Pom Baiters,
Trust David "Burbs" Warner to kick off the Ashes series hype a couple of weeks back when he said that "more hatred" was required when playing England at cricket, firmly focusing the Australian team's moral compass.
A couple of days later, the PR people at Cricket Australia forced him to retract the comment saying it was in jest and he didn't really mean it.
My arse.
This from the, formerly disgraced, now Vice Captain Warner who only four years ago clocked the now Captain of England, a bloke known as "Rooty" to his mates, for being an idiot in some dodgy, non-politically correct nightclub known as the Walkabout Bar in Birmingham.
Warner later said he did it because Root was being a twatty ol' clot and a dickhead, and he had his excuses, as he'd had a few Jägerbombs and voddies and Red Bulls, and it was the drink talking and he only got Rooty with "a glancing blow" anyway because he was so pissed and regretted he didn't really connect and deck the little shit out cold - Benny Stokes-style.
Off-field violence aside, Warner is just the ticket for getting inside Pommy heads and driving them utterly insane.
More than one England player has been sent home with mental disintegration problems after getting the treatment.
On being anointed to make his test debut, CT Bancroft was asked how he would approach opening the batting with Warner: "I played against him a Shield game once. He sledged me for four days".
Right on, brother - you've been taught by experts.
Needless to say there is nothing unusual about Strayan selectors going right off piste and coming at you from completely out of left field - you can debate forever who should and shouldn't have been picked - my problem with the current 13-man squad is the fact that it is largely made up of dried up old turds.
Give Chad Sayers a run!
He's on the wrong side of 30 and the Token South Australian, to boot.
At an average age of 28.53 years, only two players are under 25, and Bancroft and Cummins are both 24.
Where's the future in that?
Whatever happened to the young tearaways and child prodigies and the much vaunted policy of selecting the brightest and best from the ranks of the Yoof of Today?
Gorn by the wayside as an imagined exigency...it is the Ashes after all...has the Chairman and the Three Wise Men freaking out.
What would Pup do?
He's got form when it comes to threatening to break "fucking" Pommy bones.
Well, win in Brisbane for a start, he reckons.
If the Poms do that, Straya are toast, by his account.
Simple as that.
No one but the home side has won at the Gabbatoir in the last 29 years - as Bruce Mac is fond of saying, "we know that".
But that was a West Indies team that had Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge opening the batting and a fearsome four-pronged pace attack the likes of which hasn't been seen since with Malcolm Marshall, Courtney Walsh, Patrick Patterson and Curtley Ambrose rolling their arms over.
The Engerlanders certainly haven't got any of that going for them, being the mob of dead-set work-a-day county cricket clock-watching wilting shrinking violets that they are.
However, the whirring brain cogs of MJ Clarke have concluded that victory at The 'Gabba means triumph for the Poms in the series, and they get to take that stoopid little urn home.
Don't you worry about that, Pup, it won't happen at Fortress Brisbane, officially known as "The House of Pain".
And there's a new curator up there now in the form of some unknown called David Sandurski, after Kev Mitchell decided to retire from being in the job for 27 years, so that was always going to be a bit of a worry.
Then, lo, Kev decides to make the Ashes his last hurrah on an honourary basis and lets the television camera's film him riding atop the heavy roller for the very last time.
Vale Kev, job's right, job's done.
With any luck, the Durski Kid will be as patriotic as Kev was being most amenable to Strayan captains' requests to prepare a pitch to order, y'know, put a bit of good ol' doctoring into it and it'll be made sure there's a keg or two in it for the ground staff to keep the boys happy, that sort of thing.
And the coin will then be weighted at the toss.
Captain Smiffy has also revealed to the meejah that he is under pressure from the buffoons at CA "to modify my on-field body language".
Fat chance with Poms involved.
Can't see that happening after he graciously endured the most appalling dirty tricks and tactics seen in living memory displayed by that 24-carat card-carrying nasty piece of filthy cheatin' work, Mr Viralrat Kohli Sir, who recently took great delight in robbing Australia blind in India.
He had every right to be emotional, upset and downright angry at the Laws being bent and broken left right and center by a subcontinental chappie who thinks the sun shines out of his arse.
Any Pom that tries that on better watch out, or Smiffy will get snarly and sool Burbs onto them.
And Dave won't hold back, oh, no siree.
People forgive, but they rarely forget, especially in Ashes cricket.
It's not that we, as a nation, dislike the poor poor English folk as a general rule, we just HATE bastard English cricketers, jeez, there's history here chaps, nobody forgets bloody Bodyline back in the '30's do they?
Which itself was just a natural extension of WG Grace touring here at the end of the 19th century as the quintessential pompous Pommy prick, setting a blazing trail for all who followed.
Wandered into the Front Bar of The Local for a quick one over the weekend, and found the Philosopher in his usual corner - nursing this week's favoured a tipple, a whisky sour - while he was studying a story on the back page of one of the Sunday fishwraps which featured Starkers promising to go for the throat and give the Poms a bit of chin music to go on with at The 'Gabba.
Everybody knows that the Poms don't like the fear up 'em, don't like it up 'em, at all.
The Philosopher poked the paper with his bony finger and remarked "few things give me greater pleasure than seeing Poms ground into the dust, slowly, over five days".
Loose the bears on the midgets and let the gaming begin.
