Swine Swooners,
Watching the Fiasco at Subiaco was a painful experience.
No wonder Andrew Dipierdomenico, whatever his name is, y’know, the AFL No. 1 boss cocky, described Subicao Oval as the “worst ground in the league”, mid week.
“too small, can’t get a cold beer” were perhaps his central criticisms.
Suggested about $20 million might make it better.
Strange then, that the NSW Govt pulls the rug from out of underneath The Showground redevelopment, by reneging on verbal agreements to spend a squillion on the white elephant; telling the AFL oops! sorry! but we can’t find our way clear to spend a single penny on that one anymore.
Besides, we haven’t got the money anyway, and then there’s the potential backlash at the ballot box in labor heartland.
You can imagine Premier Greasy Reecy, the former Parramatta garbo, muttering in Cabinet “Rules!? Game for poofs!”
The Western Sydney Whatevers still born.
Watch the Launceston Devils queue up to have a lash at the entrails.
As someone said along the front bar at The Local yesterday when the question of AFL expansion was raised for debate, “does that mean there will be a bye in the fixture list in 20011-12?”
With BBB Hall missing in action for the past two weeks, given that extensive time on the work bench hasn’t cure his dose of Shagger’s Back, and Magic having gone walkabout for the entire season to date, the Swans are lacking focus when it comes to kicking to the forward pocket.
No matter that you have six goals kicked on you in the first quarter by a team that could muster just four goals for the entire game the week prior.
On that measure, St Kilda will win the grand final by the length of the street.
In the modern game there is rarely any chance of coming back from that far down even at that early stage and certainly game over by half time
The old blokes, with the exception of Brett The Eternal Nirvanarist Never Played a Bad Game Kirk appearing in his 200th, had rings run around them, and the few young kiddies in the side were left clueless as a result.
So that didn’t help proceedings.
As the barkeep at The Local said to me pointedly as he was languidly polishing the martini glasses, “you can get a good price on the Swans making the final eight, or so they tell me.”
FREMANTLE 6.4 11.9 16.10 18.13 (121). Goals: Mundy 3, Pavlich 3, McPharlin 3, Peake 2, Schammer, Murphy, Johnson, Thornton, Crowley, Sandilands, Hayden.
SYDNEY SWANS 2.2 5.3 11.3 16.4 (100). Goals: Goodes 3, McVeigh 2, Jolly, Mattner, Jack, Shaw, Malceski, Thornton, Buchanan, Grundy, Barlow, Meredith, O’Keefe.
At Subiaco Oval.
Crowd: 32,884.
“Campbelltown!”, the Good lady Wife exclaimed, “I wouldn’t go that far on me holidays!”
And so it is with the Wests Tigers third home ground, the home of the Western Suburbs Magpies…at least a 50 minute drive from here on a normal day…it’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from there.
And so missed another classic two weeks in a row, with the most rousing come-from-behind win seen at the ground in many a season.
“he beats one, he beats two, he beats three, he beats four! he’s beaten five would you believe, [!screaming by now!], Marshall’s found a hole, can he go all the way? great dummy there to beat the full-back, and he’s got it out to his winger, who’s away, to scooooorrre!”
Or so the ABC radio call went as I recall.
“that has to be one of the best rugby league tries you will ever see”
Benji floats like a butterfly across the width of the football field while making twenty yards with the jink, the step, the weave, the dummy here, the dummy there…beating tackles left, right, and centre…then stings like a bee.
The kiddie could be anything this season on the strength of that, particularly coming as it did very late in the second half to put the Mighty Tigers back in the match with a chance of winning.
It was a game where match fitness really counted, and yes, aware that there’s been some criticism from these quarters of Balmain’s match fitness over recent weeks, but the hard men finally stood up.
When you look at it askance, you realise that it must be a clever ploy on the part of SC Sheens to ramp the blokes up slowly, only get them really toughened up by game five or six, and then have them playing out of their minds approaching mid season, in the hope that they don’t break to pieces by season’s end and the club suddenly finds there’s more players on the Rugby League Players Association Injured Players Benevolent Fund list than not.
SC Sheens is thinking all the time, and it might just work.
It has before.
WESTS TIGERS 26. Tries: Collis (3), Ryan, Morris. Goals: Marshall (3).
NEWCASTLE KNIGHTS 24. Tries: Hilder, Houston, Wicks, Mullen. Goals: Gidley (4).
At Campbelltown Sports Ground.
Crowd:17,898.
PS. Will be in Indochina for the best part of the next three weeks, so the Winter Game wire will be in abeyance for a while.
While the Bangkok Post and the Vientiane Times do print international cricket scoreboards on their back pages, they don’t extend to Aussie football scores as a rule.
As always, any eye witness accounts, lunatic rantings, studied analysis, drunken delusions, views from The Hill, etc, much appreciated to help fill in the gaps.
