Round 18, 2005

 

 

Last year after the game known as “The Abomination” in Round 16 2004, footballinvective.com gravely declared to the world the death of the fabled Shinboner Spirit. But like the famous “Ashes” editorial in The Times announcing the death of English cricket, it appears we spoke too soon. Few of the 10,000 fans who ventured to Manuka Oval in the nation’s capital last Sunday could have expected that they would see the magnificent resurrection of the Shinboner Spirit, as the Roos came from nowhere to down the reigning champs, and finally return Chocko to the realm of mere mortals. To mark the occasion, footballinvective.com this week publishes a special tribute to the re-birth of the Shinboner Spirit.

 

Young Roo Daniel Wells has been talked up all year by footballinvective.com and is one of the early favourites for the Bosustow Medal for Cult Figure of the Year. He certainly hasn’t done his chances any harm in the past month by growing an afro. Like those new rules at the tribunal which enable it to offer a reduced sentence to players who plead guilty, footballinvective.com hereby makes the following offer to young Wellsy: if he can grow the afro sufficiently to resemble Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction by Grand Final day then we will award him the Medal on that basis alone.

 

From the opposite point of view, footballinvective.com’s Port Power correspondent, Teal Coloured Glasses, was also on hand at Manuka, and fired off this bitter melancholic missive in response:

And so it ends. A valiant but flawed effort by Port Adelaide on Sunday condemned the defending champs to the swamp of mediocrity that engulfs all teams unlucky enough to finish between 9 and 12 on the table. Not good enough for a taste of the real stuff but not quite pathetic enough to warrant receiving the Scandanavian welfare-sized handout that is the AFL priority draft pick system. 

 

Alas it is my sad duty to announce that the club formerly known as North Melbourne officially owns Port Adelaide Football Club. Like Yin and Yang, it seems these two sides will be forever linked in an eternal marriage of dominance and submission.  To the list including Shane Warne and Darryl Culinnan, Pedro Martinez and the NY Yankees, Keiren Perkins and Daniel Kowalski, and Inspector Gadget and Doctor Claw, you can now add Port Adelaide and the Kangaroos. For no matter how good the Power’s form, no matter how bad the Roos’, no matter home or way, no matter fair weather or foul, the Kangas have the Power’s number and seem to relegate Port to a loss almost every time.

 

We’re not talking about standard, honourable, 5 goals down-but-we-gave-it-a-go losses either. Among the long list of degradations we Port fans have had to endure down the years have been embarrassing thumpings, tense and tight tussles that just seemed to fall the other way, daylight robberies that made you want to tear the black heart from the chest of the umpire that wronged you so,  and now of course the final indignity: the impossible, mythical, unimaginable come from behind soul-destroyer that extinguishes once and for all the fragile, beautiful, flickering hope that maybe, just maybe, your team will get the chance to defend its hard-earned title in the magical month of September. Truly, if ever any sporting team has ever earned the right to ask another ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ it is North Melbourne to Port Adelaide.

 

In many ways this game was a microcosm of Port’s season: plenty of opportunities for a talented side to show that they deserve to be included among the contenders for the premiership but due to a lack of desire, fitness, mental strength and - in the case of some players - ability, Port will be enjoying Mad Monday for the first time in 5 years the way it was meant to be enjoyed, i.e. with all the other rubbish clubs while the quality teams keep playing.

 

Speaking of rubbish, it would be remiss of me to make comments about why Port will be absent from the finals roll call without mentioning the man that made it happen, Tony McGuiness. Regular readers may have noticed a recurring theme in Teal Coloured Glasses, namely my contempt for a man whose Snowtown-style butchering of the Power forward line would bring a tear even to the eye of Ivan Milat. How he conned his way into that coaching box will forever remain one of history’s great unsolved mysteries. We can only hope that someday soon he will be arrested and charged with impersonating an AFL coach and be slapped with a restraining order preventing him from coming within 200 yards of Alberton Oval.

Just as The Force has both the light side and the dark side, the Shinboner Spirit is also a complex phenomenon. Whilst the Shinboner Spirit spreads virtue and courage amongst those blessed by its touch, it has an evil alter-ego that spreads nothing but havoc and despair. We speak, of course, of the Shinboner Curse. The Curse is a malevolent entity that wreaks revenge of those who commit bad deeds against the Roos. This year it has taken its toll on both Melbourne and Geelong. Consider the following incontrovertible evidence.

• In Round 11 Melbourne embarrassed the Roos at Manuka, and shot to second on the ladder. They have not won a game since.

• In Round 9 Geelong flogged the Roos by 85 points at Unskilled, leading to all sorts of hubris and arrogance down at Sleepy Hollow, as embodied by FGY. With the Spirit spurned, the Curse immediately sprung into action. Geelong brought out the handbags the following week and lost to Fremantle, and since then have gone from flag favourites to rank pretenders.

Karl Marx once famously declared that a spectre was haunting Europe. An even bigger spectre is now haunting the AFL – the Shinboner Curse.

 

TigerWatch, Week 18: Just when we were about to give up hope of seeing a turn from Tiger fans, Richmond have shown that when it comes to unprompted and unexpected displays of mediocrity, it is a foolish man who writes them off. After its insipid display against Carlton, the entire club has once again been placed on turning watch. Terry Wallace would be well advised not to leave his house unaccompanied this week, whilst switchboard operators at Melbourne talkback radio stations should brace themselves for a torrid week, as Tiger fans vent their frustration in the traditional way. Plow can expect to cop a torrent of bile for not letting Richo back on the ground later in the game after he was KO’d and carried off earlier on, whilst Tiger fans will be left to lament the biggest upset loss to the Old Enemy since the 1972 Grand Final, when Big Nick’s tactical genius rolled the Tiges with a 28 goal avalanche. At least Tiger fans on that occasion could take solace at being outsmarted by greats such as Nicholls, Jezza and Robert Walls (lairising his way to a retrospective Norm Smith medal). This time they must live with the indignity of being outdone by the likes of the F-train, Digby Morrell and Mr “Old MacDonald had a fat farm” himself. (And on that farm he had … Lance Whitnall)

 

Footy fans west of the Maribyrnong have been critical of footballinvective.com this year for largely overlooking the Dogs as a team worthy of our attention. Given our propensity for needlessly antagonising fans of all teams, we strongly stand by our decision to previously snub the Scraggers. However, in the past two weeks Rocket Eade has made the football world stand up and take notice, and the Doggies have taken on a look entirely unlike anything to have previously emerged from the Whitten Oval dung pile. If the Dogs gave Geelong a football lesson last week then they gave them another one this week, namely a lesson in how to back themselves and play confident, attacking football against a half-decent opponent, and stick to that game plan even when the game starts to get tight, rather than disappearing into one’s shell faster tan an emerging mollusk in reverse gear at the first sign of danger (Geelong midfield – Do You Read Me????).

 

Rocket issued his team with a rare LTFL (Licence to Flagrantly Lairise), which is a club first for the Western Bulldogs, but a concept that was commonplace at Geelong in the Blight era, and has been de rigueur at the Crows since 1991 (despite unsuccessful attempts at revocation by Robert Shaw, whose period as Crows coach should be erased from the club history books in the same manner that Collo is busy removing every remaining reference to John Elliott at Princes Park). Full credit to Rocket, the quiet achiever of the coaching fraternity. A number of comparisons have been drawn this year between Rocket and his ex-Hawk contemporary Plow, as both men inherited ordinary teams at the start of the year, together with a hefty burden of expectation from success-starved and downtrodden supporters. The contrast between their respective styles and the results they have achieved could not have been more vivid during Round 18, as Rocket knocked off a football powerhouse, whilst Plow got thrashed by something akin to a football outhouse.

 

Rocket’s approach this year has been humble, circumspect and low key. He has never been one to blow his own trumpet, in contrast to Plow, who has the Terry Wallace Marching Band on stand-by at ever game and every press conference.

 

At the MCG on Saturday, Russell Robertson set pulses racing by taking the field with a magnificent fully fledged tash, and in so doing brought back memories of the Age of Tash from the mid-70s to early 80s. The rest of the Melbourne team also brought back memories of that glorious ago by getting comprehensively flogged, in the same way that Demon sides back then regularly did. The result once again saw the fickle football media jump all over the Saints as “genuine premiership contenders” and “Victoria’s Last Hope” on the basis that they have now achieved 5 straight wins. However, the Brighton spivs and Frankston mullets who comprise the Saints supporter base should not be making plans to drive their shiny new bandwagons up the Nepean Highway to the G on Grand Final day just yet. After all, in their 5 match winning streak who have the Saints actually beaten? The list makes for some revealing reading:

• Melbourne: Didn’t you read last week’s Invective? – Adriana has spoken;

• Collingwood: If a week is a long time in politics, two or three years is an eternity in football, and 2002-2003 is now a VERY long time ago;

• Richmond: Haven’t you read this week’s TigerWatch yet?

• Carlton: If Glenn McGrath thought he had it easy against the English tail end then he obviously hasn’t seen the Blues backline in 2005.

• Western Bulldogs: The Dogs turn-around has been a four week process by Rocket. And the Saints played them 5 weeks ago…

When the Saints were last tested by half-competent opposition they came up short against the Sheedy Trabant. That therefore puts them in the same category as Geelong, which is not saying much.

 

 

Hero of the Week: The re-birth of the Shinboner Spirit touched many up in Canberra on Sunday but the one person that the Spirit touched most of all was the previously maligned Troy Makepeace. The Spirit had seemingly abandoned him in the Eagles game, given that he contributed to the dual BOG performances of his two direct opponents David Wirrpunda and Phillip Matera. But the Spirit works in mysterious ways, and on Sunday he was shown football nirvana.

 

The Spirit chose to single out Makepeace as the Chosen One on whom to bestow its blessings, firstly because of his exultant and inherently virtuous name, but secondly, to prove to the doubting Troy that the Spirit’s resurrection was truly complete. With the Roos trailing with five minutes to go, a piece of Makepeace midfield brilliance set up Sav Rocca, who for the first time in his career converted a set shot that mattered. (Hail O Great Spirit of Arden Street, for your miracles are truly incredible!). This finally gave the Roos the lead against the Power, who were simply spellbound by the divine miracle which they were blessed enough to witness. The miracle was complete when Makepeace kicked THAT glorious left foot sealer from outside 50. Troy Makepeace, the Shinboner Spirit is with you my son.

 

Cult Figure of the Week: Matthew Robbins came from obscurity to be a runaway winner for this week’s award, and an early favourite for Mark of the Year, with his classic one handed hanger (below) and other assorted lairising. Robbins was not backward in coming forward and put in a magnificent crowd-pleasing display truly befitting of the holder of a LTFL. Football was the real winner.

 

Clanger of the Week: In a week in which Geelong slipped further down the ladder and had the football world rightly asking whether they have been pretenders all along, it was a no brainer that Pivot City would be the recipient of this week’s Clanger Prize. Bomber Thompson deservedly wins the nomination for some inexplicable coaching ‘moves’ against the Dons on Friday night. Despite being given a bigger bath than a Turkish brothel by Dustin Fletcher in the first half, Bomber chose to keep Kent Kingsley one-out in the goalsquare against Fletcher for the rest of the game, despite Kingsley giving away at least 10 inches in height and 10 pounds in testicular weoght to the Don full-back. Furthermore, when Bomber had the option of moving Brad Ottens into the forward line to at the very least create a useful diversion, he chose instead to leave him on the bench for three quarters, and then spend the other in an aimless roving DOBM role somewhere between half back and the centre circle. These decisions were typical of Bomber’s tactical clangers against an opponent as wily as Sheedy, who left his former apprentice looking more exposed than Helen D’Amico in the ’82 Grand Final. Whilst footballinvective.com has been vociferous all year in recommending that North Melbourne embrace the Bring Back Blighty Plan, we now conclude that Geelong is equally in need of the magic Blighty touch. After all, Blighty has three Grand Finals worth of unfinished business from his last stint at Sleepy Hollow. Footballinvective.com humbly submits that Frank “The Godfather” Costa pull out the cheque book and immediately engage in a frenzied bidding war against North Melbourne to win the services of Blighty as coach in 2006. The way Geelong is traveling, they have nothing to lose. Let the bidding war begin.