Round 17, 2004

 

 

It’s been a football tradition over the years that teams respond to the dismissal of a coach by rallying together and putting in a special effort in response. True to form, the Hawks honoured this tradition this week by lifting their game in respect to Schwabby. As a result, they were able to kick nine goals and lose by only 80 points on the weekend.

 

The Hawks once again showed how far they have slipped as a club when they even stuffed up one of the most basic of football skills – the knifing of a coach. Schwab was sacked, but he wasn’t really sacked, he was able to coach one game before the indecisive Hawthorn board finally decided it had the balls to give him the arse properly and banish him before the end of the season. Could there have possibly been a more insipid, limp-wristed way of handling the issue?

 

As a clue to the mentality of the powers-that-be at Glenferrie, have a look at this surreal column by Dermott Brereton that appeared in The Age the day after.

 

Here you will find Brereton attempting to appease his conscience and rationalise this decision-that-really-wasn’t-a-decision to axe Schwab by saying that, amongst other things:

 

“I have learnt that I suffer physical hurt, of any extent, much better than I do emotional hurt. Speaking with Jason, he is the same. This decision has really hurt Jason and myself.”

- Well boo hoo, Dermie. That’s what you’re elected to do on a football club board – make tough decisions.

 

“I would gladly stand in front of Mark Yeates to be crunched again, rather than sit with Ian Dicker and Jason and deliver a board's decision like that.” 

- What, you mean a no-brainer of a decision like that was painful? Your once-great club is on the bottom of the ladder, a national laughing stock; your team have stopped trying; your coach no longer has the respect of his players and has zero credibility in the football community after his ridiculous pre-season premiership prediction. The club is crying out for decisive action and LEADERSHIP, yet here you are dribbling and drooling that a decision as obvious, logical, easy and, above all, as necessary as this was ‘painful’?

 

“It fills me with wonder that some people become cynical old misanthropes. I now know the path it takes to be one, because it is as if I took one of the steps this week.’

- Well it fills the rest of the world with wonder at how a once tough and decisive footballer could be reduced to a blubbering mess simply by accepting the responsibility that goes with the position he occupies.

 

“I have been made a better person in life by having Peter Schwab enter into it.”

What has gotten into him? As a player, he was ruthless and a man of action. He didn’t muck around being sentimental and wishy-washy. He made the tough decisions and did what had to be done. That’s why he was such a great player. Dermie never felt the need to absolve himself by writing gushing puff pieces about how Daisy Williams, Paul Van der Haar, Chris McDermott or any other victims of his on-field pole-axings were really nice guys who “made his life better by entering into it.” Instead, he just ran through them and kept going, because he had the killer instinct, a drive to succeed and an intolerance for failure that was unclouded by sentimental mumbo-jumbo. If only someone at the touchy-feely, group hug that is Glenferrie could find such an instinct once again.

 

Meanwhile, the (gay) Pride of South Australia copped their worse defeat ever up at the Gabbatoir – even worse than the vintage days of 1991-92, when Plugger had them at his mercy and they regularly got walloped by cricket scores. Worse even than their classic drubbing at Unskilled Stadium by 123 points in Round 8 1992, when the Cats kicked a lazy 32.18.210 – still the highest score ever kicked against the Crows.

 

Yet the Crows probably did themselves a favour by going down in the way they did. At least it will solidify the board’s view that Neil  Craig is not the man to coach them in ’05 and beyond. The Crows have been at their best when they have combined the panache of free-flowing, laconic South Australian football on the field with pragmatic, non-parochial leadership off the field. By appointing Craig as coach next year, the Crows would be succumbing to the bad old days of SA insularity. They need to look further afield and find a coach who has credibility and recognition beyond merely South Australia.

 

To succumb to appointing a popular local would be a regression to the worst (and also the funniest) days of South Australian parochialism of the pre-1991 era. That glorious era when:

• the croweaters called their comp the South Australian National Football League in homage to the delusions they had of its own importance

• SANFL officials used to boast that Footy Park was the best stadium in the country

• mad SANFL TV commentators who never saw VFL games could label a VFL reject like John Fidge “The Genius” and hail AFL flop Scott Hodges as the greatest full-forward in history

Whilst the “Kick a Vic” jingoism of this era was highly amusing for all of us east of the border and probably served to make a state full of insecure West End drinkers feel a bit better about themselves, it is not a successful formula for success in a national competition. As much as most of their membership might still like to entertain such primitive fantasies by only looking at South Australian coaches, the Crows board owe it to themselves to be more cosmopolitan in their outlook.

 

But we need not look as far afield as Adelaide for examples of extreme of  parochialism. We need only travel down the highway to Sleepy Hollow, where the locals are once again absorbed by absurd over-exposure of the back-in-town Cats. Perhaps the scars of 89-92-94-95 have healed for Geelong residents, for the current round of parochial Cat-mania carries none of the skepticism and cynicism that built up during that fateful period of perennial Grand Final failure.

 

Instead, it has the wide-eyed optimism and innocence of season 89 – the last big Geelong revival after years in the wilderness. The front page of the Geelong Advertiser, with not a hint of irony or self-deprecation, proudly trumpeted this Sunday’s game against the Saints as “Bigger than Ben Hur” and this week has a full-page feature spread on a new Geelong player every day. The biggest beneficiaries of this hype will be the players, who will be able to ride high as local heroes on the ever-inflating bubble of Cat-worship until it bursts – and it will. But until then, anyone even remotely connected with the Geelong playing list need only walk into the front bar of the Lyric and click his fingers, Fonzie style, to be set upon by every hopeful teeny-bopper and star-f**ker in Geelong, as the footy groupie phenomenon – always as its most extreme in Sleepy Hollow – rises to new levels of intensity and potential debauchery. If only Jade Rawlings knew what he was missing out on. 

 

Enjoy it while it lasts, boys, and thank God the Canterbury Bulldogs won’t be passing through Geelong any time soon.