the Urn returns and the demise of the W.A.C.A Ground

Wackarites,

The punning was dreadful in the papers "Australia urns the Ashes!"
Won't bore you with the rest.
"Brilliant Aussies Humiliate Pathetic Poms", was all the Daily Terror could come up with as a front page headline.
Weak.
Tame; they were massacred, no-one left behind to tell the story.
News from the Mother Country has it that there was NO reportage of the event whatsoever in the fish-wraps in the Ol' Dart, and there was certainly no cause for jubilation in the Heart of the Empire.
Done cold by the Colonies, they were, the Poms, with two games to spare and now staring down the barrel of the ignominious disgracement of 5-nil.
Few things give me greater pleasure than to see the Pommy bastards cop a gigantic tusk up the runter at cricket.
There was a feeling of unbridled reflected joy & glory as one of the finest sights in world sport was being played out on the third day - "moving day" - in Perth...Poms being slowly, but unmercilessly, ground into the dust...to the tune of 9/662 dec.
Everybody has their opinions on the hinge of battle - the thing on which everything else swings - was it by far and away their best batsman, the mild-mannered Benny Stokes, going berserk in Bristol way back in September in the brain-explosion to end all brain-explosions?
We'll never know.
Was it the tourists getting utterly hammered by ten wickets at the Gabbatoir after winning the toss and putting on 300?
Smiffy was in it from the off with a lazy 141 not.
That could well have been it, there and then - the absolutely priceless 1-nil lead in a five match series.
Was it Mr. Dudley Root Esq calling the flip correctly and then incorrectly inviting Orstralia to bat and make a poultice in Adelaide at zero one down, ignoring the fact that he didn't have a sufficient arsenal, day or night?
And everybody knows what happened at the Pink Stink
Or was it Smiffy [again] departing the planet in Perth?
Sorry Pup, but your mantle as the best batsman of your generation is being seriously challenged by Skipper Smiffy here.
The double ton on a six-lane freeway was a simple joy to watch as it went on all day - proper Test cricket - the crisp cut shots, the glorious cover drives, the pulls, the swipes and sweeps and hoiks, the superlative textbook leg play all easily beating the hopelessly hapless field - even Cow Corner wasn't safe - and as the shadows grew longer it was plain comical to see the Baby-Faced Killer effortlessly twirl his bat around about above his head and just flick a short one way over the top of the only slip off some absolutely buggered Pommy bowler.
Anderson, Broad, Woakes, Overton and Ali all got hit for a hundred and then some.
And they were told about it - endlessly.
A master class.
SPD Smith has now been admitted to the Pantheon, if he hadn't been before.
At one point it was mentioned that someone with far too much time on their hands had calculated that Smiffy does up to 27 different movements of his body between facing every ball.
Crikey!
More fidgety than even MJ Clarke ever was, if that is humanely possible.
Was it Hey Hey Jonny Jonny Bairstow's unusual behaviour in a Perth bar before the tour even really began where all the wheels fell off the dodgy touring wagon?
Smiffy learnt alot while he was on a rickshaw recently in India, where they are past-masters at it; and the Poms were sucked in holus bolus and had their heads completely done in by Straya's very clever "psych-war" that was guaranteed to produce mental disintegration, despite the sledging not getting too out of hand, except for a bit of light-hearted banter...e.g. Smiffy v Jimmy Anderson discussing the state of the scoreboard in Adelbrain [Aleem Dar adjudicating].
What about the Poms just being not up to standard as the hinge point?
Plainly not good enough.
Attack? Poor, too slow. Bats? Took 'em until the third game to get a ton. Field? Below average. Minds? Gorn.
Out-played and out-foxed in every department there is.
Series over.

The epoch-ending of the WACA as a test match venue is something that cannot be let go without comment.
The Western Australian Cricket Association Ground has been there literally forever, and remains the last genuine cricket ground in the country [a high wide and handsome hill with a higgeldy-piggeldy collection of odd little old grandstands] with perhaps the exception of Bellerive Oval [whatever happened to the old TCA Ground?].
While it will apparently remain as a first-class ground for the time being, no money has been spent on it in decades - Joisus, even the pitch covers come apart after long periods of disuse - and in time it will be built over with high-rise flats, mark my words.
Never mind the black and white images of Lillee taking wickets at one end and Thommo making them jump at the other, as the chin music hummed off a "pacey WACA wicket".
Thing of the past.
The powers that be say it's too small at a notional capacity of 24,500, and apart from "high ranking teams", Perth will now not have a test match every summer, as the "lower ranking teams" test matches will be moved to Hobart.
You've been dudded without knowing it, Perth.
They will fill their new 60 thousand seater Superdome to the brim every weekend in winter, directly rivalling that other football stadium known as the Adelaide Oval, but test cricket has been consigned to the dust bin of homogenised all-seated stadia with same same only different drop-in pitches world-wide, on instruction from those on high at the ICC.
Sad, for any weary ol' nostalgic traditionalist; bloody ruined it.
Been to the WACA, once, almost exactly 31 years ago.
That's ancient history now, but the ground's barely changed since.
While the match in question is pretty much lost in the mists of time, it was a picture post-card perfect Perth day if memory serves, warm with little fluffy clouds and that unique light that reflects off the Indian Ocean, the Doctor was in, and found myself watching from one of those charming old white-washed thick wicker chaise-lounge arrangements on the balcony of a bar overlooking the ground attached to the old Western Australian Cricketer's Club sucking free ice cold Emu Bitter out of cans and smoking my head off on sponsor's product.
By invitation only...on my own in a joint full of well dressed strangers on the take, all yabbering their heads off, and it got pretty messy, to be sure.
Essentially a large "private box" before there was even such a thing, well, free piss, anyway, and not too many seats, either.
Somehow recall that it was very bright too - the first time the brand spanking new floodlights had been switched on?
Can't remember, who knows, but even so there was no shortage of shady places to lurk in.
And they were still mucking about putting in the new Lillee-Marsh stand; thinking it was meant to be open [?] but it was certainly the last major building project there
Thank Christ there was no need for anything to spill out over onto the hill, which as usual got rather raucous, but then the mob grog groaned; can't remember that much really, but it was that sort of atmos late in the day with no booze limits on full strength gear when the result is forgone against you and fist fights start to break out for alternative entertainment, and the cops move in to the cries of the crowd howling derision and calling for more.
And old-school one-day game - they'd only been playing in pyjama's for eight years - at an old-school ground, even then.
Told him not to, but the Stats Guru has been going through his filing cabinet of index cards and he reckons it was the 4th of January 1987...Australia v West Indies, Benson & Hedges Challenge Cup.
The deity-like Sir Vivian Richards was in charge of the Windies, and batting first, Gordon Greenwich tonked up an even ton, in what was a competitive 8/255 in those days, with Scoob O'Donell the best of the Aussie bowlers working The Doctor to good effect.
So far, so good.
Then the memories started flooding back - the Green & Gold were utterly destroyed without mercy by a fearsome pace attack of J Garner, CA Walsh, and MA Holding - Roger Harper was the spinner and even Larry Gomes and Gus Logie took catches in the field - and the evening session ended all-of-a-sudden soon after sunset, with Straya all out for 91, about 15 overs short.
Only the young "The Iceman" Waugh and Sundries made double figures, while the Keg on Legs, Marsh Snr, Deano Jones, A.B., and Glenn Bishop failed miserably with the willow and were all out at 5/32.
Didn't help when Boony had his stumps seriously rearranged neck and crop by Joel steaming in off the long run to make it 1/4 for a start off.
On recollection, it was a serious disappointment.
And very sincerely doubt now, wracking my brain, that such a thorough thwacking of a thrashing has been graced with my presence before or since.
Well, that's the way it was on my one and only day at the lovely old dump, as far as it goes.
So, bye bye WACA, it was nice knowing you.

Of more immediate interest on the not too distant horizon is the fact that Sydney hasn't hosted a live Ashes rubber in 23 years now.
Little wonder really, the Poms have never been able to adapt to the conditions let alone master them - never will - the vastness of the Wide Brown Land is way beyond them.
At what point do we lose interest?
Never!
Poms collapse in a screaming heap in Melbun!
Start chanting [to the tune of Robbie Burns' 1788 corker Auld Lang Syne] "5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil!"
Bugger the dead rubber, odds on you have to be at the SCG on Day 5, Monday the 8th of January, 2018, [if not earlier] for the Poms' miserable denouement and to kick their arses all the way back home to their Mumsies for a good cry.
Cricket is a hard, cruel game and all is right with the world.

Craves.

On the Pink Stink, Ep.3 - The Man in White is not always right

Gawkers,

There is just one certainty to come out of this year's Adelaide Oval test match - the Pink Stink still stinks.
Of course, the game itself was won & lost at the toss.
In the Cannon of the Word according to Chappelli, a captain needs to do but one thing on winning the toss "think about bowling, and then bat".
The only way the England Captain, Dudley Root Esq, could expunge his fatal error of sending Straya in and inviting them to make 300+ [which turned out be 8/442 dec], was to win the match.
The only redemption for Skippy Smiffy's dubious decision to fail to enforce the follow on, on Day 3, was to win the match.
And everybody knows how that worked out.
The scoreboard never lies.
The small saving grace was that Engerland couldn't even bowl Straya out in the first innings and it actually came down to the last day, and who would have thought that a Pink Stink would go on for five days for the first time?
Even that was lucky, it should have ended on Day 3 with the Poms being told to go back in and imploding under impossible circumstances.
But we know that never happened.

With the innumerable number of overturned umpiring decisions, the umps were either absolute shite, or the technology's completely fooked.
You be the judge, but you can't have it both ways.
It's by-and-large the Pink Stink to blame, again, because the ball insists on not behaving itself.
Apparently the unit they were using was the Pink Stink Mk8, and yet they still haven't been able to work it out after all these years - it must drive the manufacturers absolutely crazy.
To wit, in the after dinner session on Day 3...due to the perfect storm of the new ball, inviting damp weather conditions, and the fact that it was bloody dark...the Bamford's would have been well within their rights to call off the sesh due to the state of the shiny pink nut with black seams, under the "dangerous playing conditions" clauses in the Laws.
Someone could have been hit in much more than the box with the pill dipping, darting, shooting, wobbling, curving, swinging both ways, leaping and freaking out off a good length and generally carrying on like a mad dog's breakfast, and the players - never mind the spectators - had no hope of even seeing the gaudy orb at night.
Utterly unplayable and unpredicatable.
Straya were very fortunate to finish the day alive, and in retrospect, got away with it lightly at 4/53.
On account of the video umpire being kept very busy indeed, there has been some discussion on whether the on-field umpires will soon become obsolete, redundant, and appealing to them for a decision will go by the way side, as every ball which has even the remotest possibility of having a batsman out will be automatically determined by some technician operating the infallible DRS machine, making an already slow game, extremely slow.
Who'd be an umpire, anyway?
Cricket is like war, long periods of tediousness, with short bursts of excitement, but the ump has to make a decision on whether to kill a batsman dead or not on the evidence of something that may happen in less than a fraction of a second.
Remember this thing goes on for five days.
Surely, you'd trust the naked eye in real time over pictures on the Crystal Bucket any day - having worked for years in television, it became perfectly clear to me very early on that the camera lies.
So what if The Man in White is not always right?
It all evens out in the end, and you do have lucky and unlucky days.
Adjudication is a matter of judgement and that's where it should rest, for mine; DRS should be used only for assisting the umpires in the matter of run-outs or obstructing the field.
But nothing - nothing - will stop "progress", aka the running-dog money-grubbing posers at Cricket Australia for whom the honky dollar means the be all, and end all, and spout rubbish like: "The 'Amazing Adelaide' test match is widely-regarded as one of Australia's greatest wins", and expect us to believe them.
Bye, bye, Bamfords.
Consigned to being quaint curiosities in village cricket?

Day-night cricket has been problematical from the outset, but a five-day/night Test match?
Bugger tradition, it just upsets time-honoured drinking practices which should not be messed with.
For a start off, the liquid Lunch should be an immovable feast starting at 1pm sharp, rain, hail or shine.
On the crowd FX microphones on the radio & TV, the after dinner session on Day 4 sounded more like an English soccer stadium full of hooligans than a cricket ground, with the incessant "singing" of the Barmy Army echoing around the half empty ring of grandstands purpose built for AFL.
The vuvuzela is more pleasant sounding to the ear.
If the rumour is true that all MCC Members are pissed by 9am during a Lord's Test match, it follows that if the first ball is bowled at 2pm, the possibilities of pre-loading after a Champagne breakfast are endless, and then you can continue to get on it for the next seven-and-a-half hours at the ground.
Woot!
Did note that it was a record accumulative attendance for an Adelaide Oval test match - but that was simply because they let way more people into the ground than there were seats on the first two days.
And they weren't there to see Bodyline.
Many many thousands of people never saw a ball bowled all day as they whiled away the time getting maggoted on pink gins, jugs of Pimm's,"Champers? Darling", Crownies and God only knows what else in the specially constructed Vomitorium out the back of the Member's pavilion.
The crowd figures did not reflect a resurgence in the popularity of attending Test Cricket, rather more an interest in getting as parrotted as possible in a quiet and sociable way.
Of course, with the Members being the respectable and genteel place that it is, there would have been no brawling, or fucking-in-the-flower beds of an evening.
Surely not.
Don't quite know what it is about that very peculiar place called Adelaide, can't put my finger on it, but there is no doubt it's Yobbo Magnet Central, and has been for eons
Must be the town's reputation for depravity.
When the joint was a real cricket ground and it was graced with my presence during the mid '80's [when you could bring yr own esky into the ground and onto the high wide and handsome viewing Mound], and up until the early 90's, [when the 24-can-limit per-person per-day was just being introduced], there was one lout who did a comedy act spending all day staggering about the hill gibbering in an entirely incomprehensible dialect of South Australian English, wearing stubbies, a terry-towling hat, a ridiculous mullett, a deranged look on his face, and a tattered t-shirt that read: ADELAIDE OVAL YOBBO [RETIRED DUE TO POLICE HARASSMENT].
Late in the day, his specialty was getting into fights and comically coming off second best.
Not trying to be nostalgic here, but that's the way Test cricket should be viewed; slobbering drunk that yr so laid back you've almost fallen over in the late afternoon hot baking sun, ideally wearily barracking tired & emotional opposition bowlers up against your team's on-song batsmen.
Even better if it's Poms being belted all over the park and remorselessly ground into the dust on the scoreboard.
The thwack of leather on willow, remember? That sort of thing, old chap.
The ball-by-pink ball call on the wireless in the after dinner sessions deteriorated markedly.
At one stage the Foghorn suggested the reason why the Barmy Army is so barmy is their alleged fondness for the "cool libations"; then followed a short discussion on drinkers with a cricket problem, but somehow Jim - in the course of a just couple of minutes - then went from "everyone needs cordial!" to "you know what they say, never drink port after Champagne".
What the?
The world's gone mad.

What would Pup do?
Said it before, say it again...being the traditionalist that he is, he most likely hates the Pink Stink and would like to see the patently failed experiment shooed off for all time, but he's paid handsomely by the Nine Network to say that day/night test cricket is the best thing since bottled Scotch [or Canadian Club for that matter], on account of it rates its head off, peaking at an estimated 1,299,000 individual viewers nationwide during the evening session on Day 3.
People know what's going on - but it had nothing to do with the hour of the day, folks were home and it was just the match situation.
So Michael's between a rock and a hard place there.
Sorry Clarkey.
We'll pass on that.

After being seriously psychologically damaged by failing to break Straya's 29 year winning streak at the Gabbatoir - copping a gigantic tusk up the runter in Adelbrain to go 2-nil down in a five match series, well, the Poms, you could say, are in more trouble than the early settlers.
Now that they have been well and truly sucked into Australia's very effective "psych-war" known as sledging, complete mental disintegration from here on in is guaranteed.
Their top order is rooted with unfavourable pitches to come, their bowlers aren't as good as the home side's in any conditions, and they have to win at least two of the next three matches.
A draw in Perth wouldn't even cut the mustard, let alone stop the rot for the tourists.
Poms on toast like kippers for breakfast.
Where do you put yr money, or your sheep station, on the dead-set certainty that Sydney will be a very dead rubber?

Craves.

PS> The game is finished...in broad daylight...

the Australian cricket team's moral compass

Pom Baiters,

Trust David "Burbs" Warner to kick off the Ashes series hype a couple of weeks back when he said that "more hatred" was required when playing England at cricket, firmly focusing the Australian team's moral compass.
A couple of days later, the PR people at Cricket Australia forced him to retract the comment saying it was in jest and he didn't really mean it.
My arse.
This from the, formerly disgraced, now Vice Captain Warner who only four years ago clocked the now Captain of England, a bloke known as "Rooty" to his mates, for being an idiot in some dodgy, non-politically correct nightclub known as the Walkabout Bar in Birmingham.
Warner later said he did it because Root was being a twatty ol' clot and a dickhead, and he had his excuses, as he'd had a few Jägerbombs and voddies and Red Bulls, and it was the drink talking and he only got Rooty with "a glancing blow" anyway because he was so pissed and regretted he didn't really connect and deck the little shit out cold - Benny Stokes-style.
Off-field violence aside, Warner is just the ticket for getting inside Pommy heads and driving them utterly insane.
More than one England player has been sent home with mental disintegration problems after getting the treatment.
On being anointed to make his test debut, CT Bancroft was asked how he would approach opening the batting with Warner: "I played against him a Shield game once. He sledged me for four days".
Right on, brother - you've been taught by experts.
Needless to say there is nothing unusual about Strayan selectors going right off piste and coming at you from completely out of left field - you can debate forever who should and shouldn't have been picked - my problem with the current 13-man squad is the fact that it is largely made up of dried up old turds.
Give Chad Sayers a run!
He's on the wrong side of 30 and the Token South Australian, to boot.
At an average age of 28.53 years, only two players are under 25, and Bancroft and Cummins are both 24.
Where's the future in that?
Whatever happened to the young tearaways and child prodigies and the much vaunted policy of selecting the brightest and best from the ranks of the Yoof of Today?
Gorn by the wayside as an imagined exigency...it is the Ashes after all...has the Chairman and the Three Wise Men freaking out.
What would Pup do?
He's got form when it comes to threatening to break "fucking" Pommy bones.
Well, win in Brisbane for a start, he reckons.
If the Poms do that, Straya are toast, by his account.
Simple as that.
No one but the home side has won at the Gabbatoir in the last 29 years - as Bruce Mac is fond of saying, "we know that".
But that was a West Indies team that had Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge opening the batting and a fearsome four-pronged pace attack the likes of which hasn't been seen since with Malcolm Marshall, Courtney Walsh, Patrick Patterson and Curtley Ambrose rolling their arms over.
The Engerlanders certainly haven't got any of that going for them, being the mob of dead-set work-a-day county cricket clock-watching wilting shrinking violets that they are.
However, the whirring brain cogs of MJ Clarke have concluded that victory at The 'Gabba means triumph for the Poms in the series, and they get to take that stoopid little urn home.
Don't you worry about that, Pup, it won't happen at Fortress Brisbane, officially known as "The House of Pain".
And there's a new curator up there now in the form of some unknown called David Sandurski, after Kev Mitchell decided to retire from being in the job for 27 years, so that was always going to be a bit of a worry.
Then, lo, Kev decides to make the Ashes his last hurrah on an honourary basis and lets the television camera's film him riding atop the heavy roller for the very last time.
Vale Kev, job's right, job's done.
With any luck, the Durski Kid will be as patriotic as Kev was being most amenable to Strayan captains' requests to prepare a pitch to order, y'know, put a bit of good ol' doctoring into it and it'll be made sure there's a keg or two in it for the ground staff to keep the boys happy, that sort of thing.
And the coin will then be weighted at the toss.
Captain Smiffy has also revealed to the meejah that he is under pressure from the buffoons at CA "to modify my on-field body language".
Fat chance with Poms involved.
Can't see that happening after he graciously endured the most appalling dirty tricks and tactics seen in living memory displayed by that 24-carat card-carrying nasty piece of filthy cheatin' work, Mr Viralrat Kohli Sir, who recently took great delight in robbing Australia blind in India.
He had every right to be emotional, upset and downright angry at the Laws being bent and broken left right and center by a subcontinental chappie who thinks the sun shines out of his arse.
Any Pom that tries that on better watch out, or Smiffy will get snarly and sool Burbs onto them.
And Dave won't hold back, oh, no siree.
People forgive, but they rarely forget, especially in Ashes cricket.
It's not that we, as a nation, dislike the poor poor English folk as a general rule, we just HATE bastard English cricketers, jeez, there's history here chaps, nobody forgets bloody Bodyline back in the '30's do they?
Which itself was just a natural extension of WG Grace touring here at the end of the 19th century as the quintessential pompous Pommy prick, setting a blazing trail for all who followed.
Wandered into the Front Bar of The Local for a quick one over the weekend, and found the Philosopher in his usual corner - nursing this week's favoured a tipple, a whisky sour - while he was studying a story on the back page of one of the Sunday fishwraps which featured Starkers promising to go for the throat and give the Poms a bit of chin music to go on with at The 'Gabba.
Everybody knows that the Poms don't like the fear up 'em, don't like it up 'em, at all.
The Philosopher poked the paper with his bony finger and remarked "few things give me greater pleasure than seeing Poms ground into the dust, slowly, over five days".
Loose the bears on the midgets and let the gaming begin.

"a piece of dog meat"

Aficionado's

Did like the Foghorn, Jim Maxwell's ABC radio commentary [the match was not on any television - even pay] on the last session of the women's test match at North Sydney Oval last night..."not much happening here, as the game settles into a tortoise-like pace".
Never mind that the Pommettes were playing for the draw.
That may be the problem with the Ladies game in the "long form" and the reason why the last women's test match before this one was two years and three months ago.
Despite the heroics of EA Perry and her 15 mins of fame [it was a fabulous performance, any double-ton in any format of the game - male or female - is not to be sneezed at], and the fact they they do OK with the over rate, with 387 overs bowled in an hour short of four days...the run rate for the match was 2.35 runs per over.
That's an average of 117 runs every fifty overs, with an average of 5.5 wickets taken per day.
Now that's entertainment.

Then there is the uselessicity of the Pink Stink, writ large.
Of note was that one of the male commentators likened the Ladies pink ball to "a piece of dog meat" after about 60 overs of use.
And one of the female commentators remarked that while the Ladies ball, by law, is smaller than the Men's ball...the Ladies pink ball's all weigh roughly the same, but their dimensions apparently differ quite markedly, so it's very important to pick one out of the box of new balls that fits right for the female hand on your team.

mmmm....dunno...
What would Pup do?

"a ridiculous decision and the umps should be held accountable"

Bush lawyers,

Sack the bastards!
The Bamfords are clearly right out of their minds.
Their heads are right done in, goddammit.
What's wrong with a bit of white-knuckle cricket?
Sack 'em all!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-16/cricket-australia-investigates-decision-to-call-off-nsw-v-vic/9055302

For the picky, Law 6.2 comes into play here..."the umpires shall be the sole judges of the fitness of the pitch for play".
That's where the buck stops.
On the ground, that's that, but there's nothing preventing people who are not playing from disagreeing with or bagging the umpires before, during, and after a game.
Oh no siree, barrack yr life away.
Never mind Laws 2.7 and 2.8, which demand that it is "solely for the umpires together to decide" what Law 2.7.3 "it would not be sensible for play to proceed", means, under the circumstances.
It's up to the umps, the Bamfords, alone; no one else involved, no appealing under ideal circumstances, but the cheatin' thievin' refs were still surrounded by players, who were told in no uncertain terms it's none of their business.
The sacks of pineapples would have taken utes to distribute.
Oh, sorry, made that bit up, yr Honour.
And the season was on the line, for chrissake!
Lord, help us.

In the meantime "some kind of hatred is in order" it turns out.

http://www.cricket.com.au/news/david-warner-hatred-for-england-ashes-war-australia-verbal-aggression-cummins-starc/2017-10-15

What "kind" for some Poms, 'Burbs?
Sledging is a bit passé, so some Psych War, perhaps?
Maybe just ask Stokesy over after he's finished his anger management course, and see if we can't get him into a spiral of mental disintegration while he's hanging out for a drink.
Done it before.
Cruel game...cricket...just ask Clarkey...anyone remember August 2015?


BTW> Ferdinand has nothing to do with Magellan - merchant investment bankers - who've probs bought the Stupid Little Urn for a song.

ceremonial burning of a stolen Crows scarf

Innocent bystanders,

Did note that after Richmond's win in the Grand Final, coach Damien Hardwick was asked whether he would be taking The Boys down to Swan St, Richmond, to join club die-hards in the wild celebrations.
It'd been a long time.
"No fuckin' way!" he replied "it'd be far too dangerous down there".
One of the commentators on the television said out of the blue soon after half time as if he'd had some kind of epiphany "Oh My God! You can only imagine what it's going to be like in Richmond tonight! I'd hate to think how many pubs there are in Richmond, and they're all old school pubs too!"
And so it came to pass.
Tigers fans have never been known for their couthness in the ranks of AFL club supporters; it's not a very savoury part of Melbourne let's face it, and so there was no end of unconscionable conduct going on.
Including this...enough to engender deep stomach churning disgust and sheer horror among any self-respecting Adelaide fan - a ceremonial burning of a stolen Crows scarf, complete with obscene soundtrack:

http://www.sportingnews.com/au/afl/news/watch-richmond-tigers-burn-adelaide-crows-scarf-swan-st-afl-grand-final-triumph/nxv9x8znj69619y89gjwcc616

That's low.
We can burn what we like up here in the Emerald City, but don't they know that there's laws against that sort of thing in the Colonies?
Adelaide, exactly like the Swans last year, were badly affected by hearing the voices singing..."to lose, the unloseable game"...too many times.
Backed in as un-backable favourites, the players had tossed and turned in their beds all week playing the game over and over in their minds before it started to seep into their dreams, and when that happens, you know yr in deep doggy-doo-doo-voodoo.
Just ask the Swans, they'll tell you; the thought of 2014 reared its ugly head again.
At least the Crows weren't given a ten-goal football lesson, the raging red-hot certainties this year only went down by eight,
Never mind that Adelaide were simply outfoxed and outplayed by a very well coached team that didn't set the world on fire on paper, but did the job on the day.
Again, just like Sydney last year, it was simply a matter of who wanted The Flag the most.
A 37 year gap between drinks beats a 19 year interval since the last Premiership.
Any delirious Richmond fan who'd put down a case or two of 1980 Grange or Château Lafite to crack open next time they won the Premiership would find that it might be seriously sensational drinking this week, but you'd have to doubt that many Tigers fans would have extended to that.
Any cheap piss they did cellar would be well off by now, vinegar maybe even, it's been that long.
The fact of the matter is that Adelaide were carrying no fewer than eleven passengers who'd been shut down by Richmond - Adelaide's forwards were very effectively neutralised - and the Crows were spanked, and spanked good, held goal-less in the second quarter - albeit with a little help from the dirty cheatin' Umpires - bloody Bamfords! Crows fans cried.
But the ship was already listing by half time, and with everything on the line and all to play for, it came down to the Championship Quarter, as it always does in virtually every game.
Richmond rolled Adelaide over and they copped a gigantic tusk up the runter; the Tigers winning the Champo five goals to one and the strains of the Fat Lady singing on the Punt Road could be heard over the roar of the crowd at the cricket ground.
The last quarter was just a football exhibition - it was game over, goodnight nurse, not even close.
In any case, by rights, it should have been South Melbourne who were whumping the Crows in the Grand Final, but that's venturing off to Fantasy Land there.
You have to begrudgingly admire a bloke who looks for all the world like an inner-suburban thug in D.Martin who won the Chas, the Normie, and The Flag all in the same week.
Not too many have done that before, and - bugger the record books - it certainly makes for some stellar contributions to the gaudy trophy cabinet behind in the bar in Dusty's man cave at home.
As usual, everyone north of the River Murray couldn't give a blue root about the AFL Grand Final, and the NRL Grand final between Melbourne [Melbourne? WTF are Melbourne doing in the Sydney rugby league Grand Final?] and North Queensland [which wasn't sold out for good reason] was little better.
So, with no Sydney teams in either Big One, the 'care factor' was on the low side...it was a very quiet long weekend in this town.
Swans loyalists had had their "rue the day" moment in the 2nd Semi-Final, and the Mighty Balmain Tigers' run was over well before they narrowly avoided the Wooden Spoon to finish 14th at end of the regular season.
Not another winter of discontent.
So, in order not to bore you and shit you to tears for months on end again next year - on my solemn promise - there is no way in this wonderful wide world that football of any code will interest me in any way whatsoever from now on.
Won't give a stuff about season 2018...won't hear a word of it...you can bet on it...a certainty...
Promise.

AFL Grand Final 2017

ADELAIDE: 4.2, 4.7, 5.10, 8.12 (60). Goals. Sloane 2, Walker 2, Betts, Greenwood, B. Crouch, Cameron.
RICHMOND: 2.3 , 6.4, 11.8, 16.12 (108). Goals: Graham 3, Townsend 2, Martin 2, Riewoldt 2, Caddy, Houli, Grigg, Lambert, Castagna, Prestia, Butler.
At Melbourne Cricket Groud.
Crowd: 100,021.

NRL Grand Final 2017

MELBOURNE STORM 34. Tries: Addo-Carr (2), Kaufusi, Slater, Finucane, Scott. Goals: Smith (5).
NORTH QUEENSLAND COWBOYS 6. Tries: Martin. Goals: Lowe (1).
At Sydney Olympic Stadium, Homebush.
Crowd: 79,722

"looked a bit buggered"

Devastatee's,

Even for the eternal pessimist, it was so easy to forget the time back then when 'all hope was lost'.
Sydney were gone - gorn for all money - after Round 6 of the regular season.
They were completely cactus in anyone's language.
Toast.
No team had ever come back after straight losses to Port, Dogs, Pies, Weagles, GWS, and Carlton to make the Top 8.
It was season over right there and then with some tough teams still to come.
But then...
For months on end, false hope was engendered by winning 15 of their next 17 matches, and against all odds they did make the finals, as undoubtedly the 'form' team of the comp.
The Bush Telegraph in the corner of the loungeroom chattered into life just after half time in the semi-final; ripped off the tickertape to find it was a message from My Spy at The Ground.
"Season over. The Banjo is full of penny bungers and it's on the fire. One, just one, lesson learnt. Never lose six on the trot. Ever"
Had a bad feeling in my water about the Geelong game pretty early on, on match day.
Had to perform an enormous nervous shit straight after coffee, just for a start off.
Dangermouse, Selwood, Hawkins, Motlop etc etc; Geelong'd been disgraced the week before by Richmond - beware the wounded Cats, that sort of thing.
It was made worse, this bad feeling, by the fact that all the so-called pundits had been tipping a saloon passage for the Swans through to the Prelim against Adelbrain, also away, in a "Promoter's Dream".
But, Coach General C.Scott had other ideas, and he must have laboriously gone through the video tapes of the Swans two losses to Hawthorn frame-by-frame, to have a very good lookie at what they did right.
[Saw the second loss to the Hawks on the international satellite television while in Port Vila, and thought to myself "mmm, there's a few chinks in the armour there", but convinced myself that it was only the kava talking.]
So, Scott employed the very same tactics, and also told his players to suck in the Umpires with a few judicious "dives" in front of goal, and suck the Swans into putting all their eggs into one basket trying to shut down the Boogey Man Geelong Dangermen, leaving the Cats with loose men everywhere.
Worried out it they were, and in any case it was pretty clear that Sydney had played the match too many times in their heads already.
It was plain for all to see that Plan A wasn't working from fairly early on, and SC Horse was also sucked in by not employing Plan B and then Plan C, before it was way too late.
Never mind that the Swans just didn't turn up to play.
Still gurgling and frothing at the mouth over that particular one.
It's not as if they put on a jolly good show and made a close run of things to go down gallant in defeat by a handful of points.
They were thrashed senseless, after their previous biggest loss of the season was in Round 1, by five goals.
It always begs the unfathomable and unanswerable question - WHY NOW?
It reminded me very much of the '14 Grand Final, having just flown in on the morning of the match from Paris via a couple of days in Saigon having missed the entire finals series but looking forward to an easy Premiership win, only to see them taken apart by their nemesis, the bloody Hawks, again.
Found myself asleep on the lounge at half-time through jet-lag and awoke to find the Swans had been done like a dinner in a ten-goal football lesson.
The similarities were plain eerie.
Six goals down at the main break again and also whipsawed by ten goals at the finish, and, just quietly, the Swans score of 5.9 [39] was their lowest, in any game, in 20 years...twenty years!
The Stats Guru also found it his melancholy duty to report, after whirring the beads on his abacus in a desultory fashion, that it was the South Melbourne's lowest score in a finals match in a century.
The Swans kicked 3.17 [35] in the semi-final against Collingwood in 1917, for chrissake.
Thanks Guru, didn't need to know that.
There's nothing worse than ending up as burnt toast in The Big One, so perhaps, just perhaps, it was better to be found out in a semi-final rather than on That One Day in September, when losing becomes excruciatingly unbearably painful.
Geelong had not lost a game all season after leading at quarter time; guessing that that's why they finished second on the ladder.
Just goes to show yet again the critical importance of finishing in the top 4 and getting the second bite at the juicy cherry; the Cats had already had their 'off day', but they lived to fight another...in quick succession.
Longmire, after giving his charges an almighty gobful at quarter-time, and an even bigger rocket up the runter at half-time, had pretty much given up on them mid-way through the Championship Quarter, and by the final stanza the television camera's showed him beginning to nod off in the Coach's Box - he'd had enough - there was nothing he could about it.
After pulling out all the hair that he had left on his bonce, SC Horse fronted the press on interview after the debacle and simply said "Our blokes looked a bit buggered tonight, to be honest".
A bit buggered?
It didn't auger well from the off, when Lance Franklin appeared on the ground with a pure morphine poultice strapped to his corked thigh; clearly injured - would not have played but for the fact it was a semi-final - so it was an open invitation to the Cats, they just put two rotating tags on him and squashed him flat...he was two or three yards too slow, all day.
No Buddy goals, no cigar.
The Swans were carrying nine passengers - they know who they are - who had less than a dozen touches each.
In an 18-man boat, you can't get very far with that many crew doing nothing on the oars.
Just as a random sample, Sinclair went from absolutely huge one week, to touching the ball but twice the next.
He had two blokes and the Bamfords on his back, all day.
SC Horse then went on to concede the bleeding obvious "We didn't really fire a shot".
Not at a goal a quarter after quarter time, they didn't.
Nope.
It was a very good thing that betting on football is not really my thing, as you wouldn't want to be the punter who'd had $100,000 on the Swans straight out at $1.38.
A certainty gone badly awry, and the bookies would have been laughing all the way to the Tattersalls Club.
And it's a shame that Old Man Jarrad "Odd Head" McVeigh went out a loser on being admitted as an AFL Life Member by playing in his 300th game, but as JPK pointed out post-match "it's season over and we have a long six months ahead of us".
Don't we all, Josh?
2017 is gorn.
All that we now have left to cling to is to wish the Greater Western Sydney Pygmies the best of British luck in their quest for an inaugural Grand Final berth.
They are an excellent team now, and good on them if they make it, but even after taking full advantage of super generous draft concessions and the reported $25M+ cash the AFL has tipped into the vast pit that is the "second Sydney experiment", they still can only attract the lowest AFL/VFL finals crowd [14,865] since World War One...at the Sydney Showground...their home ground.
No-one there to hear the Fat Lady sing.
Ouch.
Aerial Ping Pong still has a long way to go in the heartland of rugby league in Sydney's Armpit, and let's face it, it will never be the dominant winter sport on this side of the island.
Maybe us fool Swans supporters, as The Professor obliquely suggested, have wasted far too much time and money on trying the re-live the "Miracle Year" of '05; what's the point of trying to be better than perfect?
That's a long time ago now, and this is an eternal pessimist speaking.
Missed.
Bugger It.

AFL 2nd Semi-Final 2017

GEELONG: 3.0, 9.4, 13.4, 15.8 (98). Goals: Dangerfield 4, Menzel 2, Menegola 2, Duncan 2, Stanley, Smith, Motlop, Hawkins, Blicavs
SYDNEY: 2.2, 3.4, 4.9, 5.9 (39). Goals: Jack, McVeigh, Mills, Papley, Reid.
At Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 55,529.