Round 14, 2005

 

 

After a week off for a mid-season sabbatical, which effectively translated into two byes in a row for Geelong (sorry Hawk fans, it had to be said), Season 2005 is up and running once again. Last Saturday night could prove to be a pivotal juncture for this season, as Brisbane re-affirmed its premiership credentials with an Aker-inspired procession against the Dees up at the Gabba. Zoologists and students of evolution around the world are stunned and flabbergasted that these peculiar, lower order blue-red invertebrates possess the capability of bipedal motion, let alone the ability to play Australian rules football. However, on the strength of last weekend, some may begin to doubt the latter proposition.

 

More significantly however from a football point of view, not only is Brisbane revving like the proverbial old M5 sports car reliving the very best of its glory years, a crafty Maroon bush mechanic-cum-techno whiz has learned how to disable the electronic speed limiter as well, unlocking some new potential in the old beast. For example, Daniel Bradshaw, after years of being a subservient Tonto to Alistair Lynch, finally stepped up to play the role of the Lone Ranger in the Brisbane forward line, with a big bag of nine of the best.

 

From Munich magnificence in the form of the Brisbane BMW, football fans got to see the football equivalent of East German engineering, aka the Rostock rabble, aka the turbocharged Trabant, aka the Essendon football club.

 

Trabant – Too Old, Too Slow

 

Once again when facing a side above them on the ladder, the Dons were left looking like a small Vukovar neighbourhood circa 1992 after they failed dismally to keep up with a rejuvenated, aggressive Shinboner unit. We tipped this. Whilst no-one at footballinvective.com would ever be so naïve or so idealistic to suggest that the Junkyard Mutt’s charges have re-discovered Shinboner Spirit just yet, at least Shinboners Shitscared took a back seat to some good, old-fashioned Shinboner Sheedy-bashing of the highest order. Some noteworthy points from the game:

 

a.  a copious supply of Veuve Clicquot football from the Rooboys, especially in the first quarter, with Hird, Rioli and Murphy given none of the latitude enjoyed against the Saints, in easily the best tackling performance by any team this season

b.  a brilliant four-quarter Roo DOBM quartet – Hale and Petrie dominating the ruck; Rocca played one of his most shrewd games in a long, distinguished (and not always so clever) career, filling the role of decoy forward (taking Fletcher out of the goal square) to perfection; Thommo, with another lazy five and some exceptional one-grab marking, is threatening to do something quite remarkable – live up to some of his untapped potential (I bet the Glenferrie Sheltered Workshop never thought that would happen).

c.  The General Leigh spent almost the entire match posing in the back 50 unopposed, captivating the crowd with his sheer presence. Matty Lloyd, his direct opponent, promptly shat himself at the prospect of lining up on the colourful Roo identity and stationed himself at centre half-back, in one of the most gutless and unaccountable games I have ever seen played by an alleged ‘champion player.’ Lloydy has become somewhat of a Leech at Essendon, draining that salary cap more readily than Rodney Adler drained those HIH coffers, with no palpable reward for the club whatsoever. He has become a sulking, ineffectual and frankly unexciting lug. How many quality draft picks have been squandered, how many fines has the club copped, how many Sheedy players have been disenfranchised by the greediness Lloydy has perpetually shown come contract time? Heffernan can’t get a game at the Dees – I hope Heffs likes the beach at Sandringham. Blumfield can’t get a game anywhere. Jacobs is at Hawthorn – enough said. Hardwick can’t get a proper coaching job. Where does Barry Young go to collect his newstart allowance? Leech has acted with callous abandon and with no regard whatsoever for the plight of talentless Sheedy players, for whom Windy Hill is like a fertile placenta and viable umbilical cord is to a fragile, dependent foetus. What has Leechy offered the Bombers in return, particularly in this dark period in the club’s history? Cowardice? Greed? Overindulgence? Impotence? All at a grossly over-inflated price (sounds like your everyday private urologist). And it was all clearly on display for the world to see last Saturday night. Actually ‘Leech’ is too good for Lloydy – at least a leech has positive qualities, such as perseverance and an ability to stick to a task.

d.  Now it’s Hirdy’s turn to cop a beating. The LMOP (League’s Most Overrated Player) is just as guilty as Lloydy when it comes to flagrant salary cap abuse, and his petulance at being targeted by some tough, fair, uncompromisisng Rooboy tackling was as sad as a Tony Lockett comeback.

e.  There are clear signs that Sheedy is desperate for answers, that he is finally beginning to feel the enormous psychological pressure of mediocrity, and that the task of rebuilding his beloved club one more time might just be beyond the wily one. After all, Jobe Watson, in the absence of the Leech, appeared in the Don goal square, and no-one was happier than Shannon Watt, whom we’re certain instantly discovered a superiority complex for the first time in his career. Quite simply, Jobe Watson is to playing football as Tim Watson is to coaching football.

 

And finally, we’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. Twenty-five years in the making but it was worth the wait - Is Don. Is Crud. And like a septogenarian having sex for the first time, Don-haters are not thinking wistfully about all the times that they missed out, but merely appreciating the blessing they have been worthy enough to receive, savouring every last ecstatic moment.

 

The Friday night clash between the Power failure and Cold Pies provided an inauspicious beginning to the round. As the Coodabeens so aptly pointed out the following day, it was highly inappropriate that Channel 9 chose to telecast this match live, for if ever there was a game that deserved to spend a great deal of time in close proximity with the editor’s scissors before it went to air, this was surely it. Frustrated footballinvective.com columnist Teal Coloured Glasses was at the Phone Dome, and penned this missive in response:

The Jekyll and Hyde nature of Port’s season continued on Friday night as the Power reverted to the kind of infuriating footy that has driven its fans to the brink of insanity this year. This match was a terrible advertisement for the game - Sexy Football it was not. In fact, had Ruud Gullitt been unlucky enough to be in attendance he would have had a fit. On paper, the wharfies’ line up is sound and their best footy is still very good but the difference between Port’s best and worst this season is enormous – so big that it is starting to rival the size of the yawning chasm between Mark Latham and his former ALP colleagues after last week’s fun and games.

 

It wasn’t so much a case of the Pies being a better side on the night, more so one of the Power defeating themselves by making basic skill errors, poor decisions and executing poorly in front of goal - the Power couldn’t have hit a barn door with a shotgun from three feet the way they were going. 2 goals from 11 first-half scoring shots represent a hopelessly inadequate return for a team with finals aspirations. Coming as it did on the back of three impressive wins it was even harder to accept.

 

Don’t be fooled though Pie fans – Collingwood’s showing in this match did nothing to show that they are anything other than an extremely ordinary side. Chris Tarrant showed us his best Ian Perrie impression (he’s obviously been working quite hard on it over the split-round: you don’t just wake up one morning with a rubber chest like that), the Clokes showed that they have each inherited exactly one third of their father’s ability and Shane O’Bree is still, well, Shane O’Bree. Collingwood being average was about as surprising as another Ashes tour starting off with a Shane Warne sex scandal. Port’s feeble showing was far less expected and herein lies the real story of the night.

 

It is the impotence of Port’s forward line that is the most exasperating aspect of their performances this year. With names like Tredrea and Primus headlining the attack you would expect that the sight of Brett Ebert one-out in the goal square battling James Clement in a body-on-body marking contest would be the exception, not the rule. Scenarios like this are the brain-child of a deviously cunning double-agent, a man sent by the Chardonnay Set from West Lakes to undermine the strength of the previously irresistible force of the Port forward line. Like the Sith lord Darth Sidious, Tony McGuinness has infiltrated the Jedi Council of the Port coaching box and is seeking to weaken it from within – a plan bearing fruit to this point of the season. 6 times in 14 this year Port has kicked less than 10 goals, compared to just once in 25 games (inc. finals) last year. Average points last year: 109. Average points this year: 89. The personnel on field are the same – the personnel in the coaching box are not. We can only hope that Yoda Williams can see the clear and present danger to the current order of the universe before it becomes too late.

At footballinvective.com, we love conspiracy theories. As Teal Coloured Glasses has this week proven, the truth is out there. Chocko, however, may have been blind to this danger due to the blind rage in which he spent most of the match. The American defence force went to DEFCON 3 in the last quarter on Friday night, as Chocko’s ever-increasing aggro threatened to culminate in a nuclear explosion. From a vantage point on the opposite side of the ground, the authors could see the Port coach’s box vibrating and the windows shuddering violently. Luckily, meltdown was averted.

 

Neil Craig’s Crows once again treated the football world to some vintage chardonnay football. It was all one-way traffic with a free-flowing forward line and a ZTT policy in the first three-quarters. Many could be forgiven for thinking it was 1993 all over again, although young teeny boppers who swooned over Tony Modra probably won’t have an equivalent focus for their affections in Scott Welsh who, to be fair, is unlikely to ever walk a catwalk in anger. However, it was certainly 1993 all over again in relation to the fragility of the Crows in the last quarter, who almost threw away a seven goal lead, courtesy of Matthew Pavlich, with eight of the best.

 

However, the best solo performance this year since Jonathan Brown singlehandedly overturned the Trabi at Colon Bowl in his first game back, still has media pundits and observers in a frenzy as to Pavlich’s true value to the Fremantle side, especially given his conspicuous absence in the first half. True to the stigma of being the league’s number one Polariser of opinion, Matthew Pavlich, at the moment, is to Fremantle as the infamous, wildly controversial ‘Brock Polariser’ was to a 1987 HDT Commodore – the secret weapon that is they key to blowing the competition away? Or just another fancy, expensive, ostentatious and completely superfluous add-on?

 

That the Dockers showed they had the potential to win, yet looked on like tourists for the first three-quarters, will be an even greater source of angst amongst their turned supporters than a thrashing would have been. Fremantle in 2005 mirror Winston Churchill’s description of Russia in the 1930s: a riddle wrapped inside and enigma wrapped inside a mystery. Perhaps a commie-style purge and a triumphal proletariat-led Purple Revolution (with Tsar Peter Bell first up on the guillotine) is not too far away either…

 

For the Crows, Mark Ricciuto again stood tall when it counted at the end of the game after spending most of the second half doing time on the pine. The Roo showed true leadership qualities in the clinches, and again re-affirmed how proud and honoured we are that his own enterprise is the major sponsor of this web site:

 

 

There was trouble after the Crow game as Graham Johncock, who has given up trying to match Byron Pickett on a football field, ended up emulating his ‘skills’ on the road, and later incurring the wrath of the authorities:

 

Now Johncock is no Rhodes Scholar. Our sources in Adelaide tell us that the incident occurred as a the result of Johncock chasing a carload of Port fans through the streets of Salisbury after it finally dawned on him that they’d been making fun of his surname for all these years. He is expected to plead for leniency on these grounds.

 

TigerWatch, Week 14: As regular readers of footballinvective.com would be aware, for several weeks now the authors have predicted that this round would be the one in which another humiliating loss would be the last straw that led Tiger fans to turn against their own side. Although it didn’t happen, we weren’t entirely wrong. We can categorically say that they would have turned. Had the Tiges not hung on by a solitary point, and instead succeeded in blowing a 7 goal lead in the last quarter, there is no doubt they would have turned. Richmond players and Wow Plow can consider themselves lucky that they were two points from a turning.

 

Over in the West, the football world was shocked as Carlton led the Eagle pornstars at half time. But the second half showed the football world they needn’t have worried. It was as if Porn United had spent the first half cleaning the pool, before getting down to business in the second half, as Carlton laid back and gave us the most submissive half of football seen so far this year. In fact, so acquiescent were the Navy Blues to the treatment dished out to them by Porn United that WA Police are making cursory inquiries into reports that the Blue drinking water may have been spiked with rohypnol at half time. The Blues managed a grand total of 19 kicks for the third quarter – only four more kicks than the Eagles had scoring shots for the quarter.

 

After closer scrutiny of this year’s fixture by the writers at footballinvective.com, we can reveal that Carlton effectively have had no real wins for the year. Their most recent “victory” was over Hawthorn which, of course, does not count. Their next most recent premiership points were against Port Adelaide, over whom Pagan has always possessed some kind of voodoo curse, so that doesn’t count either. And their only other “win” was against Essendon, who once again voluntary choked against Carlton, as has been their wont for the last 6 years, so we can’t credit that one either. That leaves them with no premiership points earned through conventional methods (Carlton board and Collo – take note).

 

After 15 weeks of miscellaneous footballinvective.com scuttlebutt re: Pagan, this most recent result must surely raise serious questions over the future of Denis Pagan. If his record at North Melbourne is disregarded, then his recent record puts him in the same pantheon of modern coaching greats such as Gary Buckenara, Peter Rohde and Damian Drum. Carlton has a proud tradition of ruthlessness in sacking coaches who actually achieve some success – Parkin, Walls, etc. Given Pagan’s lack of success, it would be un-Carlton like for him not to be living in fear right now. You heard it first at footballinvective.com – the writing is on the wall for Pagan’s future as coach of the Blues. Like the hapless LA motorists in the pic below, Pagan is going have all sorts of trouble avoiding The Arse:

 

Pagan's Fate - Not Pretty

 

Special Announcement: Due to overwhelming demand from readers who have responded to our weekly nominations for Hero, Cult Figure and Clanger of the Week after each round, it has been decided, due to popular demand, to inaugurate annual awards for the Hero, Cult Figure and Clanger of the Year.

 

This week we introduce the prize for Hero of the Year. It has been the strong view of readers that this award should take the form of a medal that is named in honour of one of the all-time greats of the game. Accordingly, we are proud to announce the inauguration of the annual Malcolm Blight Medal for Hero of the Year, as judged by our independent panel of experts. We humbly predict that the Malcolm Blight Medal (aka “The Blighty”) will soon become the second-most prestigious individual award in football (after the Magarey Medal, of course).

 

Just as there are multiple Oscars awarded each year in recognition of outstanding achievement in the various facets of movie-making, there will multiple Blighties awarded each year in recognition of the differing fields of achievement in football. This year, footballinvective.com will present three separate Blighties:

 

1. The Malcolm Blight Medal for Player of the Year;

2. The Malcolm Blight Medal for Coach of the Year; and

3. The Malcolm Blight Medal for best all-round “good bloke” of the year (thus completing the Holy Trinity of football awards).

As any impartial reader would acknowledge, Blighty’s achievements are such that he deserves to have the medal named him in each of these categories.

 

The Blighty for Player of the Year is particularly apt. After all, he won a Magarey, a Brownlow, a Coleman, and two premiership medals. His achievements as a player arguably eclipse even those of The Great Man, who despite his undoubted greatness, always had one terrible shortcoming that held him back – he wasn’t born South Australian.

The Malcolm Blight Medal:

Most prestigious award in football

 

 

Hero of the Week: John Worsfold – The red hot favourite for the Malcolm Blight Medal (Coach of the Year category) deserves at least a week in the limelight, on multiple grounds. First, he made Denis Pagan look worse than ordinary - surely sufficient grounds in and off itself, many would argue. Secondly, like Russell Crowe’s Oscar for “Gladiator”, it wasn’t so much that particular performance that earned him the prize but recognition of sustained high performance over a much longer period of time.

 

Cult Figure of the Week: Byron Pickett – copped a sickening hip and shoulder blow to the head from Scott Burns that would have left any other player in a paraplegic ward, but for Byron he just bounced straight up and even gave Burns an encouraging pat on the head. A bit like Ayrton Senna patronizingly patting the head of a little kid in a billy cart, as if to say “keep trying son – one day you can grow up to be like me as well.” As if to show how harmless the blow was, given the recipient, the tribunal let Burns off Scott free. Had any other player been on the receiving end, the Tribunal would have been obliged to refer the matter to the homicide squad.

 

Clanger of the Week: In an up-and-down year for Big Bad Barry, the Swans spearhead surely reached his lowest ebb this week, as he failed to score a single goal on Darren Gaspar, akin to the Socceroos losing 5-0 at Telstra Stadium to Tonga. Rumours this week allege that Alice Springs bookmakers have now suspended betting on “Clanger of the Year”, given Hall’s leap to outright favouritism.