Fanatical football fans,
After going through the entire summer suffering from the disgrace of not seeing a ball of first class cricket bowled in the flesh, somehow found myself at the historic Henson Park in Marrickville on Friday evening last to watch an AFL "praccy match" between the Sydney Swans and the GWS Giants.
Why, you may well ask?
A very good question.
Getting a bit toey for the new season, perhaps?
Not usually.
It was to be a serious, fully-officiated game of Rules, the Good Lady Wife works two blocks away, it was slated for a 5:30pm start, it was about 26°C with a steady sea breeze in, so why not?
With unlimited interchange, the Swans had a 29-man squad at the ready, and the Pygs turned up with 28, and from the off the Bamfords were very lenient indeed on the holding/dropping the ball rule - no incorrect disposals were paid - just to keep the game flowing.
As you'd expect in a pre-pre-season game, everyone was as rusty as a squeaky gate.
Any amount of time in the gym is a poor substitute for 'match fitness'.
That said, there were a few glimpses of things to come.
It was a willing Championship Quarter in the end as they got into their rhythm and Rohan, Rose, Parker, K.Jack, Towers, Florent all dug in, but of course everyone needs game time.
Buddy took a screamer in the first quarter with two big Pygs hanging off him and punted a huuuuge one from 60m out, handsome it was, high through the high diddle-diddle, bounced off a few cars and rolled through the Sydenham Rd gate.
Lance then ran around in the backs for a while, did a couple of laps of the oval, then came off and didn't return.
Put his feet up in cotton wool.
The Swans dug-out featured two large old-style mist spraying fans that looked like they were formerly film studio machines to keep the players cool, and Buddy stayed near.
Tom "The Pearl" Papley [who's changed his shirt No. from No.51 to No.11 this year - but that's another story] played well up front, a bloke who's always been rated in my book, Callum Sinclair, looked like a solid length of well sculpted teak, played hard, and is obviously out to make the No.1 ruckman spot his own, but they've got all sorts of problems down back except for Rampe.
The man needs help!
The new kid on the block, Ben Ronke, looks the goods with his flippy-floppy haircut, Darcy Cameron is yet another tall to replace the flaky Tipsy - who is now enjoying his much-anticipated well-earned retirement - while Ryley Stoddart, who wears a Woodsy-style head-band to hold in his '90's grunge-style look, is a prospect, and Colin O'Riordan is just plain ugly and is out of his league at present.
Toby "That Fuckin' Pest" Greene didn't play for the Pygs, and wasn't on the sidelines either.
Nowhere to be seen.
So we couldn't heckle him.
Given that it was a "no penalty" game, maybe GWS thought it a good idea to leave him out.
P'raps, yeah, Tobes could go berserk and start decking blokes, doing illegal shirt-fronts, and going the squirrel grip with no fear of suspension.
Could make the papers.
Nah, keep him in his cage for the time being.
During the first half we were sitting in the lower deck of the King George V Memorial Grand Stand, the top deck of which was taken up entirely by the Swans and Giants coaching staff, and Joisus, don't they have a few?!
SC Horse was there, but not coaching, [L'il Johnny Blakey had that task] and Longmire was first spied climbing the steep stairs into the upper deck with a very grim look on his face staring intently at his mobile phone.
Perhaps the Secret Plan is squirreled away in that phone and he was trying to unlock it?
Odd Head McVeigh [Assistant Coach] was very serious looking indeed, and he appeared even more even worrisome of because his impressive, foreboding, bald pate.
The only bloke who looked anywhere near happy was Rhyce "Rick" Shaw [Backs Coach], but with a full-bearded face like that he could burst out laughing at any moment.
You have to wonder what a natural clown is doing in the coaching caper.
Brett Kirk [Forwards Coach] was in the mix, but for some unfathomable reason apart from the general decline in mental faculties that comes with age, and the fact that he's been taking a very low profile in the job after a stellar career, we were struggling to light upon his name.
What the?
Tip of the tongue stuff.
The GLW provided the clue "Gee...who was the only known openly Buddhist bloke with one of those classic Naughtie's bouffants to play for the Swans, eh? That's him."
Stevie J and Mummy, who the Swans pinched from GWS after their retirements last year for jnr coaching roles were nowhere to be seen.
Perhaps it was too early for animosity?
Wait for the third round home game against the Giants to throw them into the box?
The Swans Marketing Dept. seriously underestimated the good-sized crowd.
Word had got out, and everyone was in, from the town drunk right through to the really seriously fully hard-core supporter.
All the sausage rolls in the kiosk were sold out before quarter time, and the beer queue at the only bar open was about half a mile long.
One bloke got sick of waiting, so he went and pinched his kid's scooter and did the one-leg hoik up the hill, then scooted down the lane to the Henson Park Hotel, and was back in his seat inside ten minutes with a choice six-pack of beer tins, having cast the child's scooter aside in a desultory fashion.
It was a free entry practice match after all.
No security.
A couple of really old folk, well into their 70's, in front of us settled in before someone who looked like their son in his 50's turned up and laid out the full cheese and bikkies platter and popped a bot of red.
The best dressed spectator surely went to the lady with wispy braids of multi-coloured hair who arrived on a lavishly festooned bicycle, then walked around behind the dug-outs in three-inch white platform shoes, wearing a short sleeveless red dress with a large white No.5 on the back, and she held a Dalmatian by a leash.
That's right, a spotty dog - a new adornment for a well-known Marrickville eccentric.
And the pooch wasn't the only hound in the ground; wherever people gather there's always canines hanging around on the scrounge.
The players didn't leave the paddock at half-time, but stayed on in huddles being addressed by the various coaches, when the female ground announcer panicked and went berserk on the Tannoy, unaware of the time-honoured tradition at Henson Park of kick-to-kick always being played at half-time [not full-time] in any game, and she started screeching "Will all spectators please get off the ground! No spectators are allowed on the ground! Can everybody please leave he ground now! Everbody, please get off the ground!" and so on.
The thousand or so people playing kick-to-kick ignored the instructions to a point.
Instead they conspired to all congregate at the southern end where the Pygmies were standing around looking at whiteboards, so Greater Western Sydney players were getting donged on the bonce by stray footballs, and kids footies were being kicked into their nuts - but there wasn't a soul playing kick-to-kick at the Swans end.
We moved to the hill at half-time because that seemed to be the favoured wing, and to get a closer view of the electronic scoreboard with our failing eyesight.
Two of the four sets of floodlights had come on as the light just started to fade to twilight, then they tried to turn on the other two light towers and everything went ppphhhttt!
The fuse box must've blown up.
Complete power outage throughout the ground, nothing happening on the coaches computers upstairs, scoreboard black, lights out in the George stand.
The blokes running the scoreboard gave up after about ten minutes and pulled down the shutters, and after about twenty minutes of the third-quarter a single light bulb came on on the edge of the score box, and the ground announcer was going "ch ch ch" then hitting the microphone a couple of times, but there were no words.
The players battled on gamely as it became harder and harder to see the ball, and no-one in the ground except the official scorer knew what the precise numbers were, but the consensus at the third break was that the Swans had kicked enough goals in the Champo to win.
And so it came to pass.
The announcement came on the Tannoy at three-quarter time at about 7:20pm..."Unfortunately due to the ground-wide power outage, we have to end the game early tonight. Thanks for coming".
Don't ask me how the Swans will go in '18 on that showing, you need to see the Gypsy for that - they know what the future holds.
But, with the blackout and everything, you can only say that the probability of going 0-6 again at the start of the season is extremely low.
So let's get ahead of ourselves here; if they go 6-0 - all against good sides too - they're well on their way to The Flag.
Cheer, cheer.
SYDNEY SWANS: 11.11 (77).
GWS GIANTS: 7.9 (51).
At Henson Park, Marrickville.
Crowd: 6,500 [est].
Note: Match abandoned at three-quarter time due to bad light.
