Fellow aghastee's,
Once Coach Harry daringly, bravely, and completely unexepectedly dropped the explosive mid-week bombshell by relegating his No.1 marquee player The Great Benji Marshall to the bench for the Rabbitohs game on account of he'd been playing like rubbish in recent weeks, it was all bound to go to hell in a handcart.
Benji has never played for Balmain in jersey No.14.
After all these years.
Ever.
Usually first picked.
He's come off the bench a few times while coming back from injury, but you have to go way way way back to find the last time, when he played in jersey No.17.
The match was without doubt the most appalling display put on by a side in the gold and black in recent living memory.
That's not in dispute.
Defence was shot to bits very early on, they had no ball, no direction in attack, no grunt in the pack...nothing, just nothing.
Worst of all, there were quite a few ball-watchers standing around waiting for someone else to do something.
Ball-watching is simply not acceptable in rugby league after the Under 12's, even in park football.
There is just no room for those types.
Anyone spotted playing with that attitude will have their card punched, and there were a few cards punched on Friday night, let me tell you.
No names, no pack drill; they know who they are.
It was a pitiful sight as the television camera loomed into the Wests' coach's box with 25 minutes gone and Balmain down 0-34 to reveal assistant coach The Great Roycie Simmons with his head in his hands, as if he was weeping, and then cut to the sight of The Great Benji prowling up and down the sideline garbed in a full-length dressing gown.
That was enough for even the most hardened supporter.
In the end, in the limited time he had on field, Benj didn't have a bad game, and the Best Leb In The Game put in a manful performance, but was clearly at his wits end in the finish, captaining a defeated, deflated, demoralised, plain embarrasing side.
The ramifications have been huge.
The day after the match, the Wests Tigers CEO, Stephen Humphries - a well-known, well-respected clean-skin administrator with an impeccable Balmain pedigree - promptly resigned.
Quit.
Gave the game away.
Could clearly see the buck would have to stop somewhere, and it would most likely be at the Club Secretary's expansive mahoganny desk in the Back Office.
The Club Secretary says he's given up "with a heavy heart", but reading the rest of his resignation statement between the lines and he's saying "but, jeez mate, I've had it up to here with The Board".
The Board is in open warfare between the Balmain and Western Suburbs factions.
The Balmain people accuse the Western Suburbs people of bringing nothing to the table, while the Western Suburbs mob accuse the Balmain mob of doing all they can to ignore and denigrate the proud Magpies legacy.
So the joint-venture is close to fatally fracturing, and the club, as it is, could implode at any moment.
The bush telegraph in the corner of the loungeroon chattered into life late on Friday night.
Tore off the tickertape to reveal a message from the Stats Guru who noted that "South Sydney has not been on top of the rugby league leader board after ten rounds since 1951".
He probably didn't have enough lines left in the telegram to detail how close Balmain have come to the record Tigers' shockers, losing streaks etc etc...signing off with "balmain. stop. shot birds. stop"
At least he had the good sense to acknowledge that you could go on and on about it, but what's the point?
Sheepishly put my head around the door of the Front Bar at The Local on Monday morning to see what was shakin'.
Fortuitously, the Brown Bros weren't in to laugh at me; there were unconfirmed reports that they were seen actually doing some work on the roads for the council.
Half expected to see The Philospher as white as a sheet in his usual corner, but no.
He was in the pink and enjoying a draft of this week's favoured tipple, a Bloody Mary with a stick of cucumber in it, and fixed me with a bead and said "It's not the end of the world, you know, but I did run into Henny Penny up the street on my way to the pub. Haven't seen that weirdo for a while".
Coach Harry has booked the players in for quite a few session down at the Room Full of Mirrors down on the Balmain Rd over the next little while, judging by his comments on interview after the game: "we've got a lot of training and a lot of looking at ourselves to do".
He must be dreading the fact that they have to play at Leichhardt Oval this weekend, even though it's against the FNQ Cowboys, who have never recovered from the '05 Grand Final loss.
What crowd support they get at the Spiritual Home for that, on another interminable infernal Friday night in the current predicament will be very interesting.
You'd think the bleachers would be populated only by lunatics from the nearby Callum Park, and rusted-on die-hards.
Hazily recalled having a miserable day out not so long ago watching the Tigers get towelled up something terrible by the Rabbitohs in similar circumstances.
Turns out it was three years ago, almost to the day:
http://crazycraves.blogspot.com.au/2010_05_16_archive.html
It's worth repeating the last paragraph, as the whole shooting match was as shitful back then, as it is now.
"Would be well served to live out my born days without having to witness and endure in person such a miserable gawdforsaken shocker again."
Enough said.
SOUTH SYDNEY RABBITOHS 54. Tries: Inglis (4), Merritt, Reynolds, Walker, Champion, G.Burgess, S.Burgess. Goals: Reynolds (7), Goodwin (1).
WESTS TIGERS 10. Tries: Koroibete, Fulton. Goals: Sironen (1).
At Olympic Stadium, Homebush.
Crowd: 19,178.
A bloody draw.
A bloody point would have done, you blokes.
When the game was well in the dillybag, it was the one that got away - big time.
What the?
A most unsatisfactory outcome all round.
No one gets to sing the team song and both sides see it as a failure.
What good is two Premiership points to anyone?
To solve that problem, the side that scores the most goals should win on a count-back, for mine, but that'll never happen.
Of course there are always two ways to look at a draw.
In a hard-scrabble low-scoring game characterised by short kicks and constant scrimmaging, stacks on the mill etc [that would have left anyone unfamiliar with the caper completely perplexed by what on earth was going on] Sydney should've won easily, and for the most part looked like they were doing it in a canter, and yet if Fremantle had had any sort of accuracy in front of goal, they would have romped home.
SC Horse would be pulling great tufts of hair out of his bonce at that conundrum.
He'd also be furious, knowing full well the importance of winning at home.
With the mid-field again garnering all the Brownlow votes, with perhaps a nod to Barlow of the Dockers, how can they let it get away from them like that, with but a single goal in the Champo and outplayed in the Final Stanza?
At the end of the day, the players clearly looked buggered and bitterly disappointed, and they only had themselves to blame.
The Hannberry Kiddie looked particularly downcast given that he'd kicked four dead-set pearlers in a total of eleven, and yet that wasn't enough in the finish.
And who can blame him?
Blame was apportioned by my spy at the ground who reported there were a fair few disgruntled Swans fans pouring out of the ground at full-time who were muttering darkly about that Irishman Tommy Walsh missing everything from 40m out in the denoument, saying things like "not good enough".
Don't want to bore you with all this Gladwellian "tipping point" nonsense that the Stats Guru is enamoured of, but we have probably reached that moment in the silliness.
Essendon in 3rd, Sydney in 4th, and Collingwood in 8th would all be very eager to win over the next fortnight, just in case Hawthorn and Geelong decide to make a break for it at the top.
You'd want to be on the coat tails of that, at the very least.
What's the odds on the Swans falling short of the top four by half a win at the end of the season?
Fairly short, you would have thought.
SYDNEY: 3.0, 7.2, 8.3, 11.4 (70). Goals: Hannebery 4, McGlynn 2, Everitt, Bolton, Jack, Jetta, Pyke.
FREMANTLE: 3.6, 3.8, 5.12, 9.16 (70). Goals: Ballantyne 2, Fyfe 2, Mayne, Johnson, Suban, Duffield, Clarke.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 22,546.
