Disgruntled clubmen,
On the event bus to the ground, sat across from a Geelong fan in an understated retro Cats top and navy blue jeans, sporting a fabulous bouffant and ridiculously long fingernail extensions.
Waiting for her to pick her nose with one of them, when a pair of tickets to the game were noticed being held in a very nervous vice like grip; she’d almost crushed the chits between finger and thumb, so firmly were they wedged in there.
The quivering anxiety about the possibility of another champion season being cruelled at the last hurdle was etched in her face.
Needn’t have worried so much.
It was an all round fairly miserable night out, if the truth be known.
[But no complaints about the cheap seats; they were the best we’d ever had in six years on the four-game Family Homebush Superpass at $11.65 a ticket – including free Olympic style public transport -- the best weekend entertainment value in the Emerald City by the length of the street -- and it was something of an end of an era, being the last time all the family will go to the bleachers together, given that the eldest is about to turn 20 in a minute; it would be something of an ask to get her in as a child next season!]
The beer was very horrible, flat, barely cold and with a distinct metallic tang, and soon gave way to fair sized cups of a half-decent shiraz out of a bottle at the back of bar at seven bucks a throw.
The pies tasted like they had in them offal that’d been swept up off the factory floor.
No mention of kidneys and livers on the list of ingredients on the cellophane packet, but they were there, nothing surer.
Swans performance was similarly smelly, exuding that special aroma of a sad season wasted like a shot bird.
A cursory glance at the stats sheet reveals of the Swans’ 12 losses this season, apart from this one and the one point loss to the Saints, they have been beaten, well beaten, in every other with a points margin between 11 and 61, with an average losing margin of 26.
Not like it used to be.
Failure to capitalize on a good four goals-to-two win in the Championship Quarter, inability to shut down a down-on-their-luck champion team’s attack, along with an abject display of futility trying to kick a winning goal nearing the end of the final stanza -- all the blood, sweat and tears in the final paralysis amounting to nothing.
You’d have to wonder if the young blokes in the side had been told footy is a hard, cruel game as they hung their heads in the customary fashion after a narrow loss?
Jack Shit was easily best on ground.
A coach killer.
No wonder SC Roos is giving the game away before he goes completely bald.
Welcome to the brave new world, Longy!
SYDNEY: 2.3, 5.5, 9.11, 13.9 (87). Goals: O'Loughlin 3, Mattner 2, Goodes 2, Moore, Kirk, White, Hannebery, J.Bolton, O'Keefe.
GEELONG: 3.4, 6.5, 8.7, 13.12 (92). Goals: Byrnes 3, Mooney 3, Hawkins 2, Johnson, Lonergan, Selwood, Ablett, Corey.
At Olympic Stadium, Homebush.
Crowd: 40,261.
The usual suspects were arranged [or should that be arraigned?] along the front bar at The Local, with a few extra Big Brown Brothers in, as is normally the case of a Sunday afternoon when the Tigers are playing.
Most agreed that Cronulla are arguably the worst team to be turned out on the paddock by any club in this season of mediocrity, which led to some spirited discussion of the impact of the salary cap on the caper.
“the NRL is not aiming to create a competition of equality, but rather a competition of evenness – so no side can be better than the other, or in other words, any given team can be just as bad as any another”.
There was much decrying of the fact that under the current regime, the genuine superstar teams of the not so distant past are simply impossible to put together in this day and age.
“who have the kiddies got to look up to anymore?”
The Human Wrecking Ball had a wow of a game with three tries.
The bloke certainly has terrific explosive pace for someone who’s lugging around a 110kg frame; no one in the caper, big or small, can catch him on the burst, let alone put a hand on him, so it’s easy to see why he is now the season’s leading try-scorer.
There was even talk of lining up Tuiaki against Usain Bolt behind the mobile barrier at Harold Park for a match race over 30 metres.
Much nodding of heads “kid’d go well”.
Our Benji again showed all the skills in his 100th game – there’s just no defending against the “Benji Step”.
The Moltzen Kiddie has been ping-ponged all over the back line in recent weeks and again found himself at full back, and played brilliantly after deciding that the defence would look after itself and all he needed to do was inject himself into the game as an extra centre.
That Pom Ellis was reprimanded a couple of weeks ago for putting in a leg tackle, and almost did it again, before he recalled an old timer telling him “in my day son, a deliberate trip was a send-off offence”.
Ten tries to two, and this from a side fielding a half-back, in the form of Robert Fui, who had never played the game before [well, at least not in first grade].
Lo and behold, the Monday morning spinning of the abacus revealed the Mighty Tiges, after six wins and bye, now in fifth place on the ladder -- on top of the log jam on points for and against.
Gosh!
But the real test against the Eels, Titans and Bulldogs is yet to come.
SC Sheens would be acutely aware that even if Balmain did make the finals, they’d have to beat all those sides again to go anywhere near the season decider.
The Philosopher in the Corner, as is his wont, said nothing during the match, but on the full time hooter was heard to be muttering something indistinct about 2005 into his brandy and soda, before startling everyone with a loud exclamation “September is a different bottle of mussels altogether! You mark my words!”
CRONULLA-SUTHERLAND SHARKS 10. Tries: Brown, Wright. Goals: Covell (1).
WESTS TIGERS 56. Tries: Tuiaki (3), Marshall (2), Ayshford (2), Ryan (2), Moltzen. Goals: Marshall (8).
At Shark Park, Cronulla.
Crowd: 12,982.
