Round 8, 2006

 

 

As the old saying goes, there are many ways to skin a cat, and long-suffering Geelong supporters experienced every single one of them in excruciating detail on Saturday night. When a morose Sam Newman appeared on the Sunday Footy Show the day after the 1995 Grand Final and declared "It was the most insipid performance I have seen by a Geelong football side – Ever”, little did he know that the club would serve up another once-in-a-lifetime display of half-baked ineffectual mediocrity barely 10 years later.

 

It’s over. There can be no redemption after such a performance. The Fat Lady has sung for the Cats in 2006. The best team in the AFL after Round 2 has sunk without a trace to become the undisputed worst team in the space of 6 weeks.

 

After winning the pre-season cup with some attacking flair and risk-taking football, the Cats returned on Saturday night to their signature “chip it around-kick it sideways-never go down the guts in case you kick to a contest-wait for someone else to take risk- hang on to the ball and wait for someone else to show leadership” type of game plan that took the rest of the comp only 3 rounds to completely figure out and which has now condemned them to (yet) another wasted season of mediocrity and underachievement ever since.

 

Footballinvective.com was there are the MCG in a red velvet spiv box in the new Northern Stand, and spent the whole game letting fly at the Geelong players with a torrent of heckling and disparaging remarks:

 

Footballinvective.com express their scorn

 

Unfortunately, it has long been the view of footballinvective.com that the Geelong Football Club, the city of Geelong, and Geelong supporters in general are missing a crucial football chromosome which enables team supporters and football clubs to respond in the appropriate manner to humiliating losses and chronic poor form by actually putting pressure on the team to pull its finger out when it is underachieving. Unlike normal teams, in which the passion and volatility of fans keep the players and the club administrations on their toes, there is no such element down at Pivot city. Instead, the club knows that it can put on whatever kind of meek, heartless performance it likes, safe in the knowledge that it will not have to face the wrath of the supporters. For all our disparagement of fickle Richmond and Port Power supporters who turn on their team, at least these fans provide the crucial element of ACCOUNTABILITY, a crucial pre-condition for any football team.

 

Fed-up with such passive acceptance of mediocrity, footballinvective.com this week took it upon itself to dispense some vigilante justice, Richmond-style, and travelled down the highway on Sunday morning to deliver a truck load of chicken manure and a crate of sheep hearts to the front door of Unskilled Stadium, before then conducting a brief memorial service at the Eastern Cemetery in which Geelong’s hopes for Season 2006 were formally laid to rest. Unfortunately, news of our vigilante mission never reached the mainstream lesser football media due to it being suppressed by the Geelong Advertiser, whose Burns and Smithers attitude towards the Cats prevents any critical words being uttered about the team. Yet as much as the Geelong Advertiser is part of the problem, it unfortunately is merely reflecting much of its readership.

 

Geelong supporters, so long downtrodden, disheartened and unquestioning, must now rise up and overthrow the kind of “near enough is good enough”/”nevermind there’s always next year”/”we all still love you anyway” culture that caused the club and the city to:

*   Lose 8 Grand Finals (4 day and 4 night – count ‘em) in the previous 18 years;

*   Lose 3 Grand Finals in 6 years with the highest-scoring team of all time and the two greatest football geniuses of all time (Blighty and The Great Man);

*    Host fawning public receptions at Geelong Town Hall on the night of every losing Grand Final to uncritically pat the team on the back and tell them that they all still love them anyway.

*   For 2 years in a row become clear premiership favourites (Round 9, 2005 and Round 2, 2006) before immediately choking and instantly becoming as fragile as Mark Latham’s glass jaw for the rest of the season;

 

Footballinvective.com has now decreed that after decades of underachievement that would make the Buffalo Bills and Al Gore blush, it is time for accountability at Sleepy Hollow. Or, to put it in more simple terms, it is time for all Geelong supporters to turn.

 

Geelong supporters of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

 

Let the War Begin.

 

 

Whilst Saturday night’s debacle naturally consumed most pundits attention in Round 8, the humiliation of the Geelong Football Club should not overshadow another almighty flogging dished out to the Family Club the night before. Two weeks ago cocky Hawk fans thought they were about to return to the heights of the 70s and 80s (a bit like Donald Trump’s haircut), but since then the club has fallen back to earth faster than the space shuttle Columbia. After breaking the Demons goal kicking record, Melbourne full-forward David Neitz received the most media attention that he’d had since his last visit to the bar at Clown casino, though it must be said that the Hawthorn backline were as loose as Biggest Loser Adro’s old pants. Hawthorn’s much-maligned rookie full-back Zac Dawson was once again a focus of discussion, with the lesser football media making excuses for him on the grounds that he wasn’t actually assigned to play on Neitz. However, given that no one at the game could figure out who Alistair Clarkson had put on Neitz instead, this excuse doesn’t really hold water. One begins to wonder how much longer the “experience will be good for the kid”, as Jack Dyer would say.

 

Meanwhile, in another example of managerial ineptitude at the Family Club, Richie Vandenberg, still desperate to convince the football world that the Hawks are not pretty boys, got himself suspended for 3 weeks, but in another example of Jason Dunstall’s administrative genius, the club appealed the sentence and ended up getting it increased to 4. It’s re-assuring to see that nothing has changed at Hawthorn.

 

In the City of Churches, Port Power players would have been filling every confessional in town after another meek fade-out against the Lions. Teal Coloured Glasses managed to drag himself away from the Power player’s race after venting his spleen for several hours after the game, and had these words of advice for his team:

 

Another week, another home thrashing. This time it was the Lions who absorbed the Power’s almighty 15 minute effort before walking all over them for the remaining 105 to administer a resounding 69-point thrashing (not nearly as fun as it sounds). On a positive note however, the true nature of the reason for Port’s miserable form revealed itself as it became obvious to all and sundry that the Power is ‘taking a dive’. By deciding that the quickest route to the top is via the bottom, Port has embarked on an ambitious venture to get absolutely smashed both home and away in an effort to secure the cream of this year’s young talent.

 

Of course the ‘experts’ are now all queuing up to slam the Power’s nefarious plan. Tim Watson intimated on Melbourne radio on Tuesday morning much of what has been said here: that Port had already written off this season, that the Power was simply playing for draft picks and that the AFL should investigate the situation.

 

Of all the people most qualified to spot ‘tanking’ then surely it is Watson, a man who as coach of St Kilda managed one of the most breathtaking demonstrations of skiving of all time. He took a team that had made the Grand Final in ’97 and still included names like Harvey, Burke, Loewe, Jones and Winmar and managed to send it plummeting to bottom spot by 2000 – and in so doing secured Nick Riewoldt and Justin Koschitzke with the first 2 picks in that year’s draft. Or perhaps this is being overly harsh on Watto – maybe he really was just a horrendous coach. 

 

And so what if the Power is ‘pulling a Hawthorn’? The highest pick it has ever – ever mind you – had in its 10 year history was the ill-advised choice of Michael ‘he’s no Anthony’ Stevens at pick 5 in 1998. In the modern-day AFL, there is no worse fate than that of finishing 9^th, too low for finals and too high for any chance of drafting good enough players to get out of the mediocrity cycle. A clash with the Bombers at Telstra Dome this weekend presents Port with the perfect opportunity to set themselves up for the rest of the season – dead set last after round 9 with Carlton to follow in Round 10. A loss there and the no. 1 pick is there for the taking.

 

So sit back and relax Power fans. Enjoy the schadenfreude of watching teams get one over the ‘Pride of South Australia’ like Richmond did this week while Chocco and co. position themselves for a crack at the best draft since 2001. In particular, a lack of success in 06 gives Port the best shot at nabbing Glenelg sensation Bryce Gibbs for 07.

 

The selection of this highly rated youngster would be even more satisfying given that he is the son of former Bays star Ross Gibbs and is a player the Adelaide Crows attempted to draft under the father-son rule - only to learn that although Ross had played the required number of games, it was during the wrong time period and therefore Bryce was ineligible. My heart bleeds for you Crows fans. He now looks all set to join the Cornes brothers as sons of Glenelg guns plying their trade on the Dark Side. This prospect is just too delicious for words – tank on Port, tank on!

 

Port's demise has led to Port Power supporters turning, and numerous other South Australians taking advantage of their plight, as the following offerings from heartless chardonnay-sipping Crow fans reveal:

 

 

 

And just to rub in even more, one final offering, just in case Port supporters have forgotten the outcome of their most recent September outing, the Mega Showdown against the (Gay) Pride of South Australia, here’s a timely reminder, straight from the mantelpiece in the Crows Tavern bar at Moron Park:

 

 

But in a shameful week for SA footy, the Crows also went down to the Tiges, who served up the biggest case of over-possession since Shapelle Corby packed her boogy board bag. Just as Jason Gillespie should not kid himself that a double century against the Bangladeshi pie throwers is a record with any real credibility, Joel Bowden should not kid himself that taking 24 marks in a game like that is any kind of achievement. Richmond’s mercenary coach Terry Wallet would have been relieved to have escaped with the four points and buy himself a bit more time staving off the wrath of Tiger fans, but his “gameplan” can most charitably be described as the football equivalent of Senator Ron Boswell, who beat Pauline Hanson in the 2001 election with the slogan “Not Pretty, but Pretty Effective.”

 

Separated at Birth:

 

Boswell and Plow

 

Plow, not surprisingly, was proud of his win, and spent the next 24 hours telling the lesser football media that he had pulled of a tactical coup equivalent to his toppling of Essendon in the Dons’ only loss for season 2000. Predictably, many in the lesser football media were easily seduced, with Brian Taylor in particular acting like he’d just polished off a bottle of rohypnol prior to his interview with Plow the next day. But the football world should be grateful for the intervention of Kevin Sheedy, who immediately put Plow back in his box by publicly ridiculing his “basketball crap” game plan. It’s good to see that Sheeds continues to maintain a healthy skepticism for two of the great blights on world sport – Terry Wallace’s ego, and the game of basketball in general.

 

 

Hero of the Week: Kevin Sheedy – A much needed reality check for Terry Wallet in his self-proclaimed moment of triumph.

 

Cult Figure of the Week: David Neitz – Gutsy club leader who rises to the occasion when under pressure. Just what Geelong needs right now.

 

Clanger of the Week: Geelong Football Club. Say no more