Round 14, 2004

 

 

Another round, another Geelong interstate trip, and for the third time out of three this year, another Geelong loss by less than a goal. As a wise man said last month when Geelong started looking good, Geelong is only traveling well when they are actually winning the games they are expected to win. Never was there a more accurate summation of the erratic, inconsistent, manic culture of the long-suffering club that those erudite words. This was one the Cats should’ve won, as is the Collingwood game this Friday, so the jury is still out on the Cats.

 

Meanwhile the verdict is well and truly in on St Kilda. The footballinvective.com jury finds the Saints guilty of being on the skids and on the way out. Full-forward Jerry Seinfeld has run out of gas, Harvey is now into his twilight and the fact that they still don’t have a real coach has finally caught up with them. Footballinvective.com will be the first to burst Mike Sheahan's bubble by making a Big Statement and saying that the Saints are gone as a serious contender. If they were on “Wheel of Fortune” they’d be at that stage of the game where the letters G-O-N are up on the board, and Adriana is about to walk over to turn around the letter E to complete the word which spells out the fate of the Saints. It won’t be long until we once start to hear that annual media refrain “There’s trouble down there at Moorabbin.”

 

Meanwhile, Collingwood had the bye this week and were gifted a nice percentage boost at the MCG. Whilst Peter “we’ll win the flag” Schwab can consider himself extremely lucky that the most ordinary coach in the league has been beaten by Frawley and Ayres to the title of First Coach To Go. Perhaps he is a fortunate beneficiary of the culture of self-delusion which pervades Glenferrie in '04, where they cling to the belief that they are actually a top-flight side just going through a temporary rough patch. The minds of the entire Hawthorn fraternity seem to have been cryogenically frozen, Austin Powers style, during the last quarter of the 2001 Preliminary Final – the last time the Hawks were a half-decent side. Just like Austin Powers, they have failed to absorb the reality of the changing world around them ever since. 

 

Even the whole board of the club, with the notable exception of Don Scott, seems cursed with this affliction, which can be the only explanation for them not yet ridding themselves of Schwab, who seems a more hapless front man than even Simon Crean in the darkest days of his leadership. Whilst treacherous roosters in the Labor Party used to speak of Crean leading them to a “train wreck”, in Schwab's case, the locomotive has well and truly impacted, and the rest of the football world has been watching the bodies being pulled from the wreckage ever since Round 2. Yet nobody in a brown and gold jumper, either on or off the field, appears to have even felt the impact yet.

 

The Hawks’ current embarrassing state makes footballinvective.com think back to the 1980s when the Hawks were the real deal. Back then, on the rare occasion when they didn’t put in 110%, Yabbie Jeans would shame his players into action by telling them that their performance had been “un-Hawthorn-like”. Just the mere mention of that dreaded word was enough to motivate a proud and professional team to lift their game. These days, the 2004 edition of the Oxford dictionary would contain a very different definition of the word “un-Hawthorn-like”. Modest, down-to-earth, self-aware, persistent and hard-working might be some of the words used to define this term.

 

Over at Footy Park, disappointed Crow fans wondering “what went wrong” this year now have the answer, as their boys demonstrated that the only thing holding them back this year was actually their own coach. Self-proclaimed “career coach” Gary Ayres now finds himself at a self-imposed career crossroads after he spat the dummy and bailed on the Crows. One wonders what the career coach will do next. Perhaps he’ll be sending his CV around to the a few clubs who might think themselves in need of a “career coach”. If he is, then it is only fitting that his former players gave him such a good reference on the weekend. Hats off to the Pride of South Australia, who demonstrated to prospective employers the true value of Ayres to a club by throwing off their inhibitions and belting the second placed side by 12 goals as soon as he was gone. A fitting send-off if ever there was one.

 

Meanwhile, the inevitable has occurred once again down at Punt Road, with yet another Tiger coach ending up with a body full of sharpened implements. But this time Danny Frawley fell on his own sword rather than honour the glorious tradition of his forebears by allowing a craven board to insert it from behind. For lovers of football soap opera, it’s disappointing to see a change of coach at Tigerland without the accompanying drama of the customary bungled public execution. 

 

Already rumours have started of possible replacements, with the inevitable gags about the warning sign on the door to the Richmond coach’s box telling its new occupant to “Mind your Head”. Many a good coaching prospect may well feel deterred by Richmond’s perennial history of coaching purges, but one rumored contender who is unlikely to have such qualms would be Terry Wallace. The Plow’s cynical and mercenary values should be perfectly suited to Punt Rd. Who can ever forget the way he so heartlessly colberted the Bulldogs with a week to go in 2002 as soon as he got the slightest sniff that they might be more money to be made elsewhere? Like a good-old fashioned Kings Cross red lady of the night, he’s been hitching up his skirt and offering himself around the AFL ever since, in the hope of some new coaching action ... at least until a better offer comes along. What a fitting choice he would be as coach of the Tiges. A good old-fashioned Richmond blood-letting in a year or two will be the perfect rough justice for Wallace and his mercenary ways. Footballinvective.com only hope the Richmond members do the right thing and vote Mal Brown back on to the club board once again, just so he can be there to make Wallace’s knifing all the more painful when the time comes - as it surely will at Tigerland.