Loyalista,
There is simply no coming back from having seven goals kicked on you in the first quarter, sorry Essendon.
The Fat Lady was already starting to warm-up the vocal chords within the first half hour after the opening bounce.
That's all she wrote, what's more to say?
The Goodes Train really only made a cameo appearance, but it doesn't matter if you carry a passenger or two, when the mid-field is playing that well, and the tall timber are doing an admirable job up front.
The Strayan of the Year is worth his weight in marketing gold, and that will do, just quietly.
It doesn't matter what you think of Buddy - the man's a freak.
There's no one with his height and strength who can throw his weight around quite like he can.
And there's no arguing with five goals and having a blinder, short and simple.
No idea what the club is paying Franklin this year [although a little birdie was singing when they hired him that most of the cash is backloaded onto the final years of his contract as an incentive and reward for longevity], but whatever the dollar amount is, it's becoming more and more apparent that it may well be worth it, and that Buddy's a keeper.
Bird continues to fly under the radar, while JP Kennedy has set some sort of record for the most number of consecutive 25+ possession games.
Hawthorn must have been completely out of their minds when they let JP go for a couple of lowly draft picks.
Fools. And plenty of Hawks supporters thought and said so at the time.
Parker continues to be the find of the season, after feeling his way into senior footy last year.
He's now very confident that he can match it week in week out at the top level; tough no-holds-barred consistency is what you aim for when you are a nuggety-type six-footer.
No doubt the highlight of the Championship Quarter was an unsual one.
A Bamford collides with Nick "Full as an Esky" Malceski - that's like being run over by a small truck without warning - and ends up on the Medicab
Umpire Pannell will cop the concussion rule and have a week off you'd expect.
Funny thing, the Stats Guru points out that the only time Malceski has ever been suspended was for "contact with an umpire", but not this time, as it was all the Bamford's fault - he was too close to the ball instead of standing way back and watching the thing, and he wasn't aware of what was going on around him - wrong place, wrong time to be weilding a whistle.
Essendon do have some class fans, don't they?
It's all very well having a quiet chuckle at an umpire's misfortune, but apparently they booed the gurney as it was coming off the ground as they reckoned it delayed the game for too long.
Then it emerged mid-week that some fool of a Bomber's supporter had been thrown out of the ground for calling The Goodes Train a "black bastard", or worse.
And that in the Marn Grook game, of all games.
They are almost as classy as Collingwood fans.
So there you go....an official mid-season Purple Patch - five in a row - and now firmly entrenched in the top four, after just sneaking into the top eight a couple if weeks ago.
SC Horse must be thinking that's a nice place to be with the bye coming up, and then a Thursday night game at home against a faltering Geelong.
Time for the first cigar of the season.
ESSENDON: 1.1, 5.3, 6.6, 9.10 (64). Goals: Ryder 2, Carlisle 2, Goddard, Zaharakis, Hocking, Daniher, Bellchambers.
SYDNEY: 7.1, 12.4, 15.4, 18.6 (114). Goals: Franklin 5, McVeigh 3, Tippett 3, Parker 2, Kennedy, Derickx, Goodes, Rampe, Bird.
At Docklands Stadium.
Crowd: 41,098.
The Mighty Tiges took the get-out-of-jail free card + the two free points, while it was on offer.
Clever football smarts.
Found myself pottering about in the kitchen whipping up something or another on Saturday night, so only caught snatches of the radio call, all the way from The Shire.
Don't know that Shark Park, in its current incarnation, has ever been graced with my presence, and can't see any call to go in there in the near, let alone mid-to-long term future.
At the end of the match the radio commentators were doing the call of the card and summing up the scorebox and naming their top three players and finished their remarks with "well, the referee's have certainly made a spectacle of themselves tonight".
Forward passes that were "a few kilometres forward", "even Blind Freddy standing at the back of the hill could see that", run-around-second-man plays that amost always involved a blatant shepherd, offsides galore, snaky business in scrums - crikey, there was allegation of biting for gawd's sake [that in the end stayed on field] - there was even a "chicken wing" tackle - all of which went unpunished while the Bamford's constantly blew the whistle calling penalties for the most marginal technical infractions.
The players could see that the umps were all at sea, rules are there to be broken if you can get away with it - both sides were as guilty as each other - and they both took full advantage of it.
After a tough hard fought even first half, Cronulla scored two dodgy tries in two minutes soon after half time, and five minutes later, Balmain scored two dodgy tries in two minutes to go two points ahead.
At that point, The Best Leb In The Game, back from injury to resume his crucial role as Master of Proceedings decided that that was enough of that nonsense, and no more points were needed.
So he made sure they never conceded a free yard in defence - just sat on the football and shut the game down in the second half of the second half - with the option of working a drop goal for a three point lead always a live option.
But in the denoument even that wasn't necessary.
Coach Harry is one of the few very good strategic thinkers in the game - rugby league is not very complicated, it's a plain and simple game - Mr Potter eschews yelling down the telephone, throwing the headphones about or any of those kinds of histrionics, in favour of leaning back in the box seeing the thing in the big picture - which is the current 80 minutes at hand - with his strange far-away eyes.
On that showing, if Balmain can start to empty Sick Bay a bit and get back to having the the luxury of picking the first-picked side week in, week out, they are definitely top eight material, but the rugby league table is a strange thing; where the wheels can fall off at any moment at the drop of a hat, if you aren't careful.
CRONULLA-SUTHERLAND SHARKS 20. Tries: Tagataese, Gallen, Gordon. Goals: Gordon (4).
WESTS TIGERS 22. Tries: Nofoaluma, Richards, Paterson, Lawrence. Goals: Richards (3).
At Shark Park.
Crowd: 15,869.
Footnote:
Did note that The Great Benji Marshall made his debut for St George on the weekend (in a 0-36 loss!).
His performance was variously described in the fish wraps as "unimpresssive", "lack lustre", and even "embarrassing".
Here's a bloke who made the mistake-of-his-life by walking out on Balmain after a stellar career over a simple contract dispute which should have been easily solved, went on to make a fool of himself in Auckland playing rugby union at which he was a self-admitted "utter failure", to return in short order to the only game he knows - rugby league - well aware that his heart will never be in it if he isn't playing for the Tigers, who don't want him back for good reason - you can do all the humble pie eating, son.
Despite the full-blown narcissism, inflated sense of entitlement, plain greed, and sheer bastardry - you have to forgive him all that and feel for the poor guy.
Look for a mid-season retirement from all codes of football; about a million dollars short of where he could and should have been.
Sad.
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