Round 19, 2005

 

 

As we revealed last week, St Kilda’s recent winning streak has not included any wins against decent opposition. Geelong demonstrated on Friday night that this is clearly still the case.

 

The Eagle Porn Stars found the going tough this week resembled Dirk Diggler circa 1983 against the Dogs, who continued to surprise the football world by being the most entertaining side in the league at present. The “Sons of the West” gave the impression that they were from at least 600km further west (ie. the other side of the Vic-SA border) by putting on a classic display of free-flowing attacking football to knock off the ladder leaders. Rocket persisted with his blanket LTFL* policy on the field. This week, however, he seems to have extended the policy to off-field behaviour as well, as a cocky gloating Rocket appeared on the front page of the West Australian predicting that the Eagles would go down to the Dockers this week. With his penchant for self-promotion and big statements, Rocket is becoming more like Plow every week, with one minor detail still setting them apart – the small matter of on-field success and credibility.

 

The demise of the Eagles on the weekend should finally remove all doubt in the minds of the football world and confirm what footballinvective.com has always known - the Crows are now clear premiership favourites. Ever since the beginning of the season, it has been apparent that this is the Year of the Crow. Our pre-season prediction of a seventh-placed finish, and the mid-season prediction of runner-up was nothing more than a cunning Gordon Gecko-style ruse to manipulate the betting market for our own advantage. Had word got out that footballinvective.com was tipping a Crow flag the odds would have surely plunged, and thus reduced the windfall return on the 4 mortgaged houses that we put on the Crows prior to Round 1.

 

The (gay) Pride of South Australia did nothing to dispel this view when they easily stitched up the Dees in another walk in the (moron) park. It was the Crows’ second victory over a bunch of hapless Melburnians in the past week, with the first being the announcement by the AFL and MCC that they will transfer the Preliminary Final from the MCG to the Home of Football (ie Moron Park). As the Coodabeens aptly remarked, this will surely leave MCC members up in arms, as they will be seething that they no longer have an extra game to not turn up to each year.

 

But whilst the “Team for All South Australians” are sitting pretty, the Team for Lesser South Australians is struggling on the eve of Showdown XVIII. Our Port correspondent Teal Coloured Glasses filed this latest lament on the fate of the Power:

 

Colberting and has been a hot topic here at Invective recently and being a community-minded column, Teal Coloured Glasses will touch on the blackest of the black arts this week with a message aimed at all aspiring Leighs, Aarons and Brads across Australia. The lesson this week is inspired by the of the declining fortunes of the once-promising Nick ‘I believe this knife in my back belongs to you’ Stevens - Port’s victory over Carlton at the MCG this week highlighting just how dangerous the practice can really be.

 

The fact is, colberters do not get any more craven or selfish than Stevens - a player whose colberting ways would have blanched Braveheart’s Robert the Bruce. Let me set the scene. The year is 2003 and a younger, better version of the receiver now wearing 24 for Carlton is in the final year of his contract with the Power. Port’s season finished with another disappointing finals loss at the hands of the magnanimous and chivalrous Magpies, cheered on by their modest and friendly supporters. Not 48 hrs after the loss, Nick took the first step on the path to the dark side by declaring he wanted to return to Victoria and, facing the prospect of negotiating with a soft-ball specialist who didn’t want to play for the club anyway, the Power hierarchy reluctantly agreed to the request. Soon after, negotiations began to send Stevens from whence he came, with Port announcing that they wanted either a high first round draft pick in the swap or a low first round draft pick and a quality player. Every Melbourne club with salary cap space came knocking with Melbourne even offering the no. 5 pick in the national draft that year (subsequently used on Brock McLean) but it soon became clear that something wasn’t quite right.

 

As a result of playing in the Grand Final that year and several teams blatantly tanking to gain priority picks (att Neale Daniher: stop denying it, it’s embarrassing for everybody) Collingwood’s first round pick that year was a lowly 17, yet in their wisdom they deemed this a fair price to offer for young Nick. Unsurprisingly, Port disagreed and asked for either Simon Prestigiacomo or Alan Didak in addition to the pick but Collingwood, having somehow deluded itself into believing that by keeping their side intact they were only a gun on-baller and maybe half a dozen mid-sized hacks away from a premiership, instead

a)     drafted anybody they could find who could prove even the remotest genealogical connection to Tony Shaw; and

b)     colluded with Stevens and hatched a cunning plan to achieve their nefarious mutual objective.

 

The plan was as follows: Collingwood would refuse to budge from their derisory offer while Stevens nixed trades to any other club, both parties believing that Port - fresh from another humiliating finals fade-out - would fold under the pressure of losing their best midfielder for nothing in the pre-season draft on top of their September disaster. Thankfully, Port refused to buckle and in perhaps the most pertinent example yet of the inherent dangers of colberting, Stevens was condemned to a career in football purgatory at Optus Oval and Collingwood were left to rue the one that got away, whilst the colbertees from Alberton celebrated a premiership at the very next time of asking. As Nick can now attest, although it might appear that doing a Colbert will get you a date to the Brownlow with a girl with a diamond G-string and a part time job as a semi-permanent panelist on The Footy Show due to your experience with big games, the reality is that it’s more likely it will get you a date in court with Laurence Angwin after he repeatedly burgles your house, and a part time job as a semi-permanent panelist on What’s Cooking due to your experience with wooden spoons. So remember kids; if a friend asks you to colbert, just say no!

 

It’s only been a mere 20 weeks since footballinvective.com first floated the idea, but the Adelaide Advertiser has finally cottoned on, and this week published a marvellous piece on The Messiah and the Disciple:

 
MALCOLM Blight's new ritual at his north Queensland retreat is sifting through his Foxtel guide to lock in when he will watch a replay of the latest Crows game.

Adelaide's original Messiah appreciates the Crows he saved in 1997-98 are rising from purgatory. Their new saviour, Neil Craig, is Blight's disciple….

….BLIGHT will return to Adelaide on Friday night, making a special appearance at the German Club in the city at 7pm to promote the KICK campaign to raise funds for Australian football in Papua New Guinea.

 

All we can say is this: The heathens of Papua New Guinea are about to enter a new era of spiritual enlightenment.

 

Round 19 also saw another example of the bone-headed football media being late with the news and only writing about a significant football idea after it is aired on footballinvective.com. A full week after footballinvective.com announced to the world the re-birth of the Shinboner Spirit, the penny finally dropped at The Age, with an article entitled “All hail the Shinboner spirit.” Well d’uh. With on-the-spot news coverage like this we can expect those intrepid newshounds at The Age to announce the safe return of the space shuttle Discovery next week, and England’s arsey 2-run win at Edgbaston a week later (BTW: Disgraceful decision by Billy Bowden to give Kaspa out – the poor bloke  didn’t even have his hand on the bat. And why doesn’t Greg Matthews start sledging those who really deserve it, such as a certain lairising NZ umpire, instead of always dumping on our gutsy heroic Test side?)

 

In a tragic case of life imitating art, Eddie decided it would be a good to sit in the coach’s box and look important during the Pies-Roos game. In so doing he brought back memories of Graham Kennedy’s hapless pie tycoon president in “The Club”, the only difference being that, unlike Jack Thompson, Malthouse was dumb enough to let him in.

 

 

Hero of the Week: Brent Harvey – With the tactical genius of the McGuire coaches box having got the Pies in a winning position with a minute to go, Boomer bravely stepped forward set up the winning goal, and in so doing ensure that the Shinboner Spirit reigned supreme for another week. Egotistical club presidents take note.

 

Cult Figure of the Week: Rocket Eade - Rampant on-field lairising and shameless off-field coach gloating made Rocket a no-brainer for this week’s award. Who would have thought the Western Bulldogs would rise to become the most colourful team in the AFL?

 

Clanger of the Week: Rocket Eade – went one lairisation too far by tipping the Dockers to knock off the Eagles. Not even Angry Docker Fan (after Freo’s 2005 season now likely to be Angry and Manic Docker Fan) would share that sort of confidence.

 

 

LTFL: Licence to Flagrantly Lairise