Round 7, 2005

 

 

Prior to the Melbourne-Crows game on Friday night the MCG turf was flooded with thousands of women. Given the propensity for softness of both teams, some observers could be forgiven that this was the curtain raiser for these two teams, or at the very least a portent of the sort of game they were about to put on. It was indeed a wise choice by the AFL to decree that this celebration of femininity should precede match between the two sides who play the prettiest and most effeminate brand of football in the league.

 

However, if we were expecting the football equivalent of 36 nubile nymphettes in the Demons-Crows game, we were sadly let down, as the football equivalent of 36 haggared wenches took the field instead, and served up a veritable skanky ho of a game. As a spectacle, it was like enduring the site of those grannies behind the SCG goals at the Paddington End attempting to put on a Swanettes routine.

 

Given the Crows ordinary showing in the battle of the shielas, one particularly deranged Crow fan took it upon himself to attempt to land a prominent female recruit with well-known defence capabilities, in order to add some spine to the Crow backline:

 

Downer: “Hey Condi, now you can be a Moron too”

Rice: “Sorry Alex, Chocko got in first. He says I remind him

          of Byron Pickett”

Rumour has it that the Crow jumper presented to Rice once belonged to Greg Anderson, who we always knew played like a girl.

 

Continuing the female theme the next day, Dennis Pagan lashed out at his Blues at half time in the game against Richmond, labeling them “schoolgirls and shielas”. Matty Lappin is rumoured to have replied “Schoolgirls! Where?” and run straight for the nearest fire extinguisher.

 

If Football Park is Mecca for lovers of South Australian-style football, then Alberton Oval is surely Medina. There was trouble in Medina this week as the Power pondered what it felt like to be as bad as Carlton for 7 days, following their Richmond shellacking. Salvation arrived in an unlikely form, namely Chocko’s mum, who appeared in The Adelaide Advertiser urging her son to rediscover some of the mongrel that he showed last year. It seemed to have done the trick, as the Roos were once again reduced to a mix of Shinboner Shitscared in the forward line, Shinboner Showboating in the midfield and Shinboner Shithouse in the back half. The General Leigh was dragged off by Tredrea and by the end of the game resembled a car that had spent a night unattended with the doors unlocked in a Salisbury car park:

 

 

But if Chocko’s mum provided the recipe, Tredrea baked the cake in the first three quarters, and Dominic Casisi provided the icing in the form of some classic last-quarter razzle dazzle as well. His two late goals once the game was beyond doubt were a feature of the match and included:

• Two gratuitous side-steps;

• Two superfluous play-ons;

• One unnecessary baulk; and

• Ten over-hyped high-fives.

Not bad for a Sandgroper trying hard to fit in in his adopted state. Casisi is the ultimate coach’s man – a disciplined, no-nonsense tryer (some would use the term boring) when the game is in the balance, but a shameless crowd pleaser when it no longer counts.

 

Whilst the authors ventured to Moron Park full of trepidation in the e expectation of a torrent of that famous Port Adelaide supporter feralness given that their season was supposedly on the line, Port supporters after quarter time were unusually subdued, and did much to belie their anti-social stereotypes. It’s as if once a team wins a flag its supporters become comfortable, relaxed and full of hubris, since they know they are good and feel they no longer have anything to prove.

 

The contrast could not have been greater with the Cats-Saints game on Saturday afternoon, as two bunches of supporters with an inferiority complex the size of the American military-industrial complex faced off against each other. For three quarters it was the Leyland Brothers up against The Nick Riewoldt Show, before they both metamorphosed into Bollinger Football and The Invisible Man respectively in the last quarter.

 

The Roos, meanwhile, must now take a good hard look at themselves. The Junkyard Dog has lost his mongrel and now has a psyche more like that of Lassie, with the one difference being that Lassie goes out there and gets things done. It seems there is nothing left for the Roos to do than to hold a séance and hope they can contact the long-departed Shinboner Spirit, or at the very least pray for the Second Coming, ie, the return of Malcolm Blight to Arden St.

 

TigerWatch, Week 7: For the second consecutive week, Tigermania hit Melbourne. However, like an average formula one driver who fortuitously wins a race after all the faster cars conk out with mechanical malfunction, Richmond has had the good fortune of coming up against two teams that were in the midst of major engine, gearbox, suspension and chassis failure. Nonetheless, the Tiges know how to put on a razzle dazzle show when the going is good in the warmer months, best exemplified by an unmarked Dr Pink catching Ryan Houlihan with his pants down whilst indulging in a flagrant act of LWA (whilst at the same time busily looking for the nearest mirror) on the forward flank in the second quarter, then after effortlessly dispossessing him, casually showing the ball to the crowd and then drilling it from 50 on his wrong foot (after missing a complete sitter of a set shot directly in front two minutes earlier). It was April Premiers football at its best.

 

Carlton kindly turned back the clock to the glory days (that is, glorious for the rest of the world) of 2002-03, when it took possession of the mahogany ladle and the club suffered two of its greatest ever humiliations, namely

a)  the ignominious downfall of John Elliott and the exposure of his salary cap rorting; and 

b)  Corey McKernan winning the club B&F.

 

At the start of the season, the prediction was made that Pagan could do for Carlton what Otto Rehhagel did for Greece at Euro 2004. Instead, he increasingly appears more like other modern day coaching greats such as Tony Shaw and Tim Watson. Pagan’s credibility is now on the line. He left the Roos when he objected to their innocuous request to do a bit more promotional work for the club, and instead got sucked in by a high-flying “businessman” whose last credible commercial dealing was in 1989, back when Pagan was still coaching the Roo Under-19s to 26 consecutive flags. Pagan circa 2005 now resembles Ron Barrasi at Melbourne circa 1985 (the last year of his much-vaunted “five year plan”). Like Barrasi, Pagan was happy to be feted as an Old Master brought back to save a once-great club, yet too willing to rely on nothing more than his own self-perceived magic powers, and willfully ignorant of the general standards of underachievement that had comprehensively permeated the club since he last paid it a visit.

 

Even when they are going well (enjoy it while it lasts, Tiger army) Richmond fans can always be relied upon to provide the football world with a unique brand of in-your-face post-match reaction. Whenever they get badly done, Melbourne talkback radio airwaves are invariably inundated with Tiger fans venting their spleen at their team’s personnel, or lack thereof. But it seems old habits die hard. Even when the going is good, the more outspoken and splenetic of fans still feel the need to vent their disgust on the airwaves - at something, anything. So it came to pass that on more than one occasion this week indignant Tiger fans could be heard telling hapless radio jocks how “disgusted and appalled” they were, this time not at their own team, but at “the football world” for “not giving us the respect we deserve”. “If any other team had done what Richmond has done in the last two weeks the media would be declaring them total premiership favourites”, said one.

 

However, Tiger fans are slow learners, and it does not seem like they have yet learnt to temper their expectations. They are still as willing as always to naively invest all their hopes of unbridled glory in hacks and underachievers who invariably get exposed. They should learn the lessons of history and what happens when people get pumped up beyond their ability. Last Saturday’s orgy of self-congratulation at the MCG appeared eerily like the outpouring of hopeful emotion at the ALP national conference of January 2004 when Mark Latham took the stage. And we all know what happened there, don’t we boys and girls. It surely won’t be long before Terry Wallace starts telling us all that “It’s Time” for the Tiges.

 

 

Hero of the Week: Chocko's Mum

 

Cult Figure of the Week: Dominic Casisi - see previous comments on vintage razzle dazzle

 

Clanger of the Week: The Delusional Disorder that effects all patients at the Glenferrie sheltered workshop mutated into rank psychosis last week, as Sam Mitchell and “No Chance” Bateman appeared in the Herald Sun claiming that their bosom buddy Luke Hodge was better than Chris Judd, and the Hawks really made the right decision when they recruited the former and passed up the latter at the 2001 draft. For the first time in the history of this column there is no need to insult anyone with any words of our own. The words of the two young Dawks speak for themselves:

"I think without taking anything away from Juddy – and I haven't seen heaps of West Coast – but I haven't seen Juddy control the game in the way that I think Luke Hodge can," Mitchell said.

 

"With Juddy, there is no doubt he can break games open, but Hodgey has got great presence on the field.

 

"He might not ever pick the ball up out of a stoppage and zoom away and kick that goal as frequently as Judd, but he is certainly going to be a damaging player and one that opposition clubs are going to certainly be worried about, coming up against us week after week."