Anticipationists,
Little wonder the crowd at a full-to-the-gunwhales Subiaco Oval, who were jammed in like sardines, was so quiet and so glum.
They'd forgotten what it's like to lose at home.
Weagels fans had enjoyed no less than 18 straight wins on their side of the island....jeez, it must be good to be a member there with a guaranteed win...all the time...until they come the inevitable cropper.
Their last loss at Sooby was in Round 3 last year, against, you guessed it, the Swans.
It could be turning into some kind of hoo-doo.
The Bamfords might as well have given the whole midfield the Best on Ground award as a group.
They most certainy would've shared all the Brownlow votes between them.
Rhino Keefe, Ric Shaw, the Haneberry Kiddie, Son of Gary, The Little Birdie all had excellent games.
Not to mention blokes like In Like McGlynn and the New Train Jetta, who has the radar well & truly going on ridiculously long shots at goal, and bags 'em almost every time.
Teddy Richards took four marks in a row at full back in the Champo to thwart any Weagles threat in front of goal being just one example of the heroics on display.
Once they had won the Champo, in spades, it was never in doubt.
My spy at the ground telegraphed through "LRT should have never taken off the head gear" after he was carted off for the umpteenth time this season with yet another head knock [and remember he's also copped a busted cheekbone].
The Ugliest Man in Football is a walking, talking advertisment for head gear - he could make good money by endorsing a popular brand of strap-on helmet - not only do they go some way to protecting the bonce, they also tend to help hide your extreme ugliness = winner!
That said, the stability of the Swans core playing unit only goes to show how far you can you can get by not having a season cruelled by injury.
Sure The Train was out for a few weeks and has been slow in getting himself competely right, and Mummy was sidelined for a while, but apart from that, by and large, Mr Ed has been able to field pretty much an unchanged line up throughout, and there is certainly some depth on the bench, when required.
It's novel to field more than one ruckman at the same time - no other team does it - but it works, and it must be hard to coach against the relentless scrapping and tackling the Swans deploy in defence, denying the opposition any chance of getting proper structure and go forward together.
And then there's the wily old heads combining with the blokes with young legs in attack.
You've got a recipe for success with that, as the scoreboard suggests.
And the scoreboard never lies.
The most pleasing thing about it was that on the now faint background of the rivalry created by '05 and '06, they didn't just beat 'em, they gave 'em a right touch up; a bloody good towelling.
While the Swans went about scoring one of their most important and perhaps finest wins since the Miracle Year in front of that huge crowd at Subiaco - where they truly love their footy - a miserable 7,669 punters were streaming out of the Sydney Showground after witnessing the Crows give the Pygmies a 27 goal football lesson.
Under normal circumstances, in any other town, the Swans win would, of course, be front page news.
But a casual check of the fishwraps in the newsagent on Monday morning revealed that that's not the case in the Emerald City.
Even the back page editors had no idea the Swans had already gone top the week before.
Wouldn't know a good sports story if it fell on them.
The run home gets fascinating now.
It must be rather rare for all top eight teams to play each other on the same weekend, as they will do this weekend, which should just about start to sort the men from the boys.
Coach Horse on interview after the game refused to be drawn into the futures market saying "everybody talkin' 'bout September. I aint talkin' 'bout September, 'cos it's only July".
Well said.
WEST COAST: 4.3, 7.7, 8.8, 10.9 (69). Goals: Masten 3; Darling 2; Selwood, Sheppard, Cox, Newman, Naitanui.
SYDNEY: 5.1, 10.4, 13.8, 18.13 (121). Goals: Jetta 4, Reid 3, Bolton 3, Bird, McVeigh, Goodes, McGlynn, Pyke, Roberts-Thomson, Everitt, Kennedy.
At Subiaco Oval.
Crowd: 39,152.
Another very flaky win.
Very flaky.
Did just enough to pull off victory against a team placed 15th on the ladder, just one short of stone motherless last.
And let's face it, If you can't win against the Chocolate Soldiers, you might as well pick up your ball and go home and call the whole thing off.
No less than six lead changes in a rugby league match is enough to get the blood pressure boiling through the roof and over the moon.
The forwards took it up well enough all night, the backs looked a little disjointed in attack but due to the good coaching had plenty of set plays in the repetoir to score enough tries, the goal kickers cancelled each other out, and superior match fitness was always going to be a factor in the finish.
See which ones of the big units tire first.
The two marquee players, Farah and Marshall aren't playing very well at the moment; the Best Leb in The Game is still cut up about his mum and Benji has trouble convincing his mother to polish his kicking boots week in week out.
Sirro Jnr, after a stellar debut, is now finding the first grade going a lot tougher than first thought now that he has to play it every weekend.
The leap up from the Under 20's to the seniors is like jumping a yawning chasm in terms of the pace, skills, and toughness involved.
To heap more trouble and woe and gnashing of teeth on a season already cruelled by injury, appears the Bludnut Keefy Galloway will be in the casualty ward for 3 to 4 weeks with a ruptured thing-a-me-jig; never a good idea to rupture anything, lets alone a what's-its-name.
Whoever they replace him with will no doubt be big and boofy, but won't have the same grunt.
If someone like Benji gets hurt, gawd forbid, then it's season over there and then.
The Tigers are really not much more than a week-to-week proposition at present, which is not a great place to be with the pointy end of the season looming.
If fact, it's a bad place to be.
The win was enough to push Balmain back into the top eight, but The Stats Guru has pointed out that on any calculation, only ten teams can realistically make the top eight, and ten into eight won't go.
Even the most mathematically illiterate among us, like myself, can understand that.
Two will miss out.
Nothing surer.
SC Sheens on interview after the game refused to be drawn into the futures market saying "obviously the two premiership points are very valuable, the way the competition is going, but that said, there's no point getting ahead of ourselves."
Well said.
Somebody must've had a word in the shell-likes of the Bamfords, because, much to their credit, they have pulled their heads in in recent weeks.
It's taken them this long?
Perhaps they have finally been told that the whole point of refereeing in the rugby league is to let the game flow and allow the players sort it out for themselves; minor infringements can be let go by and large as they will always cancel themselves out in the end, and the whistle should only be used sparingly, for obvious, blatant infractions of the rules.
You know it makes sense.
WESTS TIGERS 26. Tries: Farah, Fulton, Heighington, Lawrence, Murdoch-Masila. Goals: Marshall (3).
PENRITH PANTHERS 18. Tries: Kingston, Mansour, Walsh. Goals: Walsh (3).
At Campbelltown Sports Ground.
Crowd: 12,384.
