Round 17, 2006

 

 

Up in Canberra, North Melbourne played its last game before colberting the nation’s capital in pursuit of Gold Coast CASH. Whilst Leigh Colbert might have retired from the team, his spirit lives on in the club boardroom.

 

The Year of Shame continued for the Cats on the weekend. Louis Vuitton handbags flooded the Canberra market, as Geelong meekly went down to the Roos in its weakest and most heartless performance of the year so far, featuring:

·         Steve Johnson – About to be appointed Professor of LWA (Lairising Without Ability) at Oxford University;

·         Stephen Queen – Built like a brick shithouse, and played like one too. As “captain” of the side was his usual self when the team was under pressure (after only 5 minutes), its commitment was being questioned and the team needed someone to lift it. In short, the most ordinary display of leadership seen in Canberra since Natasha Stott-Despoja was in charge of the Democrats;

·         Cameron Mooney – Every good team needs a player who can display some physicality, "fly the flag" when the going gets tough in order to fire up the team, and the Big Hairy Cat fills that role at Geelong. He should not be judged harshly for once again getting suspended, for it should be remembered that  Mooney’s numerous acts of violence are simply in proportion to the extent to which the team needs a spark and a LEADER (ie. all the time). Mooney’s level of on-field violence and the extent to which he feels the need to fly the flag is simply in proportion to the deep, deep poop that his team keeps putting itself in. Given the utterly shameful and helpless situation that Geelong now finds itself in, Mooney should take the field in his next game armed Chuck Norris-style with a pair of UZIs, such is the size of the flag flying now required at Geelong:

Mooney - The Answer

 

Footballinvective.com has commented extensively on the physical, psychological and cultural weakness of Geelong during the club's Year of Shame in 2006, and has often speculated on the reasons why this is so. In particular, it has speculated that the community of Geelong's tolerance for losing Grand Finals in the 1990s has bred a culture in which mediocrity and near-enough-is-good-enough is not only tolerated, but positively applauded. If we ever needed proof of this phenomenon then it was provided this week in an unlikely place within the lesser football media, when the ABC launched an on-line series featuring  replayed radio commentary of great Grand Finals. The first match to be featured was, not surprisingly, 1989. The pre-amble to the replayed commentary on the ABC site was written by a member of the ABC's Tobin Brothers commentary team, and long time Geelong supporter Gerard Whately. To say footballinvective.com was stunned to see how Whately regarded Geelong's loss in 1989 (and subsequent losses in following years) is like saying Julius Ceasar was stunned when he saw his best mate Brutus looming behind him with a piece of kitchenware about to colbert him in 44BC.

 

Readers can read Whately's full commentary on the '89 decider at the Tobin Brothers web site and judge for themselves, but the following extracts should prove the point, as Whately described what it was like to watch his team lose a Grand Final:

“...brave, gallant, heroic defeat”

 

You've never found it in your heart to be angry. The replay isn't painful. In a perverse way it's joyous.

 

Some say because we don't grieve we have failed to achieve better. I've never believed that to be true.

 

Brave, gallant, heroic defeat. And still I can find no place in my heart for sadness.

Footballinvective.com bets Whately all the tea in China that the most recent team to lose a close Grand Final, the West Coast Eagles, have not been spending this year patting themselves on the back about their "brave, gallant, heroic defeat". Nor do we believe that any self-respecting Eagles fan could be able to look at a replay of last year's decider and see Banfield hitting the post, Kenneally rushing that behind, and Leo Barry taking THAT mark and think that "The replay isn't painful. In a perverse way its joyous." The only thing perverse about losing Grand Finals is the perverse, twisted mind of supporters who can tolerate it and believe that players are heroes for losing them. This perverse ideology (let's call it Whatelyism for want of a better word) is a cancer that has eaten away at the moral fibre of Geelong ever since 1989, and was in many ways attributable for the team losing another 3 Grand Finals in 6 years afterwards. After all, if even the team's most loyal supporters can "find no place in their heart for sadness" what hope is there for the actual players? Gerard Whately has inadvertently outed himself as part of the problem down at Geelong, and candidly admitted just how insidious the problem of the defeatist ideology of Whatelyism has become. Footballinvective.com reckons he was even one of the guilty parties in the Brownlow Stand who cheered the Cats off the ground after they blew a 9 goal lead against the Eagles in Round Round 10.

 

After Kevin Sheedy's Baby Bombers lost the 1983 Grand Final, Sheedy - appalled at players joking around at a post-match booze-up - famously grabbed the microphone on stage and castigated the players for not feeling the pain, saying that any player who didn't feel sick inside at having just lost a Grand Final did not deserve to pull on the guernsey again. The effect on Essendon was there for all to see in 1984 and 1985. Yet in contrast to Kevin Sheedy's realism and - dare we say it - sense of pride and self-respect for his team, Geelong gets patted on the back after every latest humiliation by defeatist supporters who revel in "brave, gallant, heroic defeat" and who "can find no place in their heart for sadness." This is not just illogical and embarrassing for the team, this tolerance for defeat has had disastrous - and costly - effects on the club's culture ever since 1989. Malcolm Blight, like footballinvective.com, was shocked by the Cats' inability to feel pain after the 1992 and 1994 Grand Finals and remarked in "100 Years of Football" in 1996:

"When you're coach and lose a Grand Final, it's never pretty. The first one (1989) was exciting. The second one (1992) was THE MOST DISAPPOINTING DAY I have ever spent in footy. When you get five goals up in a Grand Final and don't win THAT HURTS. But I don't think the players or the people at the club really understood that, and I really believe that those sins are now being paid for with the last couple of results (1994 and 1995)."

It does not take a football genius such as Malcolm Blight to see that a tolerance for "brave, gallant, heroic defeat" has the same effect on a team's moral fibre as drinking a bucket of Draino has on one's internal organs - it destroys all it touches, and leaves a nasty hollow feeling inside. As Blightly alludes to, the defeatist, back-slapping culture after each losing Grand final was the worst thing that could have happened to the team after such losses, yet exactly the same thing is happening at Sleepy Hollow this this year after each new humiliation (for that's what they are) in Geelong's Year of Shame in 2006.

 

In 2006 footballinective.com has advocated a number of changes at Sleepy Hollow - a new captain, a new coach, and violent civil disobedience from Cat supporters. To that list can now be added another urgent priority - a purge of all Geelong supporters who tolerate mediocrity and "brave, gallant, heroic defeat." Football is a brutal, uncompromising game and there can be no place for "supporters" with attitudes such as that, for ultimately such attitudes infest the team as well. Before the end of the 2006 season, footballinvective.com proposes the establishment of a Committee for the Investigation of Un-Geelong Activities, to be chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy, which will interrogate all Geelong season-ticket holders to determine their attitude to their team. Any such individuals who express any liking for "brave, gallant, heroic defeat" or who, when shown footage of the Cats' losing Grand Finals find the experience "joyous" should then be rounded up later that night and given a choice - Either they can agree to leave town peacefully and never attend a Geelong game again, or they can be marched off the end of Cunningham Pier, where they can then spend eternity contemplating how few premiership cups there are on the bottom of Corio Bay.

 

But if Gerard Whately and his Geelong defeatist ideology looked foolish this week, he was surely outdone by the Prince of Petulance, Jason Akermanis, who was ignominiously voted out of the Brisbance Lions 12-0 by his teams' leadership group. Yet if Aker was made to look like a clown by this outcome, what can be said by Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, who boldy declared that he wanted to recruit Aker to the Queensland Labor Party:

I want Akermanis, says Beattie

QUEENSLAND AFL star Jason Akermanis may be headed for a future in state politics, after Premier Peter Beattie said today he wants Akermanis to pursue a career in state politics.

 

Akermanis, whose career with the Brisbane Lions is coming to an end, told today's Sunday Mail he was interested in a political future.

 

Mr Beattie today said he would "sit down and have a chat" with the 29-year-old AFL player about standing for State Parliament for the Labor Party.

 

"Aker" was dropped from the Lions this week after tensions between him and coach Leigh Matthews boiled over.

 

When asked whether he would be a good politician, Mr Beattie replied: "Of course he would".

 

"I haven't had a chance to have a chat with him but course he would."

Unfortunately, it is typical of the lack of real characters in the modern game that anyone who shows a glimpse of colour, such as Aker, can get so massively over-exposed, no matter how unfunny, petulant or predictable they are. This over-exposure now appears to extend to being wooed by gullible politicians as well.

 

As a small example of Aker's shallowness, in one of his recent Courier Mail columns he was making suggestions for how to make the grass grow at the Phone Dome, writing that he saw Australia and Italy play at an indoor stadium in Germany and "I didn't see any of the players slipping over". That would be because the Fritz Walter Stadion in Kaiserslauten is outdoors (as confirmed by footballinvective.com on its recent visit). This is but one small example of Aker's typically ill-considered, uncreative commentary (and  calling your coach a f*ckwit in another column - some real comic genius there too...)

 

Unfortunately, the lesser football media also seems to be under the spell of Unfunny Aker, with the Herald Sun this week doing a full-page spread on which Victorian team would take him, without actually pausing to ask why any other team would even want him. Consider: A team leadership group voting (unanimously) to indefinitely suspend a player is unprecedented. And it should not be forgotten what he was suspended for:

·         it wasn’t poor form;

·         it wasn’t off-field indiscretions;

·         it wasn’t for Lawrence Angwin-style pilfering;

·         it wasn’t for getting into a drunken brawl at 4:00am, for which players appear not to get suspended anyway (hello Mr Tarrant and Mr Johnson – time to forget about Brownlow votes this year and start worrying about jury votes instead);

No, Aker was not suspended for any of these reasons. He was suspended (not by the coach, not by the club board) by his TEAM MATES because of his attitude and his personality and because serious, professional footballers - even those who have been his comrades for 10 years - can no longer stand to be around him. Why anyone would want him on their team - either a political party or a Victorian side - is beyond the collective wisdom of footballinvective.com.

 

Given the effect he has had on his team and his general demeanor since his dummy spit in the third quarter of the 2004 Grand Final when it started to look like the Lions would not win, we despair to think what would happen if Aker were to go into politics. Accordingly, footballinvective hereby presents its Letterman-style Top 10 most likely outcomes if Jason Akermanis enters politics:

 

10. Just like he reportedly drafted his Norm Smith medal acceptance speech before the 2004 Grand Final, before he is even elected to Parliament Aker hatches his “Aker for Canberra” campaign to become Prime Minister, along the lines of the “Joh for PM” campaign of 1987 (featuring another deluded Queensland lairiser who nobody south of the Tweed could take seriously).

 

9. Aker seeks to emulate the feats of a great ALP leader by trying to break Bob Hawke's beer sculling world record on the floor of Parliament, when things go horribly wrong...

 

8. Following on from his ill-judged prediction after Round 2 that Geelong would win the 2006 flag, Aker makes the bold prediction that the Australian Democrats will win a majority of seats in both the House of Reps and the Senate after the next election (this is about as likely as a Geelong revival given the current equally low credibility levels of the Cats and the Dems).

 

7. Aker fails to turn up to Parliament for his maiden speech after being unexpectedly detained for 3 hours by a full-length mirror and one of his highlights reels.

 

6. Aker inadvertently becomes the subject of a British-style political sex scandal, after being caught in a compromising position with an effigy of himself.

 

5.  Aker nominates himself for the cabinet but when a vote of the party-room is taken, the result is exactly the same as the last time his peer group were asked to express confidence him (and booted him from the team): 

All those in favour of Aker: 0. 

All those against: Everyone.

 

4. Just like he pre-emptively colberted his team this year and was unanimously voted out of the Lions faster than a turkey slapping Big Brother star, he will declare he no longer wants to be in the Labor Party after one election, publicly labels Peter Beattie a f*ckwit and is then unanimously voted out of the Labor caucus, making him the next Mal Colston (a fellow shameless Queensland ALP colberter).

 

3. Just like another Labor Party MP with a funny-looking beard and an unnaturally high opinion of himself (G. Evans), Aker destroys his credibility (political and otherwise) by getting busted having an affair with Cheryl Kernot.

 

2. Just like another temperamental ALP figure who suffered a big loss late in 2004 and memorably spat the dummy (M. Latham), Aker goes AWOL for several weeks before turning up in a park with a shaved head to oh-so graciously announce his retirement. He then turns up 6 months later to publish his "The Akermanis Diaries" (can't wait for that one.)

 

1. Aker does a Harold Holt and disappears whilst scuba diving after being told there was a TV camera and microphone at the bottom of the ocean.

 

Aker - Arseclown

 

 

Hero of the Week: Daniel “Big Wayne” Kerr – the Eagles turned back the clock to the finest days of Porn United in 2005 with the kind of physical prowess that would make Dirk Diggler and Chest Rockwell look like pre-pubescent schoolboys as they tore apart the Crows. None was finer than Big Wayne Kerr, with 40 penetrating, sultry, lascivious possessions.

 

Cult Figure of the Week: Cameron Mooney – one of the few Geelong players to consistently go in hard during the Year of Shame. There can be no further indictment on Geelong’s current softness than that he got fined by the club this week for doing so. He shouldn’t feel too disappointed that he will be suspended for another game next week – it’s not like he’ll be missing anything.

 

Clanger of the Week (x2): Peter Beattie – speaks for itself

 

Mike Sheahan – a belated, yet thoroughly deserved first nomination for Mike “As consistent as Shoaib Aktar” Sheahan for 2006 with his comments on Fox Footy on Monday night. After being asked to comment on James Hird's brilliant BOG effort in his comeback game and whether he should play on next year, Sheahan replied:

“It’s not a question of what’s right for James Hird. It’s all about what’s best for the Essendon footy club….”

After the club hasn’t won for 15 weeks then Hird returns underdone to be clearly BOG and help them win a game, surely even Mike Sheahan can see that there is simply no question that having James Hird on the field is clearly, undoubtedly, unequivocally “what’s best for the Essendon football club”. How could anyone (other than Mike Sheahan) ever think otherwise. 

 

Clang!