Salvation Janers,
Woke up on Sunday morning and wandered into the front yard to get the fishwrap that'd been lobbed in there, only to regret rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.
Opened up the sports section to reveal a very confronting and deeply disturbing image.
It was a large photograph spead across two pages of Lewis "The Ugliest Man in Football" Roberts-Thomson sitting in front of his locker in the Swans change room along with his mother, three sisters, and fiance.
Dear oh dear oh dear.
It was enough to frighten the hell out of small children.
Certainly gave me a start.
Good thing that he's a champion footballer, and played a key role in this one after Mummy did himself a mischief and was subbed out of the game at half time, by helping out Pykey in the ruck.
The Stats Guru says the late season purple patch is now turning into something else again with seven wins on the trot and a visit to sunny Surfers Paradise on the intinerary for this weekend - and who can argue?
That sort of thing and Sydney going top three weeks running hasn't been seen in living memory.
Lets hope the Swans don't fall back into that old-time routine of winning ugly in the run home, doing just enough for victory.
The idea has its merits, but it really aint no preparation for September, as things tend to get scrappy [13 behinds to half time? What the?], evinced by the fact that flambouyant playmakers like The Goodes Train and the Jetta Kiddie both had quiet games, with Goodesy still playing on one leg.
It was, needless to say, a close run thing throughout, but four goals in four mintues in the denoument flattered the Swans scoreline.
Deep into the final quarter my spy at the ground pushed through a telegraph message: "The fittest team won".
Quite right.
This mob are match hard after 17 rounds; tough as teak.
And the coach knows if you haven't got that, you are no chance in the finals.
These blokes are trained to within an inch of their lives.
After a couple of slow weeks, JP Kennedy was back to his best and probably garnered the three Brownlow votes, and remains a genuine smokey to pick up the Chas, for mine [the bloke, playing for the leading side, is at 25/1 down at the books to win the top gong, so load up].
The Guru also noted that the Sainters haven't played at the SCG since 2009, when they won by a bloody point, and the crowd that night was 27,805...so surmised that this time around 971 people must have had something better to do.
Maybe they were put off by the sight of HQ looking like a bomb has hit it, with the Bradman and MA Noble Stands in ruins, with bloody big diggers sitting on top of the huge pile of rubble.
Guessing that by the time the cricket season comes around they will have cleared that away, and all that will be there for the New Year test match will be a huge gaping hole, as it will take them the best part a year to put together the new structures, to complete the final stadiumisation of the ground that began 21 years ago, when they covered The Hill in concrete and plastic seats.
The good old days have gone away.
You only have to look at the hideous monstrocity they are creating at the once venerable Adelaide Oval with the sole purpose of turning it into a soulless AFL stadium, given that the purpose built 38-year-old footy stadium, Football Park, looks set to go the way of Waverley and be demolished and covered in flats.
They are no longer cricket grounds that host the occasional game of football, rather the other way round, football stadiums that stage the occasional game of cricket.
CB Fry cited watching the game from a wicker chair with a gin and tonic in hand in the now shamefully demolished 1882 George Giffen Stand, with the cathedral towering above the magnificenr scoreboard to the left and the Adelaide hills as the backdrop, as perhaps the finest sight in world cricket.
No more.
Repeat, the good old days have gone away.
Oops, a bit off topic there, but that's my rant for the week, what's yours?
My spy also commented that the latest look for the "it" girls at the footy is a maple leaf flag beanie.
Right colours, and a nod to Mike Pyke, who is, apparantly, a well-known pants man.
Coach Longmire was his usual taciturn self on interview after the game.
Mr Ed refuses to get carried away with anything, knowing more than anyone, that winning the last game of the year is all that matters.
SYDNEY: 1.6, 5.13, 9.13, 15.15 (105). Goals: Goodes 2, Bolton 2, Jack 2, McGlynn, Bird, Grundy, Kennedy, McVeigh, Jetta, Roberts-Thomson, O'Keefe, Reid
ST KILDA: 5.1, 5.4, 7.9, 10.16 (76). Goals: Milne 5, Saad, Koschitzke, Dal Santo, Dunell, Gilbert.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 26,834.
If yet another season cruelled by injury needed an exclamation mark, this was it!
Fancy Timmy Moltzen doing a hammy in the warm-up - the warm-up, for chrissake - and failing to take the field.
Then poor Sirro Jnr manages to dislocate a shoulder mid-way through the first half, which is likely to be a season ender as a shoulder reconstruction looms.
Young Curtis apparently has a history of being somewhat fragile, so could it be another sad case of a hugely promising career being shot early by chronic injury?
Then the Try Scoring Freak was carted off late in the opening stanza with a calf, never to return.
To hold the home team to 16-16 at half time was a brave effort under the circumstances.
Late in the piece Murdoch-Masila was taken off with some kind of mischief, and the Tigers were down to no men on the bench, no reserves left, not a one; a bench that was entirely empty, deserted, nobody sitting on it.
[It's also been reported that Matty Groat busted a thumb in the reserve grade game. Joisus. Even lads you'd call on in a crisis are going down].
As a result, That Pom Ellis - coming back for his first game in 13 weeks from a serious foot injury - was forced to play the full 80 minutes in the second row - something that was never planned and is all but impossible to do even when fully fit.
Superhuman effort.
From there the result was a fait accompli, and yet Balmain managed to stay in it right to the finish, with only a field goal and a fruit-on-the-sideboard try to the Cowboys in the last five minutes putting the game beyond doubt.
Never mind that the play was end-to-end with both sides error riddled as no one really managed to hang onto the ball, let alone do much useful with it.
As the commentator on the ramshackle MMM radio call was moved to say near the end of the first first half "boy, oh boy, this is one crazy game of football".
Townsville is a long way to go for a Monday night to see the troops decimated, trashed on the front line.
SC Sheens put it succinctly on interview after the game: "Right now all I'm worried about is the guys in hospital. I'm not thinking about what I'm going to do with the lineup next week".
And then it goes from bad to worse to cataclysmic as news filters through on the bush telegraph that The Great Benji was seen gingerly hobbling about at Tuesday morning training on a bad toe, and he's also got a thumb niggle and isn't expected to train all week.
Lawd, save us!
That could be just about season over.
Or maybe not?
By some miracle, Balmain still manages to cling on to 8th spot, but the result certainly has plenty of ladder implications, as the Tigers lost a golden opportunity to take a two win break on the rest of the field; the loss opens the door for four other teams to challenge for a finals berth.
But, as everyone knows, how many teams have won the premiership from 6th-8th since the introduction of the top eight system?
Zip.
And with half the first pick team in Sick Bay, even getting to September in a hopeless situation is doubtful.
NORTH QUEENSLAND COWBOYS 29: Tries: Cooper, Fai Fai Loa, Hall, Mitchell, Tate. Goals: Thurston (1). Field Goals: Bowen (1).
WESTS TIGERS 16: Tries: Farah, Fulton, Iosefa. Goals: Marshall (2).
At Townsville Sports Stadium.
Crowd: 12,357.
