Long-suffering Club Loyalists,
Can someone please tell me just what on earth is happening with the bloody football?
Open the back page of any Melbourne newspaper and you will see that the journo's are smelling blood and circling like sharks on the fact that it has been 24 years since the Sydney/South Melbourne Swans have gone 0-4 at the start of a season.
Worse still, they are rubbing their hands together with glee when they explain to their readers that there are 10 [that's right, ten] players on the Swans current roster who have appeared in at least one game in the seniors who were not even born in 1993.
Wassup?
Suddenly the Swans go from being last year's Grand Finalists [no need to mention "beaten"] to feather dusters in the space of a month?
Something's going on.
If you ask any club loyalist they will talk you up and down the street about what is going wrong.
The Good Lady Wife is very good at lip reading, an art she has finely honed since her yoof, and saw she the television camera spotting Super Coach Horse just before three-quarter time at Sooby in the box leaning back in his chair after something appalling had happened with the Swans [this was after Horse had already thrown down his pen and papers in a desultory fashion] on field and she translated accurately the movements of Longmire's lips which went unrecorded "ABSOLUTELY FUCKED!"
A fair assessment from the coach of the situation, you would have thought?
On interview after the game he said he was very disappointed to be at 0-4 at the start of the season, but it is, what it is.
What is it?
See above.
You will never win a game of football trying to soil the opposition out of the game.
They'll have you all grasping at straws.
Go forward and kick long!
As it was Maundy Thursday and the Messiah was going to be pretty much had it by tomorrow, at one point found myself crying out in exasperation "what would Barassi do?"
Cranked up the old Bush Telegraph in the corner of the loungroom and pushed the message down the wire and across the Nullabor Plain to my Spy at The Ground.
The thing soon clattered back with a reply from the terminal at Subiaco Oval..."Barassi would tear the earlobes off the lot of them and then move Chanders into the ruck, Kennedy behind the ball, Dan into the forwards, and Jack to murder someone every five minutes"...
The Stats Guru slooped over his abacus in discontent and pronounced that any chance of making the top four, if still mathematically possible, is now long gorn.
The Swans went top last year on percentage with just five losses so only a dead-set fully-certified Miracle could see them win the Minor Premiership two years in a row.
Making the Top Eight at least, having the missing-in-action mid-field firing, sorting out the ruck properly, protecting Buddy and Reid so they can star, Plugger training W.Hayward "the goal-kicker from North Adelaide" solely as a goal sneak, and getting the former Captain Jack to simply play better and fight better, are just some of the other problems the Swans face.
Add to that a Sick Bay that's full to overflowing with the barely walking wounded, doctors and nurses working hard, plus a jaw-dropping bottom-scraping shallow depth in the playing roster.
It's all very well and good to "blood young players" but you usually only get one in four who is really any good and becomes a long-term keeper.
That can take years.
The Swans have done precious little buying of experienced journeyman players on the open market to plug the gaps for a quite a while now, which only begs the question, why?
Surely they can't be short of a bob, even given the major league losses on potential merch sales last year?
Beaten Grand Finalists, by their very nature, are not invincible.
Don't get any lover of The Red and The White all riled up by talk of Umpires or you'll get an almighty spray about the iniquity of it all and just the plain & simple denial of natural justice.
It's difficult to see the predicament after such a long string of success [with strings attached, of course, like, they lost the Grand Final last year'n'stuff], or to read any direction, if there is one, into the grand scheme of things.
Sydney hates losers, though.
Joisus, who can forget '92-'93?
Wasn't in town at that juncture, cleared out; it was that bad.
The nadir to end all nadir's.
Staring into the chasm, they were.
The Swans lost their last 15 games straight in '92 - what an absolute shocker - and started '93 with another 11 straight losses and then managed to chalk up their single win of the season to end the losing streak at 21 games, and finish up the year dead set Wooden Spooners at 1-19.
Thanks for that football lesson, Guru.
And the crowds at the SCG were truly and utterly abysmal - the club nearly disappeared altogether, written off as a stupid mistake and a bad loss, and were about to go down the financial suck hole via the gurglar to oblivion, if they didn't sign a contract with Barassi on the back of beer coaster to come out of retirement and go through the joint throwing the weight of his bargerase around and using his very peculiar stentorian voice to full effect, and most fortituously, they had Carroll and Kelly on contract who became marquee players and genuine superstars.
South Melbourne crowds at "away games" were bigger, but they still amounted to only a few thousand.
Nobody likes to be seen with losers in this town, oh no siree.
So the situation at the present minute could be worse, alot worse, it could get worse, alot worse, actually, statistically.
The Dark Ages will take some beating.
But, yup, it is 24 years since the Swans went zip-4 at the start of any stoopid VFL/AFL season.
It was reported on Good Friday that someone had had a Road to Emmaus experience on Facebook, recognised the Messiah, and uttered "I have complete faith in Horse and the boys".
Ahhh...faith, don't get me started...football teams, for God's Sake.
What would Jesus do?
He would point out that Sydney were only beaten by Port by a "bloody point" the week prior, and battled on gamely all day in a hard-fought hand-to-hand combat style match to only go down by three goals in the denoument in the Golden West, and there's absolutely nothing to worry about, wouldn't he?
Nothing for it now but for SC Horse to have spent some time over Easter down at the Magic Waters puffing on his pipe and staring out to sea before thrashing them on the training track; just get things right.
Otherwise, the faint and distant sounds of the song of the Fat Lady start getting louder.
Sweet weepin' Jesus upon The Cross, they've got the Pygmies at home this week in what used to be called "The Battle of the Bridge" but has now been re-branded to the all-inclusive peace & love style "Sydney Derby XII".
Everybody knows GWS would love nothing more than to make Sydney toast, very early in the season.
If they win, they will.
Over at Tigerland, the fun & games and unmitigated trouble and strife continues unabated - the least of which is going through three coaches in six weeks.
Jason "Squeak" Taylor quite rightly was punted for being a hopeless joke and a mean spirited vindictive bastard, then the assistant coach in Andrew Webster takes over the reins for a couple of weeks and appeared to do little else than coach from the sidelines while constantly yabbering on into a walkie-talkie to God only knows who - was he tyring to get Jesus on the line?
Then the Board in their eternal wisdom appointed another sacked coach in the form of the [not so Great] Ivan Cleary, who's been sitting on his fat arse for a whole year doing nothing after he was let go by Penrith for not doing a very good job.
Clearly Cleary came to the role with the expressed intention of keeping the "Big Four" intact and on the books - never mind that he won his first game in charge, his side ran out of legs in a comedy of errors on Easter Monday - and failed at the first hurdle with Moses, casting down the tablets from the Mount, deciding to up stumps and go to Parramatta on a "lucrative" two year deal.
Balmain of course said no way, José, you must play out the rest of yr contract to the end of the year, but of course money does the talkin', and an accomodation will be reached where Moses can move to the Eels before the end of the new contract window, because you don't want a turn-coat at the club who couldn't give a blue root about Balmain's fortunes, despite what he might say about it.
See you 'round, Mose.
As far as the other three go, Tedesco is the best full-back in the world and can write his own ticket - good luck to him; it's highly likely to be more than the Tiges can afford.
C'est la vie.
The half-back in Brooks is a very good one and, being a Balamin boy born and brred, and the good sense to sign on for two more years - he's well worth keeping, good half backs are hard to find, while Captain Woodsy, despite his comedian impersonations and happy-go-lucky nature, knows full well that he is earmarked as the next New South Wales State-of-Origin skipper and is looking to secure his long term future and will go anywhere they're prepared to seriously entertain his asking price of $850K+ per season as well as a genuine chance of a Premiership.
Just please, let it not be the Bulldogs.
And the hyper-dysfunctional Balmain Board complains that their hands are tied because the powers-that-be are yet to decide whether next year's salary cap will be increased to ten million dollars.
You heard me right.
You need $10,000,000 to buy enough players for an at least half-way decent competitive team that might see semi-final action.
Ten million bucks to pay a rugby league team and maintain the big load of baggage?
It's come a long way from the working man's game.
Said it before, say it again, the Tiges look a million bucks on paper, and have for years, but for one reason if not another haven't been able to fire, also, for years now.
A lot of water has been passed since 2005.
They've always have been a difficult team to follow.
Now, at 2-5 after the longest long weekend for losers, their finals chances are already getting well away from them.
The best you can hope for is the unlikely event of a purple patch at some point to renew hope, as the underpinning slips away.
Or at least a couple of weekends a year when both yr football teams win.
Think about that when next you cry "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
Chin up.
Craves.
