Round 9, 2007

We all knew it was a dud rule, but this week nobody can be in any doubt (well, nobody except Kevin Bartlett). After kicking what was surely the winning goal for his team's first win of the year, footballinvective.com favourite Matty Richardson was cruelly denied by the football travesty known as the new in-the-back rule.

Unfortunately, as much as we would love to, we can't blame the umpires on this occasion, as they were merely applying the new rule in the way it was intended. Instead, we need to blame those in brought in the the rule change.

Mal Michael was clearly caught out of position (nothing unusual there) and Richo look a legitimate mark, that would have been paid in every one of the 110 previous VFL-AFL seasons. 

Richo - Jibbed.

However, in the interests of balance it should be pointed out that Richo did get paid a free kick under the same rule in the second quarter. But as an illustration of how pointless the rule is, he just played on and wasn't even aware that he'd been "infringed".

Not surprisingly, Richmond supporters responded to this outrageous act of jibbing in their usual calm, measured manner. This short but sweet post on "Big Footy" seemed to sum up the mood of Tiger fans the next day:

Richo, heart as big as Phar Lap. What a CHAMPION.

 

Umpire Maggot... your a joke. You cost us the game with that STUPID oversight. W@nker

Meanwhile, footballinvective.com was awoken on Sunday morning with Richmond supporters expressing their frustrations in the streets of Tigerland in the only way they know how:

But the umpires and rule-makers did not have it all their own way in the Richmond-Essendon game, with Robert Walls giving them a run for their money for clanger of the week. After Chris Newman hit Alwyn Davey Walls remarked that he “didn’t touch him”. If Davey was staging then it was a pretty good job – imitating convulsions on the stretcher as he was carried off certainly takes the art of staging to a whole new level. Clang.

Freo had a routine win against the Saints, in yet another chapter in St Kilda's history of anti-football in 2006. Despite having largely the same forward line that it had in 2004 and 2005 when it played high-scoring, attacking (albeit fragile) football, Ross Lyon's team has scored less than 50 points in 4 out of its 9 games. 

Lyon is a protege of Paul Roos, who in the eyes of footballinvective.com is unfairly maligned for being a negative coach. Roos may have perfected the Sydney swap style of stifling, congested football in the midfield and backline, but this was always merely one component of a broader strategy, which also had room for spearheads and contested marks in the forward line, as Mickey O and Big Bad Barry regularly demonstrate. Lyon seems to have inherited from Roos only the back half of the Paul Roos coaching manual, and forgotten to bring the front half. Lyon is typical of the new breed of modern coaches who all come through the same production line of assistant coaches and apparatchiks who learn their trade under the senior coach at a successful club. But this same system also seems to homogenise them and make them wary of innovation. More often than not, the most brash and creative coaches are also those who were previously brash and creative players (Worsfold, Matthews, Chocko, Sheedy, Roos, Eade, etc etc) and they then bring that creativity and charisma to their coaching job. On the other hand, those who were good ordinary players who merely go through the coaching technocrat career path often have little creativity and end up as over-rated flops (Danny Frawley and Ross Lyon are both in that mould, and Bomber Thompson and Alastair Clarkson have also left themselves open to such allegations on numerous occasions).

The so-called match of the round was a fizzer, as Geelong left the handbags in an accessory shop in West Lakes Mall and belted Port in the West Lakes monsoon. Teal Coloured Glasses was there at Footy Park to share the pain of the ever-dwindling numbers of Port Fans:

What a tease that was! Top of the ladder with a 6-1 record after Round 7 and sweeping all before it, Port Adelaide looked as though it had gone from being a nobody to a cover story faster than Kevin Federline. Two weeks and two comprehensive losses later however, the early success has proven – as it was for K-Fed - a mirage.

 

The concerning aspect of the two losses was that the Power was simply smashed in the clearances. When even Josh Hunt is dishing out shirtfronts and getting players carried off, you know something is horribly wrong. Both Sydney and Geelong effortlessly harassed Port’s fleet of outside runners off the ball and exposed the gap between premiership contenders and finals pretenders. As false dawns go, Port’s start to the season is up there with the best of all time:

• c. 1540BC - Moses leads the Israelites to the Promised Land to end for all time the persecution of the Jewish people

• October 1347 –Priests in Genoa and Venice believe their faith has confined the Black Death to Messina and that the spread of the disease through Europe is averted

• October 17 1917 – Communist forces overthrow the Russian royal family to begin a new age of prosperity and fairness for all citizens

• May 1 2003 – George W Bush declares ‘The End of Major Combat in Iraq’

• May 27 2007 – Port wins 6 out of 7 to begin the 2007 AFL premiership season

This weekend sees Hawthorn visiting Footy Park; the Hawks no doubt bringing with them the rubbish gameplan which has become their trademark. Clarko will of course play 17 men behind the ball for the duration of the game and then claim that it was all Ross Lyon’s fault, whilst Chocko will need to be at his very best to see off his protégé and prevent a 2 game losing skid turning into a 3 game losing streak.

If Port was concerned about its lame effort against the Cats, then it should also be concerned about how few supporters are turning up to its home games. Many have speculated as to why this is the case, but this week the Adelaide Advertiser seemed to have finally found the reason why:

Port's push to lift beer ban

 

PORT Adelaide will seek to have some of its fans drinking beer in their seats again next year - arresting the slide from AAMI Stadium to pubs.

 

There is increasing evidence of Power fans who have abandoned going to AFL games at West Lakes to watch live Foxtel telecasts at hotels and clubs where they can drink and see the football at the same time.

 

The SANFL has banned patrons taking beer to their seats at AAMI Stadium since 1975, the second season of the ground formerly known as Football Park.

 

...as another example of how Crows and Power fans have different needs at AAMI Stadium, Port supporters have not favoured this ban.

Not surprisingly, the Port heirarchy has found the answer to this dilemma:

Port chief executive John James yesterday confirmed his club is looking at this issue.

 

"It might lead to us making a proposal to the SANFL for 'beer bays' to be established at our games next year," said James. "We might trial a section of the ground, with appropriate security, that allows fans to take a beer to their seat as happens at other AFL grounds."

 

"You then choose. You sit in the 'beer bays' or you take a seat in a beer-free bay."

Although they just happen to be 100 years behind Victorian grounds in allowing beer whilst watching a game, footballinvective.com commends the Port brains trust for this proposal. Surely the SANFL can now allow beer at Port games (plus a few bourbon and coke bays to really cater for the tastes of Port fans) whilst the Team for all Teetotalling South Australians can keep the existing policy of beer-free bays for all.

Unfortunately for those sympathetic to the Geelong Football Club, its win over Port was once again darkened by the presence of Leigh Colbert as a boundary rider during the game. If this was too much for Cat fans to bear, then we only hope they were not watching "AFL Teams" on Fox Sports the previous Thursday, when Colbert was a panelist with Liam Pickering. Having developed a certain expertise with selling out the interests of fellow players at Geelong, he then proceeded to do the same to his former colleagues from the Roos, by arguing that they should re-locate to the Gold Coast, arguing how great the atmosphere was at Carrara last week (with all 12,000 people there). At that point he was startig to argue that in 3 years this would be the permanent home of the Kangas, when he said something like this: 

"this is unusual for me saying they should relocate being a born and bred Kangaroo.." 

(then suddenly realising what he was saying, he then stopped himself and correct his revealing freudian slip: 

"well, um, not exactly born...". 

An understandably shocked Pickering then jumped in and said 

"Have you forgotten about us" (implying Geelong). "You did Captain us". 

To which Colbert replied 

"um, well I meant I am a traditionalist".

To say that footballinvective.com was appalled at these comments is like saying Mark Williams was a little bit upset at half-time on Sunday. Colbert was trying to say he bled Kangas blood, and clearly (still) feels no remorse for knifing his former club in its hour of need. To make matters worse he gets to suck up to Geelong players in post-match interviews every time their game is on Foxtel. Whilst the Cats at least didn't let him into their rooms this time, he did still manage to interview Geelong players on the ground after the game. When he interviewed Cameron Mooney it was the usual cliched questions and the usual cliched answers. This is disappointing. If Geelong really is the real deal then they would take off the kid gloves and give Colbert what he deserves when he tries to brown-nose their players and pretend nothing ever happened. Here are the answers that Mooney should have given to Colbert's interview:

Colbert: "So Cam, a good win interstate?"

Mooney: "Yes, it was a triumph for team spirit and solidarity."

Colbert: "The team's really lifted in the past three weeks?"

Mooney: "Yes, it's because we've showed a lot of loyalty to each other and really stuck together."

Colbert: "You had some tough times as a club last year, didn't you?"

Mooney: "Yes we did, but when things are bad for a club, that's when a club needs its senior players the most - we all stuck with the team when the chips were down and never went looking for the soft option elsewhere."

Colbert: "Looking forward to having Tom Harley back next week?"

Mooney: "Absolutely, he's a loyal team man who loves his club and will always stick by us. They're the qualities we look for in a captain...."

Colbert: "You played one season for North Melbourne. So does that make you a born and bred Kangaroo like me?"

Mooney: "Get stuffed traitor."

Enough is enough. From now on every Geelong player and official, and every door to every Geelong dressing room (not to mention every gate into Unskilled Stadium) should bear the following sign:

Stay-tuned on footballinvective.com for the soon-to-be-released range of Colbert Free Zone merchandise - bumper stickers, t-shirts, barbecue aprons and stubby holders. The perfect gift idea for that special someone who wants to show the world what they really think of the dark art of colberting.

Finally, on a more amusing note: Now that Carl Williams is behind bars, Melburnians can no longer amuse themselves by reading stories of the latest hits and memories in Melbourne's gangland wars. Instead we can now amuse ourselves with stories of the latest hits in the ongoing Whitnall family feud, where thankfully they use eggs rather than sawn-off shotguns to settle their differences. In the latest incident, Lance Whitnall’s car got egged last week, seemingly in return for his brother's driveway copping the same fate a months ago. If Simon Overland and the Purana Taskforce now have some time on their hands then perhaps they could take up Ricky Nixon's suggestion and fingerprint the egg shells to try and catch those responsible for these dastardly deeds. Though as the report in The Rage said, we are obviously dealing with hardened professionals here, and they clearly left nothing to chance in the latest daring raid:

This time, no eggshells were found at the scene. The Sunday Age wonders if Nixon's throwaway line encouraged the culprits to collect the shells after they were thrown.

Hero of the Week: Matty Richardson - Not only did he show his guts by taking the field 6 days after having his face re-arranged more extensively than Michael Jackson and Dermott Brereton, he is also Martyr of the Week, crucified on the cross of the abysmal, un-Australian hands on the back rule. Though as one die-hard and completely compassionless Essendon fan retorted on Saturday night: "He'd been getting paid frees like that all night, so he can get stuffed."

Cult Figure of the Week:  The artist formerly known as Jarrod Rooke - He played an OK game for the Cats against Port, but deserves at least one cult figure nomination for changing his name to the more sexy Max Rooke (not to mention the 70s hairstyle and tash).

Clanger of the Week: Mike Fitzpatrick - Apparently the new interpretation of the in the back rule was his idea. Unlike Fitzpatrick however, you don't need to be a Rhodes Scholar to figure out that it was a bloody bad idea.