couldn't hack it

 

Fellow Exhaustee's,

So, it's come to this.

Heard some chattering on the weekend that suggested "it's a minor miracle that the AFL actually got to a Grand Final under the circumstances" and attendant heads were nodding in agreement. Yep, the legion of doubters and naysayers - the Eternal Pessimist chief among them - have all been proven wrong yet again. Here were were back in April/May fearing that the season might just sputter to a halt and be abandoned before a conclusion could be reached. Remember back then? When they shut down the game for eleven weeks - no footy at all - and if you recall, folks were saying during that time that they weren't actually missing the footy that much after all, and were prepared to write off this season and think about next year. It took the Powers that Be a full two months to work out what fark to do to "save" the shit show, before resuming in empty stadiums. The deathly quiet didn't last long, as they suddenly needed professionals to mix real crowd noise as fake sound effects, making sure they didn't play the laugh track by mistake. No, there was far too much money on the line just to let the thing go, call it off as a bad joke, and ponder how to reshape it again next year. Nah, far too much cash in the balance. Too many people wanted the rent. And what a tortuous road they were forced to go on while still losing a fortune - coaches, players, strappers, runners, roadies, toadies, hangers-on...trapped for hundreds of days in the Corona Bubble, permanently on tour with the wife and family in tow in a fair degree of Iso Luxury, but no stray roots for the single player or anyone else for that matter. Hanky panky entirely out of the question. Exchanges of bodily fluids strictly prohibited. Still, they never had to cook a sausage; just train and relax in the resort pool with the swim up bar (no shortage of those on the Gold Coast). After the complete evacuation from Marvellous Melbourne, it must have come as a shock to go home.

The Dear Ol' Swannies (16th) didn't make the grade for the second year running - couldn't hack it, Covid Hub life was not for them. Mad Monday pretty much passed without incident, given that they would have been drinking so much piss in Iso anyway, that it barely mattered any more. And no one has ever mentioned whether drug testers were also embedded in the Bubble. But at least there was no necessity to dress up in women's clothing and get utterly shit-faced, as was the usual course of proceedings just a few short years ago. With so much tradition and hallowed turf junked by The Covid, it's surprising there's been hardly a whisper about the fact that the MCG's god-given and holy right to host the Big One of a Saturday afternoon - the last one in September to be precise - has been so shockingly trampled upon. Most footy fans you'd suspect - afraid of being labelled as 'whingers' - would say "ah well, if they have to play it in Brisvegas, it is what it is", not realising that they're opening the floodgates. Never mind that it'll be played at night at the 'Gabba with a full house at the end of October. They could have played and televised games from Woop Woop for all it mattered and The Lord Gillon made damn sure they did, as footy blundered on relentlessly in an unprecedented spree of daily games, yep, footy, seven days a week. Anyone remember 33 games in 20 straight days? Me neither. But when the Swans were asked to play not one, but two games at the world famous Cazaly Stadium up there in Cairns in The Build Up to the wet season, well - that was beyond the pale as far as severely disadvantaging a team goes, for mine - playing in the tropics in the Build Up? WTF? That's when folks go troppo. Weirdness on a stick - just too much to ask of a club even in a 'home & away' season that will forever be remembered for its strangeness. The game may well have been 'saved' against all odds, but the 'brand' has taken a big hit. The Age - the paper of record down Mexico way - ran a story headlined "The Fairest AFL Grand Final in History"...outlining no home ground advantage, no rabid fans frothing at the mouth, no one has ever played a night grand final before...blah blah blah - well, what utter tosh. Even putting to one side those boring-as-batshit defence-driven low-scoring games, if nothing else, unless you are a native Melburnian on fragile ground or a member of the Mickey Mouse Club, it was a shit season, nothing more, nothing less, never mind it being the "season from hell".The Age then backed that up with yarn "as Grand Final preparations warm up in Brisbane, we take a walk around an empty MCG". Oh dear...

So, here we are now.

Melburnians can look forward to Friday off, for what's now morphed from a Grand Final Public Holiday into some kind of Thank You Public Holiday for putting up with so much shitfulness for so long, with even the Govt. claiming the footy forestalled a mental health disaster in the Athens of the South. Hang on...it'll be the Melbun Cup in a minute, betting turnover will break records and nervous bookies will see huge cash plunges reaching untold heights. Then that's followed by the traditional Silly Season and Xmas music in lifts, you know how it goes.

So, what would Pup do?

Go to the races, that's what. MJ Clarke was spotted at Royal Randwick over the weekend for some hastily cobbled together race worth a tasty $15M for the express purpose of debuting his latest lie-down for the magazines, after some amicable divorce proceedings left him short of a house in Vaucluse and a few million lighter. He now finds himself in very much reduced circumstances, forced to use that whiny voice of his on a breakfast radio show that no-one listens to - deliberately. Currently attracting 0.4 per cent of the available Sydney audience. That's a tough life. Podcasts on how to cook kale have better ratings. Unfortunately, the former skipper, best bat of his generation, and MCC Life Member is rarely asked for comment by the papers these days so yr unlikely to hear his broadcast position on the revenge now due on that turd Viral Rat Kohli. You'll remember the little shit masquerading as Indian captain, who drove Smiffy completely bonkers in India in '17 with some outrageous antics that will never be forgotten or forgiven. The prick sent Steve so far round the twist, a year later he'd spiralled into the madness of sanctioning Sandpapergate. Smiffy has now well & truly served his two year ban from the Strayan captaincy and could well decide to come back as skipper and monster that peasant Kohli, employing the use of the gigantic tusk up the runter in an unfriendly and unwieldy way. Could be an interesting summer. Who knows, when everything is a day-to-day proposition?  At least overcrowding on the bleachers shouldn't be an issue in an Iso cricket world; Test match fifth day crowds will still be Test match fifth day crowds, pandemic or no pandemic. Bring on the lazy, hazy, plaguey days of summer...

 

 

on the retirement of The Try Scoring Freak

Aghastee's,


Amid the chaos of the of the up-for-grabs Grannie going to Brisvegas and the ensuing uproar over why it wasn't "given" to brand new Perth or "desperate" Adelaide, there are, believe it or not, bigger fish to fry. Of course The Powers That Be selected a certified shithole as the venue, where the dog racing track was only removed in 1993, and nothing much else has changed since. The AFL knew full well the value of the enormous sacks of Palaszczuk Pineapples stacked on the back of trucks that would be coming their way for graciously awarding That One Day in September to the Gabba. The QLD Premier herself says "it's a proud moment for Queensland" and that's that. Despite the howls of protest from everywhere except north of the Tweed, the 'other contenders' should have known all along that after bleeding money left right and centre during this frightful season for the football authorities, cash is king and the honky dollar does the talkin' from now on. Either way you look at it, it's history in the making or the thin edge of the wedge with the divine right of Melbourne to host The Big One finally and so rudely stripped away. The first night Grand Final means that will now never change back to Satdee Arvo.

Depending on who you talk to, Lord McLachlan is either the shining knight on a white steed who "saved the season!" against all odds (and will no doubt lap up the plaudits along with his considerably bloated stipend), or he'll leave the game with a permanently damaged 'brand'. To be fair, good on them for getting this far with all the incalculable number of unexpected twists and turns thrown up by The Corona, as well as contributing to the mental well-being of the poor poor punters in the Melbourne metro area, but for everyone else, there's that nagging feeling of a set up here. As My Spy At The Ground remarked about whoever wins this year's convoluted Premiership flag "their name will always have an asterisk next to it in the history books". At the end of the day, when its all said and done in the final paralysis, there is no getting away from the fact it's been a shit season. You do have to wonder what kind of drugs the schedulers were taking if they reckoned sending the Swans to the "build up" to the wet season in the tropics was a good idea. Folks go Troppo in that weather, for Chrissake!

SYDNEY: 2.0,  7.2,  7.4, 10.7 (67). Goals: McInerney 2, Parker 2, Clarke, Hayward, McLean,

Rowbottom, Taylor, Wicks.
MELBOURNE:   2.3,  2.4,  3.7, 6.10 (46). Goals: Brayshaw, Brown, Harms, May, Neal-Bullen,

Spargo. 
At Cazaly's Oval, Cairns.
Crowd:  3,119*.

It's been yet another winter of discontent as predicted - virus or no virus - when both yr teams were out of contention weeks ago. The Dear Ol' Swannies are rotating rookies to "blood" them in the big time, with the season that long gone, while over in rugby league la la land it would take a mathematical miracle of which the Stats Guru would be proud for the Mighty Tiges to make the finals, what with their "horror run home". Never mind the weekend's stunning upset 34-32 win over the evil Silver Tails, the recriminations and blame game at managerial and dysfunctional board level go on as usual - Balmain, as always, the soap opera of footy politics.

No, at times like these, when all hope is lost and there is very little if anything left to cling to, it's always comforting to find shelter in nostalgia. So it would be most remiss of me not to mention the impending retirement at the end of the season of Chris "The Try Scoring Freak" Lawrence.
When you clearly remember him being the youngest player ever to debut for Balmain at age 17 (the year after the Miracle Year and Premiership in 2005), and recall most everything he's done in a storied 14 year career at the top, it tells you just how rusted on yr fandom is. If memory serves, he scored a load of tries from outside center in his early games and there were cries from commentators numerous of "Chris Lawrence! Untouched and under the black dot! The kid's a try scoring freak!", and the nickname stuck. Around the club he is known by everyone as "Rowdy" due to his quiet off field demeanour, but on field he becomes this brute of a demon. A 6'2" 100 kilogram bulldozer with a genuine turn of pace and legs like farkin' tree stumps. The Freak is a very solid unit for a centre, and he's always reminded me of those kind of people who can just waltz through solidly locked doors, let alone anything left ever so slightly ajar. The 250 gamer has never had much of a jink or a weave on him, but Rowdy's got one of the best "steps" in the game; at his best he could pivot on a sixpence any which way he liked, and he's got a great eye for the slightest gap in the opposition defences and would dart his way through, touch the ball on the ground in the in-goal, and then just throw the pill away. And when he didn't have the ball he liked to throw his weight around. Particularly so when he lost a yard in pace and made a calculated and clever late career change to switch to the pack and play in the second row, which prolonged his playing days by five years. He was always very rugged in defence, but as he matured he made opposition players pay with some tremendous hits - he liked to line blokes up from a long way out and smash 'em shitless in a shirtfront, but he was as good if not better at the try-saving flying-tackle around the legs. The longevity of his career has surprised even the man himself - he's come back from his fair share of serious injuries, including a dreadful late-career face re-arrangement with eleven fractures, and he lost count long ago of how many times he's just broken his nose. And now it's time to take a bow and leave the battlefield at the age of almost 32, with the body finally giving up him.

A superlative clubman, he achieved the now rare feat of playing every single one of his 250 games in The Black & Gold. The one club man is hard to find these days. The Freak is already a Life Member at Balmain after playing 200 games, and easily reserved his place in the Pantheon - that special place for old champions to rest of their laurels somewhere out there on the Balmain Road. Lawrence somehow managed to get picked for Australia six times in his stand out 2010/11 seasons, but he never got the nod for State-of-Origin and it will be difficult for anyone to take the moniker of "the best player never to play for New South Wales" off him. Vale - The Try Scoring Freak. Like part of the furniture for 14 years, you will be sorely missed.

MANLY-WARRINGAH SEA-EAGLES 32. Tries: Harper (2),Taufua, Gosiewski, Funa, 

Trbojevic. Goals: Cherry-Evans (4).
WESTS TIGERS 34. Tries: Nofoaluma (3), Doueihi (2), Mbye. Goals: Doueihi. (5).
At Brookvale Oval.
Crowd: TBA.

the complete evacuation of Melbourne

Brave Beserkers,

The Australian Football League has completely outdone itself in these difficult and uncertain times. Footy has gone from being a simple Satdee arvo game to an utterly meaningless sideshow...20 days straight, yep, football every day for 20 days, with 33 matches including double headers. That's more like a Big Bash cricket hit'n'giggle, but with rain. Too much confusion. If it wasn't in doubt before, it's now exposed for what it is - a desperate bid to keep the TV rights alive and some cash coming through the front door to offset the enormous cost of the bubbles - and we're not talking Bollinger here - and everything else. The stated aim of these shenanigans is to further compress the season by two weeks in order to prevent the Grand Final clashing with the Cox Plate. It will now be on the same day as the Caulfield Cup, which immediately prompts the question - which is the most important, time-honoured race? Remember, by now, we should be deep into the pointy end of the season and debate should all be about who will make the top four. As it is, the poor folks remaining in the ALF Fixtures Dept. are pulling the hair out of their scones in great tufts. Of course, all this has absolutely nothing, zilch, zip, to do with the fans.

The AFL did very well to implement the complete evacuation of Melbourne well before it became a super Covid hotbed in order to save the season, but everything remains a day to day proposition - anything could happen to entirely derail the comp tomorrow. Things becomes more farcical by the hour it seems, especially with the Ladies Football level of goal scoring seen at present. Week before last, the Swans posted their lowest score in several decades, but there's no way of knowing exactly when they kicked fewer goals, because the Stats Guru is asleep at the abacus as we speak.

Now, if you think you are the only one who reckons this is all bullshit, think again. According to several articles by well-respected sports writers seen mid week - you should ever underestimate tribalism and it's just so great to have the footy back, and fabulous football is the one thing that keeps the desperate, but Marvellous, Melbourne alive in winter, and there are legions of fanatics down Mexico way who's mental health literally depends on it, in an "anything is better than nothing" scenario.

Gawd crikey - we all know that Melbourne is the only city in the world where people will turn out in good numbers to watch two flies crawling up a wall, but this is well beyond a joke - given that Melbournians now have no chance of going to any ground anywhere in the world this year.

While the numbers in at the SCG hasn't been published, some crowd figures are starting to filter in - and the "open the gates and they will come" theory doesn't stack up. Take the local derby in the Golden West where the new Perth Stadium has a nominal capacity of 60,000 and there were no restrictions as WA hasn't had a case of The Covid in yonks - and yet only 25,306 turned up. Over at Adelaide Oval (capacity 53,500) only 13,579 showed to see the Pride of South Australia go 0-7 for the season to be firmly rooted at the bottom of the table, running stone motherless last (just behind the Swans).

SYDNEY:           2.1     5.3      9.3         9.6 (60).      Goals: McCartin 2, Aliir 2, Papley 2, Hayward 2, Clarke.
GOLD COAST:  2.3     6.7     10.13      13.14 (92).  Goals: Weller 2, Rankine 2, Day 2, Anderson, MacPherson, Sexton, Lukosius, King, Swallow, Holman.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: Not published.

The Rugby League is making a better fist of things being confined to the East Coast and NZ, and at least they won't need daily footy to scurry through it. Rugby Union, in contrast, blunders its way to bankruptcy and oblivion,
and the less said about that code the better. It's always mightily pleasing to see the Mighty Tiges win to nil at the Spiritual Home, but the television commentary became very tiresome as the boffins kept moaning "it's just so, so,
sad to see the legendary Bronco's reduced to a shadow of their former selves". That's true - Brissy is really struggling - but there was no "that's not to take anything away from the Tigers who are putting on a brilliant football 
exhibition here", which they did. Yet again, Balmain take for granted.

Under normal circumstances in pre-plague days, folks would have been fighting with each other to get into Leichhardt Oval for this one. But with a nominal capacity of 20,000 (any more and Leichhardt is downright
dangerous with the serious potential of crowd crushes), they couldn't even fill the 5,000 cap on spectators - there was no turning them away from the turnstiles, with just over half the allowed number of fans turning up and
braving it.
Nobody is in any great rush to expose themselves here.

WESTS TIGERS 48. Tries: Luke Garner (2),  L.Leilua (2), Grant,  Marshall, McIntyre, Walters. Goals:  Mbye (6).
BRISBANE BRONCOS 0.
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 2,633.
   

footy joins the mickey mouse club as the walls come tumbling down

Fearers,

You have to be surprised that there are apparently no howls of protest from Essendon fans about their Bombers being effectively rubbed out for the season. It may be because the season is already rooted, and has been from Round One, and few of them, if any, still care.

Connor McKenna. Very flakey. Negative last Wednesday, irregular Friday, positive Saturday? Mmmm. He must have got himself into some nitty-gritty situations where there was the deliberate exchanging of bodily fluids, otherwise how else would have he picked up the killer virus? Touching a contaminated door knob during an open inspection as he looks to snap up some bargain Melbourne real estate on his bloated stipend? McKenna has issues with homesickness - we know that - but sending him back to Northern Ireland again would probs be going a bit too far. That said, there would have to be some old school die-hard Bomber's supporters who'd reckon it's a good idea. Then, lo & behold, Connor tests negative yesterday? Cured in four days? WTF? Is that a double false positive or a double false negative, or both, or what? Too much confusion.

The intrinsic unfairness that The Corona bought to the new 'season' has been amplified into a meaningless echo chamber. There's no fixture list beyond Round 5 for a start off. Certainty is at zero. Essendon are down a game (as are Melbourne - has anyone asked them how they feel about that?), and no-one has any idea if it will ever be played. The AFL Boss Cocky glibly said last Saturday "we may have to treat it as a bye". Neither side would be happy with sharing the points. Some say it's lucky McKenna only took out one other player as a "close contact", but how so? He's still out of the Bomber's next game through no fault of his own. Is it just lucky that their whole backline didn't get ruled out? Do we now consider positive players and their close contacts as mere 'injuries'? How does the rest of the comp feel about the new outright ban on 'contact training'? Or the absurd notion of splitting up your backs and forwards in tactical training, so they don't lose a whole swathe of the team front or back in the event of a mass outbreak. Really? Those struggling with match fitness - and there are plenty of them - might as well kiss their year goodbye. A lot of players don't have their hearts in it as it is, and even less will now, as they ponder whether being a footballer was the right career move after all. It's a severely time-limited career for most and will never ever be the pot of gold it once was. The AFL is like a flexible and agile free-form globule at the moment, capable of mutating into a dead loss at the drop of a hat. 

With most of the players living in Melbourne (and how many of those live in the recently declared 'hotbeds'?), you'd have to suspect that the only reason the AFL season hasn't been postponed yet again is the TV rights; they have to keep playing to fulfill their new contractual obligations. Otherwise it's another shitload of dung flung into the spinning blades. And how Seven must be kicking themselves...gleefully announcing before the start of Round 3 that they'd renegotiated the TV deal, saving themselves $87M in the process. That's the first time since 1971 the broadcaster has paid less. Then, almost as soon as the signatures are affixed, a player tests positive. The television rights instantly deteriorate even further in value as yet more gawkers at the telly slip away and continue to find something more entertaining to watch/do than a Mickey Mouse comp with no crowds apart from wankers in private boxes and a badly mixed canned soundtrack. Never mind the AFL being down another $87M flogging a dead horse - their business model was a shot bird as soon as it was bitten on the arse by The Corona - and no one has any clue about fixing it, because there's no certainty, going forward, about anything in this crazy mixed up world, anymore. By rights, the AFL season should have been up to Round 15 by now, in a 23 Round season. That's two-thirds done and we should be talking about who's going to be who in the finals. It's cold. You do the math.      

NORTH MELBOURNE   2.3,   3.9,   5.11,    8.12 (60).  Goals: Brown 3, Zurhaar, Ahern, Hall, Dumont, Simpkin.
SYDNEY                         2.1,   5.3,  10.8,    10.11 (71). Goals: Papley 2, McLean, Hayward, Dawson, Blakey, Heeney, Rowbottom, Taylor, Parker.
At Docklands Stadium.
Crowd: 0.

As Dapper Dan down Mexico way makes it even tougher for the AFL, the rugby league caper continues on its merry way undaunted as the walls come tumbling down. It's not a 'national' game - limited to the East Coast - with outliers in Melbourne and Auckland, so internal hard borders are of no consequence. 'The Bubble' was burst after last weekend's games, and they're letting the players loose on an unsuspecting public for the first time in months. They're free to get up to all kinds of hanky-panky. God, help us all. Teams return to their usual home grounds, with the exception of the NZ Warriors, who stay in flip-slops on the Gold Coast because they are stuck, and can't go home. And from the first weekend after EOFY, up to 25% of a ground's capacity will allowed to be opened up to suitably distant mug punters. There's been no directive on whether the bars will be open.  Not that they will come in their droves, but pre-Covid, 10,000 (+) in a modern stadium was the size of a 'pretty good crowd' in Sydney. Then again, as soon as one spectator tests positive - which is highly likely - the gates will slam shut again and the turnstiles will rust over.

Don't mind a great deal where we are really - do you?  The care factor is starting to bottom out - but it's not very often in any season of following two teams, that they both win on the same weekend. Balmain and Townsville have history, so this is good too...although with the half-time score at 34-0, the Mighty Tiges took the foot off the pedal, when back in the olden days when things actuially mattered, they should have won by a cricket score.

WESTS TIGERS 36. Tries: Musgrove, Leilua, Brooks, Aloiai, Jennings, Mbye. Goals: Mbye (6).
NORTH QUEENSLAND COWBOYS 20. Tries: Feldt (2), Drinkwater, Marsters. Goals: Feldt (1).
At Campbelltown Sports Ground.
Crowd: 0.

try of the decade

Grizzlers,

How the Mighty Tiges could lose to a team that hadn't won a match in almost a calendar year, after scoring the Try of the Decade! is beyond me. Two kicks and nine sets of hands to put the pill under the black dot, then they took their foot off the pedal, potted a field goal thinking it's all wrapped up - then they lost interest, only to be pipped on the hooter. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in a classic mixed metaphor.

In truth, it's not quite beyond belief - it was complacency pure and simple - and it would never have been allowed to happen at the Spiritual Home in front of a full house. Coach Mr Magoo did not like it. He's wielded the axe, weeding out five passengers, saying he is sick to death of inconsistency. Aren't we all? It's been going on for years. But it was very sad to see The Great Benji Marshall among the scapegoats and dropped for the next game. The Living Legend is not having a bad season, but he's not livid about it. Benj is "shocked and disappointed" as you'd expect and the less said about his replacement in Josh "The Imposter" Reynolds the better. Coach Magoo has either lost his nana, or partaken of mushrooms, or both. Then Benji causes a "bio-security scare" by kissing a female reporter who'd been sent to Balmain to check whether the story really was true. You can't make this shit up. In any case, can someone please tell me what-the-fuck is going on? The only thing certain about any of this is the utter uncertainty about everything. Holy cow.

GOLD COAST TITANS 28. Tries: Proctor, Don, Hipgrave, Kelly, Sami. Goals: Taylor (4).
WESTS TIGERS 23. Tries: Nofoaluma (2), Doueihi, J.Leilua. Goals: Marshall (4). Field Goals: Marshall (1).
Crowd: 0.
At Lang Park, Brisbane.

The AFL makes a triumphant return to the paddock this week, and will struggle big time with no fans. There's more at stake here than in the league, which is a far superior game for television, as the aim is too keep the ball in the centre of the frame - there's not much need for wide shots, let alone panning across the non-existent crowd. The host broadcaster certainly got the cost of the TV rights way way down - while there is not a mug punter in sight and the Fat Lady can't be heard singing. The AFL's suffering revenue took another huge hit, right there. While the excitement among footy fans about the season resumption hasn't exactly reached fever pitch, the players are stuck in a bubble waiting to burst under a no bonking scrubbers regime - surely even they will lose interest soon enough under the circumstances, if not from first game game back. You do have to wonder what they do for their jollies locked up in that hygiene-driven bio-security hub. It's only a matter of time until some idiot busts out of there like a wild boy breaking free. Mark my words.

Being a chardonnay socialist to the bootstraps, my views on letting a few suited corporate types back into their poncy private boxes as the first bunch of spectators allowed in the ground are well known. WTF? That really got on my goat. Rich bastards whose interest in the game is minimal get first suck of the sauce bottle? Really? Utterly outrageous. Splash some cash and the dollar signs on the hungry tills at AFL HQ light up like Xmas trees, while the poor, broke, busted football loving pensioners freeze their arses off in the grimy blocks of inner suburban Melbourne as they wait to be pushed out of the igloo. That's not to mention the die hard fans who renew their club membership year after year after year because that's what their father did, and his father before him. What of them? The rusted-on life-long loyalists? Snubbed, brushed and ignored, they might as well be dead to the Powers That Be for all they care. The honky dollar is king.

Just on a pragmatic basis, with maybe a 1000 limit on spectators, surely you'd have the cheer squads as the first folks back in for a bit of action on the beaters against the advertising hoardings as some opposition loser is attempting a lousy kick at goal, and then going all delirious when he misses. That's what the TV viewer wants. Crazy club lunatics! The ones who make the banner every week, those kind of people - but no, it's oh, thanks for yr decades of work chums, but we forgot about the banners the players run through to get onto the field to start the game. Jesus. If the TV broadcaster really wants action, why not bring back the dancing girls? How old schoolers pine for the long lost good old days and all those terrific dance moves that the Swanettes used to put on. Marvelous stuff. When the crowd limit goes up to a couple more thousand, then you can put on the half-time entertainment! The little leaguers doing the run around, but this time you broadcast the childish madness in full. It'd be terrific! As it is, the color and movement extends to card board cut outs in the stands, complete with the faces of serial killers and even Mein Führer after fans paid to have their images put on the dummies' faces. The last person left in marketing has been taken out the back and shot. At least they didn't use Judy dolls.

The corporate types should be the last people you'd let back into the ground. Have you seen how these entitled people behave? Have you seen the unconscionable conduct they get up to with access to a free full bar? Nah, let the real fans slowly drift back into the ground to resume slurping pies and pouring warm beer over themselves. The NRL will return to "normal" sooner than the AFL too, given a 15K+ crowd is a good one in suburban Sydney, but is unheard of in Melbourne where ordinary games get twice that. The glorious "re-opening" of football is going to get very touchy when The Members start getting antsy about it - and they will - after HQ went without them playing "ghost games". And it's not as if there will be any great rush back either; it won't be a case of open the gates and they will come. Punters will still have the fear up them, with good reason - this coronavirus can kill a dude. "He went to the football, and never came back alive" will become a wild viral meme hashtag thingy. Complacency doesn't only extend to Balmain losing the unloseable game.

bring back the Wally Golly Guard

Disappointee's,

What would Pup do (apart from being in isolation with his soon to be divorced wife and child after his 'personal secretary' sensibly fled the love nest for fear of being trapped)? That's the burning question on everyone's lips. Don't you read the magazines? But the sad fact is that this is the end of spectator sport as we have come to love and know it - quite possibly forever. As the AFL and NRL are being all Bolshy about getting back on the paddock sometime in May/June, there have been very well respected medico's in the world wide infectious diseases caper who are quietly saying that as long as the novel coronavirus exists in any part of the world, it would be very prudent to limit public gatherings to less than 50 people. The Chief Medical Officer has very clearly expressed an opinion that anything prone to attracting large crowds, such as sporting events, will "be the last things to come back". People are listening to him, not clueless sports moguls.

50 people in at the footy? Socially scattered throughout the stands, as they sit among movie props and cardboard cut outs to make up the numbers? In any case, Associated Press is reporting that with soccer games in Europe hoping to recommence in empty stadia sometime next month also, the Bundesliga has calculated that to run a game from the players down would require a minimum of 213 people in the ground. That is the absolute bare bones. "The number of journalists attending would vary from country to country, but that could easily be slimmed down", they report. A match played last month in Cologne had 600+ folks in - all directly related to coaching the two teams or running the ground and the TV broadcast. How many assistant coaches, let alone hangers-on, does a football team need?

The fall out is mind boggling. A helluva lotta footy people are out of work. Little wonder those in charge of professional sport are at a complete loss. National Rugby League CEO Todd Greenberg could see the writing on the wall and made a quick smart exit from the game - not because of accusations from the broadcaster that he's been wasting and mismanaging their money for years - he's gone because Peter V'Landys was white anting him, and he doesn't want to be mired in it when the whole damn thing implodes after going belly up and people are looking for scapegoats. Best to run as far away from it as fast as you possibly can under the current circumstances. It's very difficult to see them playing again anytime soon, when at least two or three clubs, maybe more, will by definition be illegally trading while insolvent if they try to turn out a team. No gate receipts means throwing bad money after worse and chucking the team under a bus, to mix a cliché. The broadcaster will soon get very sick of it as ratings plummet with no fan involvement on any level (a quick survey of club 'apps' reveals whatever PR staff they have left on can only turn to video highlights of old games and dreadfully boring stories on what the players are getting up to in lockdown - The GWS Giants ran a highly distasteful photograph of Toby "Fucking" Greene reading the stock market reports in the paper with the glummest of faces, poor shit. You have to feel sorry for the bloke given the savage haircut he's taken on this one, surely?) No one liked the emotionless single round where they did play without crowds (even tho' that now seems like ancient history, it was just five weeks ago), and if they start doing it week in week out, interest will fall away to nothing as the broadcaster punts the games to the back channels. Eventually The Network will say "look, we are losing money on this hand over fist, so we're not going to run it". So what are you left with? Footy games in grounds bereft of spectators with no TV? That'd be like me standing in this room delivering a lecture on futility to the four walls, who wouldn't be listening anyway. Grainy four camera coverage streaming on your tiny mobile phone screen with no soundtrack as the way of the future, anyone?

Even if they were to foolishly open up grounds to all comers by year's end - no one will go - have they even realised they'll have to deeply cut ticket prices in an era of mass unemployment? What's more, people will be worried sick by what other folk - particularly away fans - might be carrying in with them in the way of the lack of basic personal hygiene more than they ever have been before. Not only will opposition supporters just smell bad, they may well be harbouring evil germs meaning to do you harm. Takes me back to 1989 when rugby league living legend King Wally Lewis, playing for Brisbane, spat in a fit of pique upon the bonce of the Gold Coast's Jimmy Cowell for being a total nong - they hated each other's guts - and Jimbo fired a well placed fleshy oyster straight back into the big King's eye - and then it was on. What a stink! They both coped token fines, but weeks later Wally, captaining Queensland, was in Sydney for a State-of-Origin match where he saw New South Wales fans in the stands wearing the now infamous hand-made improvised "Wally Golly Guard" by the thousands, just in case he lobbed a lolly over the boundary fence for something that might have been said. Perhaps there will be a business opportunity here for a Corona Golly Guard to immunise you from the screaming idiot in the row behind spraying you with a fine mist of saliva every time they open their yawning rictus for a loud screeching barrack? Some kind of personal protection bonnet in a club colours arrangement, perhaps? Never mind the fun of having Mexican beer poured all over you.

Make no mistake footy is in disarray. Raelene Castle didn't quit as CEO of Rugby Australia because the board lost confidence in her, no, she went having Israel Folau and a TV rights debacle on her hands, which was a fine ol' clusterfuck before any of this happened that sure as hell should have bankrupted the joint. Plus, the code is a very hard sell; she knew well enough that rugby union has always been riven by Old School Tie factions that shall not be moved by New Money. Crikey, they can't even decide what kind of competition they actually want, having failed miserably in the transition from "amateur" to professional, which is now very old hat indeed in the world of big money sport. Plus, of all the football codes, union is by far and away the most batshit boring thing you could ever watch on television - the ol' pigs rooting in mud thing epitomised. Great game to play, shocker to watch.

The AFL are talking about some kind of mysterious "hubs" where footy is to be performed in a vacuum for the camera, after the NRL's "rugby league island" fantasy from "Project Apollo" fell through for some obscure reason. What, no dancing girls? The National Soccer League was dead, buried, and cremated well before any of this plague & pestilence appeared. So that's finito for sure, as they go into receivership with nothing to sell in a fire sale. The National Basketball League will continue to sputter and spurt as it has done for its entire existence, the Super Netball won't play in gymnasiums with thousands of screaming fans crammed together on the bleachers anymore, and the Olympics is kaput. Stone dead. It'll be a very tough ask to get the enthusiasm and "care factor" going for Tokyo 2021. (In a Great Depression, world travel will be the province of only the leaisured wealthy anyway). Bring on competitive wall climbing! It's the end of the road for that crazy conflated idea of the Baron Pierre de Coubertin. What was the dude thinking? "Faster, Higher, Stronger" will no longer cut the mustard as everyone now focuses their laser beams entirely on survival and resilience. The once fabulous IOC gravy train has ground to a shuddering halt, and will never move out of the siding again. Current Olympic plans would send Paris and Los Angeles fully broke in any case.

By now "nothing will ever be the same" "and "it's all a day-to-day proposition" have already become lame platitudes, but nothing's more certain than spectator sport becoming an entirely different thing altogether, and maybe, just maybe, for the better. Or worse? Who knows? With the exception of Melbourne, the days of the "enormous crowds" look done for, and all you'll be able to do is read about the "tremendous atmosphere" in the lil' old history books or give some old timer a drink or three and they'll tell you all about how marvellous everything was back in the good old days. "Open the gates, and they will come" has always been a myth anyway.

The 2020 football season is toast. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. Perhaps the only thing anyone can be vaguely confident of 'going forward' is the crowds at next summer's Sheffield Shield matches won't change that much. After a long, cold, bitter winter of discontent, The Man and His Dog will still turn out to watch first class cricket. No one else will. And the Dear Ol' Swannies and The Mighty Tiges will finish the season with a win each.

empty interregnum

Disappointee's,

If anything good was to come of the weird-shit opening round of the AFL it was the-powers-that-be finally answering my years-long call for shorter quarters in Australian Rules.
Said it before, say it again, the game goes on for far too long.
Who on earth has got three hours these days to watch a game of footy, when the matches are seemingly on at all hours on almost every day of the week?
It was fine when all of them were played on a Saturday afternoon, but in this day and age of instant gratification?
They should stick with the 16 minute quarter instituted for no-crowd football, if and when the season resumes, and they should go further.
It's always been a mystery to me why the clock stops when the ball goes out of bounds.
What's that about, especially as the "deliberate' was being enforced to the hilt under last year's swathe of rules changes?
Shorter games would also mean new tactics and game strategies for extra interest, and it might even reduce the very high injury toll, which you'd have to think the players would be all for as no one wants be down
in Sick Bay drawing half-pay.
A win-win situation.
But if an empty stadium emphasised anything, it's something hundreds of thousands Melburnians, Old Adelaidians and Denizens of the Golden West have known since the invention of the telly - Australian Rules is a crap game on television.
You hardly see any lead up work except in occasional wide shots, you don't see the jostling for positions in the forward lines when a side is pressing for goal, and you never see the defensive players whose
sole job is to close down star players in opposition sides.
None of that appears on the Unblinking Eye.
David Rhys-Jones won the Norm Smith Medal for shutting down Dermott Brereton in the only MCG Grand Final ever to be graced with my presence in 1987, and yet Dave wouldn't have been seen on the Crystal Bucket
as Dermo couldn't get a kick.
There is simply no substitute for being at the ground, and as My Spy at the Ground remarked "If people can't go to the footy and cheer on their side, then what's the point?"
Quite right. Football doesn't work sans the Roar of the Greasepaint and the Smell of the Crowd.
There is no "A Wonderful Day Like Today" without it.
The premature end to the season after one game is a blessing for the Swans, as another of My Spies suggested the Red and the White (and the Crows for that matter} "won't trouble the scorers much" when it
comes to tallying up the Premiership Points in the denoument to see who's in the Top Eight and who's not.
That's if they even get the abacus out of the dusty cupboard in the Club Secretary's office.
It's a lucky thing for the AFL that they have deep pockets - made even deeper by their heartless intention of reportedly laying-off as much as 80% of their staff due to the current difficulties.
The lack of gate receipts is the club's problem, and HQ want nothing to do with it..."we've got our own problems, fellas".
When the clubs run out of money and stop paying their players, what happens then?
Will they cry poor? Will footballers have to line up at the CES and apply for jobs that no longer exist in order to pick up the dole?
But the shit will really hit the fan when the sponsors want their money back, and the TV broadcaster demands the rights contract be re-negotiated in a world where network television is rapidly dying anyway, and nobody's got the
faintest clue about what the future holds.
Seven would be glad to wash their hands of it, the way it stands now, as they will lose money hand over fist in an industry that's barely profitable, if that.
And what are the players to do with themselves now they're unemployed?
Training would have to be out of the question as 'social distancing' is impossible - there's far too much snot and sloppy spit flying around the practice paddock.
It'd be an infection hotbed, and put whole teams to sleep.
Gym work? You are kidding.
Suppose they'll just have to follow the North Melbourne lead and host all night house parties with plenty of grog and gak.
It's as good as time as any to get off one's tits.
And don't suppose the drug testers will be coming a knockin' on their doors in the foreseeable future, as they would have been laid off too, and it would be too dangerous anyway.
Whether or not the result actually stands is beside the point - it was a very unusual unique farcical match - and as long time followers of The Red and The White have pointed out - a win is a win is a win, and you'd always take
the four Premiership points if they're on offer under any circumstances.

ADELAIDE: 6.0, 7.1, 9.2, 11.5 (71). Goals: Walker 2, Lynch 2, Fogarty, Stengle, Atkins, Sloane, Murphy, Davis, Jones.
SYDNEY: 3.0, 8.3, 11.4, 11.8 (74). Goals: Heeney 4, Hayward 2, Kennedy, Blakey, Gray, Papley, McCartin.
At Adelaide Oval.
Crowd: 0.

Seeing an empty hill at the Spiritual Home was both eerie and depressing. It was as if the ghosts of past Balmain greats had emerged from the Pantheon and were stealthily haunting the joint in utter confusion.
Never seen Leichhardt Oval that empty.
Reminded me of sitting on that same hill back in '89 with a heavily pregnant Good Lady Wife and a couple of our mates in driving, torrential rain.
It had been raining for days, the grass on the hill had turned into deep mud and little rivulets were pouring off the mound and onto the concourse below.
You could hardly see the game through the pelting precipitation, and the thud and thwack of the tackles was about the only thing that could be heard above all the splashing and sploshing.
Got no recollection of who the Mighty Tiges were playing, let alone the final score, but the lasting vivid memory was there was hardly another soul in the ground apart from The Man & His Dog.
"The joint's empty! There's nobody here!" as we marvelled at ourselves being such fools wearing entirely useless plastic poncho's.
Surprised to see that elusive human-canine duo hadn't snuck into the ground undetected somehow, and the TV shots of some flag waving pissed idiots trying to look in over the barbed wire topped galvo fence were truly pathetic.
Such pathos.
There's a balcony on the back of terrace house there that overlooks the ground that would afford a fine view of the game - but I have never once seen it occupied by anyone during a match.
In 35 years.
Yet, when the ground was dead empty, that perch was full of chardonnay-gulping canapé-chomping supreme wankers, who were displaying no interest in the footy, only in waving at the TV camera's.
Look at me! Look at me! Knobs, they were, of the highest order.
Enough to make an Ol' Balmain Boy go off in the direction of sticking the fingers down the throat territory.
The Tiges had started the season off well enough winning their opening game on the back of a Benji Marshall "masterclass" against St George-Ilawarra in Wollongong - which did have a crowd of 9,137 in the rain - after
ScoVo had graciously allowed them in before banning large gatherings, mainly so the Hillsong Conference out at Homebush could continue on it's merry tongue-speaking way on the Sunday.
Now that's entertainment.
But Balmain had it coming to them in this game with a defence that was so piss-weak it was a shock to see the hopeless mess they were in out back, even to those who've lived through nigh on a decade without making
the finals.
And when the "Dog Rooter" scored a very soft second-half try for Newcastle it left a taste in the mouth that was most unpleasant. Made me want to spit out a gobful of gloop.
The Rooter of course is Mitchell Pearce, the son of the famous Balmain champion, legend, and immortal Wayne "Never Played A Bad Game" Pearce.
You'd have to hope that Wayne didn't feel the need to hang his head in shame, as everyone knows it must be very tough to have spawned such a disappointing deviant son who plays for the wrong team.
He's too good for that.
Before the season began the so-called expert pundits were asked to publish their predictions of the season's results, and no-one put Balmain finishing anywhere above 14th and many had enthusiastically backed them for
the Wooden Spoon, not very quietly confident they would finish stone motherless last and they thought the 7/1 on offer were luxury odds.
And in the likely event the season is delayed for a long time, it could even sound the club's death knell, unless some White Knight comes to the rescue, but you'd think they'd be in very short supply during the current interregnum.
Balmain has been short on cash for decades, buying and selling the wrong players and hiring coaches who were out-and-out gibbering duds and wanted their grossly bloated stipends paid out.
The merger with Western Suburbs was ill fated from the off, resulting in a totally dysfunctional board of infighters and backstabbers who couldn't organise a chook raffle, let alone work out two bob in the coffers.
The Tiges have been more than broke more than once.
Like everyone else in the country, how are they meant to survive with an income of precisely zero?
Here too the sponsors will all want their money back as the Leichhardt turnstiles once again rust to a ghostly silence.
For the faithful, it's a fine ol' time to close down the season. Only postpones the inevitable. They've tried to kill off the club before and failed, and they'll try again in a Doomsday Scenario.
Supporter solidarity and eternal vigilance are the only things standing between us and them.
It was shaping up as yet another Winter of Discontent for the die-hards anyway, so, as the Philosopher said while nursing this week's favoured tipple down in the Front Bar on my last visit to The Local before they closed the pubs
"might as well just throw your arms in the air" and may the Good Lawd Joisus help us all.

WESTS TIGERS 24. Tries: Nofoaluma, Thompson, Reynolds, Leilua. Goals: Marshall (4).
NEWCASTLE KNIGHTS 42. Tries: Tuala (2), Ponga, Barnett, Mann, Lee, Pearce, Watson. Goals: Ponga (9).
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 0.

unlucky in love

Canine Fanciers,

It's always very sad to hear of the end of a love affair. Still, the terribly upsetting recent news is not all bad for a bloke who'd willingly roll over and let MJ Clarke give him a root. Felt that way ever since falling in love with Pup on seeing him for the first time in the flesh as a raw rookie playing for NSW v WA in the Sheffield Shield at the Newcastle No.1 Sports Ground. That day he put on a century partnership with ME Waugh in a batting exhibition, and at one stage looked so comfortable against the bowling, he tonked a mighty square-drive that soared high wide and handsome...one bounce off the asphalt and over the ground's perimeter fence, whereupon the pill bounced a time or two, and then gently rolled across half a dozen netball courts, before plopping into Mullet Creek. Saw it off the bat and all the way into the water. Despite the best efforts of gangs of yoofs looking for it, lost ball was the call. And that, my friends, was on the 23rd of January 2003. Now if that's not true love, then tell me something different. Been the man's biggest fan for 18 years, and in all likelihood, he doesn't even know it.

So it's a crying shame that Michael found himself in the most unfortunate position of having to move out of he and the wife's love nest, a "$14M Vaucluse mansion", to "another of the couple's properties in Bondi". Of course, Pup's always been unlucky in love. But if you believe the papers - and why shouldn't you - "Kylsy threw him out the back door without so much as a sausage". So, let's make this perfectly clear, MJ Clarke is no cad or bounder, oh no siree, a man of principle he is, who went away when he was told to leave in no uncertain terms, it seems, never to go back.

Most unfortunately, it will certainly further tarnish Pup's already tawdry reputation with the General Public of Australia - who have never liked him, never will and there's a fair bit of enduring hate out there too. As it is, he's hardly in town anyway and spends as much time as he can being a property baron in India with a net worth at a very conservatively estimated $US40M. (Never mind that the divorce will be a tasty lawyer's picnic). It's in India where he is lauded with much adulation and where his champion cricketing career is quite rightly, without question, widely revered. As it is in England, where he is one of the very few Life Members of the Marylebone Cricket Club, so he is always most welcome to a gin'n'tonic on the chit in the Long Room at Lord's any time he likes. Yet, in Australia, he is treated like offal. Please tell me why? It's the most enduring eternal mysteries of my fandom of the man that he is so detested by the Great Unwashed. Why, oh, why? The greatest batsman of his generation - intensely disliked by the Plebeian Masses, and Simon Katich. It doesn't make sense and it's just farking outrageous, for mine, considering his admission to the cricketing Pantheon. There's ample room for me to go on and on about it here endlessly and Blame the Bingle, that sport of thing - but being in a charitable mood, that you will be spared. You'd have to think he's happy enough now flogging Wagner snake oil, pushing other sponsor's barrows(Buy More Hublot Waches!), doing the Indian celebrity appearance circuit, and making poignant comments from time-to-time on Star TV's coverage of the IPL, which keeps him on the sub-continent for months at a time. Over there, he'd never ever be short of a root, and quite obviously, he's not short of a bob. So what's not to like?

At least, at 38, Pup's old enough now to know better, now he's learnt to put ambition away after finally realising he's done it all. For years after his premature retirement he had enormous difficulties just getting used to the concept of resting on his considerable wreath of laurels. Now he knows there's nothing left to prove. He's No.1, so why try harder? And he's clever enough to make sure he has a very lush pasture indeed to be put out to. Only one thing is for certain, he'll need some very powerful pharmaceuticals for his chronic case of Shagger's Back.

And just to confound and spite me, with a new gig in commercial breakfast radio, soon enough Michael Clarke will be proclaimed Bachelor of the Year and he'll start doing nude centrefolds in Cleo magazine, with a fetching batting glove tastefully concealing his manhood.

All power to his oars.