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Pre-season Tips and Invective - 2007
Footballinvective.com is back bigger than ever in 2007, and once again the football world is serving up an abundance of hapless fodder for this web site's critical gaze. As Season 2007 is about to begin the AFL faces a two-pronged threat to its credibility:
Unfortunately, Cousins’ exploits with the yeyo seem to be just the proverbial tip of the iceberg, with stories now emerging of Daniel Kerr in cahoots with drug dealers, a ‘love boat’ full of cocaine, hookers and footballers cruising on Port Phillip Bay, and a writer in The Rage claiming to have done coke with a Brownlow medallist (Lesson number 1 for footballers – never trust anyone from The Rage). Just as the NRL has for years had a player culture which earned itself widespread ridicule as the National Rapist League, Comrade Demetriou and the AFL politburo are turning a blind eye as the AFL turns into the Amsterdam Football League. Consider the absurdly soft rules which currently apply to recreational drug use. Players have to be busted 3 times before their coach is even allowed to know they are blowing half his salary cap on persian rugs. Meanwhile, the AFL Drug Users Association is doing all it can to ensure such a slack system remains. A great example for the mums and dads out there. But whilst overpaid, drug fiend players may be distracting from the image of the game, they will be sure to get their comeuppance this year on footballinvective.com, as will every other blight on the greatest game in the world. The War on Drugs in football is yet to begin, but the war on poor form, dumb statements, arrogance and incompetence in football returns once again for another season of Invective, as we hereby present our pre-season predictions.
1. Adelaide
The attitude of footballinvective.com to tipping the AFL premiers is a bit like Malcolm Mackerras’s attitude to picking elections – make a Big Statement that nobody else is game to predict, and if it turns out to be correct you are hailed a genius. But if it doesn’t, everyone will forget about it anyway so there’s no egg on your face.
This year, after two years of choking in September, we are boldly predicting that the time has come for the Pride of SA. Just like Port Adelaide after successive chokes in ’02 and ’03, the Crows will prove that the indomitable South Australian spirit cannot be suppressed for three successive years. It’s been a colourful off-season for the Crows, as Simon Goodwin got busted doing his best Hansie Cronje impersonation, but we feel that this is nothing to worry about. We think it’s a safe bet that they will overcome these early hiccups and our money is on them to finish near the top of the ladder. Some may say that the club is gambling on its older players staying fit and finding form but we’ll wager that they have nothing to worry about. Nonetheless, some of the under-performing players from ’06 need to start fixing their game, and the inside information coming out of West Lakes (for those who can afford it) is that they will be doing exactly that. There’s no doubt about it - if you’re were a betting man you’d back the Crows in ‘07. Better still, you could even play for them. 2.
Fremantle Another bold prediction from footballinvective.com, as we predict that those purple perennial underachievers will finally crack the big time. Self-proclaimed used car salesman Chris Connolly has for years had to contend with selling the football equivalent of crappy Korean hatchbacks and ex-Victorian rustbuckets, but now has a half-decent garage to play with (Colberter Bell notwishstanding). With a goal-to-goal line comprising Parker, Pavlich and now Tarrant, Freo has one of the strongest spines in the comp, to finally compensate for its historic lack of backbone. Renowned party boy Chris Tarrant will be feeling the pressure as he finally gets his chance to be a genuine spearhead in the Freo forward line. However, given his history, Freo officials will be keeping a close watch on his after-hours activities. They will surely be down on their knees praying he doesn’t start hanging out with Eagles players. 3.
Melbourne Footballinvective.com is once again sticking its neck out by predicting big things for the Demons this year, having been turned off for years by the team’s propensity to resemble South Africa in a cricket World Cup whenever it really counted. Given the Demons’ general inconsistency, we say this with a slight qualification, namely that they are the sort of team which will either finish between 1st and 4th or between 11th and 14th – there will be nothing in between. Watching Melbourne in 2006 was often like dusting off the ‘Electrifying 80s’ and seeing football the way it used to be played – lairising midfielders (Bruce, McLean, Yze) kicking straight down the guts to a built-like-a-brick-shithouse full forward (Neitz), ably supported by a Peter Bosustow wannabe complete with tash and weekly Mark of the Year nomination (Robbo), and a roving cult figure ever-willing to throw accountability out the window in his weekly quest for Goal of the Year (A. Davey). All of them backed up by a fearsome hitman in the finest 1980s mould (B. Pickett) and a volatile, hot-gospelling coach (the Reverend). In these dull, conformist days of flooding, zoning, stoppages and Terry Wallace, its is truly refreshing to view football played the way it used to be. On the other hand, in bad weeks, watching Melbourne can also resemble watching the Electrifying 80s, in particular those bits where Ron Barrasi’s Demon sides got flogged by ludicrous margins. If they don’t happen to make the Top 4 then at the very least the Demons deserve some kind of patronizing encouragement award for their style of play. If nothing else, they will be good to watch and thus Good For Football in 2007.
Robbo – Lair Flair 4 Western Bulldogs We also predict that the Bulldogs will be Good For Football in at least 2 ways this year: 1. They will continue to play attractive, risk-taking, attacking football, with classical stereotypical South Australians to the fore (Griffen and Cooney); and 2. They will find that their team is decent enough that they don’t really need Jason Akermanis anyway, leaving Aker to spend the second half of the season nursing his ego in a Werribee guernsey. Football – and footballinvective.com - will be the real winner. Furthermore, we predict that the only thing likely to be more cringe-worthy than Aker’s efforts on the field will be his form on the Footy Show, where it seems his role is simply to make the inarticulate Richo and Riewoldt look good. He’s already given us a sneak preview, with his call for an AFL team in that renowned Home of Football, Singapore (yes Singapore, we kid you not):
No
folks, we did not make it up. He seriously said it. Some may think that it will be impossible for Aker to top this nomination for Clanger of the Year in 2007, but unfortunately, we doubt it. Meanwhile, the president of the Kangaroos is rumoured to be in negotiations with the AFL and the Singaporean government offering to play their remaining home games there in return for cold hard cash. 5 West Coast After winning a Grand Final by 1 point in 2006, the Eagles now find themselves under the pump for all the wrong reasons in 2007. Midfield maestro Daniel Kerr has metamorphosed into the most dangerous thing to get out of a taxi cab since Robert De Niro was dispensing vigilante justice, and has surely had the most embarrassing publicly broadcast mobile phone conversation since Jeff Kennett and Andrew Peacock circa 1987 (click here to listen). Coach Worsfold has confirmed that eight of his players have fessed up to using drugs. As a former pharmacist, Woosha must never have thought in his wildest dreams that he would instill such a love of pharmaceutical products amongst his players:
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Chad Fletcher almost suffered the same fate as Moe Green in ‘The Godfather’ by not coming out alive in a trip to Las Vegas, whilst Cousins has confirmed that his persian rug habit was costing him $3000 a week: The Eagle’s aesthetic and lascivious style of play was for several years hailed on footballinvective.com as the sporting equivalent of “Boogie Nights”, however in light of recent events, their club culture is now more reminiscent of a big night at Studio 54 in its prime.
Meanwhile, the Eagles are rumoured to have struck a new deal with their major sponsor Hungry Jacks, in which the burger chain will introduce a special West Coast Eagles Happy Meal. This meal consists of no burger, no fries, just a super-sized serving of coke and ice.
6.
Sydney The always-competitive Swans will still be thereabouts once more in 2007, but their essentially limited game plan is likely to be exposed by more adventurous opponents. The recruitment of Spider Everitt will prove to be a stroke of genius for the Paddington Metrosexuals, as Spider brings a much-needed dose of blue-collar values. Hopefully this will encourage Barry Hall to cease his ridiculous attempts at impersonating a university professor. If he doesn’t get rid of that appalling tweed outfit, then his former Saint team mate Spider (resplendent in blue singlet) surely will.
Barry in Tweed: Just Plain Wrong 7. Port Adelaide For the past 12 months the lesser football media has not been able to decide whether the Power is a “team in decline” or a team that is wisely pursuing a far-sighted ‘rebuilding’ program. We at footballinvective.com are in no doubt – Port have already bounced back. The turning point was Showdown XXI in Round 21 last year, when Port displayed the classic Alberton combination of mongrel and finesse to show that they can once again beat anyone. In a league fast running out of lairs, Port can still lay claim to the finest concentration of this endangered species in the competition:
8 St Kilda There was good news and bad news at Moorabbin during the off-season. Rod Butterss finally saw the light and sacked Grant Thomas, at the same time it was revealed that at the time he appointed him coach in 2001 he had loaned him $1 million, and at the time he sacked him he had failed to pay it pack (hmm, no conflicts of interest there…) The Saints now finally have two ruckmen in Matthew Clarke and Michael “Hydroponic” Gardiner. Grant Thomas’s attitude towards ruckmen in the Elimination Final last year was a bit like the captain of the Titanic’s attitude toward lifeboats – “Nah, don’t worry mate, we won’t be needing any of those tonight.” Ross Lyon now gets the chance to rebuild after the 5 wasted Thomas years, and can now take over where Malcolm Blight left off. Lyon as a player was the very embodiment of Jack Dyer’s concept of a “good ordinary player”, but he will need to be a lot more than that as a coach to revive the Saints. His role is a bit like that of a new leader of an Eastern European state after the fall of communism – there is years of deep-seated neglect to make up for, and the masses will be desperate for a quick fix. 9 Collingwood After promising a bit in 2006, it is with great delight that footballinvective.com predicts the Pies to once more slide down the ladder in 2007. The Cloke Brothers boy band has disbanded, with Jason and Cameron leaving the club, which means Travis Cloke must now do a Robbie Williams and establish a successful solo career of his own. As if trying to fill the void left by Chris Tarrant for off-field notoriety, Brodie Holland has recently been taking lessons at the Leigh Montagna-Stephen Milne school of chivalry. Anthony Rocca once again goes into a new season with question marks over his form and long-term future. Last year in one game against Hawthorn the Hawk defence managed to do achieve what the ridiculously over-resourced Lexus Centre football department had failed to do for two years, and actually played him back into form. However, charity such as that will be hard to come by this year, and with Buckley on his last legs, he will probably be sharing the forward line with him most weeks, leaving him to wonder where his next midfield delivery will be coming from. Footballinvective.com is confident that he will be singing for his supper if he is relying on Paul Medhurst or Rhyce “brown pants” Shaw for sustenance this year. 10 Hawthorn For the last 3 seasons we predicted Hawthorn to finish last, and although we still hope against hope for this dream (memories of Hawk arrogance from the 1980s still burn deep at footballinvective.com) we finally concede that they aren’t the worst team in the comp and now show a bit of potential, but thankfully there’s not much more that can be said about them either. Hawk
fans are convinced that on the basis of his pre-season form Lance Franklin is
the next Kouta, Whitten and Brereton all rolled into one, so we can at least take delight in once again seeing their
unrealistic expectations foiled. 11 Essendon James Hird and Kevin Sheedy have seen many glorious moments during their time at Windy Hill, but don’t expect too many in their final year at the club. The only thing more depressing for Don fans than contemplating their team’s prospects for 2007 is to contemplate their chances in 2008 once these two great leaders are gone. It’ll be a bit like the Australian cricket team following the retirement of Chappell, Lillee and Marsh in 1984. At least Essendon is injecting some colour and excitement back into the game by signaling a return to the Age of Tash by wearing red shorts, though unfortunately for the Dons, the 2007 incarnation of the red-shorted Bombers is likely to be as successful as the 1970s version. What
a pity that this salute to long-lost football fashion doesn’t also include a
return to other 1970s values by bringing back Rotten Ronnie, Fabulous Phil and
the Dutchman to add some much needed colour to its
bland-as-a-supermodel’s-diet playing list. Gary Ayres will get another year
to further his ambition to once again be a senior coach, but we reckon he has
about as much chance as Cheryl Kernot rejoining the Democrats to get back into
Parliament. Ayres will no doubt point proudly to Essendon’s achievements in
2006 in his first year as an assistant coach in any future job application. In
more bad news for the Bombers, Umpire Darren Goldspink has announced his
retirement, leading footballinvectice.com to question whether this will now
allow the Dons to promote someone from their rookie list to replace him.
Rumour has it that Goldspink’s number is to be retired and then hung on the
wall at Windy Hill next to John Coleman’s. 12 Brisbane The Lions go into 2007 with a severely depleted line up compared to the ruthless pride which dominated the world from 01-03. So many stars from the glory years have realised their time is up and retired, except for Mal Michael, who was graciously offered a spot in the Windy Hill retirement village for one more season. Jonathan Brown now inherits more weight than ever on those enormous shoulders of his. In past years he has only managed only 5 or 6 games a year because of suspension. Now he can still manage that many due to injuries. Unfortunately for lovers of hard-hitting, high-flying football, Football will be the real loser from his absences. We predict that the Lions will slide down the ladder early, not get back up, and crowds at the Gabba will dwindle alarmingly, thus revealing the true underlying level of support for the AFL in Queensland once all the bandwagon jumpers stop going. And of course, we also predict that Comrade Dimetriou will still keep telling us that we need 22 games in Queensland every year. Lethal Leigh will figure that it’s time he also moved on. Perhaps he could then look for another coaching job at a Victorian team which, like the Lions in ’98 had real potential but lacked leadership and direction and needed a true leader to revive a side that had squandered its talent. Now, which way is it to Geelong… 13 Geelong Speaking
of which… As if two years of flagrant under-achievement and failing to learn
from mistakes was not enough, expect more of the same this year from the Corio
Bay Surrender Monkeys. After a season of squibbing on the field whenever it
counted last year, the team chose to once again squib a hard decision when it
refused to get rid of its coach and purge its under-achieving list after its
so-called “Comprehensive Review” last October. We
confidently predict that Cameron Ling will kick the ball
sideways more often than he kicks it forward, the team’s two best key
position players (Mooney and Scarlett) will continue to be played out of
position, Brad Ottens’ lack of fitness will again mean he fails to see out a
year, and Nathan Ablett will still not be given a proper go. On
the positive side, Cameron Mooney will at least confirm his hero status by
putting up a fight, and new skipper Tom Harley will have a red-hot
crack at being a captain who leads by example. Unfortunately for Harley, he
now holds an office which has proven to be one of the biggest poisoned
chalices in league football ever since the 1980s. Think of the following list of Geelong captains for whom the Dream became the
nightmare:
After the season he had in 2006, Bomber Thompson should also be sharing a similar fate to the list of names above. But just as the defeatist surrender monkeys in the crowd at Unskilled Stadium cheered their team off the ground after blowing a 9-goal lead in one quarter last year, the powers-that-be at Geelong have done the administrative equivalent by rewarding mediocrity. Just like North Melbourne in the final years of the Schimmelbusch era, Cat supporters in ’07 will get to know all too well the feelings of frustration that surround a team with undoubted potential, but lacking to nous to unlock it. 14
Richmond It will be a dangerous time to be a Tiger fan in ’07, as the team once again fails to fulfil the over-hyped expectations of its supporters. But this should also mean that it will be a great time for the rest of the football world to be an observer of the strange, manic anthropology that is the club culture at Tigerland. Terry Wallace is now into Year 3 of his much-vaunted 5 year plan and on that basis, we could reasonably expect him to be predicting some success for his team. However, he now seems to have revised his expectations, and is now predicting a “decade of success” for the Tiges.….starting in 2011. RICHMOND coach Terry Wallace says opportunity will
knock for the Tigers in 2009, with a "decade of opportunity" to kick
in from 2011. "What
opportunity that is, no one knows, but, certainly, it will be a time for us
when two age brackets (of players) meet," Wallace said. “A holding pattern," Wallace said of Richmond's current state. "Whether that be ninth, seventh, fifth, 10th, we don't know. We expect improvement, whether that's finals, who knows?" A “decade of success” four years from now should be just the tonic for long-suffering Tiger fans. Too bad Plow won’t be there to see it. Footballinvective.com reserves the right to resurrect TigerWatch at any time during this season, once the brown stuff starts to hit the cooling device. We also reserve the right to call it Terry Wallace Death Watch (TWDW), in anticipation of his likely fate if the Tiges go backwards (as they surely will) in 2007.
Plow - tell him he's dreaming.
15 Carlton Since 2003 the history of Carlton has borne an uncanny resemblance to that of Iraq during the same time – after the old guard was purged in a particularly bloody display of regime change, it has descended into vicious internecine warfare in which nobody is safe – much to the delight of the rest of the football world. After promising much, Dennis Pagan’s second wooden spoon would have left Carlton fans as angry as Brendon Fevola’s wife when she found out where the bloody hell he’d been. And unlike its pre-season triumph in 2005, nobody is fooled by its NAB Cup success this time around. Winning the NAB Cup is a bit like Kevin Rudd getting 61% two-party results in opinion polls this early in the year – nobody seriously believes that either of them can keep it up at the business end of the season. The long-term consequences of Carlton’s loss of draft picks for its salary cap rorting are starting to take effect, and are now reflected in the lack of depth and experience in its list. For example, consider who the Blues have appointed to their leadership group this year:
Dick Pratt is now president of the club and promising bucketloads of CASH to get the club out of his current troubles. Pratt made his billions from recycling. Now that he has brought back John Elliott it just goes to show that he can recycle absolutely anything:
Interestingly, the rival ticket which ran against Pratt in the club election ran on a platform of erasing the Club’s $7 million debt incurred from redeveloping Princes Park. They proposed to do this by spending $68 million to…. (drum-roll) ….re-develop Princes Park, which just goes to show that the old days of chequebook recruiting and chequebook management have never really died at the old Navy Blues. And as one further indignity. the Whitnall family is now putting on its own version of the Jerry Springer Show, which just goes to show that there’s plenty more to come in terms of comedic antics from the Princess Park has-beens. Whitnall – All Class
16 Kangaroos It’s a hard spoon to pick this year – so many deserving recipients, yet only one mahogany ladle to go around. Whilst Adelaide picks itself at number 1, it is a desperately even battle for the mahogany ladle. But in the end, with a heavy heart and great regret, we have settled on the Kangaroos, the once proud custodians on the Shinboner Spirit, who are now doing their best to exorcise this glorious ethereal presence from their ranks and destroy their old, much-admired identity. For the last 8 years the Roos have gone searching for their future salvation in two non-football cities that couldn’t give a stuff. Having failed in this strategy in both Sydney and Canberra they are now turning their attention to – hey presto – another non-football city that couldn’t give a stuff. Having sold their bodies to Sydney and Canberra and not found the answer, the Roos are now convinced that somehow their latest effort on the Gold Coast will succeed where the other two ventures failed. After all, Cronin, Pelerman and Skase must have been onto something. After years of embarrassing themselves and their supporters by prostituting their soul and their identity in misguided interstate ventures, footballinvective.com believes that if the Roos are to abandon Melbourne they should finally bite the bullet and relocate across the Nullabor to the prostitution capital of Australia, where as the Kalgoorlie Kangaroos they will finally have a home that befits their current status. They could wear gold shorts and solve all their money woes by raking in sponsorships from all of the lucrative brothel businesses in Hay Street. If nothing else, they would at least be in a genuine football state. Given that they seem to keen to follow in the footsteps of Christopher Skase and the Brisbane Bears in the Gold Coast, expect similar results for them this year, as the Junkyard Mutt Dean Laidley struggles to give them any sense of direction on the field and their off-field leaders do their best to send them packing up to Queensland. Though at least there is some resistance to this self-destructive agenda within the club, and footballinvective.com gives full marks to captain Adam Simpson for seeing the folly of the Gold Coast strategy: "There's
been so much speculation and, in reality, it's so far off. We've only put a
toe in the water up there and it would be disastrous if we jumped in right
now, it really would," "I think because the AFL have backed us, everyone thinks, 'that's it, they're definitely going up there'. But if you knew what it was really like up there, the infrastructure and everything is a long way off being right. "When people come out and say we should go there next year, I find it difficult to understand why they think that. I know it wouldn't work." On the field, we can expect the most predictable and unexciting brand of football in the league, as the Junkyard Mutt clings desperately to his DOBM strategy of recycled tall timber. Unfortunately for connoisseurs of the game, has-been DOBMS get to flourish at Arden St, whilst potential superstars such as Daniel Wells stay un-nurtured and un-appreciated by the Mutt. Not surprisingly, Wayne Carey has said what footballinvective.com has been saying for 3 years and urged to club to put the Mutt out of his misery. Unfortunately, a club administration that has been paying more attention to planning its next visits to Movie World and the Big Brother House in their spare time on the Gold Coast has been too distracted to do the right thing and vote out the Mutt. Carey is right to call for the installation of John Longmire as coach and footballinvective.com agrees wholeheartedly – a well-hung Horse beats a mangy old Mutt any day.
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