Round 13, 2005

 

 

It was a mature and controlled performance by Porn United in the clash of first versus second at the G on Saturday, more consistent with a raunchy but tasteful R-rated SBS late night Spanish movie. The veritable Ron Jeremy marathon that Porn United has been serving up for the majority of the season took a back seat this week, with the Studd having a quiet game and Ben ‘Corleone’ Cousins continually shooting blanks with three behinds (obviously ‘Goodfella’ Gardiner forgot to leave the handgun hidden behind the toilet, as had been planned pre-match).

 

Dean "Big” Cox rose to the occasion for the Eagles and stood tall all day. He set up some penetrating thrusts deep into the forward line, but was a bit stiff to concede a couple of free kicks in ruck duels. However, the Dirk Diggler award for the day undoubtedly went to Andrew Embley, for running and kicking longer, straighter and harder than anyone else on the day. Little Phil broke the Demon cherry early with four first quarter goals and miscellaneous lairising thereafter, whilst Daniel “Big Wayne” Kerr was having way too much fun by himself to really give a damn about what anyone else was doing. Aside from the remarkably improved Russell Robertson, who has converted himself from occasional match-winning lair to genuine gun forward, and Aaron “we’ll take Shane Harvey instead” Davey (what on Earth were the Roos thinking?), the Demons (my, what great pretenders they are) essentially played the role of Roller Girl in this escapade – that is, lying back and taking it in every position.

 

At Moron Park on the Friday night, Port returned to something like its premiership form, and put on a second half of Dom Perignon-quality champagne SA football, with no less than 16 straight goals in the second half against the hapless hamsters.

 

Chocko is convinced they have turned the corner, with the Annabelle Chong-style gang bang at the hands of the Eagles 4 weeks ago quite rightly cited as the turning point. Chocko showed yet another side to his complex, enigmatic and many-sided personality by taking a leaf out of Mick Malthouse’s Confucian book of proverbs when he said “if you spend all your life in the sun, you don’t know what the rain feels like.”  Even if average Power fans don’t have the subtlety to understand his metaphor, they showed how much they still love him during the week, when one Port supporter paid a staggering $26,000 for THAT tie that Chocko wore in last year’s Grand Final. It’s difficult to judge what is more amazing – that a single article of clothing could fetch that much, or that any one Power fan would have that much discretionary income. Or maybe it wasn’t discretionary -  many Power kids could well be going hungry for a very long time as a result of their dad’s impulsive purchase.

 

The newest columnist of footballinvective.com, Teal Coloured Glasses, articulated the thoughts of the football world with this damning analysis of the Dawks:

“All the talk in the lead-up to this much-anticipated training drill concerned the Port Adelaide alumni now calling the shots at Glenferrie and the edge that their inside knowledge on the Power game plan would give the Hawks in their quest to escape from AAMI with the premiership points (or at the very least with dignity intact). Unfortunately for Clarko's crew, the only advantage this gave them was an intimate understanding of exactly how their opponents were making them look so very, very bad as the Power ran roughshod over the hapless Hawk-lings.”

*** Might the editors rudely interject at this point? If ‘Deep Throat’ had supplied Bernstein and Woodward with the sort of “inside information” that Clarkson and Hardwick (another Sheedy hack) provided their rodent charges, Richard Nixon would have eventually succeeded in his quest to become King of the whole goddamned Universe, and would probably still be in power now.

 

*** Go ahead, Teal Coloured Power fan…

“It seems the yellow and brown brigade are enduring something of an identity crisis at present. On one hand there is the Angry Al persona - the “I won't take no crap from nobody and that includes the so-called experts of Melbourne's fourth estate'” position adopted by the new coach, an attitude which clashes with the “I'm more worried about cultivating my nouveau-hobo hair-style and getting my boots just the right shade of day-glo yellow” stance favoured by a certain former captain and a certain former half-decent ruckman. In a rare moment of lucidity by a man who is the living embodiment of the adage about keeping your mouth shut and letting people think you a fool rather than opening it and removing all doubt, Tony “Dean Rioli is a fat pig” Shaw once described the Hawks as a bunch of blokes that look like Tarzan and play like Jane. For once he was on the money."

 

“There are some exceptions of course: Campbell Brown certainly can't be accused of taking a backward step and similarly Josh Thurgood certainly isn't in any danger of cracking double figures in a bachelor auction any time soon, but the point remains valid. In that timeless classic “White Men Can't Jump” Woody Harrelson accused Wesley Snipes of trying to look good first and win second - a claim this writer now levels at that group of mincing male models masquerading as a football side at AAMI Stadium on Friday night.”

Whilst it is true that 18 footballers in brown and yellow were on the field on Friday night, it cannot be said that an opposing team was present. As Dennis Commetti would say, “the wheel was turning but the hamster was dead.” Port not only recorded their highest-ever score in the AFL on Friday evening, but also notched up their biggest-ever win, breaking the previous record set against – you guessed it – the Dawks.

 

After narrowly escaping 16^th spot last year in a blatant miscarriage of justice that would make Lindy Chamberlain and Hurricane Carter think they got off lightly, it would seem that justice is likely to be done in 2005, with the Mahogony Ladle beckoning ever more vividly for the men from Glenferrie.

 

DockerWatch, Week 1: In an amazing turn-up that no football pundit could have possibly predicted, Fremantle – of all teams Fremantle – became the first team in ’05 to see its fans turn, as the Heave Ho went down to the Roos in this week’s designated match of anti-football (every round this year seems to throw up one).

 

Having laboured for 12 rounds under the misconception that there was only one Angry Docker Fan in the world, this estimate has been hastily revised to somewhere in the order of 32,000, based on events at Subiaco after the game, when Chris Connolly copped a bollocking from the crowd akin to that which could be expected if George W. Bush turned up at a Baath Party convention.

 

Now that the Dockers fans have turned, we can offer a mid-season assessment of the turning clock of each of the clubs that have now been placed on "Turning Watch" :

• Fremantle: Have turned 

• Richmond: Are turning 

• Geelong: Should turn

Geelong were premiership favourites four weeks ago yet have not won a single game of football since (the match against Adelaide was not football but anti-football, so does not count).

 

TigerWatch, Week 13: Make no mistake, the Tigers are turning. As if on cue last weekend, Plow conceded that they put in their worst performance of the year, Richo has lost it, and they got flogged by the Crows at Colon Stadium - the same result which caused the fans to turn last year.

 

In another vintage display of SA champagne football, the Blonde Mullet and Ian Perrie were the designated vignerons for the day, kicking 8 and 5 respectively. Last week against Scarlett power the Mullet, having trimmed his eponymous hirsute appendage, appeared to be suffering the same fate as Samson after his hair cut, but he turned it around this week. However, Welsh and Perrie shouldn't be getting too far ahead of themselves, as they were, after all, playing on Darren Gaspar, who played like, well, Darren Gaspar. Although they have clearly been the premier forward combination in the league so far this year (whilst the G-train has resembled a passenger and Little Nicky cried for his mummy) these boys shouldn't be booking their tickets to Ireland just yet.

 

But in a glorious weekend for South Australian football, and by extension, all South Australians, the Crows vintage performance was merely the encore to the veritable symphony of SA Lair Flair that was served up the night before.

 

The Crows are now sitting pretty in third position and that famous parochial cockiness has returned to the City of Churches. As SA sports writer Geoff Roach wrote in a classically one-eyed piece in the Adelaide Advertiser, “only complacency and bad umpiring can stop the Crows.” But Crow fans should take a cold shower before they get too carried away. Despite the amazing feats of Neil “The Genius” Craig to lift the Crows from complete write-offs to respectable contenders, and thus restore the dignity of an entire state, the Adelaide Football Club are not, I repeat, NOT the real deal. How do we know? – Because they couldn’t even beat Geelong.

 

In other split round news bites, musings and predictions:

a.      The F-train re-signed at Carlton – Beazley’s back for Labor too, so what’s the big deal?

b.      The Marrara experience last weekend was a remarkable reflection of the Northern Territory election held the same day, and tells us this – conservatism in irrevocable decline is no match for even a semi-competent working class organisation. At least Carlton managed to kick more goals than the Country Liberal Party won seats, though it was a close-run thing.

c.      Like turning the ignition on a 1991 BMW M5 that has been up on blocks for 6 months, Brisbane, the great sleeper, awakes and shows us a glimpse of the highly refined yet brutal power that still lurks beneath the bonnet, with Aker and Plugger Duck Brown firmly behind the wheel.

d.      This coming Friday night: In a scene reminiscent of the old “Holler for a Marshall” ad, Sheedy’s decrepit Trabant has broken down on a railway crossing somewhere along the length of the Leipzig-Berlin line, and a G-train is approaching…

e.      Footballinvective.com asks all football lovers, as a boycott of the turbid Sydney Swamp and its ways, to tune into that Japanese cooking game show “Iron Chef” on Saturday night instead.

Hero of the Week: Mike Rann – Premier of the greatest state in the WORLD. Just like SA winning that big destroyer contract, Rann played a minimal role in the glorious triumphs of his two teams on the weekend, but just watch him bask in the glory and try to take the credit. But let’s not be too hard on him - even political lairs deserve their time in the sun occasionally.

 

Cult Figure of the Week: Like a nymphomaniac in the Amsterdam Red Light district, the footballinvective.com writers are simply spoilt for choice this week. The Mullet with 8; Little Phil’s 6; Tredders’ single-handed destruction of the Athlete; more outlandish Cassisi razzle dazzle, plus more. However, this simple footballinvective.com maths equation for the week will give us the answer to the riddle of who to choose for cult hero for Round 13:

 

SA lair + Hamster sidestepping + Goal of the year + love handles = Stuart Dew

 

Clanger of the Week: Tony Shaw failed to get the nomination for this week, but former team-mate Brian Taylor admirably stepped into the breach. At half-time during the Triple M call of the Port-Hawthorn game, with the Hawks trailing by a ‘mere’ four goals, BT re-assured the audience that “there’s still not much in it, so Hawk supporters should stay tuned in the second half.” We know he’s only doing his job by trying to keep the ratings up, but he was made to look like a prize goose by the silver teal, as Port piled on the first 16 goals after half time and handed out the biggest quick-fire shellacking by South Australians since David Hookes scored that century off 34 balls against the Vics in 1982-83. By the way, any Hawk supporters who were gullible enough to believe him and kept the radio turned on probably got what they deserved as the next hour unfolded. Serves them right for being so delusional.