Round 22, 2004

 

 

The home and away season has ended and one cannot but help looking back with a sense of bitterness and anger. Bitterness and anger at one of the great travesties in football history.

 

When looking for the greatest travesty and act of daylight robbery in football history there are numerous games which could qualify for this title: Carlton’s robbery of Essendon in the ’99 Prelim? Adelaide robbing the Roos in the ’98 Grand Final? Geelong robbing the Roos in the ’94 Prelim? Argentina robbing Italy in the 1990 World Cup semi final? Umpire Irving robbing Doug Wade and Geelong in the 1962 Preliminary Final Replay?

 

But all of these entries in the annals of sporting notoriety now pale into insignificance compared to what occurred this week, namely Richmond’s brazen robbery of the 2004 wooden spoon from Hawthorn. Everything the Hawks have done this year set them up as deserving and worthy winners. Their credentials speak for themselves:

a)  the absurd pre-season premiership prediction of their former coach; 

b)  the club’s inability to sack the coach; the club’s inability to then find a replacement; 

c)  the coach’s speculation about who the next captain should be (ha ha);

d)  Dutchy Holland getting paid half a million a year to do nothing (gosh, that’s almost as much as former state governors get paid to do nothing); and 

e)  the captain, Hank Bulger - despite having TISM write a song about his womanising ways - making two memorable appearances on the back page of the Hun, the first time to start and then the second time to deny rumours that he’s gay.

 

Any one of these examples of football genius should have been enough on their own to justify a spooning. But then bloody Richmond had to come along and spoil it for everyone. They have finished below Hawthorn by a mere 0.99 per cent.

 

The Hawks in 2004 had it all – implosion, delusion, mass incompetence - all the classic ingredients for a spoon. The Tiges, on the other hand, make for boring spooners. All they did was play badly, without any of the bumbling entertainment that Hawthorn has given us. The Richmond fans turned on their team about 18 rounds ago. Now it’s time for the rest of the football world to turn on them with equal levels of vitriol for this abominable denial of natural justice.

 

It was the End Of An Era at the Gabbatoir as Stevo and Arch played their last game together, thus removing the last remaining remnants of the glorious Pagan Dynasty. The Roos now find themselves in a position they have not experienced since 1992 and, based on their performance on Saturday, it looks like they seem intent on taking the team back to the standards of the Schimmelbusch era.

 

The most satisfying aspect of this decline is, of course, the fate of Leigh Colbert, who left the Cats in ’99 saying he wanted to play in premierships. Well boo hoo Leigh, it’s not going to happen. Many have questioned Colbert’s values for doing what he did, but with North’s imminent return to the cellar, we can now also mercilessly mock him by questioning his judgement as well. Perhaps at the end of this season he might get a similar urge to do the dirty on his current team and look for another club that might give him a premiership. Maybe we’ll see another dose of colberting and he’ll head off to Hawthorn – with his history of poor judgment in opting for the Roos, he might just be the one player who’ll believe it when Hawthorn next boast that they’ll win the flag.

 

One aspect of the Roos end of an era that has gone unheralded is Glenn Archer’s failure to achieve his biggest goal in football. Wayne Carey's retirement must leave Archer with an empty feeling inside, having failed in his mission in life to take out the big Duck on a football field. The combination of Carey’s injuries and early retirement this year meant that Archer only got two chances, in the two Roos-Crows games in ’03. His reputation will be diminished given that in each of these games he ultimately squibbed it. Every time he ran at Carey he seriously wanted to hospitalise him, but he took the soft option by trying to disguise his homicidal intent as merely rough play in the normal course of events. If it really meant that much to him – and we all know it did – then he should not have held back. He should have just let it rip. Where was his Shinboner Spirit we ask you?

 

The Go Dees once again wilted against average opposition, this time going down to the Indian Ocean Pretty Boys. However, if one were to ask most of their supporters what they think of the disappointing end to the season then they’ll probably respond with a quizzical look before pointing to the recent bumper snow falls and saying it’s the best end to a ski season that they’ve seen in years. The Pretty Boys, amazingly, will now get to make another token appearance in the first week of finals for the third year in a row.

 

The Old Heave Ho again went down insipidly in a crunch game and will miss the 8, having spent the whole year pumping up their own tyres after their over-achievement in 2003. If, as they say, Chris Connolly is a car salesman, then the Heave Ho have turned out to be one of those el-cheapo little Korean hatchbacks – they look OK in the first year, become popular amongst airheads who know nothing about the details, but then proceed to fall apart and severely lose their value in the second year.

 

Port Power once again turned a Showdown into another Pantsdown for the (gay) pride of South Australia and will now face Geelong as minor premiers. After their ‘efforts’ in the corresponding game over the past two years, Mark Williams has a monkey the size of King Kong on his back. Right now he’s probably nervously curled up in a corner in a foetal position, trembling uncontrollably at the prospect of once again facing the first week of finals. The game looks like being the clash of the two chokers – Port, who can’t win finals, versus Geelong, who can’t win interstate. Both teams will have plenty to be nervous about. The property stewards of the respective clubs should each order 22 pairs of brown underpants for their players to wear when they take the field.

 

From one perspective, however, Geelong can’t lose next weekend. If they win, then they’ll be through to a ‘home’ preliminary final at the MCG. If they lose, however, they’ll also get a ‘home’ preliminary final at the MCG. If Port wins, then they’ll get the right to a home preliminary final (to be played in front of a crowd of two and a dog given that the price of a preliminary final ticket these days is about equivalent to Centrelink’s annual budget). This will mean that the other prelim final – for which Geelong will qualify if it’s any good - will have to be played at the G, regardless of who deserves to host it. The Saints, despite finishing above Geelong, will get rewarded with a trip to the Gabbatoir in week 1 and a trip to Moron Park in week 3, whilst the Cats will get to play their two most important finals at the MCG. Whoever said the MCC’s intransigence on finals was not Good for Football?