Tenants of the Terraces,
We were rather chuffed at the finish.
The Good Lady Wife remarked, "now that was very satisfactory all 'round".
She was right.
An excellent exhibition of rugby league; probably the best game of the season in terms of competitiveness in either code all year - never mind that it became a bit scrappy as they got tired in the end.
Always good to see two big, rangy, mobile packs go hammer and tongs, intent only on bashing the crapola out of each other for the full 80 minutes.
And both sides had some half-way decent backs to play off the back of that.
And the Bamfords were inconspicuous; glanced at the scoreboard clock when the ref first blew his whistle and it read 23 minutes gone.
The game was a very good case for leaving the players to get on with it without interference from the umpires, and these Bamfords to their credit, understood that.
The powers that be actively discouraged people from going to the ground after the best part of 200mm of rain [call that eight inches in the old money] had fallen in the Emerald City in the four days prior due to a weather phenomenon know as a mob of "complex East Coast Lows".
It was widely advertised that sections of the hill would be cordoned off as dangerous and uninhabitable [three areas, as it turned out; if people sat on them on plastic sheets they'd just slide down the hill and take half of it with them in a landslide, and no one couldn't possibly stand on the shifting ground], and that the reserve grade game had been cancelled along with the pre-match and half-time entertainment.
Even the dancing girls had been warned off, for chrissake.
You get one game of football, and that's it.
They didn't tell us that the back gate was closed, due to the approaches being ankle deep in mud, so walking in from Leichhardt we were diverted down the lane-way along the side of the ground to go in with everyone else through the Mary Street front gate.
There was almost no one in standing room on the terrace at the 20m line at the Swimming Pool End.
Lucky for the ground managers that they were playing Easts, who are as good as an out of town team, given that Easts fans don't travel.
They wouldn't go as far as Rozelle on their holidays as they have a mental block about anything west of Railway Square, not to mention the fact that one more loss for the Roosters would see them all but cactus for the season.
So it proved to be very comfortable, even though the beer cans were too cold to hold [forgot the gloves, again]; a big crowd under the conditions would have been intolerable.
Ironically, not a drop of rain fell during the game, but remarkably the ground only really got chopped up in the in-goal and along the touch lines.
Still, it was a night for the forwards.
It's very easy to forget just how good a player Gareth "That Pom" Ellis is, until you see him in the flesh.
One of the very last old school hard men from the dark satanic mills and one of the very few Poms who have made a name for themselves in first grade.
Can't think of any other prop forward in the caper who hits harder in the tackle -- putting in some nice, legal, work up and down the torso of the tacklee as they go down in a screaming heap.
Doesn't mind a bit of violence when it's sanctioned by the rules, and can cop it too, reckoning it comes with the territory.
Not sure that there's anyone else in the game at present who's better over 10 metres, running the ball up through the middle of the ruck in heavily defended territory, bumping bigger boofier blokes out of the way and leaving would be tacklers groaning, sprawled on the ground in his wake.
Doesn't bust the advantage line often, but routinely makes crucial yards.
There's nothing fancy about the way he goes about his work, but boy, he just quietly puts the fear up opposition forwards, who universally hate playing against him.
Little wonder they extended his contract by three years on a bloated stipend.
Said it before, say it again: worth his weight in gold.
Give him Man of the Match for the night, for mine.
In stark contrast, Lote "What'd I Do Guv?" Tuqiri was in his first game back after a knee that kept him out for month or so, and you could see that SC Sheens had wrapped him up tight in cotton wool.
There was nothing going on on the left edge all night.
Lote hardly saw the ball, never took a hit, trotted about on his own or just stood there like a shag on a rock and really didn't do anything at all, by design.
Good coaching.
And yet Tuqiri still managed to do a mischief to a pec, and will miss yet more games.
If anyone's been cruelled by injury this season, it's him.
It came down to a crude game of chess in the end with the Great Benji fishing for a field goal at least ten minutes out from full time, working on the Wok Ryan principle that "it's easier to get one early, than it is to get one late".
Sprayed two drop kicks well wide of the uprights, Farah had a pot shot that didn't even clear the black dot, before Marshall sent the ball, oscillating wildly, over the cross bar with six minutes left on the clock for the match winning seven point lead.
Game over.
The sweet aroma of cooking chooks.
What with having to skirt around the ground on the way back, wander up through the metal hospital, drop in for a rest at the Orange Grove Hotel, to the motor, we calculated the walk at well over a mile, up hill and down dale.
Hard work for old, but happy, fans, who wished they still lived in Rozelle.
No doubt the Manly Silvertails and the Wollongong Dragons will apply the blow torch to the belly over the next couple of weeks.
It's what's called in coaching circles a "challenging draw", and it's exactly what Balmain needs.
If the Mighty Tiges can win at least one of them, you'd have to be thinking a top eight finish is all but a certainty, even though top four may well be out of reach without a purple patch.
WESTS TIGERS 19. Tries: Ryan, Fulton, Ayshford. Goals: Marshall (3). Field Goals: Marshall (1).
SYDNEY ROOSTERS 12. Tries: Leilua, Guerra. Goals: Carney (2).
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 10,187.
After Big Bad Barry Hall - on one leg on the the first leg of his farewell tour - booted the first two goals for the Dogs the feeling in my water took a turn for the worse.
In the end it was good of BBB to bag a fiver without spoiling the Sydney party.
At last the Swans learnt how to play wet weather football, and someone in the dressing room wised up after the slipoverathon of the week previous, and managed to screw the right spriggs into the boots this week.
Just poke the ball forward as much as you can and get it into a spot where you might have some sort of chance of kicking a goal.
Playing on wet tracks is not rocket science.
And still they managed to kick more behinds.
Keiren 'Son of Gary' Jack would have undoubtedly picked up the 3 Brownlow points on offer for best on ground.
Popped up everywhere and did everything right; a brilliant game.
At last, club management couldn't pretend that more than twenty thousand people go to Sydney home games week in week out.
They don't.
The Swans marketing department lives in morbid fear of an official crowd figure of less than 20K, but this time the turnstiles could be over-wound or fudged no further.
True, the weather hadn't been that good and the Swans had lost in it last week, but as the stats guru points out, it was the lowest official attendence at the SCG in nine years.
Mmm.
And the Greater Western Sydney Pygmies think they might get a crowd?
Mmm.
Sixth on the ladder aint a bad place to be with six rounds to go, and Coach Horse would no doubt welcome this week's bye, as there are more than a few of the lads playing with niggles that could use a rest.
Just go away for a week.
SYDNEY: 2.4, 7.10, 11.14, 16.18 (114). Goals: Bird 4, McGlynn 2, McVeigh 2, Reid 2, Goodes 2, Roberts-Thomson 2, Bolton, Malceski.
WESTERN BULLDOGS: 2.1, 7.3, 8.5, 11.9 (75). Goals: Hall 5, Hooper 2, Grant, Jones, Liberatore.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 19,449.
