"he is an awesome Australian"

Hillites,

Now that the football season is over, it's perhaps time to turn our attention to the forthcoming season of the summer game and look forward to wasting whole weeks at a time during the Silly Season to the soundtrack of the thwack of willow on leather and the ripple of polite applause, by asking - what would Pup do?
The Great Man has been unusually quiet of late, apart from copping a right bollocking for endorsing some fly-by-night get-rich-quick scheme being offered by Dodgy Bros. Pty Ltd of Brisbane.
No one has asked for his opinion on the cricket lately, and Michael has certainly been entirely silent on the subject of being so rudely brushed by Channel Seven for their brand spanking new commentary team for the you-beaut whizz-bang cricket telecasts we'll all be enjoying this summer.
Clarkey was always very leery of being a selector; he voluntarily gave up the job that had been foisted on him when he was skipper on the well grounded principal of "you pick 'em, I'll play 'em", but would Pup have come up with this mob of 14 to play Pakistan in two tests in Abbers and Doobers next month?

Tim Paine (c), Ashton Agar, Brendan Doggett, Aaron Finch, Travis Head, Jon Holland, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Shaun Marsh, Michael Neser, Matt Renshaw, Peter Siddle, Mitchell Starc.

Labuschagne [what kind of South African name is Marnus, anyway]? Neser [another South African]? Dogget? Has anyone ever heard of these people?
31-year-old Jonny Holland [played two tests two years ago] in a battle with Ashton Agar [four tests on very friendly tracks] for the second spinner's spot?
But most remarkably, the ranks of the quicks must be very thin indeed with the selection of Peter Siddle, who'll be 34 in November.
OK, Cummins and Hazo are both very flaky and prone to being rooterised by injury, but where are the young tear-aways coming through the ranks? Nothing to see there.
Must have been under the misapprehension that Sids had given the 1st class game away yonks ago, or was he brought out of retirement for this one?
In any case, did spot the brand new Strayan coach Alfie Langer on the telly [he had the decency and sense to wear a sports coat, wisely eschewing Boof's ill-fitting bag of a track suit] saying that Sids had been picked only because "he is an awesome Australian".
A tried and true servant of the game is Sids, a class bowler in his day, with vast experience being the perennial bridesmaid at 12th man - no doubt about that - but "awesome" is a much overused word these days Alfie. Maybe he's just trying to stay in toon with the Yoof of Today?
No idea.
GJ "The Big Show" Maxwell has been cruelly snubbed again [Alfie: "there's a method to our madness"] due to him bagging the selectors.
As usual, there are too many Marsh's in the squad, and note also, that no Vice Captain has been named.
Perhaps they have done away with the meaningless office, after it was so was thoroughly put through the wringer by 'Burbs Warner of sandpaper infamy?

Of more import is this year's major touring team, India, so it's pleasing to see that they have continued their grand tradition of being unable to win away from home, being tidied up very nicely by the Poms 4-1 thank you very much.
The Evil Viral Rat had excuses galore after India were tipped for their best showing in the Heart of the Empire for a decade, but the fact remains that the Poms are as good at pitch doctoring as the Indians, and the Sub Continentals will never do no good on bouncy wickets in the Wide Brown Land, because they don't like it up 'em, don't like it all.
There are now inevitable calls for Kohli to be sacked as Captain...the Times of India said in an editorial that he "dons the roles of chief ball polisher, sledger-in-chief, DRS caller, umpire chatterer, schedule decider, huddle addesser, and media hater" implicating he's too busy to actually lead the team.
It's also come to my attention that India has a player called Pant, so no doubt he will be dubbed "Trouser" by the louts on the hill in Straya...as in "oi, drop ya daks, Trouser, and gissa look".

So there is hope yet to avenge Straya's last tour of India, the sheer absurdity and stress of which drove Smiffy off his rocker, out of his mind, and over the edge.
But not much.

On a side note, it should be put on the record that Alastair Cook CBE knocked up yet another ton in his final match in the test caper [33 tons at an average of 45], so he's now a dead-set certainty for a knighthood...but did overhear someone saying the other day about Cookie "I cannot remember a single shot he played, but I do remember watching him bat for a very long time".
And James Anderson is now the leading all-time fast-bowling wicket-taker in Test matches - that's probably just a function of the number of games played these days [Jimmy's been going around for 15 years] - but he aint no Ooh Aah Glenn McGrath, who he's just overtaken on the record list, oh no, siree.
After playing with him for 12 years, Cookie was asked what he thought of Jimmy, and he just called Anderson "a freak"...enough said.
There's also been some Pommy song and dance about a ball that the Englishman Adil Rashid bowled being comparable to Warnie's "Ball of the Century".
Absolute poppycock. It was a good nut to be sure, that turned at right angles a country mile outside off [could well have been called as a wide] on a made to order pitch, but it had none if the sheer poetry of Warnie getting Gatters, so that's all that can be said about that.

At least the Powers That Be have thought far enough ahead to give the Strayans a two-test warm-up in over-cooked far-away lands ahead of the Indian summer, but it's a shame that the magnificent old Sharjah ground is no longer in use.
It's an approrite metaphor for the state of cricket Down Under at the minute; the ground was abandoned, left to rot in ruins and was over-run by goats and chickens, but it did manage to rise like a phoenix from the ashes in time to host the 2018 Blind Cricket World Cup final back in January, and nothing of note has been played there since.

the true horror of the debacle in all its ghastliness

Fellow aghastees,

Out-muscled, out-played, out-smarted, out-foxed...GWS Pygmies too strong, too fast, too good on the day.
Sydney Swans taken apart.
That's about the truth of it.

Never mind not turning up on the day, Sydney were worried out of it from the very first bounce.
After spending the whole season losing at home and winning narrowly on the road, the Swans have a knack of losing finals badly when absolutely nothing about Plans A, B or C goes right.
Finals footy is never pretty, especially in his day and age when the main plan of attack seems to be to try to trap the opposition in a sandwich press and prevent them from scoring at all costs.
Little wonder people north of the border call Rules "aerial ping-pong"; apart from rugged tackling and fully-fighting, there's not much skill on show or joy for the spectator seeing the ball being aimlessly knocked about in a rolling maul of flying bodies, as no-one has enough time to hang onto the pill and do anything with it before being crunched into the turf.
The fans pay to see long kicking and high marking in good strategic play, but that seems to have fallen right out of favour in the now hyper-defensive game, where goal kicking has been reduced to the rovers banging it on the foot in hope, or just soccering goals off the ground.
It could have been worse - a whole lot worse - for Sydney, if the Greater West had kicked straight - 10.19 is a stoopid winning score, and there were 25 behinds in the match, the same number as the Melbourne/Geelong final the night previous, which was similarly unattractive.
In four finals over the weekend, 101 behinds were scored [and how many of them were "posters"?], with just 74 goals booted.

Reports started coming in at half time that the ground was eerily quiet as the faint strains of the Fat Lay singing could be heard wafting in over the Randwick End.
Only minutes into The Champo and it was plain for all to see that there wasn't even any point in praying to the various patron saints of Lost Causes, because it simply would do no good - they were shot birds.
No Nick Davis Come To Save Us here.
With two goals on the board, and despite some highway robbery by the umps going on, soon after half-time My Spy at The Ground shot through a message that got the Bush Telegraph in the corner of the lounge room chattering "don't think you can even blame the Bamford's for this one".
The Swans can usually carry a few passengers and still get by with a narrow win, but not when the whole team is travelling in steerage.
In the 'best' column in the scorebox they might as well have put "All Played Poorly", as it was impossible to pick out a Best on Ground for the Swans.
By the last break, Super Coach Horse had pulled great tufts of Ashley & Martin hair out of his bonce, and with still only two maximums on the scoreboard, he started to feel sick in the guts.
There is a school of thought that says it's better if your team fails to make the finals, rather than risk making utter fools of themselves by being bundled out of the picture in the first week in a right royal trouncing of a thumping.
No one saw it coming, least of all Longmire - he was trying to hide his face from the cameras in shame...oh...the sheer embarrassment of kicking only four goals, total, for the match.

While all this was happening the Stats Guru was completely apoplectic and going off his rocker on the beads, predicting all sorts of total shockers for the record books.
The Guru began to make loud strange wailing sounds, when the abacus revealed the full enormity of the disaster: At three quarter-time, the Swans still needed another goal just to equal their worst ever finals showing in the history of the known universe, which was way way back in the mists of time in 1899 Grand Final when South Melbourne managed to kick 3.8 [and lose by a single point to Fitzroy at the Junction Oval].
In the pathetic denouement when the "mercy rule" should have been invoked, if there was one, it became apparent that the true horror of the debacle in all its ghastliness had not happened in a very, very long time...the match was, just for starters:
*The Swans' lowest score at the SCG in 385 home games over 36 years since South Melbourne were relocated harbour-side for the 1982 season.
*The lowest score by any team in a final since Collingwood's 2.2 (14) in the 1960 Grand Final which was played in an atrocious mudbath.
...the list goes on and on and on, down to the very last funny-ha-ha one *The lowest score by any team that has included Lance Franklin.

Only one player needs to be singled out by name, and of course, that's Toby "Fucking" Greene of the GWS Pygmies
This bloke has a rap sheet as long as your arm over the years, is the dirtiest of filthy arseholes, and the most hated player in the game at the minute.
Never mind his "Russian Cossack dancing-style marking technique" - putting his studs in the chests and guts of the opposition at least three times [it's plain old kicking - with intent - and should be a reportable offence, for mine] - going in with a knee to the head is just low dog act, and yet he got off with a paltry $2.5K fine.
With his form?
WTF?
What were the Bamfords doing, where were they looking?
Greene should be hounded out of the game altogether as he will never learn, and in the interim, rubbed out for the rest of the finals series just for being a cunting rabid animal.
The very worst of the worst.

Some football boffin somewhere spouted the true-ism "the Swans are good enough to make the finals, but not good enough to win them".
So, quite obviously, Sydney need to be ruthless in the off season, letting below-average players go without so much as a sausage, and then getting into the market to buy/trade at least another ruckman, another tall forward at a minimum, and some half-way decent midfielders, all with at least 50 AFL games under their belts, then try to pick up some more gun rookies in the draft, and that's just to be competitive in 2019.
A very tall order indeed.

In the meantime, after Sunday Smoko down by the Magic Waters of the winter ocean baths, which involved a fair bit of navel gazing, Mad Monday was cancelled.
With steam coming out of his ears, SC Horse took the entire team to The Room Full of Mirrors down on the Balmain Road to take a good, hard look at themselves.

SYDNEY: 1.4, 2.4, 2.6, 4.6(30). Goals: Papley 2, Parker, Ronke.
GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY: 2.3, 4.7, 7.11,10.19(79). Goals: Greene 3,Cameron 2, Himmelberg 2, Coniglio, de Boer, Ward.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 40,350.

John Longmire, Press Conference, SCG, Saturday 8 September 2018.