"I am unbearably ashamed"

Outragees,

When Balmain coach Jason "Squeak" Taylor next faces the Wests Tigers dysfunctional board for a "please explain" over the 60-6 cricket-score thrashing at the hands of the Canberra Raiders, he should take the lead of Toshifumi Suzuki, recently the Chairman and CEO of the parent company of 7-Eleven, blaming his own shortcomings, when he was forced to resign after losing a board room battle - telling the press: "It is my lack of virtue and I am unbearably ashamed".
Squeak could also add "I have bought disgrace upon myself and my family, failed the players, and dishonoured the long and proud history of the club".
Six losses in a row is clearly untenable; doesn't matter that they lost in golden point extra-time in the last game and were illegally battered black and blue by two points in the game previous - a loss is a loss is a loss - and to mix a metaphor, Taylor must fall on his sword after having been hoisted on his own petard - more than once.
Let's face it, the team looks a million dollars on paper and probably cost considerably more, so why are they going so bad?
The buck stops at the boss's desk, Jason.
So, your decision to call them the Playmakers and give then "a licence to thrill" didn't work out so well, when all the other coaches are putting great store by defence this season, and more penalty goals - which used to be rare in Rugby League - are being kicked this year than in living memory.
Your fault?
Who knows?
But it doesn't help to have a terminally poisonous relationship with the club's most senior player in the form of the Best Leb in The Game aka The Hon. Robbie Farah.
Not a good person, Jason, to pick on and dud from pillar to post, given that he played hooker for NSW last year and remains the best dummy half on the face of the planet.
How can you run a team where the former captain refuses to be captain and dares the coach weekly to drop him to reserve grade?
Poor Robbie, must be hard when you can't even bring yourself to speak to the coach, let alone find even the sight of Squeak enough to make you vomit.
The sharks in the press, of course, are circling around Coach Taylor like he's sitting on a surfboard, and the more extremist popular papers are acting like blowflies hanging around dead meat, with headlines like "Coach Taylor given five days to turn his season around", "Does Coach Taylor have the confidence of his players?" and "Balmain CEO: Coach Taylor isn't going anywhere anytime soon".
But there are rules and etiquette surrounding losing coaches who never had the Midas Touch in the first place, and scapegoatism has become a high priority
You know how it'll play out.
Cop it sweet.
But to be at 2-6 with almost a third of the season gone may, ironically, be a mountain too high to climb for the next bunny to take his job.

The Swans keep on their sweet merry winning way.
Being robbed by ten points by Umpires easily influenced by a huge pathologically partisan home crowd at Adelaide Oval will become a mere blip on the radar come September.
Won't play the Crows again until the finals.
In the wake of the solid win over last year's Grand Finalists West Coast Eagles, the "Best:" column on the South Melbourne side of the stats sheet should have read "All Played Well".
The brililiant mix of youth and experience has no finer rival in the comp; whoever came up with "The Sydney System" has certainly found a winner and will no doubt become a life member.
Could be SC Roos.

No word this week from Clarkesville, but a little birdie is singing that book sales haven't exactly met the wildly over-optimistic pre-publication expectations.
Could be just more scurrilous, unconfirmed rumours.
Who'd know?
Haven't been in the bookshops lately on account of The Good Lady Wife's ban on me buying any more cricket books.
But, you'd expect to find a good clean 1st Edition copy of K.Clarke's True to You without any foxing around the edges, sitting un-thumbed on the $2 remainder table in due course, wouldn't you?
That's when I'll pounce on it for the collection, and won't tell anyone, if you don't.

the full range of filth

Eternal Pessimists,

The numbers are in and the reviews are out.
It must be desperately disappointing for poor poor Pup to find that just about the only way he can get his name and photo in the papers these days, is to appear in public with his wife, Kyly, at say, a book launch at some poncey pub in Paddington.
How did it come to this?
Didn't help that the fishwraps implied mid-week that MJ Clarke "didn't have that personal side" when he was Australian Captain, citing a crude quote from Glenn Maxwell:
"It makes it a lot more easier to act like an adult if youse get treated like one."
The papers, yet again, just taking malicious pot shots at perhaps the greatest batsman of his generation for no particular reason, and with no pretence at all to it being in the public interest.
Plain rude, for mine.
Perhaps Pup should consider becoming a recluse?
Must be awfully devasating for a first time author, like Mrs MJ Clarke, to have her book met with almost universal scathing reviews from the critics.
Some random quotes:
"True to You does not endorse ramming cars in your local shopping centre car park screaming "Towanda", instead Clarke suggests a more serene outlook: 'You can either be happy or right: you choose.'"
"three things I learnt from reading True to You: 1. The downward facing dog is better for you that an actual puppy. 2. Comedy is dead. 3. Christmas will be affordable this year."
"it's really a homage to Kathy Bates' fragile character from Fried Green Tomatoes."
The StatsGurgu has noticed True to You hasn't made the Top Ten Bestseller's list, and it's not even among the most popular "lifestyle" books currently in the shops.
In other words, the lavishly produced minature coffee table number hasn't exactly rocketed to the top of the charts, even at a very competitive price in a crowded market; but that would be a bit harsh as there must be some value in it.
PanMacMillian wouldn't be thinking "surely we haven't backed another dud here?", or would they?
Still, the Cosmic Couple would seem to have a fair bit to fall back on, with Michael Clarked named as the 14th Richest Cricketer in The World during the week with a net wealth of $US16M - no surprise really - but the baby will start eating her way through that.
Of course, Sachin Tendulkar streets them all by the length of the stratosphere to take top spot with elegant ease, but Ricky Ponting's fortune, give or take a sheep station or two, valued at $US65M??
There couldn't be that sort of money in racing greyhounds, surely?
That's unless they've considerably upped the prizemoney purses and the value of brown paper bags at the dogs while no one was looking.
Or maybe Punter just had his Swiss bank account under the supervision of Mossack-Fonseca as a hobby?
No names, no pack drill.

You never mind your football team being beaten fair and square, but when they are fucked over by a mob of filthy bastard no-talents, now that really riles.
Excuse my French, but the Newcastle Knights have to be the lowest of low dog teams in the league comp, and to be robbed by two points by a rabble that had not hitherto won a game all season, that just stinks like a well formed turd.
First, Tigers playmaker A Boy Named Sue goes off after ten minutes after copping a deliberate hit to the head without being in possesion of the ball, and never returns, under the concussion rule and the referee's turn a blind eye.
There is one particularly nasty individual on the Newcastle team - don't know his name - but I know what he looks like - ugly.
He was responsible for leading a five man tackle on the best prop forward in New South Wales, Aaron Woods, with the sole aim of wrestling him down awarkwardly to injure him, and sure enough, Woodsey does his ankle a mischief and will be in Sick Bay 4-6 weeks.
How low can you go, you limbo stickers?
Newcastle employed the full range of filth - squirrel grips, Christmas holds, clothesline tackles, The Cruncher, even the good ol' "chicken wing" tackle - all with apparent immunity from the authorities - no wonder there were more than a few stinks.
Then there's the sheer breathtaking audacity of Newcastle - on finding a random second ball on the ground - to kick it into their own offensive play in a bid to confuse the Balmain defenders with two balls apparently both in play.
The Bamford never blew his whistle.
What kind of cute act is that?
Luckily the hastily-cobbled-together scam didn't pay off in the end - the Tigers were wise to it - otherwise there would have been full-on rioting along the Balmain Road.
Newcastle have no regard whatsoever for the time-honoured un-written Rules of Conduct and Code of Ethics.
They resort to gratutious violence and banned underhand tactics in a vain attempt to cover up their complete and total on-field inadequacy.
It used to be said that Rugby League was "a thug's game, played be gentlemen", while Rugby Union was "a gentleman's game, played by thugs".
Maybe Newcastle should seriously consider switching codes, or just taking their ball home in a fit of pique, never to return.
No idea what the penalty count was against the Tigers, but the thieving Bamfords would no doubt have collected fat wads of pineapples from the Newcastle rooms after the game.
The whole damnable thing just shat me to tears.

Don't get me started on the Swans losing to Adelaide in a show-stopping cliff-hanger. .
Please, just don't.
No one was watching anyway.