Opportunists,
By all accounts, missed a classic upset at the spiritual home of Balmain rugby league on Monday night.
Call me a weak poof, if you will, but the gale force sou’wester and the scudding low clouds with short sharp bursts of sheeting rain was rather off putting.
As the Good Lady Wife remarked very early in the day “be buggered if I’m going to get a wet arse at the football. those days have gone away”.
In the event, the Mighty Tiges won the toss and kicked with the not inconsiderable breeze and wound up leading 10-6 at half time, then managed in a humungous defensive effort, to maintain the same score line for the vast bulk of the second stanza, to within about a minute and a half from the end when from an innocuous scrum, the Balmain backline caught on fire for no apparent reason and the try scoring freak Chris Lawrence was sent on his way from about sixty metres out to score under the posts for a famous 16-6 victory against last year’s Grand Finalists.
Those at the ground suggest that the wags operating the score board took down the scores at the end of the reserve grade game, and then put the number 10 in the Wests Tigers score box, to acknowledge the fact that playing at Leichhardt Oval is worth ten points to the home team before they even start.
And so it was.
Mad Gus Gould without hesitation awarded the man of the match award on MMM to Robbie Farah, when in truth he spent much of the game as traffic cop, with a handful of good busts over the advantage line, while the Moltzen kiddie at full back was probably a better candidate for best.
Keefy “Bloodnut” Galloway is playing out his mind in the forwards and now appears to be the most valuable off season re-signing given that he was being targeted by the Gold Coast, the team probably has the best wingers in the caper, a very serviceable forward pack led by The Refrigerator, but there remains concern that Benji is still playing too far back at half back and isn’t hitting the advantage line with the required gusto in order to create opportunity in broken play.
Needs to match that with his judicious kicks in general play and his by and large excellent goal kicking.
Still, in the grand scheme of things, the coach’s curse of inconsistency continues to dog.
The Tigers game record so far this season is W-L-W-L-L-W.
At that rate, SC Sheens will not have a single hair on his head by season’s end.
WESTS TIGERS 16. Tries: Lawrence (2), Moltzen. Goals: Marshall (2).
MELBOURNE STORM 6. Tries: Hoffman. Goals: C.Smith (1).
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 12, 646.
There was no window opportunity to attend the first Australian Rules game to be played on a Saturday afternoon at the Sydney Cricket Ground since 1952.
Good to see the Swans go around in the traditional South Melbourne strip of white with red sash, but did they really have black numbers on their backs in the 1909 Grand Final?
Thinking that the numbering of players guernsey’s in the VFL didn’t become commonplace until the 1920’s, given that everyone at the ground back in those days before vast stadiums, knew who they were looking at simply by body shape and the visage on the players faces.
Noted that the young Shaw kiddie on television interview after the game admitted that the Swans were all at sea in the first quarter, until they found “the Sydney way of going” in the second quarter.
Something that SC Roos later referred to as “Plan B”.
Don’t know if it was an oblique reference to the Doncaster Handicap being run and won on the same afternoon at adjacent Royal Randwick, or the now time honoured Swans tactic of shutting teams down across the half back line to prevent them from scoring, while not overly bothering to attack the big sticks at the other end themselves.
Low scoring, ugly win is as good as any other win, or so the theory goes.
Plan B certainly seemed to work after BBB Hall was ruled out on match day with a mild dose of Shaggers Back; the Swans ten goal kickers in a score of just 12 goals points to an increasing tendency of SC Roos to switch whole backlines into the forwards from time to time and vice versa just to confuse the hell out of the opposition.
It might just work in the long run as the modern footballer realises that you have to be able to play everywhere, multi-skill, while jumping through all the hoops at the same time.
Still, for all that, it’s a dull game when you find yourself nodding off on the lounge in front of the unblinking eye before half time.
Lord save the AFL’s “push” into western Sydney if the new team also adopts “the Sydney way of going”
Potential fans living in The Great Armpit will find themselves running a hundred miles away from that.
Can see the experiment resulting in a whole lot of people losing a whole lot of money, and it all ending in tears and a quivering mass of nerve endings after a couple of years.
Why bother?
SYDNEY: 3.0 7.2 10.7 12.12 (84). Goals: McVeigh 3, Bird, Jolly, Barlow, J Bolton, Moore, White, Thornton, Ablett, Mattner
CARLTON: 3.5 3.12 6.12 9.13 (67). Goals: Betts 3, Fevola, Cloke, Judd, Simpson, Murphy, Houlihan.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 30,834.
