Bleacherists,
(Mr Rick Edwards kindly offered to accompany me on the Kardinia Park odyssey, as my personal protection, with neutral observer status [he is a Central Districts supporter]. The photographs are his. He has my thanks for not allowing me to be arrested.)
The day began well enough as we boarded the “Lionel Rose” carriage of the train from the Berlin end of Melbourne for the one hour journey to Geelong.
There was a bloke on board who displayed a fair degree of spasticity, who spent the entire trip loudly reliving his apparently famous exploits at contract bridge.
Probably the World Champion.
We grabbed an early lunch in the bad lands at the Phoenix Hotel “that’d be a steak sanger and a parmy, then, would it love?” before getting half a dozen heart starters under the belt at the Bush Inn, where the punters asked me where I had come from and told me “you’ve come a long way to lose” while telling the publican he should be charging me more for beer.
Through the Polly Farmer gates and we were in.
Kardinia Park is a classic example of one of the last great suburban grounds.
Surprisingly small, it has been developed in a haphazard fashion over the years with the jumble of stands and other buildings bearing little or no architectural relationship with each other giving the ground a decidedly ramshackle appearance, with an old fashioned game clock, and two hand operated scoreboards, one at each end of the ground, and a video replay screen that appears to have been an after thought.
Even though we were in the ground a full hour before kick off, we were herded onto the stairway to heaven and into the standing room only section of the Gary Ablett Terrace “no seats left - standing room only today”, which in the end became jam packed in a sold out game.
No matter, the terrace is deeply raked and offers an excellent view of the playing arena.
It was “perfect weather for football” – an icy, biting three goal breeze sweeping across the ground from the direction of the Antarctic right into your face, with the occasional freezing shower thrown in.
Swans won the toss and elected to kick with the breeze only to find themselves behind the eight ball from the off.
Geelong had loose men everywhere in their forward line while the Swans struggled to drag in a single mark in the backline in the opening stanza and soon had three goals kicked on them, and then it was the usual story – catch up football.
Simply no structure in the Swans forward line with BBB Hall not playing, and Spida should have thrown his weight around more up front, rather than in the ruck, while Goodes played everywhere except full forward – which I believe was the position he was named in in the program!
The second quarter was equally bad, if not worse, as a heavy rain shower hit the ground about mid way through with the Cats seven goals to two up.
One of the locals said “joisus! there will be sleet in a moment!” There was. Another called out “bring back the drought!”
As soon as the rain started falling, and casual water briefly appeared on the playing surface, Rick, accurately, called it “game over”.
A telling moment came when a Swans player [forget who now] was lining up for a relatively simple shot at goal, and somehow managed to hook the ball to the left almost at right angles to see the thing sail away over the boundary line and into the crowd
Geelong fans are a pretty rough and ready mob, who are fond of calling the umpires “maggots”, which was appropriate enough given that they were dressed in a bilious yellow.
Locals reckoned The Goodes Train is a protected species, and whenever a free kick was awarded against the Cats, there were murmurings in the crowd of “Goodes must be involved”
But there was some utterly incongruous work from the Bamfords in the second quarter as Malceski was disrobed of his jersey in a wrestle for the pill, and was pinged for holding the ball !!
How on earth you can be done for that offence while having the shirt ripped clean off your back has got me completely beat.
I’d like to know the record number of free kicks given in an AFL game, but this particular Saturday afternoon outing would have had to come close.
At half time, we retreated to the smoking lounge near the bar at the back of the Ford Stand, out of the wind, and eventually the sun broke through to help us dry out.
There were the usual comings and goings, when this visage appeared.
A tall bloke [about 6’3”] wearing a full head-to-toe cat costume that he probably picked up at a used prop sale after a run of the musical Cats; the get up would not have been out of place at the Gay Mardi-Gras.
On the back he had attached a thick doormat inscribed with the words “CATS KICK ARSE”, so he was obviously prepared for and not averse to punters coming up to him and sinking the slipper from behind.
I knew things were going from bad to worse when we returned to the terrace after half time and tried to squeeze our way back to our spots, when a bloke just would not get out of my way until his mate alerted him to the fact that there was a cripple behind him trying to get through.
He quickly turned around and proceeded to knock my full beer out of my hand.
An explosive invective of expletives followed from me, with pointed reference to the fact that the transgressor was a Geelong fan.
He accepted the tirade with good grace, but it wasn’t going to bring back my $5.40 Carlton Draught, was it?
The Swans have forgotten how to play the Championship Quarter, and even though they won it on paper, they barely managed to get back into the match, everything about the scoreboard flatters them.
The biggest disappointment was the fact that Magic was almost entirely missing in action all day.
Fear the bloke could make a fool of himself before his inevitable retirement at the end of the year.
It should not be allowed to happen.
Things went from worse to appalling at three quarter time while standing at the urinal, a boy of about seven years of age next to me was having trouble with his equipment and proceeded to urinate on my shoes.
I was going to give the kiddie a clip over the ear, but being an away supporter, used my better judgement and let the incident pass.
It was a brave fight back from the Swans to drag themselves to within 11 points of the lead deep in the final quarter, but then it was bang! bang! as Sydney let in two soft goals [the Cats only scores of the quarter up to that point], and all hope was lost.
A telling comment near full time from a wise old bloke near us who had been offering succinct analysis of the game all day:
“Jees, Nick Davis doesn’t have a lot of mud on him”
It took us a while to work out the precise meaning of one of the classic banners seen on the day:
“THE PONTIFF’S SEED IS STRONG”.
The trip back to Melbourne behind the City of Bendigo locomotive was simply sad.
The train was full of drunk, or half drunk, South Melbourne tragics.
One woman sitting in our row of seats was particularly tragic.
She was covered in badges, buttons and pins from all the Sydney/South Melbourne era’s, and she was loudly lamenting the fact that she had somehow managed to lose her Paul Kelly badge during the course of the day.
Someone commented on her hand knitted red-and-white scarf, to which she proudly proclaimed; “my mother knitted that for me when I was 16; I am now 66”.
You can’t get more tragic than that.
The Swans have been found out, for mine.
It’s only taken a couple of seasons, but teams now have a very good idea about how to beat them at their own game.
The shallow depth of the Sydney playing roster has also been exposed by injuries to key players.
When Along Came a Schneider can’t even get a game, while two complete unknowns are named on the bench, you know something is wrong.
They are also finding it a struggle against teams with younger, faster legs.
As a mate commented after the awful showing against Collingwood…”it’s time SC Roos re-invented the wheel”.
Unless he can, they are no hope.
GEELONG: 5.1, 9.4, 11.8, 13.9 (87). Goals: Mooney 4, Johnson 3, G.Ablett 2, N.Ablett, Varcoe, Chapman, Corey.
SYDNEY: 2.1, 2.5, 5.8, 10.9 (69). Goals: O'Keefe 3, Schmidt 2, Davis, Vogels, L.Ablett, Jolly, O'Loughlin.
At Kardinia Park, Geelong.
Crowd: 23,040.
Finding a sports bar with rugby league on a screen in Melbourne is all but impossible, so haven’t seen a frame of the Mighty Tiges win over the Raiders, but there was apparently some whingeing from the Canberra camp over a forward pass and disallowed try late in the match.
Similarly didn’t see any of the spanking handed out by the Bronco’s on the Monday night previous, as I was otherwise engaged.
So can really only offer the scoreboards.
But if the fishwraps are anything to go by, the Tigers are a model of inconsistency at the moment, and yet retain a reasonably healthy position on the log-jammed premiership table.
Go figure.
BRISBANE BRONCOS 48. Tries Hunt (3), Hodges (2), Berrigan, Carroll, Lockyer, Michaels. Goals: Parker (4), Ennis (2).
WESTS TIGERS 18. Tries Farah, Lawrence, Morris. Goals: Farah (3).
At Lang Park, Brisbane.
Crowd: 29,364.
CANBERRA RAIDERS 16. Tries: Milne (2), Tilse. Goals: Carney (3).
WESTS TIGERS 22. Tries: Whatuira (2), Morris, Lawrence. Goals: Farar (3)
At Canberra Stadium.
Crowd 12,598
