get in touch with this Michael Clarke

This Michael Clarke….

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Sport/Clarke-to-miss-Twenty20-practice-matches/2007/09/08/1188783552642.html

should get in touch with this Michael Clarke…

http://www.zwire.com/site/tab5.cfm?newsid=18804671&BRD=2553&PAG=461&dept_id=506096&rfi=6

might have a cure for a strained beer gut…

A right spanking

Handing out a 12 goal football lesson to a previously in-form side is not a bad way to start September!
It was really game over by quarter time, and certainly mid way through the second stanza, as the Swans cut a swathe through the Hawks defence that had turned up after having popped one too many Mogadon’s
Very satisfying to see Lewis Roberts-Thompson aka The Ugliest Man In Football back on the paddock after entire year out.
UMIF had a solid, if unspectacular game, but what more can you expect from a bloke seriously short of match practice?
Thought young Ed Barlow had an excellent match throughout.
The kiddie has a bright future in front of him for mine, and ironically, there may not be room for him in the side in the first week of the finals.
With Hall having a little rest to sort his niggles, the Swans mid-field and forwards set up had a virtually free reign from SC Roos as evinced by the number of goal kickers…count ‘em…twelve in all!!
At one stage I think the television commentators said that UMIF was the only bloods man on the field who had not kicked at least one goal this season.
In fact, at one stage during the second quarter here was the weird sight of UMIF and Malceski running through the half forward line.
The Goodes train was very good for three of the four quarters, while Magic had probably had his best game of the season, with a goal in each quarter.
The last goal of the game from Magic was a top candidate for ‘goal of the season’ as he had the ball on the customary string, evaded four or five defenders, to find himself with both feet over the goal line in the behind area while still managing to keep the ball in play, then recovering to kick a snap at 90 degrees and boot the goal from about two yards out!
Magic indeed.
Nick Davis Come To Save Us managed to get some mud on him with four choice goals, while Spida did some very useful work in the ruck, however who could believe that Along Came A Schneider fail to kick a major in a 22 goal rout like that?
Would have had his pay docked, yet again, by the Match Committee
What all this means for the cauldron that is finals is anyone’s guess.
You’d expect the Hawks, if they turned up like that again, would be pretty quickly towelled up by the Crows.
And on that form, you’d expect that Swans would give the ‘Pies a right a spanking at the home of he Grand Final, and go all the way to boot, from 7th.
But who knows?
There’s not much for Sydney to learn from that game, and September is an entirely different kettle of fish to the regular season.
As my position on the national AFL tipping ladder suggests [107,122 out of 164,688 tippers!] couldn’t tip football to save my life, so don’t come to me looking to make any predictions, more likely to put the mock on someone or another.


SYDNEY: 5.6,14.8, 18.8, 22.9 (141). Goals: Davis 4, O'Loughlin 4, O'Keefe 3, Bevan, Mathews, Crouch 2, Goodes, Richards, Ablett, Malceske 2, Barlow, McVeigh
HAWTHORN: 1.2, 3.3, 9.5, 10.9 (69). Goals: Dixon 2, Boyle, Ladson, Hodge, Brown, Roughhead, Taylor.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 27,498.

NB: As my home computer is broken for the time being this has not gone out on The Winter Game e-mail circuit as yet.

ruined it for everyone

Fellow tragics.

How could it have come to this?
Labelled the Tigers as the heart break team of the season a few weeks back and impossible to follow, and how right did that prove to be.
With an early start on Saturday, went to bed at a12-4 at half time confident that the two premiership points were in the bag
However, the fishwraps suggest Johnny Morris lost the ball in a one-on-one strip with 12 second left on the clock and the scores all tied up.
Newcastle quickly saw the opportunity to draw the penalty and ran on into a Balmain defensive line who were all offside by a country mile.
The ball sails over the Newcastle cross bar, and it’s game, set, match, season over.
The Tigers this season have become masters at contriving yet another way to lose an unloseable match
And of all the teams to get your season done it by…it had to be the hopeless, hapless drug-addled Knights, didn’t it.
A dark day indeed.
As a colleague at work succinctly exclaimed: “Bloody Balmain. They’ve gone and ruined it for everyone”.
If I were the coach I would have given each and every player individually a gigantic tusk up the runter nd tell them to get out of my sight before I killed them.
But no such histrionics from SC Sheens as indicated by this word for word quote as seen on Sky News Straya.
“We’ve come up short. It’s been our season for most of the year, we’ve been up and down. We had our chance to win it, and didn’t. Congratulations to Newcastle, and y’know, commiserations to us. Just got to work harder for next season and that’s just about it. There’s not much else we can say”. I suppose he apologised to the fans after the Debacle at Leichhardt, so there’s little point in doing so again.
A more comprehensive season review to follow after I’ve had a chance to join SC Sheens and the boys for Mad Monday to ponderwhat might have been, but at the moment I’m just too upset.
TIGERS 24. Tries: Marshall (2), Morris, Lawrence. Goals: Marshall (4)
KNIGHTS 26. Tries: Vuna (2), Paterson, Gidley. Goals: Gidley (5)
At Stadium Australia, Homebush.
Crowd: 13,446.

The Room Full of Mirrors down on Balmain Road

Fellow disappointees,

Had to park about ten minutes walk further away from the ground than usual due to the huge crowd who were already in, and just as we were getting out of the car, a red Ferrari flashed by.
Turned out to be a good omen for later in the night, but not for the afternoon!
As we were walking along the foreshore we spied a Tigers fan who was putting his chairs and esky into his boot, while his family were getting in the car.
“What’s the matter mate, couldn’t get in?”
Oh no, the bloke explained, they had been in the ground for quite a while before the sardine effect came into play, and he found it was just far too uncomfortable and his view of the playing arena had become obstructed, so he decided to pack up and leave; “rather watch the game on television in the comfort of my own lounge room, thanks mate”
Thought the bloke was mad at the time, but as it turned out, he made an excellent decision.
The very steep hill you have to climb to get up to the Mary St entrance to Leichhardt Oval has taken its toll on many a punter over the years, but spotted a Souths fan barely struggling up the incline with a very wobbly boot on.
When we got to the top we saw the same Rabbitoh’s supporter had fallen over between two parked cars, and due to his paralytic state, was unable to get up again.
A couple of security guards were yelling at him “just keep still mate! just keep still! who are you with? who are you with?”
His mates eventually twigged as to what had happened, went back over and picked him up, and with his arms draped over the shoulders of two blokes, the dead drunk was admitted to the ground.
No problem.
Oh dear.
As we were waiting to be admitted, noticed a gate attendant tearing the stubs off a whole bunch of tickets and dropping them into the box office bin.
[The turnstiles at Leichhardt are so ancient they don’t count the patrons as they go in, and the ticket stubs have to be counted by hand].
The gate attendant loudly announced to the couple as they went through the turnstiles “have a great afternoon with your 12 children”
First hand evidence of crowd figure tampering.
That said, if there weren’t 20,000 in, the joint was still jumpin’ and packed to the rafters with the standing room only crowd on the hill extending way beyond the scoreboard bar [where it usually ends] up to the very back of the hill and then up into the Moreton Bay fig trees!
There were about 50 people on top of the old blokes toilet block, before they were eventually dragged off by the cops.
Most disappointing for everyone concerned that the crowd, as it turned out, had nothing to cheer about, and most disappointing for us to find that we had crap seats.
Right in the very first row between the 20 and 10 metre lines at the southern end – this for buying tickets on the first day they became available?
Can only now assume that most of the concourse area is taken up by Members.
So we had to look through the three strands of wire that top the fence there [presumably to prevent ground invasions and players from flipping over the sideline and into the crowd?], but at least we had a good view of the state of the playing surface – accurately described by the ground curator as looking like “the rolling green hills of Ireland”.
A good opening foray from the Tigers was butchered with a silly forward pass with the line wide open, and it was all downhill from there with the Rabbitoh’s garnering a massive weight of possession that would inevitably lead to points on the board.
Hardly saw the ball at all down our end of the field in the first half.
It’s hard to score when you have next to no possession, and the forwards are failing to provide any go forward and subsequent field position, to let the backs do their magic.
Add to that a brittle defensive effort, and the Tiger’s looked like done dinners from the moment Farah went off and never returned.
As we learned later, he had suffered a bad reaction to a pain-killing needle, and lost all feeling in his leg.
So my suspicions the kiddie has been playing injured for several weeks turned out to be right.
Only high point in the game came late in the first stanza, when Benji turned on a bit of trademark brilliance with a kick and regather, and with a jink and a step, found his winger with only the full back to beat.
But at 18-6 down at half-time, things were looking very ominous indeed.
Especially as the grand stand bar had by then run out of Carlton Draught, and could only offer luke cold VB.
With all the tackling required in the first half, the Tigers had had the stuffing well and truly knocked out of them, and it was only a matter of time before the floodgates opened for Souths.
Tigers fans voted with their feet about fifteen minutes into the second half as hundreds of them began pouring off the hill and making their way for the exits, declining to take the torture anymore.
Must be very demoralising for a team to see that, knowing that your fans had given up on you.
Taniela Tuiaki had a lovely game, but he was a shining light in an otherwise awful display.
The long and the short of it was that they just didn’t turn up to play.
About ten minutes before full time a most unusual thing was observed – a full can of beer thrown onto the ground from the Latchem Robinson stand into a huddle of Souths players right in front of us after they had scored yet another try.
The cops quickly moved in and threw out the perpetrator.
Would have thought it was just a case of the frustration boiling right over rather than anything really malicious.
On interview after the game SC Sheens was moved to apologise to the fans – and so he should.
“We've taken what was going to be our own destiny today, and we've blown it. It's very disappointing, 20 minutes before fulltime, to see people leaving. On behalf of the team, I apologise for that. We were embarrassed by it”
From talk of a home final just a few weeks back, the Tigers have now got themselves into a terrible pickle.
You would have thought they could beat the next-to-last placed Newcastle next Friday night, but then they have to rely on Parramatta beating Brisbane just to squeeze into the eight.
But on that performance, they will go nowhere in September.
As the sun started to set on Leichhardt, we lingered a while, pondering what went wrong.
The old wags in the scoreboard, at least, had a sense of humour with a sense of history.
They took down all the numbers from the Souths side of the scoreboard, left the tries and goals up on the Tigers side, and then dropped the numbers 5 & 2 into the score frame, so to anyone who had not seen the game, it would have looked like the Tigers had won 52-0.
If only.

WESTS TIGERS 12 Tries: Fitzhenry, Tuiaki. Goals: Marshall (2).
SOUTH SYDNEY RABBITOHS 37 Tries: Gordon (2), Yileen, Sutton, J.Smith, Dean, Asotasi. Goals: Williams (6). Field Goals: Williams (1).
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 20,232



What can you say about the rubbish trotted out by the Swans at The Home of the Grand Final on Saturday night?
The less said the better, for mine.
Again, a season cruelled by injury; no Kennelly, no Ball, no Ugliest Man in Football, leaving the defence in a state of considerable disarray.
Luke Brennan appeared to be entirely out of his depth, and ended up injured anyway.
It was sickening to see Magic land heavily on his back while taking a mark, and then appearing to cough up blood before being ushered off the ground by the Bamfords.
Buchanan, the fool, is looking at being rubbed out for about three weeks for mine, for a very crude late hit in the final quarter.
That brain explosion epitomized what had been going on, really.
Collingwood played a very clever Championship quarter, winning it three goals to one, and there was really never any practical chance of coming back from there.
In an irony of ironies, The Goods Train was undoubtedly best on ground in a losing team and would have collected the maximum Brownlow votes to add to the meager handful he would have gathered this season.
From my reading of the premiership table, the Swans will still make the eight, even if they go down to the Hawks next Sunday, but top four was done in [probably well before] by last week’s draw, and any hopes of another flag have evaporated in the fierce Melbourne sun.
Will probably end up playing Geelong again at Kardinia Park in the first week of the finals!
There would have been much scratching of heads and chins at the Sunday morning smoko, and you would have thought the first thing SC Roos would have done on return to Sydney would have been to book a session in at The Room Full of Mirrors down on Balmain Road.


COLLINGWOOD: 3.6, 9.8,12.10, 15.11 [101]. Goals: Rusling 4, Rocca 3, Didak, Burns, Clement, Medhurst, Thomas, Pendlebury, Swan, Bryan.
SYDNEY: 4.0, 7.4, 8.6, 11.10 [76]. Goals: Hall 4, Davis 2, Schneider, O’Keefe, Jolly, Kirk, O’Loughlin.
At Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 63,842

an appalling state of affairs

Masochists,
What an appalling state of affairs.
You have to wonder about yr commitment.
At least I was among the last to leave Leichhardt Oval.
And the old blokes in the scoreboard had a sense of humor with a sense of history…
Commentary to follow, but in the meantime check the photo’s on the blog…at…
The fans are very dissapointed
I'm here to tell you...there is always next week.

decency and sense

Hillites,

The Tigers have apparently been under heavy pressure to switch Sunday’s game against Souths from Leichhardt Oval to the Olympic Stadium.
The pressure has come from Souths, the NRL, and even the jokers who purportedly run the Olympic Stadium, as they reckon 40,000 thousand punters would turn up if they knew they could get in.
But, thankfully, the Tigers club has had the decency and sense to say “bugger that!”
I was there the day of the Leichhardt ground record was set at 22,877 in the Premiership year 2005 – also against Souths – Tigers won 42-20.
Admittedly, it was cosy; they closed the gates about 40 minutes before kick off, and they were pulling people out of trees and off the roof of the old blokes toilet block, and the noise and atmosphere was simply incredible.
At the time, the club CEO admitted “with that many people in, not everyone had a positive experience”.
But as far as I’m concerned, why should Balmain give up their home ground advantage –they are a two-try better team at Leichhardt – just for the sake of a few miserable Rabbitoh’s fans?
Tickets went on sale a week earlier than usual, and knowing it would be a sell out, I for one did the right thing and bowled up at the Balmain Leagues club the day they went on sale and handed over my cash for a pair of reserved concourse tickets.
So why should I have to go to the Olympic Stadium when I have paid my hard earned to see my favourite team at my favourite ground?
I’d be suing the NRL for false advertising if I had to.

Dancing like Whirling Dervishes

A-list party goers,

Short reports this week by necessity, despite arguably the two most dramatic games of the season, because I missed them both!
Otherwise disposed celebrating my 50th birthday at the time.
However there were a couple of diehards down in Dad’s Shed who relayed the half time score at 16-4 against the Tigers with all bets looking lost.
Then the bush telegraph in the corner chattered out the scores as the Mighty Tiges piled on four tries in the first fifteen minutes of the second half, and it was suddenly hold all betting slips.
My attention was drawn to the radio call with just minutes left on the clock for the denouement, and I do recall a few people hanging off every word, and then the rebel yell from the assembled multitude ITS OVER THE BLACK DOT !!!
Much punching of the air with fists, the high fives, and the dancing like Whirling Dervishes.
Never did see a replay of Farah’s field goal, but by all reports the bloke was staring in the face of a Backdoor Benny Elias-style nightmare before the thing wobbled over as the pigskin brushed the cross bar.
The win keeps the Tigers in the hunt, and next week’s time honoured grudge match against South Sydney at Leichhardt Oval now assumes proportions of critical importance.
Good thing I have tickets in hand on the concourse in front of the Latchem Robinson stand, as the game will be a sell out for sure, and could even push the ground record.

CRONULLA-SUTHERLAND SHARKS 28. Tries: Covell (2), Bird, Pomeroy, Talaupapa. Goals: L Covell (4).
WESTS TIGERS 29. Tries: Fitzhenry, Hodgson, Lawrence, Marshall, Tuiaki. Goals: Marshall (4). Field Goals: Farah (1).
At Shark Park, Cronulla.
Crowd 12,964.

After the whole roast lamb arrived and the drinking got serious as a few bastards, who shall remain nameless [you know who you are!], set about my entire stock of aged red wines, the transistor radio suggested that the Swans were going ‘round against Brisbane.
Didn’t take much notice of the football until I was told that Brisbane had kicked a total of four goals up until three quarter time.
After they appeared to have pegged out the game in the championship quarter, the Swans must have been looking for trees to hang themselves from then letting in three Brisbane goals in the space of four minutes in the final stanza.
A very very poor effort for whom they have no one except themselves to blame.
And Along Came A Schneider missing a point blank snap deep into the last quarter must have had the match committee wondering how much his match payment should be docked by – this week.
Saw the Jonathon Brown miracle goal right at the death on the TV highlights the next day and it was just that – a miracle.
But Brown knew from the moment it left his boot that it would sail through the big sticks to tie up the score just as the siren sounded.
SC Roos is said to be “disappointed” by the result and he has every right to be.
The draw turned out to be a disaster, and absolutely cruelled the Swans chances of making the top four.
But, did I not say a way back in the season that the two losses by a “bloody point” would come back to haunt Sydney at the business end of the year?
If they had won those two, and picked up the draw, they would have been sitting where they should be – in outright second – instead of a precarious seventh on the ladder.
What more can I say?
For the most accurate prognostications re the finals [although they concede “there’s no way of sorting it out”, but presciently also point out “the fact that Carlton again went down after being in a winning position continues to attract the attention of those with suspicious minds” see:
http://footystats.freeservers.com/Daily/Diary.html
Alas, alac…

BRISBANE LIONS: 1.0, 4.1, 4.7, 9.9 (63). Goals: Brown 4, Johnson 2, Hadley, Brennan, Copeland.
SYDNEY SWANS: 2.4, 3.7, 6.12, 8.15 (63). Goals: Schneider 2, Davis, Hall, O'Keefe, Matthews, Fosdike, Kirk.
At Brisbane Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 33,077