a field of cows

On the train from Booragul to Central, at Morriset, a bloke got on my carriage, a shortish wizened sort of South’s fan, maybe in his late thirties, with goatee beard and plenty tattoo, with no less than four boys in tow.
I’d guess, aged 3, 5, 7 & 9.
They were perfectly well behaved, sitting in their seats as they were told, maintaining a low bubble of excitement that you’d expect from boys going to the football.
Only once did the posse threaten to begin to get out of control,
Whence the responsible adult collared one of the kiddies and screamed down his ear at close quarters…
“DON’T YOU FUCKIN’ BACK CHAT ME! YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THAT HAPPENS, DON’T YA!?”
The boys fell silent for a couple of minutes, until the bloke said quietly…“look at that. that’s a field of cows, if ever I saw one” as we gazed upon a rural scene.
Then the excited little hubbub resumed with no problem.
They disappeared up the railway stairs at Gosford all holding hands.
As they did, I noted the very faded, almost indiscernible sponsor’s logo on the back of the bloke’s Rabbitohs jumper – SMITH’S CRISPS.
Child discipline at its finest.

"the pontiff's seed is strong"

Bleacherists,


(Mr Rick Edwards kindly offered to accompany me on the Kardinia Park odyssey, as my personal protection, with neutral observer status [he is a Central Districts supporter]. The photographs are his. He has my thanks for not allowing me to be arrested.)

The day began well enough as we boarded the “Lionel Rose” carriage of the train from the Berlin end of Melbourne for the one hour journey to Geelong.

There was a bloke on board who displayed a fair degree of spasticity, who spent the entire trip loudly reliving his apparently famous exploits at contract bridge.

Probably the World Champion.

We grabbed an early lunch in the bad lands at the Phoenix Hotel “that’d be a steak sanger and a parmy, then, would it love?” before getting half a dozen heart starters under the belt at the Bush Inn, where the punters asked me where I had come from and told me “you’ve come a long way to lose” while telling the publican he should be charging me more for beer.

Through the Polly Farmer gates and we were in.

Kardinia Park is a classic example of one of the last great suburban grounds.

Surprisingly small, it has been developed in a haphazard fashion over the years with the jumble of stands and other buildings bearing little or no architectural relationship with each other giving the ground a decidedly ramshackle appearance, with an old fashioned game clock, and two hand operated scoreboards, one at each end of the ground, and a video replay screen that appears to have been an after thought.

Even though we were in the ground a full hour before kick off, we were herded onto the stairway to heaven and into the standing room only section of the Gary Ablett Terrace “no seats left - standing room only today”, which in the end became jam packed in a sold out game.

No matter, the terrace is deeply raked and offers an excellent view of the playing arena.

It was “perfect weather for football” – an icy, biting three goal breeze sweeping across the ground from the direction of the Antarctic right into your face, with the occasional freezing shower thrown in.

Swans won the toss and elected to kick with the breeze only to find themselves behind the eight ball from the off.

Geelong had loose men everywhere in their forward line while the Swans struggled to drag in a single mark in the backline in the opening stanza and soon had three goals kicked on them, and then it was the usual story – catch up football.

Simply no structure in the Swans forward line with BBB Hall not playing, and Spida should have thrown his weight around more up front, rather than in the ruck, while Goodes played everywhere except full forward – which I believe was the position he was named in in the program!

The second quarter was equally bad, if not worse, as a heavy rain shower hit the ground about mid way through with the Cats seven goals to two up.

One of the locals said “joisus! there will be sleet in a moment!” There was. Another called out “bring back the drought!”

As soon as the rain started falling, and casual water briefly appeared on the playing surface, Rick, accurately, called it “game over”.

A telling moment came when a Swans player [forget who now] was lining up for a relatively simple shot at goal, and somehow managed to hook the ball to the left almost at right angles to see the thing sail away over the boundary line and into the crowd

Geelong fans are a pretty rough and ready mob, who are fond of calling the umpires “maggots”, which was appropriate enough given that they were dressed in a bilious yellow.

Locals reckoned The Goodes Train is a protected species, and whenever a free kick was awarded against the Cats, there were murmurings in the crowd of “Goodes must be involved”

But there was some utterly incongruous work from the Bamfords in the second quarter as Malceski was disrobed of his jersey in a wrestle for the pill, and was pinged for holding the ball !!

How on earth you can be done for that offence while having the shirt ripped clean off your back has got me completely beat.

I’d like to know the record number of free kicks given in an AFL game, but this particular Saturday afternoon outing would have had to come close.

At half time, we retreated to the smoking lounge near the bar at the back of the Ford Stand, out of the wind, and eventually the sun broke through to help us dry out.

There were the usual comings and goings, when this visage appeared.

A tall bloke [about 6’3”] wearing a full head-to-toe cat costume that he probably picked up at a used prop sale after a run of the musical Cats; the get up would not have been out of place at the Gay Mardi-Gras.

On the back he had attached a thick doormat inscribed with the words “CATS KICK ARSE”, so he was obviously prepared for and not averse to punters coming up to him and sinking the slipper from behind.

I knew things were going from bad to worse when we returned to the terrace after half time and tried to squeeze our way back to our spots, when a bloke just would not get out of my way until his mate alerted him to the fact that there was a cripple behind him trying to get through.

He quickly turned around and proceeded to knock my full beer out of my hand.

An explosive invective of expletives followed from me, with pointed reference to the fact that the transgressor was a Geelong fan.

He accepted the tirade with good grace, but it wasn’t going to bring back my $5.40 Carlton Draught, was it?

The Swans have forgotten how to play the Championship Quarter, and even though they won it on paper, they barely managed to get back into the match, everything about the scoreboard flatters them.

The biggest disappointment was the fact that Magic was almost entirely missing in action all day.

Fear the bloke could make a fool of himself before his inevitable retirement at the end of the year.

It should not be allowed to happen.

Things went from worse to appalling at three quarter time while standing at the urinal, a boy of about seven years of age next to me was having trouble with his equipment and proceeded to urinate on my shoes.

I was going to give the kiddie a clip over the ear, but being an away supporter, used my better judgement and let the incident pass.

It was a brave fight back from the Swans to drag themselves to within 11 points of the lead deep in the final quarter, but then it was bang! bang! as Sydney let in two soft goals [the Cats only scores of the quarter up to that point], and all hope was lost.

A telling comment near full time from a wise old bloke near us who had been offering succinct analysis of the game all day:

“Jees, Nick Davis doesn’t have a lot of mud on him”

It took us a while to work out the precise meaning of one of the classic banners seen on the day:

“THE PONTIFF’S SEED IS STRONG”.

The trip back to Melbourne behind the City of Bendigo locomotive was simply sad.

The train was full of drunk, or half drunk, South Melbourne tragics.

One woman sitting in our row of seats was particularly tragic.

She was covered in badges, buttons and pins from all the Sydney/South Melbourne era’s, and she was loudly lamenting the fact that she had somehow managed to lose her Paul Kelly badge during the course of the day.

Someone commented on her hand knitted red-and-white scarf, to which she proudly proclaimed; “my mother knitted that for me when I was 16; I am now 66”.

You can’t get more tragic than that.

The Swans have been found out, for mine.

It’s only taken a couple of seasons, but teams now have a very good idea about how to beat them at their own game.

The shallow depth of the Sydney playing roster has also been exposed by injuries to key players.

When Along Came a Schneider can’t even get a game, while two complete unknowns are named on the bench, you know something is wrong.

They are also finding it a struggle against teams with younger, faster legs.

As a mate commented after the awful showing against Collingwood…”it’s time SC Roos re-invented the wheel”.

Unless he can, they are no hope.



GEELONG: 5.1, 9.4, 11.8, 13.9 (87). Goals: Mooney 4, Johnson 3, G.Ablett 2, N.Ablett, Varcoe, Chapman, Corey.
SYDNEY: 2.1, 2.5, 5.8, 10.9 (69). Goals: O'Keefe 3, Schmidt 2, Davis, Vogels, L.Ablett, Jolly, O'Loughlin.

At Kardinia Park, Geelong.

Crowd: 23,040.



Finding a sports bar with rugby league on a screen in Melbourne is all but impossible, so haven’t seen a frame of the Mighty Tiges win over the Raiders, but there was apparently some whingeing from the Canberra camp over a forward pass and disallowed try late in the match.

Similarly didn’t see any of the spanking handed out by the Bronco’s on the Monday night previous, as I was otherwise engaged.

So can really only offer the scoreboards.

But if the fishwraps are anything to go by, the Tigers are a model of inconsistency at the moment, and yet retain a reasonably healthy position on the log-jammed premiership table.

Go figure.



BRISBANE BRONCOS 48. Tries Hunt (3), Hodges (2), Berrigan, Carroll, Lockyer, Michaels. Goals: Parker (4), Ennis (2).

WESTS TIGERS 18. Tries Farah, Lawrence, Morris. Goals: Farah (3).

At Lang Park, Brisbane.

Crowd: 29,364.



CANBERRA RAIDERS 16. Tries: Milne (2), Tilse. Goals: Carney (3).

WESTS TIGERS 22. Tries: Whatuira (2), Morris, Lawrence. Goals: Farar (3)

At Canberra Stadium.

Crowd 12,598

a stroll in kardinia park

It was as if I had spent my whole life waiting for the moment when I could freeze my tits off and get a wet arse arse standing on the Gary Ablett Terrace at Kardinia Park while watching the Swans getting flogged by the Cats.
Now I have another mission in life:
Never ever return to Geelong as long as you shall live.
As Tourism Victoria puts it in the brochure "one visit is one too many"
Diatribe to follow if and when I recover from the treatment for post traumtic disorder.
In the meantime, a few snaps taken by one Mr Risky Business.

a girl at the football

Fellow denizens of the cheap seats,

Well, what can you say about the most dismal performance of the season?
Surprised there weren’t more Swans fans rattling the bars on the box office demanding their money back, or was it just that the more disgruntled had left in disgust at three quarter time?
The first half mistakes were from a team that had just come off the bye and had been enjoying a few too many bbq’s.
I could be mistaken, but at one stage in the second quarter me and my children were simultaneously pointing and waving our arms at the goal screaming “kick long! see if you can’t pull off a good chest mark!
The Swans would have been lucky to pull in one or two marks inside their own 50m in the entire first half.
BBB Hall was having a really hard time trying to catch the ball with his knees.
There was one passage of play in the first quarter that involved the Swans performing about fifteen hand-balls, only to find themselves further away from goal than when they had started.
Three scoring shots to half time and even a gigantic tusk up the runter from the coach wasn’t going to win it from there.
In fact, uncharacteristically, SC Roos just had no answers against a well coached team who had come to play determined to beat the Swans at their own game.
As a result, the “spectacle” was just appalling to watch, and what used to be the best value Saturday night entertainment in all of Sydney, now had the feeling of a decided waste of time and money.
All epitomized by a sight seen deep into the second quarter, when the Goodes Train managed to intercept the ball on the half back flank, and then for reasons best known to himself, under no pressure, completed a full cartwheel and somehow managed to throw the thing clean out of bounds.
Looked pretty sheepish after that, and with good reason!
Just like his fans, A.Rocca is a very ugly piece of work up close and personal, but it was his well timed goals that did in a team that was beaten from the opening siren.
The very substantial attendance of traveling ‘Pies fans would have a great time on the overnight busses back to Melbourne.
On our way home on the event bus after the game, a woman in her 70’s announced for anyone who was listening in quite a loud voice:
“well, if you ask me, it’s about time that Barry Hall considered retirement”
The whole bus, as one, went “oooooh”, as they immediately realised the rather large nature of the call that had just been made.
It was obviously a prepared statement, as she emphasized the first syllable of each word as she spoke them.
Then she said:
“well? you know it’s true!”
Then a bloke in the seat behind her said.
“you know what? I think you are right!”
Then the bus just returned to its usual hubbub of individual post mortems and incriminations.
Years and years ago I was talking to a girl at the football, who insisted that every now and then an angel would fly over the football ground and the people at the ground would suddenly, and inextricably become hushed at the same moment.
You could almost hear a pin drop.
It would last only for a few seconds before the normal hubbub of the crowd would resume.
Over time, found that it’s always a good idea then to get the crazy craves massive hooter call going.
Always, without fail, it turns heads.
Can be done sitting or standing, always done with both hands cupped around the lips, and starts with a very loud & clear “c’mon!”…Lleyton Hewitt’s is a weak poof’s attempt in comparison…followed up…after a suitable interval and a deep breath to make the most of whatever lung capacity is remaining…with a “Swaaaaaaaaniiiiiesss!”
Then usually cough guts up.
Certainly, marks you out in the crowd.
But, alac and alas, all to no avail at the Western Paddock.

Another loss at home really puts the club under the pump now.
Top eight is now becoming problematical, while top four seems more or less out of the question.
The two one point losses will become critical in the final analysis.
There certainly would have been much scratching of heads and gazing out to sea at the Sunday morning smoko.

SYDNEY: 1.1, 2.1, 3.4, 8.9 (57). Goals: Hall (2), O'Loughlin (2), Ablett, O'Keefe, Everitt, Goodes.
COLLINGWOOD: 3.5, 6.11, 8.13, 10.16 (76) Goals: Thomas(4), Rocca (3), Didak, Cloke, Pendlebury
At Stadium Australia, Homebush.
Crowd: 64,222.

Mighty Tiges play the hapless Bronco’s tonight in a must win encounter in Brisbane, but that will have to wait, as I am on the first flight out to Adelaide tomorrow morning, on my circuitous way to Kardinia Park.

See you at the game.

Pup's been sleeping, but is now in Dubai

Only slightly worried that the Great MJ Clarke has more or less fallen out of the headlines since the ICC World Cup.
But he has, by his own admission, been sleeping, and finding some time to get out and about doing some work for the sponsors, and is currently in Dubai with The Bedbreaker, for a coaching stint at the famous InSportz Academy.

According to the UAE Express Pup is apparently having the time of his life:

"Michael Clarke is in love with Dubai. On his first visit to the city — stopovers not included — Clarke spent as much time sleeping as he did shopping, travelling and swimming and what is more, he is charmed by the reception he got wherever he has gone.
'It’s been a good change for me coming to Dubai. It’s hot but definitely better than in Sydney where it is pretty cold now. My girlfriend works as well and has taken a break to be here with me. So, we are having great time in this great city shopping a lot, travelling and swimming,' he said."

Wonder what My Girlfriend has been working at?

Cap'n Kirk and The Lama

“we only had ourselves to blame”

Bleacherists,

Happy to count myself among the 13K+ punters at Campbelltown, but not happy with the result, Jan.
Undoubtedly the most disappointing loss of the year.
Not because the Tigers didn’t play well, or didn’t put in the required effort for the top level of the game – in fact it was high class football all round -- rather because two of the Gold Coast tries were perhaps the softest tries conceded by any team in the comp this season.
The first Titans try was just appalling defence…set up by the now-nemesis Scotty Prince, Mat Rogers just strolled across the try line as if he was on a leisurely Sunday afternoon walk.
Balmain defence completely missing on the left.
And the other one – well, it can only be described with a shake of the head as “soft”.
No use flogging a dead horse.
Still, not a good look in a hard man’s game.
But, The Tiges did put on some sparkling running rugby league.
The Good Wife remarked that the Lawrence try was “the best thing I’ve seen all year – on or off the field”
Indeed it was.
Farah noticed that there was no-one at full back, as the Gold Coast player had inserted himself into the defensive line, so Farah decides to put in a short chip/lob over the heads of the defenders, who were quick to turn on their heels, then has the courage to re-gather the ball himself, put in a shoulder charge on the one man who got to him, then while overbalancing and throwing himself full length forward, somehow gets a pass away to no one in particular on his left, with both feet off the ground.
The Lawrence toddler swoops onto the backwards bouncing ball and sprints away for the try line!
Thanks for coming!
Champagne football!
First time I’ve had to have a good look at Lawrence, and while he’s bright green with inexperience you can see where SC Sheens is coming from; the kid does have a “massive future” in front of him if he plays his cards right.
Will probably play for Straya in the centres.
Galea had another cracking game for mine, seemed to be everywhere in defence and dummy half work could not be faulted.
Bryce Gibbs plays well every week, but doesn’t often get a mention in dispatches; he had a stand out.
After singing the praises of Collis as a goal kicker, he had an absolute shocker.
Couldn’t kick to save himself from the sideline and two of them didn’t even make the distance to the uprights, let alone the accuracy.
Archer the Bamford made some bizarre rulings, but in the end had the sense to award the penalty count to the home side, but by my reckoning there were two occasions in the first half where he could have easily sin-binned a Gold Coast player for an intentional professional foul, in holding down the player who is attempting to play the ball. But he didn’t have the guts to go beyond blowing up a penalty.
Campbelltown is an ideal, purpose built rugby league ground.
Never mind that you wouldn’t go that far on your holidays, I am on holidays, dammit!
The Eastern Concourse in front of the newish grand stand is deeply raked, making it a fine viewing ground.
Unlike some other grounds, you can see every corner of the playing surface.
To the north of the concourse is a couple of…what can you describe them as? Berms is the best word I can come up with; whopping great heavy duty mesh cages filled with large road metal stacked on top of each other, and tastefully covered in a creeper, appropriately, displaying masses of deep orange flowers.
It’s next to the bar, so the blokes who pay their money and just walk in off the street and stand on top of these things to watch the game are heavy with leather, beard and tattoo.
At the southern end of the ground, four function rooms in the Wests Leagues Club overlook the ground.
Noice in there, I bet.
Fortunately had tickets in row BB, just two down from the back of the concourse so only two steps for a cripple to stumble down and up.
Out back of the stand, no more steps and about 20 yards to the dunny and the bar.
Perfect.
And the bar has the decency and sense to be selling ice cold cans of Carlton Draught, dispensing with this nonsense of pouring them into plastic cups altogether.
Just about the only sport where you can count on the crowd not throwing things onto the ground.
Barhelp just opens the can with a tea spoon, five bucks, and away you go son, thereby there are no queues at the bar, despite the ground being more or less full.
And of course it’s a ground which is rich with displays of old Western Suburbs Magpies jerseys, worn by young and old alike.
The most impressive was the one that had the Mapgies logo surrounded by the sponsors name “Victa” “Mowers”.
Now that’s going back a bit.
SC Sheens has scratched that one in the under the “we’ll learn from our losses” side of the Coach’s Ledger, probably under the sub-heading: “we only had ourselves to blame”

WESTS TIGERS 14. Tries: Whatuira, Lawrence, Tuiaki. Goals: Collis (1).
GOLD COAST TITANS 16. Tries: Rogers (2), Lewis. Goals: Rogers (2).
At Campbelltown Sports Ground.
Crowd: 13,451.

The Swans have had a very quiet week if the best they could do is get the club’s resident token Buddhist, Captain Kirk, to give the Dalai Lama an absolute treat – a signed Swans jersey.
A fabulous addition to his extensive collection of football jumpers from around the world.

Craven.