just about as close to a perfect season as anyone could imagine

Loyalistsa,

Little wonder the hapless Tigers found themselves out like a shag on a rock on a Thursday night for a game against the Contemptible Bulldogs.
Thursday night, eh?
Brilliant way for the NRL to begin their hastily cobbled together scam aimed at World Domination, by having rugby league matches played five days a week.
But really, it was just plain embarrassing to watch.
To have not one, not two, but three tries put on you inside the first ten minutes of the match - that's not even half way though the Traditional Softening-Up Period - is simply unacceptable.
All concerned knew it.
Their hearts were obviously not in it.
As things stand, they know they are incapable of winning even a rigged chook raffle.
Said it before, say it again - probably said it right here a year ago - it'd be the same form of words: the club is in very serious need of rebuilding.
A couple of young fella's have stepped up well enough to first grade this year by necessity given the nightmarish horror of an injury run this season, and the rest of their junior ranks - by and large farkin' huge South Sea Islanders - is bristling with talent, the potentional of which is as yet unfulfilled.
The main problem is they desperately need more experienced journeymen in the forwards and the backs, but they just don't have any money to buy them, let alone retain their youngsters, with cashed up clubs always sniffing around.
You'd have to imagine Coach Potter would be on shifting sands having seen his team have nigh on 150 points scored against them in the space of just three games.
And that after The Board, under pressure to pull the sack, decided to keep him on for a few weeks to the the end of the year, because they had nowhere else to go.
Poor Harry, he's entitled to say "but, what'd I do wrong, Guv?", but that won't help him, he'll be shown the door at season end, and be shat out the poop shoot without a sausage.
Mad Monday can't come soon enough.
It'll be many many years until they come close to winning the JJ Giltinan Shield again.

CANTERBURY-BANKSTOWN BULLDOGS 30. Tries: Lafai (2), Jackson, Thompson, Ennis. Goals: Hodkinson (5).
WESTS TIGERS 10. Tries: Brooks, Woods. Goals: Paterson (1).
At Olympic Stadium, Homebush.
Crowd: 9,877.


Little wonder you can rest Sam Reid on a whim, when the Buddy-Tipsy Show kick ten goals between them!
Really, they couild have rested the entire first grade side and turned out the seconds and they still would have won.
This is really starting to sound like a broken record, but yet another leasuirely weekend stroll in the park.
The other seven sides in the top eight must be worried sick about how they are going to come close to beating the Swans, who if memory serves and chortling of the Stats Guru is anything to go by, have won 16 of their last 17 games.
If they hadn't inexplicably gone down to the Greater Western Sydney Pygmies in Round One, and 1-3 after the first month of the year, it's just about as close to a perfect season as anyone could imagine.

Just as the season well and truly reaches the pointy end, it seems that this bloggy blog blog is about to fall off the radar, and go into premature abeyance.
That's it as far as commentary goes here.
Will find myself spending the entire month of September in north-western France, where, as far as can be gathered, the local population couldn't give a blue root about The Rules, that's our Rules, not theirs.
People keep asking me "why are you going to miss the entire finals series, Craves?", which is a good question, to which the obvious answer is "they say it's nice over there this time of year".
Little does anyone know that my jet bird will be touching back down at KSA on the morning of Grand Final Day.
Cheer, Cheer, The Red & The White...
Onward to Vic-Tor-Ree!

WESTERN BULLDOGS: 1.2, 5.5, 7.10, 9.13 (67). Stringer 2, Boyd, Cooney, Liberatore, Bontempelli, Hrovat, Johannisen, Griffen.
SYDNEY: 7.3, 11.5, 17.7, 20.10 (130). Goals: Franklin 6, Tippett 4, Lloyd 2, Goodes 2, Malceski 2, Jetta, Towers, Hannebery, Parker.
At Docklands Stadium.
Crowd: 22,430.

a tale of two cities

Mudlarks,

Buddy kicks nine.
Now that's penetration for you.
The Saints didn't have a hope, no way of stopping him going in through the front and back doors whenever he wanted at will.
It was only a matter of time until Franklin did something mad.
Before he came to the Swans, he had a reputation as a big game player, and he delivered in spades in his 200th, and found himself being chaired off the ground after the final siren.
Just getting his act together for September?
You'd have to hope so.
The sandbagging continued when JP Kennedy was subbed off during the 2nd quarter at the slightest hint of a niggle, which the commentators, to their credit, tried to talk up as a full-blown hammy.
They're obviously on the Sydney payroll.
Coach Horse must be confident JP already has the Chas Brownlow in the dilly bag - he could bench him for the rest of the season and he'd still win the thing.
After last week's stroll in the park that is finals time HQ - the MCG - they made light work of an undermanned St Kilda, who just didn't have the strength or height to match them.
Swans threw a few youngsters into the game, as My Spy and The Ground remarked "to shark the pack" to see if they cut the mustard, if they're required at the pointy end.
You'd think they'd go top on that showing, especially with Geelong and Hawthorn playing each other this weekend in a Promoter's Dream.
The late season run is being timed perfectly, and Coach Horse knows a thing or two about orchestrating the games that matter - just look at the genius moves that went into the back end of 2012, and we all know what happened then.
Excellent to see the Ugliest Man in Football given a lap of honour of the SCG to mark his retirement from the caper; he just took the accolades like the dignified man that he is.
Unique in every way, you have to wonder if there ever has been a finer ornament to the game?
Who can ever forget Lewis Roberts-Thompson's exploits in the 2005 Grand Final?
Robbed of the Norm Smith, for mine, what's more to say?
And here's a bloke who "honestly, I never thought I would play AFL football", and after a chequered career dogged by injury, was asked what it was like to reach the 100 game milestone, to which he replied "I am astonished. No one told me that I'd played 99. I had no idea. I'm gobsmacked".
When he did play, there was rarely a player as good as him across the half back line, gangly as hell, all arms & legs, hands everywhere, and could run, yessiree, and had a deceptive amount of height about him so could take those high marking stops at goal, and kick the ball back to the forwards, who's already turned on their heels when they saw who was coming.
And there's been few braver men in the melee, worked the stacks-on-the-mill brilliantly, perhaps the hallmark of his career.
And could kick a goal to boot, if he was asked to.
Gave more to the game and got more out of it than he ever imagined, despite the pain and suffering that took him there and in the end bought the curtain down on an illustrious career.
Vale L-R-T.
You will be sorely missed.

SYDNEY SWANS: 6.3, 8.8, 15.9, 19.13 (127). Goals: Franklin 9, Tippett 3, Cunningham, Malceski, Jetta, Lloyd, McVeigh, Towers, Parker.
ST KILDA: 1.1, 2.4, 5.7, 8.8 (56). Goals: Riewoldt 3, Stanley 2, Gwilt, Armitage, Steven. At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 31,361.


The heavy rain set in just before kick off.
The Spiritual Home is uncomfortable at the best of times, but is plain miserable in the wet with next to no cover except under the mighty Port Jackson fig trees that really only convert the precipitation into large bucket like drips that will soak a hat in one hit.
Only foolhardy die-hards would have made the supreme effort of getting to Leichhardt Oval, in the almost certain knowledge that all they'd be going see would be Balmain's season nadir.
Needless to say, didn't find myself among them, never mind me following the team for a quarter of a century, still regarded as a fair-weather fan.
Donned the Driza-Bone in the howling winds and flooding rains of a classic East Coast Low, to trick up the aeriel on the short wave radio, only to find the wireless dominated by a call of some rugby union game between the Wobblies and All Blicks that no one in Dad's Shed cared about.
So, shut down the crystal set, turned off the light and retreated from the severe weather to the house to get in a hot tub, on the grounds that "you can always read about it in the papers" in the morning.
By all accounts, the game itself was by no means pretty.
That'd be more than 100 points scored against the hapless Tigers in the space of just two matches - believe.
Much to his chagrin, the Stats Guru has been burrowing deep into the archive to try to find another instance, and is struggling to come up with one within living memory.
Surely you'd have to call for the mercy rule and just excuse them from the rest of the season, no point turning up fellas, just go on post-season holidays as usual via the Room Full of Mirrors and contemplate your navels.
Nothing for it.
Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
The best thing to come out of the whole schemozzle was the long-awaited retirement of Braith Anasta before the game.
The bloke has spent half a season in sick bay, where he remains, and at long last decided that he simply can't go on.
Probably one of the worst buys in club history.
Braith had a stellar career at the Bulldogs and the Roosters, playing more than 250 games, won a Premiership, appeared in four test matches for Australia, and turned out ten times for NSW in State-of-Origin.
Now, that's good, very very good.
But as he reached his twilight years, Easts could see the writing on the wall and could no longer keep him under their salary cap so they sold him on a short-term deal to Balmain, who were fool enough to buy him.
He was the incumbent club captain at the Roosters when they punted him, no less.
Played just 31 games in two years for the Tigers, and did absolutely nothing.
Anasta never did fit into the Balmain culture, no one ever really liked him, and in the end it was a bitterly disappointing, costly denoument to an otherwise glittering career.
But he only had himself to blame.
So sad to see great players - as shadows of their former selves - play well beyond their use by dates, purely for money - Balmain supporters will only ever remember that, not what he did for someone else at the height of playing days.
He came to Leichhardt on a contract that said "I'll play anywhere, except at lock".
Where did he end up playing his last year?
Lock.

WESTS TIGERS 4. Tries: Hitchcox. Goals: Paterson (1).
SYDNEY ROOSTERS 48. Tries: Minichiello (2), Jennings, Moa, Waerea-Hargreaves, Kenny-Dowall, Tupou, Pearce. Goals: Maloney (8).
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 5,297.