball crosses the centre-circle going the wrong way we seem to have the entire team behind it, but still when somebody takes a mark 50m out on a shite angle they're able to work it around to a better position or find somebody leading 30m out. Yet if they completely stuff it up, as Brisbane were want to do on so many occassions, one of our guys will pick the ball up, look forward, see nothing and just hit and hope that someone will run onto it.
I'm glad I wasn't the only person cracking the sads about it either. I sat in three different places during the day and every time there was one of these hit and hope slopfests going forward the people behind me collectively sighed. I'm not saying I want to go down swinging every week and play recklessly but the success/failure rate of the end-to-end Swashbuckle is about one in fifty. It worked once today when Maric got onto one in the last quarter, and as much as I like to see my new favourite player kick goals it was neatly balanced out about five minutes later when poor Rohan Bail had to hoof one forward where he found only Lions defenders. "What else was he supposed to do?" said the guy behind me. Absolutely correct. God help us if they start trying to dink it around in the midfield to give players the chance to run forward, that's got comedy bloopers written all over it.
By half time we were behind but I was still holding onto a sick, misguided belief that we were going to run over them. But who's running over anybody when you can't kick goals? Six in the first half is about three times what we usually manage but this was Brisbane, a team we actually finished above last year. We went through Kevin Rudd's entire term of office as Prime Minister without finishing above another team, it's something of a big deal to actually be better than them. Not to mention the fact that they were handing it to us on a plate, it was just that we weren't equipped to take it.
Shame then that Jamar got precious little support despite playing an absolutely mighty game in the centre with Brad Green-esque total football cameos at both ends of the field - often within the space of a minute. He was absolutely titanic (in the good sort of way before that ship ruined the word for everybody) but we were still getting thrashed out of the middle. I know they were experimenting with Bate on the wing (not so bad) and both Jetta and Bail in the middle at various times but it doesn't help that Moloney and Jones both still kick like Heather Mills-McCartney. Gysberts and Scully were ok without ever going ballistic, and Martin's ruck cameos were more than acceptable, but there's a lot that needs to be belted back into place - violently if necessary before the real games start.
We managed to stay within ten points of them for most of the quarter, but the problem was that every time we toiled to kick a goal they would go down the other end and do the same two minutes later with a distinct lack of toil. Watts, Petterd and Jamar (towering mark in the square, rare occassion that the big bomb actually worked - mainly because he has hands like plates) all got goals that dragged the margin back to ten but we could never get the next one and no surprises when the defensive shenanigans came that was the end of us and by three-quarter time it was 28 points.
The Spencil rucked much of the second half with Jamar up forward, down back and everywhere in-between. Was constantly getting beaten to the tap even when it looked like he had best position. If it's any consolation we'd just have stuffed it up anyway if he had managed to get first hands to it.
At least there was a bit of biff in the last quarter, especially when Bail decked the guy after he marked. Nothing really malicious, just failed to pull up in time after the mark and dropped him on his arse. Started a bit of a fracas though and I'm sure somebody will be donating money to the league this week for it.
Taken in it's entirety the day was purely garbage, the only consolation being that an enormous cyclone didn't tear through the ground and kill us all. For all the positives and excuses I'm still going into next week and Round One expecting the worst this year. At least if we are anyway decent it will be surprise.
2011 Paul Prymke Plate for Pre-Season Performance votes
5 - Mark Jamar
4 - Neville Jetta
3 - Addam Maric
2 - Colin Sylvia
1 - Luke Tapscott
Apologies to anybody who actually paid to watch this stuff. Next time we play at Princes Park just wave any old card at the people on the gate, they don't actually seem to care. Try your Blockbuster Video card and see how you get on.
Leaderboard
Assuming we're only playing one more of these garbage games then Sylvia wins without it going to preferences. Otherwise he might cop the big Al Gore and have victory stolen out of his hands.
16 – Colin Sylvia (WINNER: PPPfPPP)
10 - Jack Grimes
8 - Mark Jamar
6 - Addam Maric
6 - Neville Jetta
5 - Colin Garland
4 - Stefan Martin
4 – Rohan Bail
4 - Liam Jurrah
3 – Tom Scully
3 - Aaron Davey
2 – James Strauss
1 – Jared Rivers
1 - Jack Watts
1 - Jack Trengove
1 - Luke Tapscott
Fit In Or Frig Off Corner (incorporating Expansion Talk, Travel Central and Breakdown City, Arizona)
It's a tribute to the way the AFL have made an epic balls-up of the expansion process that yesterday Scully all but said he'd be staying around next year and it's hard to believe him. "I haven’t spoken to them", "I want to be a one club player", "I love the club" etc.. is wonderful but how about your signature please?
Like him from the X Files I want to believe, and I'm trying very hard to, but I still say we get jerked around like morons for the rest of the season before he takes the golden briefcase anyway. I won’t be holding his impending departure against him during the year or rigging the votes so he gets less than Juice Newton, but if he winds up wearing that horrible uniform next year then he'll enter the J**d Hall of Shame in my book. On the other hand if he re-signs, then I never doubted him for a second and will be furiously burning old posts to cover up the evidence.
Speaking of GC and GWS I'm dying to see just what sort of crowds these heartless franchises (and that’s exactly what they are) attract. Just wait until Gold Coast win the flag in four years and the victory parade down Cavill Avenue has 27 people throwing red and yellow streamers at Gary Ablett’s bald bonce. The least they could do is hold it during schoolies so at least the heaving 18-year-olds can be counted in the official attendance. Either way there’s no chance that even if the two sides have bigger combined trading losses than Barings Bank that the league are going to let them go to the wall. Every cent they’ve got will be thrown towards keeping them afloat, and if Demetriou has to take a slice out of his $2m salary to help them live well... No that's going too far.
It's ironic that the Bears started playing on the Gold Coast and nobody cared, now the Gold Coast are starting in Brisbane and achieving an almost equal level of disinterest. Sure, Queensland has plenty more to worry about right now than some footy side with one guy they’ve heard of, several cast-off hacks and a bunch of kids but let's see what happens when people actually have to turn up. I'll be at their second "home" game at the Gabba on April 27, so let's see what sort of turnout they get then. The first game has got curiosity value written all over it, but if they don't beat the Blues or – god forbid – get flogged it'll be interesting to see how many of their 'rabid' fans show up. There actually seemed to be a few people cheering them on in Perth last week, but that might have just been bitter Freo fans who just hate the Eagles.
During the week I got a slightly dubious email asking if I wanted to write about AFL venues for some American website. There was money involved but it's probably coming through a bank account in Kosovo so I'm going to have to politely decline, but just in case they are legit and are still reading here's my personal top five Princes Park/Optus Oval/MC Labor Park/whatever it's called this week moments;
1) My mum refusing to take me there for any reason as a kid. It was the MCG and Waverley or nothing, and even Waverley got the boot when you started having to pay an extra $5 on top of your train ticket to get the bus from Glen Waverley station.
2) Finally going there in 1999 when we played the Dogs and having some Footscray bogan threaten to belt me for reasons which I'm not still sure about. Suffice to say that for once it wasn’t actually my fault.
3) The epic comeback in the last quarter there during 2003 after which the season went completely tits up.
4) Almost throwing a ten goal lead away in the last quarter of the last premiership match at the joint while sitting in the outer as one of about 23 Melbourne fans in the stadium.
5) Finding a washing machine at the foot of a staircase when Casey played the Northern Bullants, then missing Mitch Robinson punching Rohan Bail in the head 50m off the ball because I was inspecting the "disabled seating" which featured actual seats, up a step and with a clearance of 10cm before the barrier. I was overjoyed to discover today that the washing machine was still there.
Today would rank somewhere between the time Myke Pike kicked a goal against us on the day that I ditched a family reunion to watch a practice match and the time that we had our work christmas party there (!?) and it was 40 degrees.
Next week
Is there any point trying to read the whims of the league when it comes to these novelty games? This game went from the Gold Coast to Melbourne to 1pm to 12pm in the space of about twenty minutes so don’t believe the first answer you’re given for next week.
Apparently it's either Hawthorn in Tasmania or Fremantle somewhere in WA depending on the result of the Semi Final tonight. Presumably it'll be the latter unless Collingwood completely lose interest in their game or are banned because Andrew Krakouer has been voted off Conviction Kitchen. Either way thank god it's interstate. Let somebody else watch this trash next week.
Final thoughts
Was it worth it? Well it was free at least.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
