Screaming Believers,
Hawthorn will in the flag.
No question, no argument, in the dilly bag, fait accompli, home & hosed.
Which ever way you look at it there is no other winner and the rest of them might as well go home and forget about it.
After a carefully crafted game of two halves, they whip-sawed the Swans by eight goals and then some, in the finish, with no Franklin, no Rioli.
That's putting a mortgage on the Premiership, for mine.
The score box, which never lies, said both sides had kicked only four goals each to half time.
There was no indication that the floodgates would open from the start of the Champo, with Hawthorn running in four quick goals on the back of extremely poor kicking by Sydney; every time they kicked it out of defence more often than not it landed casually in the arms of a Hawthorn forward and well like, it was like, you know, gifting them goals on a silver platter.
As my spy at the ground telegraphed through "not very clever of Sydney to play their worst Championship Quarter of the year in this one".
Banged five goals to one in Q3 and it was game over.
Then there's the vexed question of who is Sydney's best team, just at the minute?
You'd have to question the wisdom of playing the Jetta Kiddie, who is obviously well short of a run.
The Football Dept would have to seriously consider not going with him again in the finals, but their hands might be forced by the fact that there will be no Goodes, no LRT, no Shaw, no Reid, and god knows who else, for the duration.
The Stats Guru noted that there were no less that eight Swans players who didn't manage to get their possession tally into double figures during the entire course of the match and added "you can't even hope to beat half-way decent sides carrying that many passengers, and Hawthorn aint no half-way decent side"
Coach Horse will no doubt thrash those players, who shall remain nameless, on the training track this week while scratching his chin wondering what to do.
Still, having squandered the saloon passage, there is no doubt that the Swans have the better run into the big one.
After the cards fell unexpectedly on the first weekend of the finals, they don't have to play Hawthorn or Geelong until the Grand Final, and just have to knock off Carlton this week to be one win out of The Decider.
Didn't really matter who lined up to play Sydney, given that Richmond and Carlton bashed the crap out of each other, and would have both pulled up sore.
Not to mention that Judd is playing on half a leg.
Of course, the Double Blues are mere pretenders as they sneaked into the finals via the back door on account of the tawdry Essendon business, so you'd expect the Swans to put them to the sword in the pointy end.
The genuine problem, the clear and present danger, which SC Horse would no doubt be thinking long and hard about at Sunday morning smoko, is Fremantle at Subi.
Rated the Dockers from the outset, and weren't they the ones who threw a spanner in the works with the draw against Sydney, who, as predicted, lived to rue the day that that one got away.
They'll remember that, and try to put it right
Now, the road is long and the road is hard, but if they can manage that, then they're still on the Shining Path.
But a lot of water has to be passed between now and then.
HAWTHORN: 3.4, 4.7, 9.9, 15.15 (105). Goals: Gunston 3, Hale 2, Roughead 2, Hill, Lake, Anderson, Breust, Shiels, Bailey, Spangher, Puopolo.
SYDNEY: 3.3, 4.7, 5.8, 7.9 (51). Goals: Tippett 2, Rohan, White, Jetta, Pyke, O'Keefe.
At Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 59,615.
Who would have thought that The Great Benji Marshall would play his last game of first grade rugby league, his 201st for Balmain, in some godforsaken town in Far North Queensland, on the very same day that a former star for NSW in the State-of-Origin caper, Glenn Lazarus, otherwise known as The Brick With Eyes, was elected as a PUP Senator for Queensland?
The Hon Senator Brick has a brilliant mind, sharp as a steel trap; so look forward to his tremendous contribution over the next six years to the lengthy debates on the floor of the Senate Chamber, given that his public speaking form over the course of his football career indicated that he couldn't string a sentence together.
No one ever asked him to be a commentator.
But, he'll least bring back the biff to Parliament House.
You wouldn't want to run into the Brick barrelling down some dark alley in the Corridors of Power late at night, with Clive Palmer flailing in his wake, all arms and legs, with the eyes lit up like lighthouses.
You wouldn't get up in a hurry.
But, let's put that digression aside.
No one imagined that the Tigers would hold the Cowboys to 22-all after 50 minutes, and then find themselves beaten by a cricket score.
Symptomatic of the season really.
Not that the score mattered in the grand scheme of things, anyway.
Poor ol' Benji, giving the game away with nary any of his legion on loyal fans in the ground.
You would have had to be the hardest of the hard core of his most ardent admirers to make the effort, still there are Tigers fans everywhere, so there would have been a handful in to witness the denoument.
An old mate of mine likened Benji's last game to Mark Waugh batting in the second innings of his last test match, with a handful of ground staff and pressmen, and a couple of stray dogs and a few chooks that had wandered onto the ground, the only ones there to see it, before Junior was quietly and unceremonially dropped, with barely a whimper in the papers.
No triumphant farewell for either of them.
Unsurprisingly, under the circumstances, Benji didn't have a very good game, by all accounts, in stark contrast to Matty Bowen who was bowing out for good after a million games for the Cowboys over the years.
Bowen had a blinder and hoisted his small children onto his shoulders at full time, competely content to give the game away.
Benji just ran down the race with everyone else.
No fanfares on the trumpets for him.
And then there's Scotty Prince, who of course was Benji's partner in crime in engineering the Miracle Year '05, who called it quits and hung up the boots after an astonishing 400+ games in 16 years in the caper.
The difference is that Prince was let go by Balmain the year after winning the Premiership in "the worst decision made by the board of any football club, anywhere, ever" [quote coach at the time, SC Sheens] and then went onto to be a highly paid journeyman before washing up on the shores of the Brisbane Bronco's to play out his final days.
Scotty was hoisted onto the shoulders of his team mates at full-time and carried around a packed Lang Park, sedan-chair style, in salutation.
No such priveledge for Marshall.
On interview after the game, Marshall said "I've had a wonderful career, and I'm grateful for that, but it will be sad to reflect on it".
Don't know quite what he means there; shouldn't he be happy, or has he realised early that he's pulled the wrong rein?
Never mind.
A worthy life member - who will ever forget the jink, the step, the weave at the height of Benji's powers?
Not me.
Maybe not a scholar, but very certainly a gentleman, and an ornament to the game.
Despite Marshall's ignominous exit out the back door, he will always have my respect.
And who can blame him, at his age, for going home and claiming the generous pension on offer from the Auckland Rugby Union Club?
Tigers of course need to make some assiduous off-season buys of seasoned players to slot straight into first grade as well as continuing their worthy policy of investing heavily in juniors and tying them up to good contracts, but money will be too tight to mention, so it could be many years in the wilderness, before they can nuture, or buy, the players that will be needed to be competitive again.
Mad Monday was a quiet affair by all accounts, and Coach Harry must've parked himself in a banana lounge by the hotel pool and gazed at his navel, knowing he has a bit of work to do - that's if the Board decide to keep him on.
A very difficult team to follow this year and a bitterly disappointing season by any measure.
Found myself in the Enfield Produce Store on Mad Monday buying a 20kg bag of chook feed, trademarked Poultry Supreme...ironic that the Eastern Suburbs Chooks did go top and were awarded the JJ Giltinan Shield...and ran into the old Wests supporter who works there.
Spied him, fixed him with a bead and just said "Tiges?", we both shook our heads and then simultaneously said to each other "ah, well, there's always next year".
Pinkie Wish.
NORTH QUEENSLAND COWBOYS 50. Tries: Ulugia (3), Bowen (2), Lui, Taumalolo, Thurston, Winterstein. Goals: Thurston (6), Bowen (1)
WESTS TIGERS 22. Tries: Tedesco (2), Simona, Sironen. Goals: Marshall (3).
At Townsville Football Stadium.
Crowd:19,519
Bleachermen,
It was no surprise that there wasn't a single Hawthorn supporter on the major event bus when it caught up with me.
Then, at the second last stop before Homebush in Enfield, he got on.
He was a boy of no more than nine years old, kitted out in the full Hawks merch, from head to toe.
And a smug little shit he was too.
He was trash-talking the Swans and suggesting that he was going to see Hawthorn in a mere training run.
He also appeared to suffer from St Vitus Dance; couldn't stay still and was constantly hopping from one foot to the other while bagging Sydney from here to breakfast.
There was no-one on the bus who wanted to give the kid a clip over the ear more than me, but some of them had probably read the book "The Slap" and concluded that there was no future in hitting small children.
But, Lord Crikey, it was most uncalled for and very annoying.
An easy walk through the front gates and slid into the best seats in the ground in the Members, on the eastern wing with the centre square right in front of you, with no more than a dozen steps to negotiate up and down.
Brilliantly designed, the Cathy Freeman Stadium is still as good as it was the day it was was built.
The only thing wrong with the place is the beer.
Undoubtedly the worst served at any ground in the country; outrageously priced, excreable, undrinkable, worse than gnats' piss, are words that come to mind; little wonder the punters shake their heads and ask "why is it so?".
Luckily we managed to smuggle in a few thermos flasks full of goon past the scant security detail, so we never had to shell a clam at the bar, and were well served with cheap BYO shiraz-cab thoughout
It was clear to everyone at the ground the Swans were playing a game of ducks and drakes from the outset.
And who could blame them?
Let the Hawks win and take the Minor Premiership and play them again next week; far, far better than beating them and allowing Geelong to go top, and then have to travel to Kardinia Park, again, in the opening round of the pointy end.
Longmire is a clever man.
After a serious first half, Coach Horse had seen enough there to engender real confidence in a finals campaign when the blowtorch is applied the belly.
He could see that his side was more than a match for the Hawks, so he told them at half time to just play out the Champo as it comes, and as it happened it was honours shared.
Then he told them to take the pedal right off the metal in the last quarter, given there was no significance at all in what the scoreboard said at the end.
Swans were never in any danger of finishing higher or lower than 4th.
Sandbagging the strategic advantage at its finest, just as they did last year [and we all know what happened then].
Was looking forward to seeing Tippet play in the flesh for the first time, but, alas, it was not to be.
Tipsy was named in the starting side in The Record, but never played on account of some mystery bogus ailment that he picked up at the last minute, when in fact he's as fit as a fiddle.
The Football Dept had been warned when they bought him that he could be knocked out by a half-way decent well-directed fart, so, best to wrap him up in cotton wool for the finals, when they will be needing him to kick bagfulls, without fail.
More clever thinking.
Take no risks.
Little wonder everyone else was also in on the lark.
Fremantle "rested" 12 players and so signalled their intention to throw the game against St Kilda, just to give the opposition's retiring superstars a winning send off, Geelong must have been playing on valium if they could only beat Brisbane by a point - no Elephant Juice happening there - Carlton must've handed over big wads of cash in brown paper bags to beat Port by a point, and as for Essendon...it's best not to go there, given we haven't heard the last of it.
And then Adelaide won by the length of the street against an opposition who'd just had enough for one season.
The Good Lady Wife accompanied me to the ground, and as is her want, she complained bitterly that the bloody biased bastard Bamfords had "three brown eyes. two out front and one out the back of the head so they could more easily look over their shoulder at things that weren't really there".
Moreover, she claimed they were colour blind, and unable to distinguish the red and the white, while all the time knowing exactly what a bacon and egg sandwich looked like.
Still, she grudgingly conceded that at least one Bamford made the right call when he took Buddy Franklin's name and number plate and wrote them down in the little pocket book officialdom keep in their shorts
Can't say that we had a good view of the incident, given that it happened in the pocket on the other side of the ground, but people around us with good long vision and/or binoculars began suggesting that Buddy had had indeed been reported.
All we could see was the aftermath, as the entirely defenceless Malceski went down like a sack of potatoes having disposed of the ball well before he was violently taken out, and he didn't get up in a hurry.
Much later, the footage on the newsreels revealed it it be a shocker - in rugby league parlance it would be described as a malicious late high tackle, which in the normal course of events, would be a send off offence, and a month cooling your heels, as it damned well should be.
It's always been a mystery to me why there has never been a send-off rule in Australian Rules.
It just encourages serial offenders, and doesn't a well known pest like Buddy have form in that regard?
Dirty bastard.
It would have been a dead set scandal if he got off scott free, but as it is he got rubbed out for a week.
While that's a self-serving sentence with a nod to finals gate reciepts, the Swans aren't unhappy about it.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth
You have to admire Malceski for selflessly taking the fall for the team, and the idiocy of Franklin, for single-handedly taking out the Hawks number one artillery piece for the all important 1st Qualifying Final.
Magnificent work there, Lance.
Nick - you'll get a medal.
Took the train home, given they put on, as always, the super efficient 2000 Olympics transport service - for free - to quickly clear the crowd.
World class.
As we rattled around the loop track, the mood among The Red and The White was ebulliant.
Never mind the bollocks, they'd seen enough to tell them the Swans will go deep into September, even though almost half the players who appeared in last year's Grand Final didn't take the field.
The reinforcements will do fine enough.
The phony war is over.
September is a whole different bottle of mussels.
Stand by for some thrilling, ruthess, cut-throat football.
Cheer, cheer, the double-chance at the back-to-back.
SYDNEY: 5.2, 9.2, 13.4, 16.4 (100). Goals: White 3, Parker 3, Rohan 2, Mumford 2, Bolton, K.Jack, Mitchell, McGlynn, Pyke, Morton
HAWTHORN: 2.2, 7.5, 11.6, 17.10 (112). Goals: Roughead 4, Franklin 2, Gunston 2, Breust 2, Birchall, Lewis, Hale, Puopolo, Anderson, Lake, Mitchell.
At Olympic Stadium, Homebush.
Crowd: 37,980.
Yet again, didn't see a frame of the Tigers game, on account of it was played simultaneously with the Swans game.
Had no spies at the ground, either, so no telegraph messages and they don't put the rugby league progress scores up on the big screen at the AFL.
Not on yr nelly.
According to the fishwraps the next morning, remarkably, Balmain found themselves 18-0 to the good after 14 minutes, after one of four, yep that's right, four Burgess brothers - all of them Poms - who were playing for South Sydney was sin-binned for ten minutes for some mysterious infraction that no one but the Bamford could fathom.
The Tigers then, by all accounts, made a good account of themselves, before they were eventually run over by the Rabbitohs in the denoument, and Souths went top.
The Rabbitoh's have got a good chance of winning the Premiership, given that their nearest rivals aren't travelling that well leading up to the pointy end
Good luck to them - it's been 42 years between drinks.
Reports suggested there were strange scenes at the end of the game to mark the Great Benji Marshall's 200th game.
Along with The Best Leb in the Game, the great man was given Life Membership of the Balmain RLFC, and got some kind of football in a glass case for his trouble.
Seems Benji said "thank you very much" while looking at the thing quizzically, saying to himself "what the fark is this?"
The Club Chairman leaned over his shoulder and explained "It's fruit for the sideboard, Benji. Something you'll want to show your grand children".
So that's that then, admitted to the Balmain Pantheon with all the other greats, and then out the back door.
Ducked my head around the front door to the Front Bar at The Local on Monday morning and was surprised to see that the Philosopher wasn't in.
The barmaid said he'd been in earlier and had had a stiff gin & tonic to calm his nerves, but after reading the political pages and the washup article from the Tigers match, he snapped a Keno pencil in half with his bony fingers, tossed the paper on the floor in a desultory fashion, said nothing, and went home.
Someone in the bar who'd also seen him said he, like the world-wide legion of other Balmain fans, in their despondancy, can't wait for Mad Monday to come soon enough.
The off-season beckons.
WESTS TIGERS 18. Tries: Simona, Tedesco, Murdoch-Masila. Goals: Marshall (3).
SOUTH SYDNEY RABBITOHS 32. Tries: Reynolds, Farrell, S.Burgess, Merritt, L.Burgess. Goals: Reynolds (6).
At Sydney Football Stadium.
Crowd: 14,891.
