Round 22, 2006

 

 

It's finals time and the big story in the football world is the unexpected rise of the Dockers and, even more unexpectedly, the emergence of the hitherto rare and even more rarely heard breed of homo sapiens, the Docker fan.

 

After more a decade of walking the streets of Perth with their heads bowed copping the laughter of arrogant Eagles fans and telling their friends that the purple attire they keep in their wardrobe is really a left-over from a fancy dress party, Docker fans everywhere are now holding their heads high and singing that ridiculous club song of theirs with pride. It's as if the years of hibernation have made them determined to announce their presence to the whole world. As a prime example of how Angry Docker Fan has metamorphosed into Exuberant Docker Fan, footballinvective.com this week discovered a football website that rivals even this one for pure football passion, insight and genius. We refer, of course, to the inimitable www.dockerland.com, a web site for Docker Fans. 

 

This week was a good week to visit dockerland.com, in order to observe Exuberant Docker Fans at their height of pre-emptive triumphalism, as the following offerings from the site reveal:

 

Match Preview: Freo v Adelaide

by Shane Richmond Adelaide are scared. Everyone is scared. Fremantle are sweeping through the AFL competition like the Germans through Europe on one of their misguided adventures. Clubs, players, administrators, supporters...they're all hiding out, trembling after their greatest fear suddenly became a reality - the sleeping giant is awake and this week he'll running amok in downtown Adelaide ...more You may remember a couple of weeks ago when the Eagles chucked everything they had at Fremantle They got themselves up by a couple of points at quarter time then ran out of stufff to chuck. Fremantle ran away with that game like they were escaping a booze bus. Even if Adelaide were starting with something to chuk they'd be in trouble. Fremantle are looking 10 foot tall and bullet proof at the moment. Well, Aaron Sandilands always looks like that but for Peter Bell that's a big deal. They haven't lost a game in 9 weeks. Seasons have changed, governments have fallen and planets have been struck off the register since Fremantle last lost a game of football. They've been making a mockery of teams, good and bad, for over two months. Fremantle go into the finals this week with a pretty simple record. They've played 1 final and they lost it. In that same period, the Crows have a much more impressive record - they've lost 3 of their past 4 finals. The last time they won a qualifying final was nearly 10 years ago and even that was only against the hapless Eagles.

As footballinvective.com discovered, a quick browse of the dockerland.com Dockerland fan forum page makes some interesting reading. In particular, this post calling for "confidence not arrogance" said it all about the new breed of Docker fan:

FFC_VIC   Posted: 28-Aug-06 15:37 Confidence not arrogance

Reply |  Edit

Now that we are experiencing our first sustained period of success, I am very pleased that the team has taken the confidence not arrogance approach. This among many other things is what separates us from the chooks. By confidence I mean backing each other, not making outragous statements on abilities, not rubbing opposition noses into the ground etc. I genuinely hope that we, as supporters can remain on the confidence phase and not slip over into the arrogant. Still, everyone is free to celebrate this fine team in whatever way that they consider appropriate.

Footballinvective.com is not quite sure, but we believe that the reference to "the chooks" is a Docker fan term of derision for their feathered (and undeniably arrogant) cross-town rivals.

Unfortunately for whoever posted the above message, its sentiments of "confidence not arrogance" do not appear to have been heeded by the administrator of the site, who this week published the following on-line poll:

Dockerland Poll Where should we hang the Premiership flag from? On top of the club rooms Subiaco Oval Off the back off a ute that we drive up and down Stirling Hwy while playing Long Way to The Top Give it to Jeff Farmer to wear as a cape Give it to Pav to use as a hanky Out the Front of Dale Kickett's place Over the statue of John Gerovich

Lest anyone be in any doubt what readers of dockerland.com think of the chooks and their supporters, this post on the forum should leave you in no doubt:

KO   Posted: 23-Aug-06 12:12 Re: Freo v. West Coast: Good v. Evil.	Reply  |    Edit
I hate their players, hate their support staff, hate the coaches, hate the supporters. I'll boo Judd and the decision.

Fortunately for lovers of football humour, the champagne comedy does not end there on dockerland.com. For the Discerning Docker Fan who really wants to antagonise the chooks, dockerland.com kindly provides a free Leo Barry Face Mask:

For those who wish to download the mask, dockerland.com also provides easy-to-follow 5-step instructions for assembling and using the mask:

1. Print out pages 2 & 3. We recommend you use a heavy photo paper for best results but the back of a bit of scrap paper will do the trick

2. Cut around the outline of Leapin’ Leo’s head and cut around the outline of the handle.

3. Get the Clag glue pot out and paste some glue onto the back of Leo’s chin & at the top of the handle, above the dotted line.

4. Stick Leo's chin jus below the dotted line.

5. Stick it up the Eagles!

But as far as Angry Docker Fan passion goes, the coup de gras as far as footballinvective.com is concerned is this offering, which predicts the future foreshore of Freo should the Dockers ever happen to win a finals game:

Rio De Janeiro:

 

Fremantle:

 

The scheduling of the four finals matches this week has also given rise to (yet) more disquiet with the AFL politburo, as football fans worry about no games in Melbourne for two weeks in the lead-up to the Grand Final. They should instead be worried about no finals on Saturday afternoon in Melbourne except for the Grand Final. Despite the attempts of the politburo to downgrade Saturday afternoon in favour of "Mother's Day" type games on Sundays, and Saturday night games for so-called "theatre-goers". Saturday afternoon is still the traditional home of football, at least in Victoria. And it still is for the mighty SANFL as well. Which is why all South Australians are rightfully indignant at the politburo deciding to schedule the Crows-Freo game for Saturday afternoon at Moron Park whilst the MCG stands vacant. Up until now, the AFL has respected the SANFL by not scheduling games on Saturday afternoon that will clash with the the week's offering by South Australia's finest. But it seems that the SANFL is no longer safe. In a move that can only be seen as a return to the xenophobic hostility of successive VFL administrations in the 1970s and 80s that first gave rise to the "Kick a Vic" movement, the Axis of Evil within the AFL (namely Vic and WA) are now clearly combining to undermine South Australian football, all in the name of doing all they can to give a premiership flag to the only team that has never won one (Freo), and thus complete Comrade Demetriou's nefarious plan to implement full football socialism, where all clubs can win flags regardless of merit. Another concern with this scheduling decision is that it will also create car-parking chaos in the Max Basheer Reserve as 50,000 Crows fans battle for car-parking spaces with shoppers at the West Lakes Mall next door. Perhaps the Mall would be best advised to just shut down for the day to avoid the problem altogether. After all, given that every Crows supporter in Adelaide will be glued to the game, that leaves only Port supporters who would go out shopping at the same time, and given the well-known behavior of Port supporters in shops of any kind, it's not as if shop-keepers at the Mall can expect to make any money on game day, despite having their stock literally "walking off the shelves."

 

Meanwhile, back in Melbourne, after several days of agonising, soul-searching a blood-letting over the issue of who should be its coach, the Carlton board finally bit the bullet and decided to....... do nothing.

 

As a result, Dennis Pagan survives as coach, as a fitting reward for his back-to-back wooden spoons. However, his fate seemed less positive earlier in the week, and footballinvective.com looked like being on the verge of claiming its first-ever coaching scalp when on the Hun reported on Tuesday it was reported in the Hun that: 

 

Pagan on Carlton's chopping block

 

DENIS Pagan's head will be on the chopping block at a crucial meeting tonight after several Carlton directors privately endorsed assistant Barry Mitchell to replace him.

However, despite the hopes of footballinvective.com and disgruntled kangaroo fans everywhere, the Carlton board must have been watching episodes of Jim Hacker in "Yes Minister" ("I'm not being indecisive. I just can't make up my mind.") given its prevarication and flip-flopping, when three days later it decided to keep him, as also reported in the Hun:

 

Pagan stays as Blues coach

 

CARLTON coach Denis Pagan has kept his job, but Blues premiership star Stephen Silvagni is already gunning for the position.

And in another shock, Stephen Kernahan has emerged as the key player in saving Pagan.

Silvagni last night told the Carlton board he was willing to join the club as an assistant if it could guarantee him the senior coaching role in two years.

Mike Fitzpatrick, appointed by the AFL politburo to attend Carlton board meetings to baby-sit the club, must have been bemused with his old club's decision-making prowess, and was probably not disappointed that he had to cancel his plans to see "Thank-you for Smoking" each night this week in order to attend board meetings, given that it provided a much more hilarious form of entertainment.

 

There are many obvious reasons why Carlton is no longer the club it once was, but there is clearly no more compelling evidence that it has totally declined as a footballing force when it cannot even be relied upon to provide the football world with the the bloodsport of heartlessly sacking a coach. Like most other facets of the game on and off the field, this was one skill in which Carlton used to lead the rest of the league but these days even consecutive mahogany ladles is not sufficient for the knives to be sharpened in the Princess Park kitchen. 

 

The Year of Shame for Geelong finished the way it began in Round 3, with a flogging from Hawthorn. Of all the humiliations that Geelong has inflicted upon itself this year, there can be no greater humiliation than that Hawthorn is now its bogey team. Bt don't expect its players to be too upset about it. As this item in the Hun, this week revealed, the insidious disease called "tolerance of failure/mediocrity/underachievement" that infests so much of the civilian population of the city of Geelong has now clearly spread to its best player as well:

 

Top Cats want Bomber to stay

 

GEELONG'S leadership group has thrown its weight behind embattled coach Mark Thompson.

 

Matthew Scarlett, the club's full-back and best player, told the Herald Sun last night the overwhelming majority of players wanted Thompson to continue next year.

 

"He's the only man we want and we need him to coach next year," Scarlett said.

 

He warned he would quit the club if Thompson was dumped and replaced by Daryn Cresswell, who has been linked to the Cats since the announcement this week of his sudden departure from the Brisbane Lions.

 

"If Bomber got the arse and Daryn Cresswell came back, I'd be the first one to walk out," Scarlett said. "There's many others who would do the same thing, but I'm not prepared to name names."

For several years now, footballinvective.com has acknowledged that Matthew Scarlett is the finest full-back in the AFL, and the finest player in his team. But given his inability to see the best interests of his team, dramatic action is required. Having previously argued for a purge of club supporters in Geelong to rid the city of defeatist elements, this purge must now embrace a number of personnel from the playing group as well. It may even implicate a majority of the playing group, who must now be dealt with. The fact that such a purge may mean that the club can't even field a team for a couple of years is surely a small price to pay. As the American general in Vietnam so aptly stated whilst loading up his B52s full of napalm: "We have to destroy this village in order to liberate it." The same thing goes for under-achieving football teams with a tolerance of failure. Let the War Begin.

 

 

Hero of the Week: Brendon Fevola - Even though his team got flogged and ended up with the spoon, Fevola deserves recognition for winning the Coleman Medal. This achievement is made all the more noteworthy by the fact that at the end of 2005 Fevola was in the Hall of Shame as the recipient of the footballinvective.com John Bourke Medal for Clanger of the Year by an AFL player. This is perhaps a positive sign for players who may win this award in future, given that in Fevola's case it was obviously a spur to perform better. In recent weeks the lesser football media has been full of stories speculating on what it was that motivated him to discard his previous wayward ways and turn his career around - marriage, family, the responsibilities of club leadership, perhaps. But, as usual, such analysis is fatally flawed, for it overlooks what must have surely been the biggest motivation of all, something that would burn inside the heart of any footballer for the entire off-season - the shame of winning the John Bourke Medal.

 

Cult Figure of the Week: No doubt about it, www.dockerland.com follows proudly in the footsteps of footballinvective.com by supplying a unique brand of football humour.

 

Clanger of the Week: Geelong Football Club. In a year in which footballinvective.com was the first to identify the club's many flaws, way back in Round 3, and commented extensively on them ever since, on this occasion, no further comment is required. Shame Geelong Shame.