no banjo, no cigar

True Blue Bloods,

On interview after the Preliminary Final, Mr Longmire was asked by some blowie in the Press Gallery:
"Was it better to play three hard finals in a row or have a week off, win a game, have another week off, then...well, in Geelong's case, lose?"
Super Coach Horse replied "I don't know. I just don't know. I don't think anyone knows".
That's a lie.
Of course he does.
He's been a planning and a scheming for this for a whole season, and making a closer study of Sun Tzu's The Art of War in his spare time.
Lets face it - football - it's all about conflict.
Nothing less.
How best to strategically shove the tigantic tusk up the runter of the enemy.
Strengths and weaknesses, adaptability, the lay of the land, horses for courses, defensive arrangements, attacking with fire, heavy artillery, surprise, the use of spies...it's all there...has been since around the 5th century BC.
Horse has done it all this year - looked at it with an eye that's used to gazing out to sea down by the Magic Waters at Sunday morning smoko.
The Big Picture Man.
The Big Kahuna.
Having won the game at quarter time against Geelong, My Spy at The Ground pushed through a telegraph message saying "best finals coaching effort since '05".
Hard to argue with that.
Did SC Horse throw the Qualifying Final, so that his troops would be battle hardened going onto The Biggest Stage, safe in the knowledge they could beat anyone else left in the race?
Did Cleverman reckon on not playing the Pygmies in the Grand Final from Game 1 this season?
Also asked on interview after the game who he'd prefer to meet in the Grand Final, SC Horse said "Don't care, I'll just go out there and see who it is".
That's a lie.
He's planted spies all over the shop, especially at Puppies HQ, so he knows that they don't know that he knows what they intend to get up to.
When you've got the enemy's plan of attack slipped under the hotel room door, the defensive seige mentality is pretty simple:
"If a side can't kick goals on you, they only win rarely".
On that basis alone, they didn't take out the Minor Premiership for nothing.
Build the brick wall and they will come - to throw themselves against it, time and time again, hopelessly in vain.
Old Man McVeigh, Ace Aliir, the weirdest looking man in football, The Great Teddy Richards, Rising Star gongee "Saw" Mills, along with J.Laidler and H.Marsh, all know they're not certainties to be picked in the backline for the Granny.
It's that good.
Yoof and Experience is a two-way street.
Said it before, say it again, the Swans mid-field can look after themselves.
Do like how "Pearl" Papley seems like he's grown another leg in the finals series in the forwards, the way he gets out the 9 iron, swivels and chips through traffic, off two or three steps, and bang!
The pill sails straight through the middle of the big sticks, landing many rows back in the second tier.
The perfect rover for Franklin.
And it's very handy indeed to have that hugely expensive genuine marquee bull-in-a-china-shop up front; not only does Buddy kick straight from 70m through to 2m and throw his weight around like there's no tomorrow, he reads the game so uncannily.
No one man in any opposition team can mark the monster with a massive football brain.
Helps to have Heeney the Cardiff Zucchini, in form, and loitering with intent in the forward line, also.
Any number of Swannies can play in the ruck at a pinch, and have, through the year.
So why not have the tallest man ever to play for Sydney or South Melbourne in Big Sam Naismith at six foot ten in there?
It goes without saying, as it did last week - JP Kennedy can do as he pleases, he don't need no coach to tell him what to do - a major cog in the wheel, the key to the lock to That One Day in October, for mine.
Ring up the Stats Guru and he'll tell you the Bulldogs have far too many voodoo's on their plate.
Most people alive today were aint even born when Footscray won their last Flag [1953].
And for them it's been "bleak ever since".
That is, since birth.
Fairytales do come to an inevitable conclusion, and they mostly end in tears.
7th has never beaten 1st since the Hare-Clark-McIntyre-Duckworth-Lewis finals system was introduced.
No team ever has won four hard finals in a row, all of them sudden-death, to pinch The Flag.
Teams don't come out of being bashed up senseless in a cliff-hanger of a Prelim, and then go on to win the Premiership against a side coming home with a wet sail on the back of handing out two consecutive hidings.
The list goes on.
The Dogs have already played their Grand Final, and will continue to do so in their heads all week - a trap the Swans fell right into two years ago - there is no fear like the fear of fear itself.
And no club with a team song as bad as the Bulldogs 'tune' has ever won the Premiership in living memory.
Sorry Footscray - no banjo, no cigar.
Loyal supporters have long memories, so being beaten by the Bullies twice at the SCG in the last two regular seasons, and the Swans being unbearably ashamed after the 2014 Big Dance is like modern history to us.
A little birdy has been singing that Andrew Ireland - a living legend in own own right, and the Wise Old Man among the the Swans' long-serving adminstrators - having personally lost three grand Finals himself as a player at Collingwood - admits in private that 2014 "burns in our guts".
Failure is not an option.

GEELONG: 0.5, 2.8, 7.10, 8.12 (60). Goals: Taylor 2, Hawkins, Bartel, Selwood, Caddy, Dangerfield, Stanley.
SYDNEY: 7.2, 11.3, 14.4, 15.7 (97). Goals: Papley 3, Parker 2, Tippett 2, Franklin 2, Rohan 2, McGlynn, Heeney, Richards, Naismith.
At Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 71,772,