Barrackers,
It's been a while since the Swans have handed out a ten goal football lesson.
Let's face it, Freo were fairly hapless all night, so it turned into a light training run for the Swans, with an emphasis on high marking drills and pinpoint positional play.
In other words, a procession - a glorious procession just like the Royal Wedding, which was impeccably timed so you could see on the television the Royal Wedding Vows being taken during the ad breaks in the third quarter, with the Royal Wedding Carriage doing a lap around Windsor in the 25 minute Royal Wedding Procession straight after full-time, as the banjo was still playing.
Sweet as a nut.
SC Horse tied them up in knots with his backs - holding them to a single goal to half-time - and the Swans have got a forward line that's the goods, with the Childe Ronke the latest in a long line of top prospects over the years.
The eleven goal kickers came from all over the park, and even the Best on Ground, Lloyd, booted one cantering up from the back pocket.
The match was chockers with milestones; Buddy looked pretty ginger on his sore tootsie and is obviously out of match practice, but his second goal of the game was an absolute pearler, to notch up a magnificent 300 six-pointers for the Swans.
His only acknowledgment of this mighty achievement was to raise his right index finger to just under shoulder height, as if to say "I'm No.1, so why try harder?"
Lance Franklin now joins Tony "Plugger" Lockett as bona-fide dead-set living legends, being the only two players in world history to have kicked 300 goals for two different clubs.
The ten-million dollar man knows where he sits in the Pantheon.
Buddy could also have had another welcome week off next round against the stone-motherless last Brisbane - for reckless play - after accidentally elbowing some unfortunate Docker in the bonce, causing him to spit out a few teeth; got him good and proper, Buddy did.
But, they let him off.
It came as a complete surprise to everyone, except the Stats Guru, that Nick Smith has now played 200 games for the Swans.
Nick who? you could be forgiven for thinking.
Who would have thought?
Smiffy has always been that ever reliable back-man, possibly the best tagger in the modern game, and by all reports is a superlative mild-mannered club-man, but he's one of those footballers who has to work very hard at his limited born gifts of 'talent'.
Isn't he the bloke with the most number of games played without any Brownlow votes or something like that? So, he's obviously put in a double ton for The Red & The White without anyone really noticing, even though his name is probably among the first the selectors put down on the team sheet, week in, week out.
Nick would not be recognised by anyone walking down any street he liked, let alone being pestered for autographs, and you would expect that he would like it that way.
He's living proof that it is possible to have a very good football career while flying fully under the radar.
It came as no surprise to anyone at all that Josh P Kennedy also played his 200th for Sydney; he's got everything except a Brownlow, with the ol' hard-nut being robbed blind of that glittering prize on more than one occasion down the years.
JPK is just JPK, he was spawned by football royalty, and he's been a super-star for yonks.
One of those players who never gets injured and could go on forever -- he and Smith both played in the 2012 Premiership side, and they won't be going anywhere in a hurry until they win that bloody flag again.
Hawthorn will forever rue the day they traded JPK away in 2009.
On a minor footnote, the AFL's second experiment in China again failed miserably.
It rained throughout in Shanghai and so ipso facto it was a dreadful game of footy by all accounts and there were nowhere near the 10,689 official crowd actually in attendance at the dilapidated old Jiangwan Athletics Stadium, after a bit of old fashioned turnstile inflation cooked the books.
But in a saving grace, for the first time ever, grog was made available for sale to the paltry crowd in the time-honoured Strayan way.
Gawd, you would have needed a drink or two just to get through the exhibition of awfulness.
Poor old Gold Coast lost a minor fortune on their "home game", and Port had been there with the Suns before, all to zero-sum effect.
The powers-that-be are now talking about taking a Melbourne club there next year, but who'd be foolish enough to sacrifice a home game in outer-suburban Shangers?
The AFL is as dead as a door nail in China and they might as well cut their losses and run, given that Pres. Ping is a fanatical soccer fan, and is pouring trillions into the game to try and buy a World Cup.
They've got much bigger fish to fry than a very strange foreign game from the Land Down Under.
SYDNEY: 3.3, 7.4, 11.6, 17.9 (111). Goals: Kennedy 3, Franklin 3, Papley 2, McCartin 2, Hayward, Ronke, Lloyd, Heeney, Parker, Sinclair, Hewett.
FREMANTLE: 0.4, 1.7, 2.9, 7.10 (52). Goals: Walters 2, Sandilands 2, Langdon, Ballantyne, Fyfe.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 27,481.
Nick Smith strikes a pose before his 200th game for Sydney Swans, SCG, May, 2018. Photo: Phil Hillyard/News Ltd.
Back in the day, used to have a licence to keep a brown dog who went barking mad at the sound of whistles on the television.
She'd yap-yap-yappidy-yap her head off and run around in circles when things like the basketball and the hockey came on during the Olympics and stuff, and you had to toss the hound outside as it was not possble to stay in the same room as her because of the racket when the AFL was on, as the whistle is the soundtrack to Aussie Rules.
That canine would have gone absolutely ape-shit at yet another game of rugby league being ruined by an officious over-zealous referee's whistle....there were an entirely ridiculous 22 penalties in the game as the ref blew the pea out of the damnable thing, ending any hope whatsoever of a free-flowing competitive game of football from the off.
At the risk of rudely defaming the bastard in question, Ben Cummins is a fool to himself and a burden on the community, as well as being an utter cockhead, if he believes imposing the strict letter of the law on footballers helps the spectacle in any way.
And he's got form to boot; the last time the Tiges played Cummins, he blew 20.
In the first half, the ning-nong pings Penrith three times in a row for creeping up over the advantage line in the play-the-ball, making them technically off-side, and the fourth time they did it, he sent off the nearest offending player to the sin-bin for ten minutes...this was fine with Balmain fans at the time, as my Spy at the Ground put it "Penrith lead the penalties conceded count in the comp this season because they are dirty rotten cheats".
But, as if to even things up for the home crowd, the Bamford did exactly the same thing to the Tiges in the second half - four times and yr off, and a Balmain player in Alex Twal duly gets sin-binned for persistent professional fouls, and to make matters worse, the Panthers promptly score the match winning try against the run of play, producing the 16-2 scoreline, which never changed again through to full-time.
They had the game handed to them on a silver platter.
In the end the ref had so lost control of the match, players were openly questioning him when he tooted his flute, shouting "what was that penalty for??" as the packed grandstands shook their heads in unison asking the very same question.
Give me strength.
Obviously, the fool does not know that referee's and umpires are there to be seen, not heard, and you can tell when a Bamford is having a good game, because you don't notice them.
As it was, only Balmain's rock solid defence prevented them from being thrashed; lesser teams would have been beaten by 30+.
Penrith are the real deal this year it must be conceded, and have now gone to a clear second on the ladder and will go deep into September
The game was full of ironies, of course, as Balmain coach Ivan "Clearly It's" Cleary's son Nathan Cleary plays half-back for Penrith...father-on-son...and Nathan had a blinder coming back from seven weeks out with a rooted leg, getting one up on his dad.
And the commentators nightmare was extended as the Tiges' Malakai Watene-Zelezniak's brother Dallin Watene-Zelezniak plays full back for the Panthers.
The banterists on the telly solved that brother-on-brother tongue-twister by referring to them by their first names only.
Phew.
PENRITH PANTHERS 16. Tries: Peachey, Phillips. Goals: Maloney (4 ).
WESTS TIGERS 2. Goals: Marsters (1).
At Penrith Stadium.
Crowd: 15,081
