ten spinners since TGW

Did note mid week that MJ Clarke has been silent on the matter after declining to the join the recent chatter about the ten players who have been picked for Straya as spinners since the retirement of The Great Warnie.
Probably because he forgot who they are.
And who can blame him?
How easy it is to forget:

Name Tests Played after TGW retirement Wkts Ave
SCG MacGill 4 10 65.10
GB Hogg 3 8 60.13
NM Hauritz 16 58 36.22
B Casson 1 3 43.00
CL White 4 5 68.40
JJ Krejza 2 13 53.23
BE McGain 1 0 --
SPD Smith 2 3 27.33
XJ Doherty 2 3 102.00
MA Beer -- -- --


How many are still playing first class cricket, then?

scenes of unspeakable horror

Fellow Aghastees,

It was like watching a bright beacon as it suddenly, without warning, just disappeared with a final flicker over the horizon, signifying the loss of all hope of salvation.
Found myself on the deck outside the Colin Egar Bar at the southern end of Adelbrain Oval when it happened.
Waiting very patiently for stumps on Day Four with my 100th beer of the day in hand, when KP Pietersen bowled what would have been the second last ball of the day - a nothing ball - and MJ Clarke played a nothing stroke, somehow contriving to put a huge inside edge on it that could be heard resonating around the ground, which short leg duly trousered.
Never mind what happend before or after that moment.
Out for 80. Four down and a long, long way behind.
One brain explosion and it was game over in the blink of an eye.
Just at that instant, Cricket Australia sent me a text message saying "we're officially fooked".
Believed them, for once.
Mind you, did get to see Pup put together a tidy well-made half century between tea and stumps, and that was more than welcome relief after watching The Evil Empire bat for a two full days, and then some.
Still the best exponent of the late cut in the modern game, some lovely work against the spinner, leg side play, as usual, impeccable; the classical on-drive to a vacant field will always give you value for your shots, while he doesn't mind the odd straight hit that clangs into the sightboard.
But it was precious little consolation.
Could, but won't, take you through the Abomination in Adelbrain chapter and verse - nothing good would come of it given the utterly miserable woefulness of the entire experience; the torture was just too hideous.
Suffice to say that after Straya lost any chance of winning in the first 16 minutes of a five day match, the local fishwrap, The Advertiser, was moved to comment in the next day's edition:
"the pictureseque outlook at the Oval and the festive atmosphere of the opening day soon gave way to scenes of unspeakable horror".
With the Ridiculous Little Urn now safely locked up at Lords, surely the Chairman and the Three Wise Men must take the only honourable course of action available to them and sack themselves, after RT Ponting has fallen on his sword.

hammer'n'tongs

Canine Fanciers,

There's something up with Pup.
Maybe playing hurt?
Only had to have had a look at him in the crystal bucket over the past five days.
MJC tried hard all week to hide his humanity.
Always keen on Day One on doing nothing at all in the field, constantly scouting for a position where the ball was consistently not going.
Might as well have stood under a shady gum tree.
Day Two, came out and put together a well made 9 in 81 minutes, before offering a gimmee to the Poms.
Obviously intent on just holding up an end...ran nothing more than a single until Mr Cricket forced him to make a four, all run!
Ambled rather creakily to the crease to make his ground at the end of that.
Spent Day Three on the massage table having his spine walked on by a 4'6" Thai massuese.
Day Four; the only time anyone spotted him, he was dressed in cotton wool at point or cow corner; a good look that.
Then did his best work on Day Five, contriving to grass a sitter at slip.
First he saw of it was when he looked down and it was spinning around on its axis at his feet.
What's more, his second shocker of the match.
Shaggers Back is as good a thing to blame it on than anything else.
A chronic injury in the true sense of the word; longstanding, lingering, loitering, incurable and inadvertedly but seriously aggravated when he started going hammer'n'tongs on Our Lara.
That's when he needed to hire a life coach.
Pup'll end up one day in the Compo Chair, and finish his career in a Jason Recliner.
Will he last long enough to see Punter fail to survive the workings of the razor gang after losing The Ridiculous Little Urn, yet again --- to take on the Captaincy, however briefly?
Do the fools allegedly in charge aka the Chairman and the Three Wise Men have a Plan B for anything, let alone the Ashes or the succession?

the idea of not doing anything

Bleachermen,

It's a funny game, cricket.
On the strength of Sudsy's hat-trick, Bubbles' chances of playing in a test match this summer have just taken a critical nose dive.
Only faint hope is to take a bag in the Shield and replace Joke Johnno for Perth.
But, as it appears, while Cap'n'Cockhead remains as skipper, Poor Ol' Frenchy might as well put his baggy green in a glass case.
Shame, that.
Thought Pup hid himself very well in the outfield today.
Keen on the idea of not doing anything.

safely locked up at Lords

Aghastees,

And so, it has come to this.
Straya drops to fifth in the test rankings, behind, guess who?
That's right.
Engerland.
Poms must be licking their puffy chops thinking they will have us like kippers for breakfast.
The Silly Little Urn safely locked up at Lords, without much risk of being disturbed.

ICC rankings for Test teams:
Ranking Team Matches Rating Points
1 India 34 130
2 South Africa 29 119
3 Sri Lanka 23 115
4 England 39 112
5 Australia 37 110
6 Pakistan 23 83
7 West Indies 21 79
8 New Zealand 25 78
9 Bangladesh 19 7

MJ Clarke certainly had an unhappy time, and could fairly be asked to shoulder much the blame for the Debacle in India; not a lot of centre wicket practice ahead of the Ashes with scores of 14,4,14, 3; managing to get himself stumped in the second innings in Banglaore without even knowing it.
And this at the venue where he made a century on debut.
Pup's test average has now dipped to 48.91.
The bloke is obviously looking for more responsibility than the Vice-Captaincy, so he can lead from the front.
In any other country, there would be an urgently convened Royal Commission, with the Captain and Selectors called as the star witnesses.
But, no, everyone will just continue on their merry way as if nothing had happened..."oh, well, you get that in India"...being the weakest of weak excuses.
Surely, surely, surely the buck must stop on the desk of Straya's Worst Captain in 22 years, RT Ponting?
Said it before, say it again; for how long can Cap'n'Cockhead survive on shaky ground as yet more underpinning slips away.
Warnie, the best Captain Straya never had, was quite right to have a mighty go at the shabby treatment Punter handed out to Uncle Horrie in Bangalore.
Ponting's defence? "what? I didn't do anything, yr Honour, honest".
Precisely the problem.
Lord, save us.

wept openly

Disappointees,

"a bloody point".
As my former mother-in-law used to say.
A bloody point.
Amatuer mathmeticians describe it in football terms as the "slimest of margins".
You can't be done out of playing in the Grand Final by half a point.
And there's only one way to get a bloody point in the rugby league and that's via the courtesy of the bloody field goal.
Not that Balmain didn't use the device to get to the post on more than one occasion during the season.
But still, it's still a bloody point.
The scoreboard doesn't lie.
Can't argue.
Those who drifted into the ground on a whim remarked on how it was such a lovely balmy night for football.
The Olympic public transport system had been cranked up to full scale for the evening and everything - then as now, ten years on -- worked perfectly.
No waiting, no delay, anywhere, anytime.
Magnificent [but will no doubt be topped by Delhi].
Nicely seated in the SW corner just back from the corner flag with a tip top view of the southern in-goal; seats not plated in platinum, but pretty good for thirty bucks.
Found ourselves next to a very vocal Rabid Western Suburbs Fan.
We got on well; me yelling "c'mon Balmain", him yelling "c'mon Wests" or "c'mon Magpies", in the true spirit of the joint venture.
The first half was a curious affair; as the Good Lady Wife remarked drily just before the break "we've been robbed blind in the penalty count, you know" [5-0 as it turned out], then, just as she said it, the Tigers finally got one for inside the ten..
Suddenly its dawned on me why the St George defence is rated so highly -- they continuously play from an offside position with the connivance of the cheatin' Bamfords!
Nice work if you can get it.
And yet Balmain somehow led 12-6 at half time, while looking good about it.
The Dragons are a pretty dirty side too; one of the worst in fact, putting on cheap shots a plenty.
They've not had a terribly good track record down at The Tribunal, as you'll recall.
The deliberate knees into the back of Lote "wot I do guv" Tuquiri, while he was on the ground and defencless, was a prima facie case.
In my day, that was clearly a send-off offence, and yet in this day and age of weakness on the part of officialdom when it comes to clear cases of foul play, the Bamford's attention had to be drawn to the fact that Lote had copped it bad in the back door, by the Bamford upstairs!
Can't abide that.
Lord save us.
As the massive crowd roared with that peculiar sound of a rugby league crowd in full throat; could not help thinking that the forces of evil were conspiring against "us".
Still, there was nothing to complain about heading to the bar at the break.
The pack, as usual, aquitted themselves well, while the backs did enough -- almost -- but it was that sort of game from early on where there didn't appear to be any stand-out Tigers player.
It was always going to be hard to pick a man of the match.
Not looking for heroes, as there were none to find.
The Rabid Western Suburbs Fan spent a lot of the second half warning the Tigers in no uncertain terms about the dangers of allowing the opposition too much field position where they might get into a place where they might consider trying to pot a drop goal.
Everyone's jaw dropped when that strange freak Soward did just that in the 75th minute from a fair way out at a fair angle.
And that was that.
Game Over.
Kaput.
Balmain turned over to receive the gigantic tusk up the runter through no fault of their own.
The Rabid Western Suburbs Fan wept openly on the full-time hooter; there was no way he could hide his humanity or the tears streaming down his cheeks from his convulsive weeping.
It was a pretty raw scene among the sobbing Balmain fans all around, really.
Is this what football does to people??...crossed my mind.
Then we all went home, profoundly disappointed, perhaps even "shattered".
They could have just put "all played well" in the Best: column in the Wests Tigers scorebox in the Sunday fishwraps.
That would've been enough.
In the dug out, SC Sheens could be seen resting his chin comfortably in his hands, showing not a hint of emotion at the denoument.
The bloke is reputed to only ever having smiled once.
He would have -- some time later -- in his cups, scratched that one into the "we'll learn from our losses" side of the Coach's Ledger, signed it off, and closed the book.
Ducked my head into the Front Bar at The Local mid week as is my wont, to be told that the result was met with a general shaking of lowered heads among the afficiandos on the day.
The Philosopher, in a rare outburst, was reported to have railed against the Hare-Clarke-McIntyre-Lewis-Duckworth system as "a complete joke", and left it at that.
As they say in the classics, there's always next year.

ST GEORGE-ILLAWARRA DRAGONS 13. Tries: Nightingale, Smith. Goals: Soward (2). Field Goals: Soward (1).
WESTS TIGERS 12. Tries: Lui, Tuqiri. Goals: Marshall (2).
Crowd: 71, 212.
At Olympic Stadium, Homebush.

And so endeth the Winter Game wire for another year.
Thanks for all the outrageous suggestions, crazed comments, cock'd'up criticisms, downright abuse and drunken ramblings...
It's been fun.
There will be the occasional post on the Summer Game wire on the escapades of MJ Clarke and any first class cricket that may be witnessed first hand, so, until then, get a dog up ya.

The Fear

Bleacherites,

Never in doubt.
Even if, yet a-bloody-gain, found my self reaching for the industrial strength heart pills, washed down with a few powerful snifters to stop the damnable thing missing a beat, settle the nerves, that sort of thing.
Not one to unduly bag a beaten opposition, but the Raiders were the least likely in the top eight for mine as they didn't have the overall class across the paddock all season and their young blokes were gripped by the fear of dropping their bundles in front of a gangbusters sell-out record home crowd, and absolutely mortified, when they duly did.
To wit, the Croker Kiddie; one of the most accurate and reliable goal kickers in the caper.
The look on the poor bloke's face when he shanked the penalty goal shot just wide from right in front of the black dot that would have to leveled the match at 26-all and pushed it into extra time, had "oh, joisus, even me mother is ashamed of me" written all over it.
Very pleasing to see Roycey Simmons took the advice to give Benji a wheelbarrow of footballs, to punch through the slot on the training paddock.
He hasn't kicked five from five in a while.
The Tigers have got to where they needed and wanted to be be via the circuitous route under the Hare-Clark-McIntyre-Duckworth-Lewis sytem, remembering that they faced the distinct possibility of being knocked out cold in week one.
There is no doubting Benji is in career best form five years on from just coming out of his rookie kiddie days, and while acres of newsprint devoted to stories about the mercurial brilliance of one man in the Balmain backline have been recycled as fish wraps, not nearly enough has been said or written about the Balmain forwards.
Under-rated, under-valued, though probably not under-paid, but over-performed.
It's been well known for a hundred years or so that forwards win games of rugby league, and backs, as always, can go please themsleves.
Perhaps the Tigers pack is unheralded on account of they do not boast a single huuuuuge South Islander amongst their numbers; only the Best Leb In The Game, a Pom, a few wizened journeymen [some now wearily consigned to the bench], a retiree from time to time in the form of The Great Skando [who, at last, seems to have retired, telling SC Sheens in no uncertain terms, "for gawd's sake, don't pick me this week, coach. you bastard"], a Bludnut and a Refrigerator.
Said it before, say it again, but if Ellis is not the best second rower going around in the comp then they'll be some hat eating going on, surely?
If Farah hasn't got the best football brain at dummy half of any of his contemporaries over the last five years, and yet still can't get a game for NSW; more felt in the gob.
Blokes like Gibbs, Fulton, Heighington are unashamed high class mercenaries, who play for good money, but are loyal to their paymasters to the last.
Galloway is a special head case.
And no-one wants wants a full-on shirt-front from The Refigerator, as you'd probably end up TPI.
No one can argue with that, and sensibly, no one does.
In the backs, the miracle reappearance of Lawrence after being counted out for the season with a purported broken jaw just two weeks previous, was, well, a miracle.
They need the Try Scoring Freak to do what he does best - score tries.
On paper the Dragons should win this week, and the bookies certainly see it that way - you can get luxury odds about the Tigers straight out - given the Saints line up is a pretty good one and the fact that they had a massive advantage in the points scored for and against, more than any other team in the comp by the length of the street, at the end of the regular season.
But if you could be bothered to drill down into the stats, most of those points were scored against weak teams, while the Dragons did tend to struggle against good relentless defensive outfits, who had some explosive power in the backs and at least one good finisher on the wing.
Lote 'wot'd I do, guv?' Tuqiri, anyone?
For mine, St George will be gripped by the fear that they won't even make the Grand Final after winning the Minor Premiership by a whisker, while the Tigers won't have anything of the sort that to contend with and really have nothing much to lose; as it was in the Miracle Year '05, everything, then and now, is just a bonus on a season well played, notwithstanding that another Winfield Cup would be a good thing to have in the trophy cabinet down on the Victoria Road.
It'll also be a very very interesting battle of tactics and strategy from two very old, very wily Super Coaches, who have no shortage of Premierships between them, to see who comes out on top.
Betting on my man, even though SC Sheens has not managed extra time all that well this season, but he would have learnt from that...
If it comes to that.
God Forbid.
With both clubs having huge supporter bases [as noted many times previously, you see Tigers fans, everywhere, every day, in all sorts of unusual places and situations] there should be a bumper crowd in, but you'd expect the Balmain/Western Suburbs conglomerate of supporters would shade the Dragons fans slightly in the attendance figures, giving Balmain something of a home ground advantage.
But not much, mind you.
They sold 35,000 seats in the club member's pre-sale by all reports, so should get about 60,000 in at a minimum, plus some walk up.
But, in breaking news, the senior bureaucrats who support Balmain at Shitty Rail have decided to make life difficult for St George fans by scheduling trackwork for Sutherland, Kogarah, Rockdale, Dapto, Wollongong and Thirroul.
If that goes ahead, the pressure on the event bus system will be enormous.
The Club Secretary would no doubt be madly shuffling the beads back and forth on the abacus working out the percentages on the gate receipts as his faithful assistant goes ching! ching! on the old back office cash register, all the time thinking, praying, dreaming, of the spectacular box office bonanza that is the premiership decider.
Tickets to the cheap seats are in hand; and cheap they are at just $30 a throw.
See if you can spot us on the telly.
We'll be the photogenic screaming delerious ones waving at the camera from our angle right on the try-line in the south-western corner of the ground, shouting lame stuff like "go you good things".
Was reminded this week of that wonderful work of art that appeared on the old brick wall barrier on top of the road bridge over the railway line at Petersham in the week before the '89 Grand Final, hand painted with a wide brush, in two foot high white letters:
"THERE IS NO FEAR LIKE THE FEAR OF FEAR ISELF, EXCEPT SIRRO"

CANBERRA RAIDERS 24. Tries: Harrison, Monaghan, Thurling, Tongue. Goals: Croker (4).
WESTS TIGERS 26. Tries: Heighington, Ellis, Tuqiri, Lawrence. Goals: Marshall (5).
At Canberra Stadium.
Crowd: 26,476. [Ground Record]

Craven.

For the record:
2nd Preliminary Final
St George Illawarra Dragons (Winner 1 Wk 1) v Wests Tigers (Winner Semi-Final 1)
Saturday 25 September 2010, 7:45pm AEST - ANZ Stadium, Sydney Olympic Park.
Dragons: 1. Darius Boyd 2. Brett Morris 3. Mark Gasnier 4. Matt Cooper 5. Jason Nightingale 6. Jamie Soward 7. Ben Hornby (c) 8. Neville Costigan 9. Dean Young 10. Michael Weyman 11. Beau Scott 12. Ben Creagh 13. Jeremy Smith
Interchange: 14. Nathan Fien 15. Trent Meriin 16. Matt Prior 17. Jarrod Saffy; Reserves: 18. Nick Emmett 19. Kyle Stanley 20. Jon Green 21. Luke Priddis.
Tigers: 1. Mitch Brown 2. Lote Tuqiri 3.Blake Ayshford 4. Chris Lawrence 5. Beau Ryan 6. Benji Marshall 7. Robert Lui 8. Todd Payten 9. Robbie Farah 10. Keith Galloway 11. Liam Fulton 12. Gareth Ellis 13. Chris Heighington
Interchange: 14. Ben Murdoch-Masila 15. Daniel Fitzhenry 16. Simon Dwyer 17. Bryce Gibbs; Reserves: 18. Mark Flanagan 19. Andrew Fifita.