on being toyed with

Fellow Appallees,

No mystery in any of this...
Woke on Sunday morning not feeling all that well also, after giving the drink a bit of a nudge at the ground and particularly after the game, with a burning desire to get the backyard incinerator going fiercly and setting fire to all my Swans memorabilia.
All the old tickets, programs, soveniers, about two dozen free hats collected over the years, and the guernsey that never did fit, with the scarf thrown in on the top for good measure.
Still don't know what stopped me.
Even the most disgruntled fan can take a loss, but to be rolled over like that and subjected to a brutal gigantic tusk up the runter without so much as putting up a fight is just plain unacceptable.
There was not even a hint of excitement or exuberance on the event bus to the ground.
Everyone knew what was going to happen, as all the passengers had that same bad feeling in their water.
The atmosphere in the ground was pretty drear from the off with the home fans already downcast, and the smattering of Geelong fans their usual dour selves - they are not prone to excitability, as only one thing matters to them, and that's winning the flag.
Lots of collective groaning from the assembled throng.
It was very obvious for everyone in the cheap seats to see, after about ten minutes of the first quarter, that we were looking at the 2010 Premiers in action.
Swans crunched with no mercy in the backs; forwards completely impotent against dogged defence and tall timber.
Systematically demolished in all aspects of the game.
Not a single winner on the park all night.
It's all very well and good that Sydney has got the Son of Gary, but Geelong of course, has the Son of God!
The Pontiff's Seed Is Strong.
Enough said.
He had a blinder.
Remarkable that we remained in our seats past the Championship quarter, just to witness the Swans being toyed with, and said so much in no uncertain terms in the barracking.
But, no one was listening.
In an unprecedented move, we decided to join the ever growing exodus out of the ground after ten minutes of the final quarter as the massacre by then was just too painful to witness any longer, with Geelong in front by a full 14 goals, yes you read right, 14 goals, forgetting the ridiculous number of Sydney behinds, by which time any interest in barracking was gone.
Simply no point.
It was all the more painful given that the Geelong players were under strict instructions from the coach at the last break to take their foot right off the accelerator pedal, relax, conserve energy, prevent any opportunity for injury, while they benched their star players, and still the Swans were on struggle street.
As the Good Lady Wife succinctly put it during three quarter time:
"It looks as if the Swans are a semi-decapitated mouse, with it's little legs still twitching about, while it's being pawed at by some hideously ugly cat, before being swallowed whole".
Not interested in ever seeing that sort of thing again.
Found ourselves on the very first event bus out of the joint, the "Miserable Express", while beating myself up by drafting in my head a well worded letter to the people in the Sydney ticket office, demanding my money back having had the misfortune of attending three pitiful losses in three games at Homebush this season.
Then wearily factored in the why bother factor, and gave up.
Simply no point.
Sydney people are very quick to shun losers; even the seriously inflated crowd figure was the second smallest at the Western Paddock since the Swans started playing there the year after the Olympics.
There was no one in.
Absolutely no pressure on the bars; in fact there were beer pourers standing around twidling their thumbs, who were more than happy to take the time to prepare you a couple of tumblers of cheeky Shiraz [just 60c more than the execrable ale], while they would have re-frozen plenty of left over steak-and-kidney pies for next year.
They were pulling down the shutters on the food outlets at half time.
SC Roos made his first sense in weeks defining the team's finals prospects on interview after the match as "we'll just be making up the numbers".
"the huge talent gap is insurmountable, at present" sums it up nicely.
While the ladder position might still look reasonable on paper, with no one really breathing down their necks, 9&9 nonethless points to a season through the S-bend with the run home to come, all confidence gorn, and the team playing like shot birds, and a Mad Monday on the 30th of August.
Now, if ever there was one, is the time for a session in the Room Full of Mirrors down on the Balmain Road.
Everyone involved could benefit from taking a good hard look at themselves.
Despite all that, doubt that St Paul would have spent much time on pulling his hair out at Sunday morning smoko down by the Magic Waters, leaving that up to The Horse, but there would have been plenty of that far away look as he gazed out to sea contemplating the fact that you are "a long time retired" in this caper.

SYDNEY: 3.7, 4.12, 5.16, 9.18 (72). Goals: Goodes 3, Bolton 2, Jack, Kennedy, White, Kirk
GEELONG: 5.1, 10.1, 18.3, 20.5 (125). Goals: Johnson 6, Ablett 3, Mooney 3, Ottens, Varcoe, Hunt, Kelly, Byrnes, West, Ling, Mackie.
At Olympic Stadium, Homebush.
Crowd: 30,710.

Haven't seen a single frame of the Tiges match as it was played simultaneously as the Swans game.
You don't get any League score updates at The Rules.
Would have jumped at the chance to swap my Swans tickets for a seat at Leichhardt Oval on Saturday night, but sadly, it was perfectly clear that the Swans tickets were unloved and unwanted and effectively worthless.
Spies who were at the ground suggest it was yet another case of Balmain being handed a get out of jail card free, against a side with a caretaker coach who are running stone motherless last in the comp, this time courtesy of a benevolent Bamford!
You don't see that very often.
Those close to the action, as best as they could reckon, say a hapless Sharkie was denied a perfectly good try in the dying minutes that would have won them the game, after he was ruled to have infringed the "fair advancement of the ball at the try line" rule [a fancy new name for a "double-movement", apparently] when it was clear the bloke was not tackled, was not held, and had used the not-illegal advantage of momentum to plonk the ball on the chalk.
But all accounts, it was a further example of how real time action observed by the naked eye on the spot beats slo-mo replays every time, because as everyone knows, the television lies, and yet the decision comes down to a legally blind referee looking at a crystal bucket and it's taken out of the hands of the man who was there, but who wasn't quite 100% sure of what it was that he actually saw.
Who'd be an umpire?
Little wonder the Sharks were spitting chips and then spewing about being robbed blind, and told everyone within ear shot who wanted to know, but its a conundrum that will never be solved.
Not that the Leichhardt faithful cared one bit.
It's only a good excuse to have that extra schooner in the Orange Grove Hotel on the way home, while disecting the game in the post-mortem.
The only other highlight of the fixture in the bush telegraph reports was Benji being given a rollicking Bronx cheer when he finally kicked a goal.
The home crowd are on to him.
Thinking the win mathematically guarantees Balmain a berth in the top eight - could be wrong there - but there is certainly now a log jam for a top four spot, which is worth its weight in shiny shiny gold in the Hairy Clarke finals system employed by the NRL.
SC Sheens would have just scratched that one in the "we'll take our wins" column in the Coach's Ledger, and think nothing more of it, while the Club Secretary would be looking to give that old cash register in the back of the Revenue Office a good polish, as it's been unused for five years, on account of it only goes ching! ching! in September.

WESTS TIGERS 24. Tries: Fulton (2), Brown, Lawrence, Tuqiri. Goals: Marshall (2).
CRONULLA-SUTHERLAND SHARKS 22. Tries: Collis (2), Ferguson, Gardner. Goals: Porter (3).
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 14,942.