Round 20, 2004

 

 

The laughs continued in the football world this week, as Mr Meretricious himself, Terry Wallace, signed up as coach of Richmond. Just like Roxanne in that song by The Police, Wallace can now put away his red light and stop walking the streets propositioning football clubs.

 

The laughs began immediately when Wallace managed to keep a straight face telling the world that it would be a five-year task to turn around the Tigers. Yet not even the most optimistic of Tiger fans would believe that he will still be there after that long. If he does, he will be the longest-serving Tiger coach since Tom Hafey. The most brazenly mercenary coach in the league has now signed up with the most brazenly mercenary coach-sackers in the league. Few will consider it anything less than a fitting payback for his colberting of the Bulldogs in 2002 when the well-worn Richmond coaches axe descends upon him at some point in future. Wallace may think he has what it takes to avoid such a fate, but Richmond has been sacking coaches for a lot longer than Terry Wallace has been sacking clubs, and are the best in the business at the grisly art. There will be no escape for him this time.

 

Back when Wallace colberted the Bulldogs in the hope of landing the Swans job he came up with the all-time classic of an excuse that he was actually doing the right thing by the club and that by quitting his job he was really saving the jobs of others (we kid you not). Let’s see if he can come up with an even more ridiculous rationalisation when his time comes at the hands of Richmond.

 

But even Wallace’s 2002 effort was eclipsed in the past week, as the world was treated to some of the Great Sporting Excuses (GSEs) of our time. First it was the Greek sprinters trying to shirk a drug test by using GSE #1: “Uh, sorry, I was in a motorbike accident”. Then it was Danny Frawley, who treated us to GSE #2: despite 12 insipid losses in a row, his team’s list has “more potential” than their opponents. That was the GSE used by the Spud after the Tiges once again got belted, this time by the Crows.

 

The Junkyard Dog also let fly with an uncharacteristic outburst against the Saints. Junkyard Laidley told them that talent alone won’t win them a premiership. This is true enough, but if mere talent won’t win you a flag, how far will “potential” get you? Laughed off the park without being spat on, perhaps?

 

This week has also seen more crocodile tears and hand-wringing from the do-gooders of the world over the alleged ill-treatment of detainees in Iraqi prisons and Guantanamo Bay. If such do-gooders really are concerned about genuine human rights abuses then they should stop worrying about the rights of Saddam’s former henchmen and al-Qaeda morons and instead start worrying about the gross human rights violations about to be inflicted on innocent Australian civilians this weekend. We refer of course to the fate that awaits anyone brave enough to attend this Sunday’s match between Richmond and Hawthorn.

 

If it came down to a choice between the MCG next weekend and being photographed in a gimp suit by sadistic marines whilst doing unnatural things with a large cylindrical vegetable in Abu Graib prison, then any self-respecting Tiger or Hawk supporter should be choosing the less humiliating option and heading off to Iraq. Perhaps the scheduling of this match is the AFL’s idea of black humour – on the same day that the world’s finest and most dedicated athletes will be battling it out for the pinnacle of human sporting achievement in the 100 metres final in Athens, Richmond and Hawthorn will be going head to head for the Mahogany Ladle. 

 

Back in the serious world, the Demons have slipped from first to fourth in two weeks and might as well reinstate their old nickname the Fuscias, such is their current propensity to wilt and resemble pansies. Their generosity means Geelong now gets fourth spot and the chance of a first-up final against Port Power (woo hoo). Given that they have the Hawks in Round 22, all the Cats need to do is beat the Crows this Saturday to stitch up fourth. Yet this is not as easy as it sounds. One of the biggest hoodoos in football is the fact that in 14 years, Geelong has only ever beaten the Crows once at Moron Park, with the famous colberting of Colbert in 1997 being one of many losses they have suffered. Perhaps more than any other game this season, this week’s match is the true test of whether Geelong really have discarded the handbags and shaken off their old habits in 2004.

 

The Cats should also be commended for giving the Donkeys a mighty walloping in a magnificent sleepy hollow mud heap last Saturday. The putrid conditions at Unskilled brought back memories of the glory days of Moorabbin back in the 1980s when the Saints used to leave the sprinklers on all week to create as much mud as possible, in a desperate attempt to improve their chances by lowering the skill level. 

 

The current Cats administration are a particularly competent lot. This week they were up against the one team in the league that is most accustomed to a playing on a fast track at home and the one that is also the most suspect in the wet. Perhaps maybe, just maybe, Brian Cook and Frank “The Godfather” Costa went back to their history books to find this cunning Moorabbin plan to thwart the hapless Dockers. If so, then congratulations to them. Rescuing the Cats from bankruptcy and restoring the club’s credibility is one thing, but a stunt such as this truly renders them amongst the finest football administrators of all time.

 

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the “administration” at Hawthorn. Having left the football world giggling with their rank inability to sack a coach, the Dawks are now demonstrating that they do not even know how to hire one either. Rumour this week was that they were knocked back by Garry Lyon. A further rumour, one that footballinvective.com is starting right now, is that he KB’d them with the following words: 

“No thanks, I’ve decided that being a full-time coach might interfere with my commitments on ‘Bulger MD’. Playing the role of Houston Crabbe is very important to me and I’m worried that if I was coach of Hawthorn people wouldn’t take me as seriously anymore.”

 

But the best rumour of all – confirmed as fact in the media last week - was that Messrs Dunstall and Brereton, in their desperate search for a new coach, somehow managed to kid themselves that they could entice either Leigh Matthews or Dennis Pagan to break their contracts a year early and join the Spooners. We’ve seen some classic clangers at the Family Club this year, but this really is taking it to an even higher plane. Perhaps they thought Pagan might be tempted to swap one going-nowhere basket case for another, but to even think that Lethal might even for a split second contemplate colberting the Lions in favour of the Hawks suggests that there is something seriously psychedelic in the sausages at Glenferrie.

 

Brereton and Dunstall trying to poach Matthews is like two scrawny, pimply adolescents with no social skills (think of the hapless fast-food serving kid on The Simpsons) walking into the most up-market nightclub in town thinking they can pick up the most stunning, sophisticated supermodel in the place, who also just happens to be in a long-term relationship with a Formula 1 driver. Sorry kids, it just ain’t gonna happen.

 

At least the pimply kid on The Simpsons knows his place in the world. The same can’t be said for these two gentlemen in the yellow and brown. The proposition that an all-time great of the game such as Lethal, on the cusp of coaching four flags in a row with the greatest team ever, might think of throwing it all in to join the try-hards at Glenferrie is about as likely as John Howard quitting the Libs before the next election in order to kindly try to revive the fortunes of the Democrats.

 

The Herald-Sun report of this vintage farce summed it up with a classic piece of understatement: “an action seen by many as casting the club in a very poor light”. Poor light indeed. As a breathless Sandy Roberts exclaimed after The Great Man kicked the goal of the year in 1989, “What more can you say?”