Whingers,
As the footy season ploughs on, with the Mighty Tiges yet again out of the rugby league frame despite the triumphant return of the Best Leb in the Game to The Spiritual Home at Leichhardt, and the well-placed Sydney Swans now at very serious risk of having a season cruelled by injury and producing a bitter winter of discontent, it's now perhaps time to dream of the summer game and those warm, lazy, hazy days in the sun.
Never mind that Straya are now fielding the B team, as the Terrible Treacherous Trio have been getting in some match practice in what might as well be cricket injun country where sandpaper is legal - Canada [currently in the ICC's 17 member Americas Division along with other world cricket powerhouses such as the Turks and Caicos Islands, Costa Rica and Belize - a Sydney 1st grade side would beat Canada in a canter], it's come to my attention that Pup is out of a job.
You heard right, no longer to be heard or seen on the telly above the thwack of willow on leather, as flanneled fools cavort about the village green.
With the Seven Network having rudely pinched the cricket rights off Nine's Wide World of Sports, sending Mr Packer into a 78rpm spin in the his poor shallow grave, there's no room for MJ Clarke in the commentary box anymore it seems.
Always had my doubts about the meejah caper as a post-game career for the great man; a cricket brain the size of a watermelon to be sure, but that whining little voice was harsh on the ear, and he was never ever popular with the General Public who took a dim view of his first engagement to L.Bingle for some completely unfathomable reason, and he had an undeserved reputation among cricket followers as a stuck-up prick, smart arse and wise guy.
It was would be of no surprise at all to now see Clarkey relocate full-time to India, where he is fêted like God - as the greatest batsman of his generation should be - and he's been spending months at a time there anyway, lately with Star TV on the IPL.
Not much point staying at home when yr treated like offal.
And Michael could always just retire to obscurity on some blissful tropical island as a welathy absentee landlord and real estate baron, and no-one would notice.
But Pup is not the only casualty in the drama, oh no siree; Chappelli, Tubby, Heals, Warnie, and that almighty English dick-wad Mark Nicholas have all been brushed by Seven as has-beens and are now lining-up down at Centrelink, with only Slats being offered a job.
They would never ever be able to coax Bill Lawry across - he was an extremely loyal Packer man and wouldn't be seen dead at Seven, content now at age 81 to remain where it's all happening in his pigeon loft for the rest of his born days.
Seven have got Tim Lane [now a "veteran broadcaster" at 66], James Brayshaw [who can ever forget Jimmy's stellar 75 match Sheffield Shield career?], and Alison Mitchell on ball-by-ball, and a bevvy of superstars in RT Ponting AO, GD McGrath AM, MJ Slater, DW Fleming, JN Gillespie, SM Katich, BJ Hodge, GS Blewett and DP Nannes in the 'experts' chairs.
What a line up!
Ricky is widely acknowledged to be as boring as batshit, Flemo is all over the shop like a mad dog's breakfast, Whispering Ooh-Ahh is just Ooh-Ah, the last time anyone ever heard of Dizzy he was hooking big barra in the Top End, The Super Kat will strangle someone or something, Hodgo is there to sharpen up his undoubted skills at giving the selectors a spray, Blewy comes to TV via an undistinguished career in commercial radio, and Dirksey's only claim to fame is a rumour that he once played for the Netherlands.
You've got to be super excited to point of drooling in expectation about all those fresh faces telling it like it is.
Might have to just carry on regardless as usual, and switch on the steampunk powered wireless - the set still works, and wild out-of-control speculation that the Strayan Broadcasting Commission would be stripped and robbed of the radio rights proved to be unfounded.
The photogenic and very well qualified Pommy, Alison Mitchell, is of note, being added to the Seven team "not because she's a woman" but in the name of politically correct gender balance.
It's 35 years since a female was last heard regularly in that masculine bastion of a television cricket commentary box in this country, the last one of course being the great Kate Fitzpatrick way back in '83.
Everybody was scratching their heads back in the day as to how Kate managed to land a job as a cricket spruiker as she came from a background as a popular stage and screen actress, people worried desperately if she had some kind of extra-curricular relationship happening with KFB Packer, and she seemed to rub the Old School Tie brigade up the wrong way everyday anyway, so she only lasted a single season.
Given that Kate is now 70, it might be too much of an ask of her to make a comeback as an Honourary Grand Dame.
Shame.
