missed the mark

 

Disappointee's

'They had their chances' was the call at full-time, so it wasn't as if there was any bad luck involved, but there it is. Ba Boom! End of the section, season over. Just like that. Your ticket is punched. Swans go down in the Elimination Final by a single, solitary point to dash the hopes of the die-hard faithful.

After a see-sawing affair looked like turning into a rout at three-quarter time, and the match was seemingly gorn for all money by any estimation, like everyone, My Spy at The Ground was getting pretty frantic in the final quarter, when the Swans then threatened to have a very good dip at winning the thing after playing catch up football all day. But they missed the mark. Just to prove the Swans made a complete mess of the last quarter a message from the ground sputtered through on the Bush Telegraph in the corner of the lounge room. "Bell out of bounds, Haywood poster, Hickey behind, Wicks hits post, Bell yet another poster, Buddy behind". If any of those had been converted, South Melbourne would have won in a canter. But, alas, it never came to pass. Seven behinds in the final stanza will not win a final. You can talk all you like about whether they shifted from Plan A to Plan B too late, but it really was a shame to go out in the first week of the finals after finishing sixth. The Battle of the Bridge thing fell out of favour a long time ago, as there's never been any if this cross town rivalry thing that can get pretty bitter and twisted in natural two-team towns like Adelaide and Perth, so that passion was missing in Launceston, of all the joints on the face of this Gawdforsaken earth. GWS have no supporters anyway, as they're an entirely manufactured entity. As far as can be discerned from the Pygs opening finals performance, the key thing in their favour seemed to be that demonstrative thug in the form of the now rubbed-out Toby Greene. Please. Do not get me started on Toby "Fucking" Greene. Without the crazed wildman of the west, Geelong should gobble them up like kippers for breakfast in the semi's.

But nah, the game was full of coodabeens, shooldabeens, miteabeens and all that jazz. Buddy needed to go deep into September to really threaten the one million career goals milestone this season, so will now have to wait for the big time pay day - the 9th year of his contract with The Red and The White. Throughout the regular season the Swans never lost or won by very much for the most part - not many thrashings - but the Covid bubble arrangements skewed everything. For the second season in a row, the Premiers will have their name painted in gold on the timber panels down at the clubhouse with an asterisk denoting the *impossible conditions the season was played under.  In the final paralysis, it was a mighty effort just to prove the pundits wrong and make the finals at all. If you told any of the players before the season started they'd be playing a finals match in north Tasmania in search of a crowd, any crowd, they would have laughed you got of the room. Going forward, as they say in newspeak, even with a very solid basis for a Premiership winning side, they'll still need a little judicious off season buying in the player market, some trading away of their consistent passengers, and ushering through a fresh crop of draftee's. You'd have to think the future for the Sydney System looks bright. It's a margin call in these difficult and uncertain times, but maybe even brighter than the future of the AFL itself. Everything is very much kept in-house. The Swans could have done a week long pub crawl around the picturesque Apple Isle dressed in women's clothing to celebrate Mad Monday for all anyone knows, as it wouldn't have made the papers.

'They only had themselves to blame', was the call at full-time. And for once, losing by the slimmest of margins was hardly the fault of the Bamford's; they had a reasonable enough game, so there's that. Damn it. Back in the day there would have been the whiff of me pouring a beer tin over me bonce with smoke pouring outta the ears, but not so nearly as bad as the worst experience in world sport: losing the Big One by a point in a score measured in hundreds of them. It never fails to remind of that time many, many, many moons ago now, finding myself in the kitchen of an ordinary suburban home straight out of 1950's Adelaide with my inconsolable the then first mother-in-law in a distraught stupour. For a woman who only very rarely drank anything at all, she'd managed to put away the best part of a bottle of cooking sherry and was wobbling around attempting to slug some from the neck slurring to no-one in particular "a bloody point, a bloody point, a bloody point, a bloody point", and apart from the occasional grunt of "shit!" was incapable of saying anything else. The 1978 SANFL Grand Final was the cause of her angst and grief. Her beloved dear boys from Sturt, who were unbackable white-hot favourites, had been beaten in a classic snatching defeat from the jaws of victory scenario by those ruffians from Norwood by "a bloody point" with the absolutely insane scoreline of Norwood 16.15 (111) d. Sturt 14.26 (110) before a crowd of 50,867 at the now demolished Footy Park. 41 behinds in a match to produce a result of a "bloody point, a bloody point"...ah well, as they say in the classics...there's always next year.

SYDNEY:  3.2 , 5.4,  8.6, 10.13 (73). Goals: Heeney 4, Franklin 3,
Papley 2, Bell.
GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY:  3.2, 9.3, 11.7, 11.8 (74). Goals: Greene 3, Sproule 2,
Himmelberg 2, Hogan 2, Taranto, Lloyd.
Crowd: 8,635*(capacity restricted).
At York Park, Launceston.

 

anyone's Flag

 

Denizens of the Bleachers,

Things always augure well from the off when you find yrself sitting in front of the colour telly and the marquee player in yr team kicks the Goal of The Year inside the opening ten seconds of the match - and then goes on to boot a bag. Just what the doctor ordered. Lance B Franklin was fed the ball out of the ruck from the centre bounce, dodged a few tackles, steadied about 60 metres out, no leads going on, an open goal, and he thought to himself "I can kick this myself" before honking a whopping left foot drop punt that sailed through the high diddle-diddle with distance to spare. Under usual circumstances, the packed crowd at the SCG would have gone absolutely ape-shit at the sight of something so high, wide & handsome after the season the Swans have had. Instead, The Red and The White found themselves stuck between a rock and hard place in the wastelands of Docklands with not a soul there, apart from what the Germans have calculated at about the 630 people required to run a professional stadium game.

Never mind that Sydney have been on the road now for 70+ days, they can see the light at the end of the tunnel now it's business time in the pointy end of the season to mix a few metaphors. They know the more they keep winning, the more they're kept from home. That's the least of their problems with Sydney littered with beshitten LGA's and sundry hotbeds of infectious disease. If they lose, so be it, but the way things stand with one of the most even top eights in years where everyone's a chance, it wouldn't be hard to motivate them to drive deep into September. At this point, it's anyone's Flag.

Super Coach Horse has been satisfyingly brilliant this year, decamping to the inter-change bench more or less permanently mid-season, leaving the real coaching to Dean Cox up in the box with the legion of assistant coaches, while Horse barks orders and gets in players' ears at ground level while the game is going on. Horse has even been on the curly phone hotline to upstairs. The Good Lady Wife is an excellent lipreader, but she's been stymied by the Super Coach wearing his mask on his chin and only pulling it up when he knows the camera is on him. Longmire can see a golden opportunity here in the twilight of his coaching career - wouldn't it be nice to cap it all off with another Premiership falling into your lap as other teams fall for the trap? The roster, without really serious injury all year, has come good a couple of seasons early by most calculations. Looking back on what the self appointed pundits said at the start of the season they were ranking the Swans to finish in 11th-16th. No-one predicted a 6th placed finish, least of all more than one squandered opportunity to make the top four.

Former Crows coach Don Pyke has to be given a lot of credit for his strategic planning on each and every opposition team week-in week-out all season long. He's the one who devises plans A,B, and C...and rarely this year have they had to go beyond Plan A. Adelaide must rue the day they got rid of him, given they were lucky to finish 15th without him. The "Sydney System" has worked a treat yet again. Bring on a few excellent youngsters through the Academy every year - one out of four has really excelled; Erroll Gulden is but a babe in the woods at 18, but has "long term star player" written all over him. And Sydney's knack of rehabilitating washed up players has done wonders yet again with Tom Hickey at long last fixing one of their long-term weakness - a genuine ruckman. The mid-field is crackling along just in time for the blowtorch-to-the-belly end of the season, and you can't fault a back line who can put up a concrete rendered brick wall whenever required. With Buddy closing in on 1000 career goals, the forward line can suit themselves.

And so we come to Saturday's elimination final against modern day arch rivals the Greater Western Sydney Pygmies at the only place that will have them - York Park, Launceston. Launey, eh? York Park has a nominal capacity of 19,500 but even though Tassy is entirely plague free you won't see them hanging from the rafters. With interstate travel banned, not many, if any, will understand Sydney, as they get all their footy news from Melbourne, where the Swans are rarely, if ever, mentioned; the Pygs even less so. The Stats Guru has been busy with the abacus getting a handle on the run up-to the deciders, and notes that the Swans have won seven of their last eight minor round matches against teams placed 9th, 5th, 7th, 11th, 8th, 10th,18th, and 16th at the time - so they haven't faced a top four side in yonks and there's really no way to get a handle on finals possibilities, but in amongst those wins, Sydney towelled up GWS by 26 pts. If nothing else, it will be one of the weirdest finals in eons, never mind that it should by rights be at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Home ground advantage is long dead now, and will probably never return.

SYDNEY:  6.4, 9.7, 13.7, 21.10 (136). Goals: Franklin 6, Papley 3, Heeney 3, Wicks 2,
McLean 2, Mills, Dawson, Gulden, Hickey, Rowbottom.
GOLD COAST :  0.4,  3.8,  5.9,  6.13 (49). Goals: King 4, Corbett, Sexton.
At Docklands Stadium.
Crowd: 0.

There really are fewer better places than Browne Parke, Rockhampton to bury once and for all the Mighty Tiges hopes of making the finals after playing sudden death for weeks now as they clung onto the mythical "mathematical chance" of sneaking into the top eight. Rocky, eh? With the NRL having been forced to flee to QLD under the Corona protocols and in search of a crowd - any crowd - the Tiges turned up at a ground described in its Wiki page as "the home of rugby league football in Central Queensland since the 1890s". It's just a shame rugby league didn't come to Queensland until 1908. So it's a ground with tickets on itself, for start off. Be that as it may, on the strength of the 50-20 debacle, they would have been eaten like kippers for breakfast if they'd accidentally made the season enders anyway.

So what went wrong in yet another winter of discontent as the poor Tiges blundered on, unable to make the Top Eight for the 10th consecutive season?? That's a long time between drinks for the hard-bitten supporter to not even have a whiff of the finals, let alone a Premiership. It was hardly the fault of Coach Mr Magoo. Madge just didn't have enough to work with, and the "greater than the sum of their parts" thing just never happened for him. It didn't help recruiting a new skipper in James Tamou who had a dreadful season, and is a self-admitted failure as a captain "there are things I have let slip for too long and I put that all on me". At least Tamou knows that he's first in line to take a good look at himself down in the Room Full of Mirrors on the Balmain Road, if not clean out the club's back door without so much as a sausage. A major league blunder they could never fix.

Daine Laurie is a bright young talented full back who's set to go places. David Noafaluma continues to bring vintage brute strength with skilful creativity to the wing, but he turned up still pissed from the night before at training one day recently and he put it down to a lack of genuine motivation and everyone seemed sweet with that; he got a slap on the wrist axing from the "leadership group" - whatever that is - to which he is sure to have said "you can have it". The Mighty Tiges have a very handy goal kicking five-eighth in Adam Doueihi, who's taken over The Great Robbie Farah's mantle as "The Best Leb in the Game", while the pack is a perfectly serviceable unit without being brilliant, but they're more mobile and robust than most with a ranking chief in the Samoan mafia, the 115kg bulldozer known as Luciano Leilua, leading the way - but that does not make 13 players to put out there on the park every goddamn week, Pando or no Pando. You can't do too much with a serious shortage of depth, not to mention talent, on the roster.

Die-hard Tiges supporters would have been quite happy if the Corona had just halted competitive sport altogether, and are now disappointed that'll never happen after Tokyo. Balmain ended up playing too many players trying to fix up the weak links in the chain and plug the holes in the dykes, but it never worked. The miserable crowd at Rocky was testament to the popularity of the match. Given that ScoMo is No.1 ticket holder at the Sharks, it's not that surprising.

The whole shebang is enough to drive the long suffering Tiges punter completely spare, but year after year we still come back for more punishment & insanity, even if all hope was lost in the wilds of Queensland after a decade in the doldrums. And there's still two more rounds to play in the regular season, so they didn't even get to have Mad Monday in the tropics and break out of the Corona bubble - yet. For the truly rusted-on, The Glory Days have well and truly gone away.

CRONULLA-SUTHERLAND SHARKS 50. Tries: Mulitalo (2), Metcalf (2), Kennedy (2),
Katoa (2), Wilton. Goals: Trindall (6).
WESTS TIGERS 20. Tries: Chee Kam, Maumalo, Taulau, Tuilagi. Goals: Doueihi (2).
At Browne Park, Rockhampton, Qld.
Crowd: 2,863.

 

Hamburg Olympic bid 2015

 

Grandstanders,

While "The Quiet Games" in Tokyo were a pleasant enough diversion from more pressing matters, it goes without saying the lack of atmos was palpable. There were some stunning athletic moments and achievements of course, but with no screaming fans going apeshit or legions of that special kind of Japanese lunatic that would have turned out at every venue to marvel at, well, it wasn't the same. Nothing is the same anymore, least of all the future of spectator sports. Let's face it. It's been all downhill since Syderney 2000, and those days have well & truly gone away. The AFL Grand Final to be staged in Perth and the decider in the National Rugby League to be played in Auckland in order to have some kind of of crowd - any crowd - rent-a-crowd - gives you an idea of where this is all heading.

The good burghers of Brisbane better be careful what they wish for just at the moment when everything is nothing more than a day-to-day proposition; the denizens of the city of Hamburg got it spot on a few years back now - seen on the streets of the city in the lead up to the 2015 referendum on bidding for the 2024 Olympics, in which the resounding vote was NO...

...so the Games went to Paris/Los Angeles (LA was meant to have 2024, but they swapped with Paris for 2028. No one asked why). There were no other bidders. The Corona is the only thing that's changed in all those years...and, oh, and the entire lack of interest in staging the Olympics. The deeply privileged & entitled, absurdly ostentatious and astonishingly corrupt multi-billion dollar business that is the International Olympic Committee might have something to do with it...sorry Brisvegas, but there are bigger fish to fry. Never mind the games' impending death knell at the heavily boycotted shambles that will be the winter Olympics in Beijing next year.

 

 

Mr Walker

 

Casual racists,

It's well known that Tex Walker is as thick as a brick and can hardly string a sentence together, but who knew he's also idiotic imbecile? Never mind him always being the flakey show pony who couldn't pull a Brownlow vote to save himself as he only ever had one good game in four and has been pulling the wool over the Adelbrained selector's eyes for years - his comeuppance now comes via the time honoured tradition of calling a black-cunt a black-cunt.

So it's excellent that his football career is now dead in the water; perhaps he could take the lead from Iron Bar Tuckey and go into the hotel-motel trade?

 

screaming down the blindside on cocaine-laced pickle juice

 

                     David Nofoaluma of the Balmain Tigers showing off his perfect dentition. Photo: News Ltd.

Punters,

Trust the Mighty Tiges to reach the half-way point in the season knowing that their year, for all intents and purposes, is a shot bird - and then come out and play their best game in a very long while. Go figure. Is there is still some hope left to cling to? The Stats Guru had been sneaking a look at the ladder as it stood before the match and put Balmain's chances of making the finals after an unspectacular season into the realms of "the mathematical". They have to pretty much win everything from here on in to do that for a start off, and things are not helped by the fact that over the next month the poor things play teams who are currently 1st, 3rd, 2nd and 4th on the ladder. What's the chances? Then they put in their number one performance so far all season, thrashing the Saints for the second time this year, while having an absolute ball doing it. Talk about ultra-reliable inconsistency.

It always warms the cockles of a rusted-on diehard to see the boys remind them of teams dubbed "The Entertainers" that played for Balmain in days of yore. There's no finer sight in world sport than running rugby league. We know that. There's never been any argument about that. The controlled chaos of "broken play" can work a crowd to fever pitch, and it's what brings them through the turnstiles. So why not keep going that way for the rest of the season and not worry about being toast from time to time? Is it possible to just have fun?

Most honorable mention should be made here of the 100kg six-foot Samoan refrigerator known as David Nofoaluma, celebrating at home after playing his 150th game the week prior. Noffa's had the misfortune to play his entire nine year career at the Tigers in an era where they never really threatened the Top 8. And he never did acquire the sobriquet of "The Try Scoring Freak", as the Tiges already had one in the team in the form of the now retired Chris Lawrence. But by crikey, can Nofoaluma score tries on the wing - all 82 of them, and closing in on the club record, to boot. While he's a master at 'screaming down the blindside', his best tries come when he switches tack back in off the wing and they have everything you'd ever want; the jink, the step, the weave, the constant speed changes, before strolling across the try line leaving a trail of defenders flailing in his wake to go in 'untouched' under the black dot as the commentators screech "Noff-ar-Looma!". From Day One you could see the bloke was the goods, but who knew that over the years he'd go on to quietly develop a football brain the size of a watermelon? Always good to have a fleet-footed winger with a fair bit of heft and 'don't argue' about him, but with his thinking cap on also? That's rare out there. He's no freak of nature that's for sure, but he's a clever man. And one of those footballers who just can't hide the fact that they really enjoy what they do. 

There was an unusual and welcome sight on the telly broadcast pretty much straight after the final siren, as the triumphant team was saluting the fans in the stands, of the Balmain Great Robbie Farah, now retired. The question arose "what's Robbie doing at the ground?" - as it turns out 'The Best Leb in Game' is now a 'consultant front-row forward coach' for Tiges when required. What was he doing, then? Robbie was seen nation-wide stuffing his face with a large hamburger. Joy. That's a good Balmain Boy. Job's right, job's done.

WESTS TIGERS 34. Tries: Roberts (2), Nofoaluma, Laurie, Seyfarth, Talau.
Goals: Doueihi (5). 
St GEORGE-ILLAWARRA DRAGONS 18. Tries: Williams, Hunt, Amone.
Goals: Norman (3).
At: Western Sydney Stadium, Parramatta.
Crowd: 9,982.

Tom "The Pearl" Papley, after being tightly marked and unseen for three quarters of the match, must have had a cocaine-laced pickle juice at the last break because he played mad. He shook his tag and set the field on fire in the final stanza, booting two of his three goals to put the match beyond doubt against an opposition that had simply run out of legs. Papley ran around and through them, and celebrated each six-pointer with his trade-mark impression of some kind of Whirling Dervish. The pretty boy came good just in the nick of time.

Never mind that up to that point the Swans were in clear and present danger of being robbed blind by the umpires, who had an absolute shocker on a stick. There are few things quite as galling as Bamfords being so woefully inadequate. Some, like My Spy at The Ground, even think that they are born to it and do it on purpose..."God, umpires are made to just really annoy people". Bumbling officialdom in all its tawdriness. Nothing worse. And don't get me started on the opposition captain getting a free ride from the Bamfords all day bloody long. What was that all about?

So, at the half way point in the season, The Red & The White - at 7 & 4 - have exceeded all expectations, when the most pessimistic of pundits at the start of the season had them in a battle for the Wooden Spoon. Things have been put on the boil by some talented rookies, a few 2nd and 3rd year players coming on, a genuine ruckman (at last) in the much travelled journeyman, Tom Hickey, who has again proved that the Sydney System works - pick up old, clapped-out, seemingly washed-up players and turn them into in-form position players, however briefly for pragmatic reasons, and then there's some evergreen old timers who never have a bad game; Josh P Kennedy (269 games) and Luke Parker (223 games) come to mind and both caught the eye again with excellent matches. It won't last forever, but that's damn near 500 games down 'The Spine'. Supercoach Horse seems to have taken up a more or less permanent perch on the bench without the curly phone, as 'assistant coach' Dean Cox & Co. actually run the show from the gods.

Isaac Heeney "The Cardiff Zucchini" has battled a bashed up body all year - and all career for that matter - but put in a scorcher to win the Goodes-O'Loughlin Medal for Best of Ground in the Marngrook match, and is now the only player to have won the gong twice. Marngrook was overtaken by the Indigenous Round, then the Sir Doug Nicholls Round and something called Dreamtime at The G (which no doubt the AFL has trademarked), when Markgrook was in fact a Goodesy and Mickey O concept they came up with way back in 2002 for the annual home game v The Bombers. There was even a Marngrook Trophy for it. Plenty of top notch blackfella's have played for both clubs. But the vagaries of scheduling have now seen Essendon pushed to one side, and the troph goes to the winner of the match between whoever the Swans happen to be playing in Didgy Round. Why isn't there room for both?

Be that as it may, cautious optimism has set in among diehard Sydney fans, but they all know a season cruelled by injury can be just one game away (two gun draft picks are both in Sick Bay after a few games in the big boy's league), players can and do get The Yips, and then there is the strange phenomenon known as The Wheels Falling Off, which can happen at any time for no apparent reason. Even so, the Stats Guru has again gone out on a limb after a look at the rest of year and a quick whir of the abacus and put the Swans in the Top 8 at the denouement, but there is still a helluva lotta work to do to make the Top 4, which is the only place you can realistically win the Premiership from. The Great Buddy Franklin, bless his heart, said on interview that he's still in the game only because he "wants to win the Premiership" and Lord only knows time is running out because "I'm not getting any younger, that's for sure".

SYDNEY:    5.3, 8.4, 11.6, 15.10 (100). Goals: Heeney 3, Franklin 3,
Papley 3, Hayward 2, Kennedy 2, Parker, Wicks.
CARLTON: 4.3, 8.5, 10.9, 11.12 (78).   Goals: McKay 3, Cripps 3,
Betts 2, Silvagni, Williams, De Koning.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 29,822.

                            Tom Papley of the Sydney Swans on cocaine-laced pickle juice. Photo: Nine Ent/SMH

rules? what rules?

 

The Three Amigos
(l-r) Errol "Goolies" Gulden, Logan "Lofty" McDonald and Braeden "Campo" Campbell. 
       

Well, there's a turn up for the books. Way too gutless to outlay cash money at luxury odds about the Swans on no form and dire pre-season predictions all 'round. The returns would've been better than GameStop and should have put the house on The Red and The White. But, no. Supercoach Horse raised some eyebrows but was vindicated in showing faith in a trio of 18 years olds on the basis of if you've got draft picks ready to go, then play them. Gulden, McDonald, Logan go down in the record books as first gamers, and all acquitted themselves nicely. Theory has it that about one in four draft picks really makes it in the AFL, and go on to play lengthy, perhaps stellar, careers - the rest can't hack it, get sick of it (and who could blame them) or succumb to terminal niggles. A good case in point is Callum "Saw" Mills (2015 draft and he of the really stoopid busted leg fame that kept him out for all of 2018). He's been hanging around in the Swans backline for a few years now, sharpening up the day for when he would be moved to the midfield and really shine. Always rated the kid and now he's got his chance with some years under the belt in the top flight. It also bodes well that Isaac Heeney The Cardiff Zucchini (2014 draft) was Best on Ground for mine. The poor bloke has spent the last couple of years being bashed from pillar to post by opposition teams who've tagged him out the game more often than not. Now he's got the room to move under the new rules, he's set to be a wild boy breaking free. The new "standing on the mark" rule is undoubtedly the most advantageous for the young Swans in the new suite of regulations - which at least compels the Bamfords to at least give the new rule book a cursory read. As well as stopping ay opposition hanky panky while take a set shot for goal (such as well known players climbing up the big sticks like they were coconut trees) it also encourages the play-on. If a player is ordered by the Bamford to "stand" on the mark, then he's trapped inside a one square metre box, so it's easier to just run around him. That improves the "flow" of the game which the PR Dept. is after, and adds to the goal tallies which is always good for the ratings. A win-win-win situation. All this could be an aberration or a one-off, of course, but the Stats Guru has been been whirring the beads on the abacus, and reckons the Swans have a much better chance of avoiding the Wooden Spoon again this year. And he's not even factored in the triumphant return of The Great Lance Franklin this weekend, which should cause no end of trouble for the team with the youngest roster in the comp - the Pride of South Australia. There will be chagrin in the colonies. After being missing in action for the entirety of the 2020 season, Buddy is now in the 8th year of his heavily back-loaded $10M nine year contract. And he sure could use this weekend's appearance fee after some slim pickings lately and given he has a brand spanking new mouth to feed.  

BRISBANE: 3.3,  8.4, 10.7, 14.10 (94). Goals: Bailey 3, Daniher 2, McCarthy 2, Berry,
Coleman, Lyons, McCluggage, McInerney, Hipwood, Zorko.
SYDNEY:    2.4,  8.4,  17.6, 19.11 (125). Goals: Gulden 3, Heeney 3, McDonald 3, Mills 2,
Parker 2, Reid 2, Wicks 2, Blakey, Papley. 
At Brisbane Cricket Ground (Gabba).
Crowd: 22,762.

Looks like the Mighty Tiges honeymoon period lasted for all of ten minutes - and that was last week. To get beat to thirty in the opening stanza is one thing, but to get comprehensively toweled up to forty is another. Oh dear. As My Spy at The Ground was moved to remark - "painful to watch". They are going to need a lot more oomph in the coming weeks to be at least competitive. Super Coach Magoo will be pulling great tufts of hair out of his bonce soon enough, and he's already half-bald with a prominent 'widow's peak'. It's a long time since he won a Premiership with Souths back in '14, and just getting this year's Balmain mob in the top eight for the first time in a decade will take a superhuman effort. Sure it was pouring with rain and the ground was underwater, but there the excuses end. It should have been a low scoring grinding game, but became a try-fest with a 34-year-old Eastern Suburbs winger with grey hair running in a hat-trick of them. Balmain has already been found out by the new "six again" rule being ruthlessly enforced to effectively replace penalties for minor infringements like offside in order to speed up the game at the play the ball. That is difficult to handle if the opposition are adept as 'milking' those six-agains.You spend the whole time with forwards having to endlessly take on the opposition battering ram, so when they do eventually get the ball, it has all but died by the time it reaches the backs and any attacking momentum is lost. You simply can't coach against that. On current form, the Tigers won't even come into the pundits previews as 'capable of a surprise on a good day'. As it stands, they'll be flat out avoiding the tag as the league's whipping boys and that's no place to be and certainly would be "painful to watch" over 25 rounds. Looks like the poor suffering rusted on supporter has some more suffering to do, as of 10 years wasn't enough, but as always, there's faith, hope & charity to cling to.

WESTS TIGERS 6. Tries: Liddle. Goals: Doueihi. (1).
SYDNEY ROOSTERS 40. Tries: B.Morris (3), Tedesco (2), Tupouniua,
Baker. Goals: Taukeiaho (4), Tedesco (2).
At Campbelltown Sports Ground.
Crowd: 6,102.
 

 Balmain Tigers dejected as Eastern Suburbs pot yet another goal.  Sunday 21 March, Campbelltown Sports Ground.

buy yourself a new Captain

 

Long sufferers,

After a strange, weird, bizarre, and quite frankly very disappointing Test cricket season, the footy has crept up on us with barely any warning. The pre-season hoop-la normally reaches fever pitch this time of year as the back 12 pages of the papers obsess over who in, who's out, and who's up who and for what. Things have been oddly quiet as folks really don't know what to make of anything in these times of plague; everything remains a day-to-day proposition, let alone making far flung predictions who will win the Grand Final in September  - which seems like an epoch away, and probably is.

So one day recently found myself leafing through the various rugby league rags, and in the official National Rugby League fish-wrap there were 12 pundits who were asked for their predictions on where the various teams might end up on the Premiership ladder at the end of the season. Only one of these so-called experts put the Mighty Balmain Tigers in the final top eight. One out of a dozen people who allege they know what they're talking about. Oh no, don't tell me, not another long, cold, bitter winter of discontent? All anybody seems to say about the Tiges chances is it's been ten years now since they last made the finals and the long-suffering fans have had it up to here. Can they break the decade old hoodoo? Can they unexpectedly rocket up the ladder? Can they give rusted-on supporters a break? The consensus of opinion is, ah, no, not this time, amigos. Shit.

It seems like coach Mr Magoo has been busy in the off-season with the Football Dept. recruiting left, right and centre. However, you can imagine my surprise to learn that they've shelled out for a new Captain, to replace The Great Benji Marshall who, at age 35, has now left the club for a second time in yet other stupid, silly, easily resolved dispute over money, to become a bench warmer and some kind of "whisperer" over at South Sydney. Be that as it may, it's a serious admission about the lack of leadership in the club if they have to buy in a new skipper in the form of James Tamou. He's played 263 games for the Cowboys and the Panthers, and played the last of his 14 Origin games for NSW five years ago. No shortage of experience there, but at 31 years old he's in the twilight of his career and there's not much on paper that says he's born leader - he skippered the losing Penrith grand final side last year. Mmmm. Five new recruits made their debuts in Round One...and what a motley crew they are. James Roberts is the quintessential journeyman having played for no less than five clubs - this is his sixth - since 2011, but has only played 150 games, so must be injury prone or not good enough. The others were unwanted. Balmain pulled a right swiftie to steal  Daine Laurie from Penrith, where he was the third-rated full back and couldn't get a game. Brisbane couldn't wait to get rid of Joe Ofahengaue, a hundred gamer with two Origin appearance to his credit, but he was released from the last two years of his contract to come to the Tiges, while the 19-year-old Tukimihia Simpkins was also let go by the Cowboys.

Balmain have never had much luck with marquee players (Josh Reynolds has been shoved out the back door without so much as a sausage after two dreadful seasons and has pissed off to England), and it seems that this year's recruits were largely unwanted elsewhere, so were snapped up for a song by the Tiges, who are technically broker than broke with no leagues club and survive on cash handouts from the NRL and the magnanimous support of wealthy patrons who have nothing better to spend their clams on. The Western Suburbs side of the "joint venture" appears to have all but disappeared. But money is still too tight to mention, and despite the so-called salary cap, if your mob is not cashed up to the hilt, they have little hope. None of this augers well for the eternal pesssimist. After the superstars, the lesser ranked players will go anywhere just to make a quid after they took a savage Covid haircut on their bloated stipends last year. 

So given all of the above, the new look outfit actually acquitted themselves rather well in the season pipe-opener against the Raiders - who are being widely tipped as likely Grand Finalists. (No crowd restrictions in the ACT, so they had a goodly number of non-socially distant fans in the stands gobbing on each other). It was no shellacking. Balmain put on some very effective defensive drills in the first half to keep the score at 6-6 at the break, but lost the plot early in the second half and the Fat Lady started singing. The forward pack has the potential to develop into a formidable unit, while there are plenty of points in the back line with proven try scorers. But the diehards have been saying exactly that for a decade and more, and it hasn't helped. At least the Tiges run into some crack teams in the first four rounds to get their act together and test themselves against some quality outfits before hopefully devouring much easier meat as the season rolls on. Everyone will know soon enough.

CANBERRA RAIDERS 30. Tries: Rapana (2), James, Young, Nicoll-Klokstad. Goals: Williams (5).
WESTS TIGERS 12. Tries: Liddle, Nofoaluma. Goals: Brooks (2).
At Canberra Stadium.
Crowd: 15,680.

 

 

a tremendous loss of face - "they are nothing without Kohli"

 

Innocent bystanders,

What a very curious state of affairs we have reached in Strayan cricket.

Perhaps the pivotal moment of the recent Test match series came late on the second day at Adelaide, when My Spy At The Ground  - who was actually in the stands, and not pretending to be making pithy observations while watching television - sent through an urgent telegraph message: "I'm really pissed now. What's the score, Jimmy?" Be that as it may, what would Pup do now it's all over? Not many folks ask for MJ Clarke's opinion these days given his blockbuster breakfast radio show is garnering an impressive 1.6% of the available Sydney audience. That's almost like talking to four walls, but after Adelaide, he was said to have said "They are nothing without Kohli". Oh, for the benefit of hindsight.

Surely, surely, the pink test experiment is finally dead, buried and cremated? Yet another two-and-a-half day game in Adelbrain featuring an average 140 runs per innings, and a wining margin of eight wkts, employing a pink ball that explodes off a good length when new, rears up into the teeth at night, but goes soft after about 20 overs and slows up on a pitch with way too many grass clippings rolled in with the aid of the heavy roller. Hazo and Paddy were just licking their chops with glee when they saw the ball doing really stoopid things swerving all over the shop, and got into the way of thinking "we're towelling them up here", otherwise called "momentum", but it's way way short of a "fair contest". If you get caught batting at night with a pinkie, you're dead and gone.The chief tactic seems to be get as much daylight batting in as you can.

Third grade teams don't get bowled out for 36 on decent pitches unless there's something very seriously wrong. The common line in the papers of it being "inexplicable, pathetic, incredible" doesn't wash with me, or the Stats Guru, who was quick to exclaim "Oh!  Such a slow over rate! Absolute shocker! What about the glacial accumulation of runs!" after India were 3/107 at tea on the first day. Perhaps there should be a push by the Stats Guru to have all pink ball test matches expunged from the records and stripped of test status on account of just being not right, while admitting all the five-day games played in World Series as official test matches, accommodating a new test playing nation called Rest of The World or something or another. It's time for change, and the Pink Stink it's now well beyond being a failed experiment. Just ask Kookaburra, who've been driven completely nuts by it for years. Can anyone at Cricket Straya or the ICC spell F-A-I-L-U-R-E?

But, of course, you are not allowed to argue with 'progress' or the honky dollar that's tied up in the now fading right's deals; the paid-out commentariat over at the Kezza Stokes stable at Seven are not permitted to get critical of the pitch or the ball, not even when the pill is all but unplayable in the hands of a couple of the best fast bowlers going. Damo Fleming came closest on the telly when he couldn't contain himself for a moment longer and blurted out "Oh! I love these bowler dominated Test matches!". India has plenty of excuses for the woeful second innings in the City of Churches, chief among them "yeah, a shit score in shit conditions in a shit game".

Found myself about to say to some child on Xmas Day, that Boxing Day has been a long-standing rite with me since the age of nine. Ooops. That was until being reminded by the Stats Guru that this Boxing Day at the MCG "tradition" didn't become a thing until after 1969-70. Christ! Age hasn't caught up with me that quickly, surely?  Anyways, Boxing Day was always going to fall flat this year on account of the plague  - we knew that - but the crowd even fell short of the maximum allowed under the Covid regulations on every day of the game. So that's about as much interest as there's ever been in going to test cricket on the later days (after the mad mad crowd who traditionally Get On The Beers on Boxing Day). Back in the day, under normal circumstances, that'd mean long beer queues and all-in brawls, but in these conflicted times of social estrangement it's a "why bother?" People are still a bit leery of crowds, as you'd expect, even as my Spy at The Ground remarked "cricket is a very good Socially Distant game with the positioning of the players, isn't it?" And besides, folks simply don't go to the ground to watch the stand-by visiting skipper Rehane make a statement after the Adelbrain fiasco, and bat all day, do they? 

So the tourists win solidly by eight wickets in Melbourne in what? An unremarkable Test match, over in under four days, on a dodgy drop-in, with the tourist's temporary Captain's knock the deciding factor, and what else? Oh, that's right, dropped catches lose matches. Who had a lazy Xmas in the bubble, then? Oh, dear. So, Straya goes and squanders a priceless 1-0 lead in a four test series, which suddenly becomes one-all with two to play.

Then comes Syderney. There was never any serious consideration given to actually gracing the ground with my presence this year as it would have been an entirely futile exercise. There was a shitfight over the regulation size of the crowd before a ball was even bowled. Even after the Avalon Clusterfuck, there was no debate about whether the match would go ahead - oh, no siree - that was a promise that the Ruby Princess made, and promises made by the Ruby Princess are promises kept. First it was going to be 50% capacity, then they knocked that back to 25%, then 20%...at one stage during the panic, found myself reading the SMH who in all seriousness suggested the crowd would be limited at 2,000. Then came the final word that it would be 10,000 and that's it. But from the outset, they got 7-8 thousand daily crowds, mainly the Swami Army on the drink. The Ruby Princess has obviously never been to a Test match after tea on any given day, when things tend to get a bit rowdy, tired and emotional. And besides, who'd wear a mask throughout an exhausting seven-hour day while drinking beer through a tube? They were slung around most people's necks by then anyway, after they'd decided from very early on that they'd Get on The Beers.

Sydney was once again dropped catches lose matches. Don't they have some of those practice slips catches machines in iso? Never mind the much publicised "racial abuse" from behind the picket fence at the SCG; it got me to thinking what Yabber would have thought of Captain Paine being too busy yabbering behind the stumps and calling Indian batsmen dickheads instead of concentrating on the matter in hand - winning the match - while dropping three catches, and fumbling a stumping which could have cracked the game wide open very late in the five day piece. Who's the dickhead now? India batting out the last day for a draw is so unusual these days in Test cricket it was hailed as truly remarkable - but a draw is still a draw - even if the tension can go sky high if there's the slightest sniff of victory.

Onto Brisbane, humid ol' Brisvegas for a game on a pitch on which a million AFL matches had been played over the months prior. The joint looked like a cow paddock pockmarked by the removal of the cow patts. Of course the curator couldn't do much more than turn out a road - nay, a four lane highway - from the mud heap he was given. The look of the 5th day pitch was of cracked concrete - they were too scared to put the heavy roller over it. After the Indians so miraculously performed three run outs in a single innings, which is perhaps chief among the cardinal sins of Test cricket, Paine's missed stumping on the final day in the tropics is where the whole shooting match aka the Border-Gavaskar Trophy was lost. Once again, Straya snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, when the Troph was theirs for the taking. Someone has to take responsibility, and that somebody should be the skipper falling on his sword, Kim Hughes-style, but without the sobbing. It's only a game.

Pup likes India - where he's treated like royalty and being an MCC Life Member gets you places - and he knows all about how India were so much more flexible and adaptable to the highly usual playing conditions than Straya ever were from beginning to end. And about Straya's initial complacency through the pink prism of a day/night fantasy all came crashing down around them in the lengthening shadows of the Gabba, and how much the sudden end of "the Gabbatoir" era means in terms of tremendous loss of face. Pup is a serious student of the game and he knows how losing the 33-year-long non-losing streak at the Brisbane Cricket Ground is enough to really shit to tears the aficionado, not to mention the home supporters at the Woolloongabba ground, who've been well used to winning for nigh on a generation.

Given that the epidemiologists are saying that everybody knows shit's fucked, and 2021 will be just as crapola cornflakes as 2020, you'd have to think that an Strayan tour of The Veldt next month for a couple of test matches must be problematical, surely? The dropping of Wade for Carey makes sense - one's on the way out, the other's coming in - but the news that Travis Head and Moises Constantino Henriques might be "fighting it out or the No.5 spot" is of genuine concern. Joisus, Moises??? The middle order ranks can't be that thin, surely? Never mind the best pace attack in the world right now, the GOAT is starting to get long in the tooth on unhelpful pitches, and he has no understudy. The list of problems goes on

So, perhaps now it'd be a good move to just unilaterally ban the Barmy Army from travelling to Straya in any way, shape or form for next summer's Ashes. Visas will be denied. Then we can just on get with what Strayan's were born to do -- unmercifully goad and sledge the Poms in peace - invoking derogatory racial stereotypes to the point of vilification. Everything else is just training for taking on England.