pleasure, joy and righteous triumphalism

Bleacherites,

For an old rusted-on Balmain supporter, with Western Suburbs tendencies, there is nothing that gives more pleasure, greater joy and a sense of righteous triumphalism than to beat Manly, away.
There is a hackneyed old saying in rugby league "I support [insert name of team], and anyone playing Manly".
The Silvertails have a long and storied history of utter utter utter bastardry towards us Fibro's.
It's a Wests Magpies thing this "Clouds of Dust and Buckets of Blood" stuff, back in the late '70's when rugby league was a really violent game, and there was a class war on.
No-one has quite forgotten about it, and Balmain gleefully adopted the very deep-seated detestation of the Sea Eagles when they merged with Wests in 2000.
Saw on the TV coverage that some Manly fool on the hill had a banner which read YES. WE HATE YOU TOO.
Funny ha-ha.
My particular hatred of Manly goes way back to 1990, on my first and only visit as a biased spectator to Brookvale Oval, when Balmain's Steve Roach was outrageously sent off for 5mins in the sin-bin for constantly back-chatting referee Eddie Ward about the fact that he was being deliberately and unfairly targeted.
Blocker then had a brain explosion - but to me it was more a gesture of abject pitilessness - when he patted Ward on the head like a he was a child, in a time when touchy-touchy feely-feely of the authorities was strictly off limits for some reason, and looked upon poorly by the powers-that-be [four week suspension, rubbed out for deliberate contact with a Bamford].
As Roachy took the long, lonely walk to the pavilion - indignantly bad-mouthing any official in sight on the way - he was treated in an appalling fashion by Manly fans, who lobbed gollies and full beer cans in his direction and called him all sorts of vile perverted names.
They're all class there on the Northern Beaches.
To cut a long story short...have to consider myself very lucky to get out of that one alive, after being chased loud, drunk and disorderly, livid and furious, out of the Manly Leagues Club by a group of thugs intent on giving me a good ol' fashioned beating, and my bacon was miraculously saved by a passing Palm Beach bus.
That's very ancient history now, but you can see where the extreme animosity comes from; it's not only tribal for me, it's personal.
The Tigers hadn't won at Brookvale for a million years - the Sea Eagles are all but impregnable there - and despite a stellar start to the season, Wests were still rated by the bookies as the underdogs.
Given coach Clearly It's Cleary's game plan to date has been been entirely based on defence and denying the other team points at the expense of attack, the Mighty Tiges unexpectedly roared out of the blocks as Manly were still rubbing sleep out of their eyes, running in try after try against rice-pudding defence, to lead by an incredible 26-zip at half-time before a stunned full-house.
Manly fans booed their own players off the field at the break.
All class they are on the Northern Beaches.
The Tiges pack of forwards did what forwards should do - take it straight up the middle - and despite not having the Nastiest Man in Football, Russell Packer [knee] on hand, the Try Scoring Freak Chris Lawrence and Benny Matulino the Tongan Refrigerator did the hard yards required.
The Great Benji Marshall is astonishing everyone with his form at five-eighth, looks like he's grown a third leg, and his trademark "the step, the jink, the weave", is with us again.
Not bad for a bloke who came back to his Spiritual Home as an aged mentor and only expected to be an occasional bench-warmer at best - and now he's bringing out the best potential in Luke Brooks who's finally turning into a first-rate half-back.
David Nofoaluma and the man with the worst barber in Sydney, Kev Naigama, were really dangerous in the backs, the curiously named Kiwi, Dallin Watene-Zelezniak [a commentators nightmare], solid throughout, but the goal-kicking local junior Esan Marsters at centre three-quarter was Best on Ground for mine.
And the journeyman full-back Corey Thompson was safe under the ball all day.
Star recruit Josh Reynolds took until Round 6 to get right after doing himself a mischief in the warm-up before the first game, and is so lacking in match fitness, they sensibly wrapped him in cotton wool, and he just waddled around at dummy-half for the limited time he was on the paddock, but he did a shoulder anyway and will be out for at least another month.
An expensive flaky buy?
Will come good, you'd hope.
They look like a team, they've got some depth in the roster, and it's the first time Balmain have gone 5-1 at the start of the season in eons, after being written off by all and sundry at the start of the year as dead-set certainties for the Wooden Spoon.
They've got a game plan to suit the occasion, have knocked off some highly fancied sides with 24% of the season gone, and Cleary is now clearly developing some smart, clever set-plays.
Balmain fans travel -- in numbers; we have infiltrated the entirety of this heaving city and way beyond -- so did rather like some of the banners seen on the telly on the Brooky Hill...INCH BY INCH in alternating black and gold lettering was a nice one [possibly referring to the fact that rugby league is the most territorial of all the football codes, where field position is of critical importance, or it could have had something to do with a gigantic tusk up the runter along the 'do you slowly' line, who knows?], but the one that took the biscuits for mine was a lovingly hand-created Balmain coat-of-arms surrounded by the words TILL THE DAY I DIE.
Now, that's hard-core fandom.

MANLY-WARRIGAH SEA EAGLES 12. Tries: Thompson, Parker. Goals: Cherry-Evans (2).
WESTS TIGERS 38. Tries: Marshall (2), Lawrence, Watene-Zelezniak, Brooks. Penalty try (1). Goals: Marsters (7).
At Brookvale Oval.
Crowd: 15,456.

Found myself in the front bar at the Lord Wolseley Hotel in Ultimo for the Red and the White up against the Evil Bulldogs, so there was a fair amount of boozing and caurousing going on and not a great deal of attention was paid to the footy, and we had to wait until the racing at Woyal Wandwick had finished anway until we could get it on the "big screen" - read, a normal sized telly.
During the final quarter, fell into the company of an absolutely rabid Swans fan who creamed his jeans on the final siren, as well as a GWS Pygmies supporter [never come across one before, but yes! they do actually exist] and a died-in-the wool Geelong loony, and even though they had no skin in the game, they were jumping up and down with excitement in the final minutes.
At the bar when somebody bellowed that Buddy had butchered a certain goal [he'd left his kicking boots at his Mum's], only to return to see Lance bang one through the high-diddle-diddle, and then the Florent Kiddie ran away with the ball and scored from 40m out to extend the lead to a lovely seven points with about a minute to go.
How sweet it is, but talk about playing the classic "get out of jail free" card.
3-1 up at the start of the season sure beats last year's absolute shocker of 0-6, but they still have a long, long, way to go, and there's trubble out back and a lot of other problems for SC Horse to sort out.
Any more injuries and well, mmm.

Still, it's not that often that both yr football teams win on the same weekend, let alone on two weekends in a row.

WESTERN BULLDOGS 5.3, 7.7, 9.10, 11.13 (79). Goals: Dickson 2, Bontempelli 2, Redpath, Gowers, Jong, Dale, Wallis, Daniel, Dahlhaus.
SYDNEY 4.0, 6.3, 10.4, 13.8 (86). Goals: Franklin 3, Parker 3, Papley 2, Heeney 2, Cunningham, Towers, Florent.
At Docklands Stadium.
Crowd: 32,870.

sold a pup and Pup out of a job?

Aghastee's,

On the face if it, it seems the Seven Network has been sold a pup, and Pup is out of a job.
Hang on, maybe not...

The only thing for certain is that Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer would be revolving in his grave, screaming the foulest of obscenities.
So, was World Series Cricket all for naught?
You may remember 30 May 1979, when Packer won The Great Schism which ended after a long legal battle in complete & utter capitulation by the then Australian Cricket Board.....Nine got the TV rights for ten years, and the ABC was brushed forever.
Back then, cricket fans were simply horrified that television advertisements would intrude on the sanctity that is Test Cricket, never mind that almost 40 years later, Packer's greatest invention...one-day cricket...would be hived off to pay TV.
That's no great loss to the genuine student of the game, but Kezza would be absolutely furious.
After paying a poultice for the tennis, Nine were very clever to bid up the price to the point where they knew Seven would fork out a king's ransom to hold a very expensive baby, while Ten weren't even in the game.
Seven is keeping the domestic Test Matches on live-to-air as a sop to the anti-siphoning legislation [which they still have to get around for the one-day internationals].
It's fairly clear to those who have an interest in the media landscape that Seven will run a hefty loss on those, and hope for handsome profits on no less than 43 Big Bash League matches.
Forty-three! "More than ever before!" trumpets Cricket Australia.
Christ Almighty, they'll be playing day and night every day for weeks.
Forget the theme tune to Nine's Wonderful Wide World of Sport, let's be blunt here, the so-called "Sound of Summer" is long gone, with The Goanna, and Tony G and then The Benood, all dead.
Is Keith Stackpole still alive? [yep, 77, he is].
Why not bring him back?

Which brings us to the vexed question of who's in and who's out of the commentary team.
It is quite sick-making to think that Seven Network boss-cocky, Tim Worner - a filthy self-confessed adulterer, cad and bounder who's wasted far too much of Seven's money being in court for far too long in recent times, and resigned in disgrace from the Swans board - has the final say on this one.
The fool knows nothing of cricket.
Noted with dismay in the weekend fishwraps, that Grubby Worner is seriously considering personally bringing back a retired football caller in the form of 69-year-old Dennis "Centimetre Perfect" Cometti.
Now that's thinking outside the box, not.
The last time Cometti called cricket, Alan McGilvray was in the commentary box, and he's been dead 21 years.
Mark Nicholas is the first one out of a job because he only got it in the first place as he was KFB Packer's "go-to" and fix-it" man whenever he was in London - anything Kerry wanted, Nicholas could provide.
81-year-old Bill Lawry only really retains an interest in racing pigeons for serious money, Chappelli, Tubby and Heals are all Nine men through and through and know no other television culture, while Warnie is, well, just Warnie.
MJ Clarke can say some insightful things on the telly, but that high squeaky voice is hard on the hearing, and he is unpopular with the Australian general public, so it's something of a surprise that Pup is currently calling the IPL on Indian TV, along with Slatts, so on that evidence alone, they're in with half a chance of being re-employed.
Thank the Good Lord Joisus that that pompous pommy prick Michael Vaughan is instantly out of work, and the less said about that obnoxious gormless god-awful serial pest KP Pietersen, the better.
By some reports, James Brayshaw is good for a gig, but where's Greg "Long Donger" Matthews when you need him?
Mo's brief stint at radio commentary was excellent; he has a cricket brain as big as a watermelon, speaks his mind eloquently, and he's the man you really want when the going gets weird.
Stuart MacGill had a go at it once on TV and once on radio, but he ended up writing cook books instead and decided to continue on unabated with what some folk in cricket circles cruelly described as his "red obsession" - uninterested in beer - the wine aficionado was also considered a bit left-field because he openly confessed to reading books on tour.
Magilla the Gorilla was also a first-class arguer with Umpires, took the moral high ground against both Robert Mugabe and Kentucky Fried Chicken, didn't mind taking CA to court for $2.6M in back pay, and only recently described the selectors as "morons" for picking Tim Paine.
What more do you want in a television commentator?
Oh, where are they now?

But all that's by-the-by.
Nine still has the rights to the next Ashes in England, and various upcoming World Cups etc, entirely confusing the ordinary sensible punter who won't know which channel to watch.
Check yr local guides....but in any case, as the Foxtel people will tell you, television is dead anyway, and the future is all about "streaming"...why watch the cricket on a 65" flat-screen, when you can now view it on a 4.5 inch screen on yr telephone!?
Gee whizz, reminds me of the time after the advent of colour TV, when people used to take their new portable battery operated black and white telly's to the beach with them.
But lets get down to tin tacks here..."show me the money".
CA did very well indeed to flog the rights for $A1.182B over six-years.
Which begs the question - where does all that cash go?
My Spy at The Ground noted that at the same time the list of centrally contracted players for 2018-19 was very quietly released, which unsurprisingly did not include Smiffy, Burbs or Bonkers, who've been paid off to keep quiet.
Here's the stellar top 20 cricketers in Australia, right here, right now:

Ashton Agar, Alex Carey, Pat Cummins, Aaron Finch, Peter Handscomb, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Nathan Lyon, Glenn Maxwell, Shaun Marsh, Mitchell Marsh, Tim Paine, Matt Renshaw, Jhye Richardson, Kane Richardson, Billy Stanlake, Mitchell Starc, Marcus Stoinis, Andrew Tye.

Sheesh...a mob of world-beaters there, and playing "Pick the Captain" out of that motley lot will be like trying to pin the tail on the donkey.
What central contracts are worth is now for some reason "confidential", but at last count the top 20 get a minimum of $900,000 each [the skipper gets a premium that pushes him well over a mill], so that's roughly $18 million a year, or $108 million over the six years in central contract money.
That's chicken feed, in relative terms.
There goes all of Packer's promises to pay professionals properly.
Never mind last years protracted "pay war" which, after the industrial action of striking for the Australia "A" tour of South Africa, was appalling handled and botched by one J.Sutherland - the players said they came away with "a better revenue-sharing deal".
Really?
For sake of argument, let's leave out the match payments and bonuses, they've settled for contracts that are worth 9.13% of the TV revenue.
So where exactly does the other 90+% go?
There's no question that the powers-that-be, the boss cocky's, head honcho's, top banana's, grand poo bah's, big kahuna's and the vast legions of hangers-on down at Cricket Australia HQ are paying themselves handsomely rather than spending it on fuzzy intangible things like 'grass roots' cricket, of course middle management would be bloated to simply outrageous proportions, and the size of CA's media department alone surely must rival the almost 100 press officer's employed by the AFL.
Staff to burn and, now, the number of in-house lawyers at CA would be staggering.

The upshot is there will still be at least two competing live radio networks [you'd hope - how much are the radio rights worth at the minute? Jack Shit?], One-Day Internationals and T20's can go to hell in a handbasket behind a paywall as far as the purists are concerned, and in the final paralysis, there will be nothing for it but to actually go to the ground and start barracking, drunkenly.