footy joins the mickey mouse club as the walls come tumbling down

Fearers,

You have to be surprised that there are apparently no howls of protest from Essendon fans about their Bombers being effectively rubbed out for the season. It may be because the season is already rooted, and has been from Round One, and few of them, if any, still care.

Connor McKenna. Very flakey. Negative last Wednesday, irregular Friday, positive Saturday? Mmmm. He must have got himself into some nitty-gritty situations where there was the deliberate exchanging of bodily fluids, otherwise how else would have he picked up the killer virus? Touching a contaminated door knob during an open inspection as he looks to snap up some bargain Melbourne real estate on his bloated stipend? McKenna has issues with homesickness - we know that - but sending him back to Northern Ireland again would probs be going a bit too far. That said, there would have to be some old school die-hard Bomber's supporters who'd reckon it's a good idea. Then, lo & behold, Connor tests negative yesterday? Cured in four days? WTF? Is that a double false positive or a double false negative, or both, or what? Too much confusion.

The intrinsic unfairness that The Corona bought to the new 'season' has been amplified into a meaningless echo chamber. There's no fixture list beyond Round 5 for a start off. Certainty is at zero. Essendon are down a game (as are Melbourne - has anyone asked them how they feel about that?), and no-one has any idea if it will ever be played. The AFL Boss Cocky glibly said last Saturday "we may have to treat it as a bye". Neither side would be happy with sharing the points. Some say it's lucky McKenna only took out one other player as a "close contact", but how so? He's still out of the Bomber's next game through no fault of his own. Is it just lucky that their whole backline didn't get ruled out? Do we now consider positive players and their close contacts as mere 'injuries'? How does the rest of the comp feel about the new outright ban on 'contact training'? Or the absurd notion of splitting up your backs and forwards in tactical training, so they don't lose a whole swathe of the team front or back in the event of a mass outbreak. Really? Those struggling with match fitness - and there are plenty of them - might as well kiss their year goodbye. A lot of players don't have their hearts in it as it is, and even less will now, as they ponder whether being a footballer was the right career move after all. It's a severely time-limited career for most and will never ever be the pot of gold it once was. The AFL is like a flexible and agile free-form globule at the moment, capable of mutating into a dead loss at the drop of a hat. 

With most of the players living in Melbourne (and how many of those live in the recently declared 'hotbeds'?), you'd have to suspect that the only reason the AFL season hasn't been postponed yet again is the TV rights; they have to keep playing to fulfill their new contractual obligations. Otherwise it's another shitload of dung flung into the spinning blades. And how Seven must be kicking themselves...gleefully announcing before the start of Round 3 that they'd renegotiated the TV deal, saving themselves $87M in the process. That's the first time since 1971 the broadcaster has paid less. Then, almost as soon as the signatures are affixed, a player tests positive. The television rights instantly deteriorate even further in value as yet more gawkers at the telly slip away and continue to find something more entertaining to watch/do than a Mickey Mouse comp with no crowds apart from wankers in private boxes and a badly mixed canned soundtrack. Never mind the AFL being down another $87M flogging a dead horse - their business model was a shot bird as soon as it was bitten on the arse by The Corona - and no one has any clue about fixing it, because there's no certainty, going forward, about anything in this crazy mixed up world, anymore. By rights, the AFL season should have been up to Round 15 by now, in a 23 Round season. That's two-thirds done and we should be talking about who's going to be who in the finals. It's cold. You do the math.      

NORTH MELBOURNE   2.3,   3.9,   5.11,    8.12 (60).  Goals: Brown 3, Zurhaar, Ahern, Hall, Dumont, Simpkin.
SYDNEY                         2.1,   5.3,  10.8,    10.11 (71). Goals: Papley 2, McLean, Hayward, Dawson, Blakey, Heeney, Rowbottom, Taylor, Parker.
At Docklands Stadium.
Crowd: 0.

As Dapper Dan down Mexico way makes it even tougher for the AFL, the rugby league caper continues on its merry way undaunted as the walls come tumbling down. It's not a 'national' game - limited to the East Coast - with outliers in Melbourne and Auckland, so internal hard borders are of no consequence. 'The Bubble' was burst after last weekend's games, and they're letting the players loose on an unsuspecting public for the first time in months. They're free to get up to all kinds of hanky-panky. God, help us all. Teams return to their usual home grounds, with the exception of the NZ Warriors, who stay in flip-slops on the Gold Coast because they are stuck, and can't go home. And from the first weekend after EOFY, up to 25% of a ground's capacity will allowed to be opened up to suitably distant mug punters. There's been no directive on whether the bars will be open.  Not that they will come in their droves, but pre-Covid, 10,000 (+) in a modern stadium was the size of a 'pretty good crowd' in Sydney. Then again, as soon as one spectator tests positive - which is highly likely - the gates will slam shut again and the turnstiles will rust over.

Don't mind a great deal where we are really - do you?  The care factor is starting to bottom out - but it's not very often in any season of following two teams, that they both win on the same weekend. Balmain and Townsville have history, so this is good too...although with the half-time score at 34-0, the Mighty Tiges took the foot off the pedal, when back in the olden days when things actuially mattered, they should have won by a cricket score.

WESTS TIGERS 36. Tries: Musgrove, Leilua, Brooks, Aloiai, Jennings, Mbye. Goals: Mbye (6).
NORTH QUEENSLAND COWBOYS 20. Tries: Feldt (2), Drinkwater, Marsters. Goals: Feldt (1).
At Campbelltown Sports Ground.
Crowd: 0.

try of the decade

Grizzlers,

How the Mighty Tiges could lose to a team that hadn't won a match in almost a calendar year, after scoring the Try of the Decade! is beyond me. Two kicks and nine sets of hands to put the pill under the black dot, then they took their foot off the pedal, potted a field goal thinking it's all wrapped up - then they lost interest, only to be pipped on the hooter. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in a classic mixed metaphor.

In truth, it's not quite beyond belief - it was complacency pure and simple - and it would never have been allowed to happen at the Spiritual Home in front of a full house. Coach Mr Magoo did not like it. He's wielded the axe, weeding out five passengers, saying he is sick to death of inconsistency. Aren't we all? It's been going on for years. But it was very sad to see The Great Benji Marshall among the scapegoats and dropped for the next game. The Living Legend is not having a bad season, but he's not livid about it. Benj is "shocked and disappointed" as you'd expect and the less said about his replacement in Josh "The Imposter" Reynolds the better. Coach Magoo has either lost his nana, or partaken of mushrooms, or both. Then Benji causes a "bio-security scare" by kissing a female reporter who'd been sent to Balmain to check whether the story really was true. You can't make this shit up. In any case, can someone please tell me what-the-fuck is going on? The only thing certain about any of this is the utter uncertainty about everything. Holy cow.

GOLD COAST TITANS 28. Tries: Proctor, Don, Hipgrave, Kelly, Sami. Goals: Taylor (4).
WESTS TIGERS 23. Tries: Nofoaluma (2), Doueihi, J.Leilua. Goals: Marshall (4). Field Goals: Marshall (1).
Crowd: 0.
At Lang Park, Brisbane.

The AFL makes a triumphant return to the paddock this week, and will struggle big time with no fans. There's more at stake here than in the league, which is a far superior game for television, as the aim is too keep the ball in the centre of the frame - there's not much need for wide shots, let alone panning across the non-existent crowd. The host broadcaster certainly got the cost of the TV rights way way down - while there is not a mug punter in sight and the Fat Lady can't be heard singing. The AFL's suffering revenue took another huge hit, right there. While the excitement among footy fans about the season resumption hasn't exactly reached fever pitch, the players are stuck in a bubble waiting to burst under a no bonking scrubbers regime - surely even they will lose interest soon enough under the circumstances, if not from first game game back. You do have to wonder what they do for their jollies locked up in that hygiene-driven bio-security hub. It's only a matter of time until some idiot busts out of there like a wild boy breaking free. Mark my words.

Being a chardonnay socialist to the bootstraps, my views on letting a few suited corporate types back into their poncy private boxes as the first bunch of spectators allowed in the ground are well known. WTF? That really got on my goat. Rich bastards whose interest in the game is minimal get first suck of the sauce bottle? Really? Utterly outrageous. Splash some cash and the dollar signs on the hungry tills at AFL HQ light up like Xmas trees, while the poor, broke, busted football loving pensioners freeze their arses off in the grimy blocks of inner suburban Melbourne as they wait to be pushed out of the igloo. That's not to mention the die hard fans who renew their club membership year after year after year because that's what their father did, and his father before him. What of them? The rusted-on life-long loyalists? Snubbed, brushed and ignored, they might as well be dead to the Powers That Be for all they care. The honky dollar is king.

Just on a pragmatic basis, with maybe a 1000 limit on spectators, surely you'd have the cheer squads as the first folks back in for a bit of action on the beaters against the advertising hoardings as some opposition loser is attempting a lousy kick at goal, and then going all delirious when he misses. That's what the TV viewer wants. Crazy club lunatics! The ones who make the banner every week, those kind of people - but no, it's oh, thanks for yr decades of work chums, but we forgot about the banners the players run through to get onto the field to start the game. Jesus. If the TV broadcaster really wants action, why not bring back the dancing girls? How old schoolers pine for the long lost good old days and all those terrific dance moves that the Swanettes used to put on. Marvelous stuff. When the crowd limit goes up to a couple more thousand, then you can put on the half-time entertainment! The little leaguers doing the run around, but this time you broadcast the childish madness in full. It'd be terrific! As it is, the color and movement extends to card board cut outs in the stands, complete with the faces of serial killers and even Mein Führer after fans paid to have their images put on the dummies' faces. The last person left in marketing has been taken out the back and shot. At least they didn't use Judy dolls.

The corporate types should be the last people you'd let back into the ground. Have you seen how these entitled people behave? Have you seen the unconscionable conduct they get up to with access to a free full bar? Nah, let the real fans slowly drift back into the ground to resume slurping pies and pouring warm beer over themselves. The NRL will return to "normal" sooner than the AFL too, given a 15K+ crowd is a good one in suburban Sydney, but is unheard of in Melbourne where ordinary games get twice that. The glorious "re-opening" of football is going to get very touchy when The Members start getting antsy about it - and they will - after HQ went without them playing "ghost games". And it's not as if there will be any great rush back either; it won't be a case of open the gates and they will come. Punters will still have the fear up them, with good reason - this coronavirus can kill a dude. "He went to the football, and never came back alive" will become a wild viral meme hashtag thingy. Complacency doesn't only extend to Balmain losing the unloseable game.

bring back the Wally Golly Guard

Disappointee's,

What would Pup do (apart from being in isolation with his soon to be divorced wife and child after his 'personal secretary' sensibly fled the love nest for fear of being trapped)? That's the burning question on everyone's lips. Don't you read the magazines? But the sad fact is that this is the end of spectator sport as we have come to love and know it - quite possibly forever. As the AFL and NRL are being all Bolshy about getting back on the paddock sometime in May/June, there have been very well respected medico's in the world wide infectious diseases caper who are quietly saying that as long as the novel coronavirus exists in any part of the world, it would be very prudent to limit public gatherings to less than 50 people. The Chief Medical Officer has very clearly expressed an opinion that anything prone to attracting large crowds, such as sporting events, will "be the last things to come back". People are listening to him, not clueless sports moguls.

50 people in at the footy? Socially scattered throughout the stands, as they sit among movie props and cardboard cut outs to make up the numbers? In any case, Associated Press is reporting that with soccer games in Europe hoping to recommence in empty stadia sometime next month also, the Bundesliga has calculated that to run a game from the players down would require a minimum of 213 people in the ground. That is the absolute bare bones. "The number of journalists attending would vary from country to country, but that could easily be slimmed down", they report. A match played last month in Cologne had 600+ folks in - all directly related to coaching the two teams or running the ground and the TV broadcast. How many assistant coaches, let alone hangers-on, does a football team need?

The fall out is mind boggling. A helluva lotta footy people are out of work. Little wonder those in charge of professional sport are at a complete loss. National Rugby League CEO Todd Greenberg could see the writing on the wall and made a quick smart exit from the game - not because of accusations from the broadcaster that he's been wasting and mismanaging their money for years - he's gone because Peter V'Landys was white anting him, and he doesn't want to be mired in it when the whole damn thing implodes after going belly up and people are looking for scapegoats. Best to run as far away from it as fast as you possibly can under the current circumstances. It's very difficult to see them playing again anytime soon, when at least two or three clubs, maybe more, will by definition be illegally trading while insolvent if they try to turn out a team. No gate receipts means throwing bad money after worse and chucking the team under a bus, to mix a cliché. The broadcaster will soon get very sick of it as ratings plummet with no fan involvement on any level (a quick survey of club 'apps' reveals whatever PR staff they have left on can only turn to video highlights of old games and dreadfully boring stories on what the players are getting up to in lockdown - The GWS Giants ran a highly distasteful photograph of Toby "Fucking" Greene reading the stock market reports in the paper with the glummest of faces, poor shit. You have to feel sorry for the bloke given the savage haircut he's taken on this one, surely?) No one liked the emotionless single round where they did play without crowds (even tho' that now seems like ancient history, it was just five weeks ago), and if they start doing it week in week out, interest will fall away to nothing as the broadcaster punts the games to the back channels. Eventually The Network will say "look, we are losing money on this hand over fist, so we're not going to run it". So what are you left with? Footy games in grounds bereft of spectators with no TV? That'd be like me standing in this room delivering a lecture on futility to the four walls, who wouldn't be listening anyway. Grainy four camera coverage streaming on your tiny mobile phone screen with no soundtrack as the way of the future, anyone?

Even if they were to foolishly open up grounds to all comers by year's end - no one will go - have they even realised they'll have to deeply cut ticket prices in an era of mass unemployment? What's more, people will be worried sick by what other folk - particularly away fans - might be carrying in with them in the way of the lack of basic personal hygiene more than they ever have been before. Not only will opposition supporters just smell bad, they may well be harbouring evil germs meaning to do you harm. Takes me back to 1989 when rugby league living legend King Wally Lewis, playing for Brisbane, spat in a fit of pique upon the bonce of the Gold Coast's Jimmy Cowell for being a total nong - they hated each other's guts - and Jimbo fired a well placed fleshy oyster straight back into the big King's eye - and then it was on. What a stink! They both coped token fines, but weeks later Wally, captaining Queensland, was in Sydney for a State-of-Origin match where he saw New South Wales fans in the stands wearing the now infamous hand-made improvised "Wally Golly Guard" by the thousands, just in case he lobbed a lolly over the boundary fence for something that might have been said. Perhaps there will be a business opportunity here for a Corona Golly Guard to immunise you from the screaming idiot in the row behind spraying you with a fine mist of saliva every time they open their yawning rictus for a loud screeching barrack? Some kind of personal protection bonnet in a club colours arrangement, perhaps? Never mind the fun of having Mexican beer poured all over you.

Make no mistake footy is in disarray. Raelene Castle didn't quit as CEO of Rugby Australia because the board lost confidence in her, no, she went having Israel Folau and a TV rights debacle on her hands, which was a fine ol' clusterfuck before any of this happened that sure as hell should have bankrupted the joint. Plus, the code is a very hard sell; she knew well enough that rugby union has always been riven by Old School Tie factions that shall not be moved by New Money. Crikey, they can't even decide what kind of competition they actually want, having failed miserably in the transition from "amateur" to professional, which is now very old hat indeed in the world of big money sport. Plus, of all the football codes, union is by far and away the most batshit boring thing you could ever watch on television - the ol' pigs rooting in mud thing epitomised. Great game to play, shocker to watch.

The AFL are talking about some kind of mysterious "hubs" where footy is to be performed in a vacuum for the camera, after the NRL's "rugby league island" fantasy from "Project Apollo" fell through for some obscure reason. What, no dancing girls? The National Soccer League was dead, buried, and cremated well before any of this plague & pestilence appeared. So that's finito for sure, as they go into receivership with nothing to sell in a fire sale. The National Basketball League will continue to sputter and spurt as it has done for its entire existence, the Super Netball won't play in gymnasiums with thousands of screaming fans crammed together on the bleachers anymore, and the Olympics is kaput. Stone dead. It'll be a very tough ask to get the enthusiasm and "care factor" going for Tokyo 2021. (In a Great Depression, world travel will be the province of only the leaisured wealthy anyway). Bring on competitive wall climbing! It's the end of the road for that crazy conflated idea of the Baron Pierre de Coubertin. What was the dude thinking? "Faster, Higher, Stronger" will no longer cut the mustard as everyone now focuses their laser beams entirely on survival and resilience. The once fabulous IOC gravy train has ground to a shuddering halt, and will never move out of the siding again. Current Olympic plans would send Paris and Los Angeles fully broke in any case.

By now "nothing will ever be the same" "and "it's all a day-to-day proposition" have already become lame platitudes, but nothing's more certain than spectator sport becoming an entirely different thing altogether, and maybe, just maybe, for the better. Or worse? Who knows? With the exception of Melbourne, the days of the "enormous crowds" look done for, and all you'll be able to do is read about the "tremendous atmosphere" in the lil' old history books or give some old timer a drink or three and they'll tell you all about how marvellous everything was back in the good old days. "Open the gates, and they will come" has always been a myth anyway.

The 2020 football season is toast. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. Perhaps the only thing anyone can be vaguely confident of 'going forward' is the crowds at next summer's Sheffield Shield matches won't change that much. After a long, cold, bitter winter of discontent, The Man and His Dog will still turn out to watch first class cricket. No one else will. And the Dear Ol' Swannies and The Mighty Tiges will finish the season with a win each.

empty interregnum

Disappointee's,

If anything good was to come of the weird-shit opening round of the AFL it was the-powers-that-be finally answering my years-long call for shorter quarters in Australian Rules.
Said it before, say it again, the game goes on for far too long.
Who on earth has got three hours these days to watch a game of footy, when the matches are seemingly on at all hours on almost every day of the week?
It was fine when all of them were played on a Saturday afternoon, but in this day and age of instant gratification?
They should stick with the 16 minute quarter instituted for no-crowd football, if and when the season resumes, and they should go further.
It's always been a mystery to me why the clock stops when the ball goes out of bounds.
What's that about, especially as the "deliberate' was being enforced to the hilt under last year's swathe of rules changes?
Shorter games would also mean new tactics and game strategies for extra interest, and it might even reduce the very high injury toll, which you'd have to think the players would be all for as no one wants be down
in Sick Bay drawing half-pay.
A win-win situation.
But if an empty stadium emphasised anything, it's something hundreds of thousands Melburnians, Old Adelaidians and Denizens of the Golden West have known since the invention of the telly - Australian Rules is a crap game on television.
You hardly see any lead up work except in occasional wide shots, you don't see the jostling for positions in the forward lines when a side is pressing for goal, and you never see the defensive players whose
sole job is to close down star players in opposition sides.
None of that appears on the Unblinking Eye.
David Rhys-Jones won the Norm Smith Medal for shutting down Dermott Brereton in the only MCG Grand Final ever to be graced with my presence in 1987, and yet Dave wouldn't have been seen on the Crystal Bucket
as Dermo couldn't get a kick.
There is simply no substitute for being at the ground, and as My Spy at the Ground remarked "If people can't go to the footy and cheer on their side, then what's the point?"
Quite right. Football doesn't work sans the Roar of the Greasepaint and the Smell of the Crowd.
There is no "A Wonderful Day Like Today" without it.
The premature end to the season after one game is a blessing for the Swans, as another of My Spies suggested the Red and the White (and the Crows for that matter} "won't trouble the scorers much" when it
comes to tallying up the Premiership Points in the denoument to see who's in the Top Eight and who's not.
That's if they even get the abacus out of the dusty cupboard in the Club Secretary's office.
It's a lucky thing for the AFL that they have deep pockets - made even deeper by their heartless intention of reportedly laying-off as much as 80% of their staff due to the current difficulties.
The lack of gate receipts is the club's problem, and HQ want nothing to do with it..."we've got our own problems, fellas".
When the clubs run out of money and stop paying their players, what happens then?
Will they cry poor? Will footballers have to line up at the CES and apply for jobs that no longer exist in order to pick up the dole?
But the shit will really hit the fan when the sponsors want their money back, and the TV broadcaster demands the rights contract be re-negotiated in a world where network television is rapidly dying anyway, and nobody's got the
faintest clue about what the future holds.
Seven would be glad to wash their hands of it, the way it stands now, as they will lose money hand over fist in an industry that's barely profitable, if that.
And what are the players to do with themselves now they're unemployed?
Training would have to be out of the question as 'social distancing' is impossible - there's far too much snot and sloppy spit flying around the practice paddock.
It'd be an infection hotbed, and put whole teams to sleep.
Gym work? You are kidding.
Suppose they'll just have to follow the North Melbourne lead and host all night house parties with plenty of grog and gak.
It's as good as time as any to get off one's tits.
And don't suppose the drug testers will be coming a knockin' on their doors in the foreseeable future, as they would have been laid off too, and it would be too dangerous anyway.
Whether or not the result actually stands is beside the point - it was a very unusual unique farcical match - and as long time followers of The Red and The White have pointed out - a win is a win is a win, and you'd always take
the four Premiership points if they're on offer under any circumstances.

ADELAIDE: 6.0, 7.1, 9.2, 11.5 (71). Goals: Walker 2, Lynch 2, Fogarty, Stengle, Atkins, Sloane, Murphy, Davis, Jones.
SYDNEY: 3.0, 8.3, 11.4, 11.8 (74). Goals: Heeney 4, Hayward 2, Kennedy, Blakey, Gray, Papley, McCartin.
At Adelaide Oval.
Crowd: 0.

Seeing an empty hill at the Spiritual Home was both eerie and depressing. It was as if the ghosts of past Balmain greats had emerged from the Pantheon and were stealthily haunting the joint in utter confusion.
Never seen Leichhardt Oval that empty.
Reminded me of sitting on that same hill back in '89 with a heavily pregnant Good Lady Wife and a couple of our mates in driving, torrential rain.
It had been raining for days, the grass on the hill had turned into deep mud and little rivulets were pouring off the mound and onto the concourse below.
You could hardly see the game through the pelting precipitation, and the thud and thwack of the tackles was about the only thing that could be heard above all the splashing and sploshing.
Got no recollection of who the Mighty Tiges were playing, let alone the final score, but the lasting vivid memory was there was hardly another soul in the ground apart from The Man & His Dog.
"The joint's empty! There's nobody here!" as we marvelled at ourselves being such fools wearing entirely useless plastic poncho's.
Surprised to see that elusive human-canine duo hadn't snuck into the ground undetected somehow, and the TV shots of some flag waving pissed idiots trying to look in over the barbed wire topped galvo fence were truly pathetic.
Such pathos.
There's a balcony on the back of terrace house there that overlooks the ground that would afford a fine view of the game - but I have never once seen it occupied by anyone during a match.
In 35 years.
Yet, when the ground was dead empty, that perch was full of chardonnay-gulping canapé-chomping supreme wankers, who were displaying no interest in the footy, only in waving at the TV camera's.
Look at me! Look at me! Knobs, they were, of the highest order.
Enough to make an Ol' Balmain Boy go off in the direction of sticking the fingers down the throat territory.
The Tiges had started the season off well enough winning their opening game on the back of a Benji Marshall "masterclass" against St George-Ilawarra in Wollongong - which did have a crowd of 9,137 in the rain - after
ScoVo had graciously allowed them in before banning large gatherings, mainly so the Hillsong Conference out at Homebush could continue on it's merry tongue-speaking way on the Sunday.
Now that's entertainment.
But Balmain had it coming to them in this game with a defence that was so piss-weak it was a shock to see the hopeless mess they were in out back, even to those who've lived through nigh on a decade without making
the finals.
And when the "Dog Rooter" scored a very soft second-half try for Newcastle it left a taste in the mouth that was most unpleasant. Made me want to spit out a gobful of gloop.
The Rooter of course is Mitchell Pearce, the son of the famous Balmain champion, legend, and immortal Wayne "Never Played A Bad Game" Pearce.
You'd have to hope that Wayne didn't feel the need to hang his head in shame, as everyone knows it must be very tough to have spawned such a disappointing deviant son who plays for the wrong team.
He's too good for that.
Before the season began the so-called expert pundits were asked to publish their predictions of the season's results, and no-one put Balmain finishing anywhere above 14th and many had enthusiastically backed them for
the Wooden Spoon, not very quietly confident they would finish stone motherless last and they thought the 7/1 on offer were luxury odds.
And in the likely event the season is delayed for a long time, it could even sound the club's death knell, unless some White Knight comes to the rescue, but you'd think they'd be in very short supply during the current interregnum.
Balmain has been short on cash for decades, buying and selling the wrong players and hiring coaches who were out-and-out gibbering duds and wanted their grossly bloated stipends paid out.
The merger with Western Suburbs was ill fated from the off, resulting in a totally dysfunctional board of infighters and backstabbers who couldn't organise a chook raffle, let alone work out two bob in the coffers.
The Tiges have been more than broke more than once.
Like everyone else in the country, how are they meant to survive with an income of precisely zero?
Here too the sponsors will all want their money back as the Leichhardt turnstiles once again rust to a ghostly silence.
For the faithful, it's a fine ol' time to close down the season. Only postpones the inevitable. They've tried to kill off the club before and failed, and they'll try again in a Doomsday Scenario.
Supporter solidarity and eternal vigilance are the only things standing between us and them.
It was shaping up as yet another Winter of Discontent for the die-hards anyway, so, as the Philosopher said while nursing this week's favoured tipple down in the Front Bar on my last visit to The Local before they closed the pubs
"might as well just throw your arms in the air" and may the Good Lawd Joisus help us all.

WESTS TIGERS 24. Tries: Nofoaluma, Thompson, Reynolds, Leilua. Goals: Marshall (4).
NEWCASTLE KNIGHTS 42. Tries: Tuala (2), Ponga, Barnett, Mann, Lee, Pearce, Watson. Goals: Ponga (9).
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 0.

unlucky in love

Canine Fanciers,

It's always very sad to hear of the end of a love affair. Still, the terribly upsetting recent news is not all bad for a bloke who'd willingly roll over and let MJ Clarke give him a root. Felt that way ever since falling in love with Pup on seeing him for the first time in the flesh as a raw rookie playing for NSW v WA in the Sheffield Shield at the Newcastle No.1 Sports Ground. That day he put on a century partnership with ME Waugh in a batting exhibition, and at one stage looked so comfortable against the bowling, he tonked a mighty square-drive that soared high wide and handsome...one bounce off the asphalt and over the ground's perimeter fence, whereupon the pill bounced a time or two, and then gently rolled across half a dozen netball courts, before plopping into Mullet Creek. Saw it off the bat and all the way into the water. Despite the best efforts of gangs of yoofs looking for it, lost ball was the call. And that, my friends, was on the 23rd of January 2003. Now if that's not true love, then tell me something different. Been the man's biggest fan for 18 years, and in all likelihood, he doesn't even know it.

So it's a crying shame that Michael found himself in the most unfortunate position of having to move out of he and the wife's love nest, a "$14M Vaucluse mansion", to "another of the couple's properties in Bondi". Of course, Pup's always been unlucky in love. But if you believe the papers - and why shouldn't you - "Kylsy threw him out the back door without so much as a sausage". So, let's make this perfectly clear, MJ Clarke is no cad or bounder, oh no siree, a man of principle he is, who went away when he was told to leave in no uncertain terms, it seems, never to go back.

Most unfortunately, it will certainly further tarnish Pup's already tawdry reputation with the General Public of Australia - who have never liked him, never will and there's a fair bit of enduring hate out there too. As it is, he's hardly in town anyway and spends as much time as he can being a property baron in India with a net worth at a very conservatively estimated $US40M. (Never mind that the divorce will be a tasty lawyer's picnic). It's in India where he is lauded with much adulation and where his champion cricketing career is quite rightly, without question, widely revered. As it is in England, where he is one of the very few Life Members of the Marylebone Cricket Club, so he is always most welcome to a gin'n'tonic on the chit in the Long Room at Lord's any time he likes. Yet, in Australia, he is treated like offal. Please tell me why? It's the most enduring eternal mysteries of my fandom of the man that he is so detested by the Great Unwashed. Why, oh, why? The greatest batsman of his generation - intensely disliked by the Plebeian Masses, and Simon Katich. It doesn't make sense and it's just farking outrageous, for mine, considering his admission to the cricketing Pantheon. There's ample room for me to go on and on about it here endlessly and Blame the Bingle, that sport of thing - but being in a charitable mood, that you will be spared. You'd have to think he's happy enough now flogging Wagner snake oil, pushing other sponsor's barrows(Buy More Hublot Waches!), doing the Indian celebrity appearance circuit, and making poignant comments from time-to-time on Star TV's coverage of the IPL, which keeps him on the sub-continent for months at a time. Over there, he'd never ever be short of a root, and quite obviously, he's not short of a bob. So what's not to like?

At least, at 38, Pup's old enough now to know better, now he's learnt to put ambition away after finally realising he's done it all. For years after his premature retirement he had enormous difficulties just getting used to the concept of resting on his considerable wreath of laurels. Now he knows there's nothing left to prove. He's No.1, so why try harder? And he's clever enough to make sure he has a very lush pasture indeed to be put out to. Only one thing is for certain, he'll need some very powerful pharmaceuticals for his chronic case of Shagger's Back.

And just to confound and spite me, with a new gig in commercial breakfast radio, soon enough Michael Clarke will be proclaimed Bachelor of the Year and he'll start doing nude centrefolds in Cleo magazine, with a fetching batting glove tastefully concealing his manhood.

All power to his oars.

the ‘Feuded With Michael Clarke’ XI

Aficionado's,

The Chairman and the Three Wise men have found themselves between a rock and a hard place, as the new cricket season hasn't exactly got off to a great start, despite the Mighty Blue Bags winning their first four games in the Shield outright at almost full strength and all but booking a place in the final before December. When NSW cricket is strong, Strayan cricket is strong, eh? Three blokes have cracked in November, and can't play on. And none of them have done a hammy. These sort of things can be career-enders. Not the first, nor the last, to have their heads done in; that's no place to be and there's no fun there when you're like that. This does not auger well. With two of the absentees in almost certain test contention, the selectors had to be disturbed from their slumber to do some hasty re-thinking for a squad to take on Azhar Ali's Paki's [btw it's pleasing to see Imran Khan's love child and namesake making a comeback at 32 after two years in the wilderness.] And then Jimmy Pattinson gets rubbed out for one match for calling an opposition player a homo - the third time he's called blokes names in a Shield game this calendar year. Doh. Then Smiffy gets reported, and cops a "code of conduct" and a fine for dissent, failing to remember the fundamental principle that The Man in White is Always Right. It seems they just can't help themselves. Given that the first four picked [SPD Smith, DA Warner, PJ Cummins, JR Hazlewood] are carrying the can for the team, the pickings are on the rather slim side. Yet again. And eight of the players in the squad are 29 or older. Where are the gifted 16-year-old tear-aways?

Amongst the droppee's post-Ashes, it was most disappointing to see the Token Muzzie brushed. The Ooz Man has once again been treated disgracefully by the selectors [he does average 40 in Tests after all], even though it never helps having a poor Ashes, moving to Queensland, ever, and making F-all early-season domestic runs. But you'd have to sincerely hope they aren't going to hang the "has-been" placard around Khawaja's neck. If you want to know about cricket being a cruel game, just ask Tokes, he'll tell you. You are in constant danger of being shoved out the back door without so much as a sausage. In the never ending quest for another opener, Harry Harris has been the victim of having his card marked "not quite a Test cricketer". JoBru Burns comes back from the bush for another shot at opening, despite having next to no form, purely on a horses for courses basis. No surprises either that the patsy in Sandpapergate and therefore the third "cheater" in the squad, Cam 'Bonkers' Bancroft, comes back with Alfie playing favourites and Chairman Trev saying "he can bat anywhere". That, after ten tests as an opener? Redeem one, and you have to redeem them all, is the only other explanation. Mike Neser is no bolter and no rookie and has been bought in to replace the perpetual 12th man Sids as the traditional "entertainment officer", handling important duties such as preparing the trays of powerful gin & tonics. The poster boy for the banana industry, PM Siddle's laugh-a-minute demeanour will be sorely missed, but he'll happily admit he's been carrying the drinks for a bit too long.

The Summer comes after the very close run thing that was the 2-2 Ashes in the Old Dart. Memorable only for Smiffy playing right out of his brain and getting Bradmanesque-like averages while his partner in crime Burbs Warner picked up a very bad dose of The Yips. Ian Baker-Finch came to mind; couldn't play the shots he'd mastered on the practice greens. Warner was obviously suffering under the ban on punching out Joe Root for being an obnoxious Pom in some bar room brawl in Birmingham, after which he made a mountain of runs. Never mind that the middle order failed miserably, often, or that Hazo and Cummo carried the attack under difficult circumstances bowling out Pommies and winning a couple of matches. It was not like the Glory Days of a five-nil thumping, 2006-07 style. Who will ever forget the "Never in Doubt" Test in Adelaide, when England declared their first innings closed at 500+, and still lost. The Great Warnie, Ooh Aah Glenn McGrath and Alfie Langer all retired, while Damo Martyn drifted off the face of the planet mid-season without explanation at the peak of his powers, never to be seen again. Stresscothick lost his shit after two tour games, and went home before the first Test, which he knew would mentally destroy him. Pup tonked a couple of classy tons and was never again dropped by Straya, while Roy Symonds went north in search of the ever elusive Barra and became a shadow of his former self. Things moved in mysterious ways that summer.

Which brings us around to the inevitable question. What would Pup do? Given that he eschewed a spot on the selection panel whenever he could, not much. Clarkey said practically said nothing on the ESPNSTAR TV commentary of the Ashes that was remotely memorable and he was sparely used, now that he likes to keep well out of the limelight in his home country, preferring the Sub-Continent where he is considered one of the deities in the Hindu sect which has cricket as its cult. Sachin is God, of course, but Pup sits right with him at the Long Table along with a host of other living luminaries. And why not spend most of your ample spare time in India, when you've retired too early, where you can really easily soak up the "star factor"? Pushing snake oil on Wagner vitamins TV commercials, and appearing in magazines wearing a Hublot watch can't be that hard, surely? No-one asks for Michael's opinion in Australia anymore - never did really - which is par for the course, given the best batsman of his generation's shabby treatment from the General Public, who've put in 15 solid years of wholehearted detestation of the bloke for reasons known only to The Great Unwashed. No wonder he's sodded off.

So for the utter, hopeless tragic, the following snippet is shamelessly clipped from the little known and poorly read website, cricket365 https://www.cricket365.com/, who've highlighted the speculation involved in selection in times of difficulty with this splendid idea...picking the ‘Feuded With Michael Clarke’ XI. All eleven, top to bottom. Simon "Strangler" Katich? First picked. Captain:

"A theoretical cricket team selected solely for the fun of it, often under some ludicrous self-imposed constraint.
It’s a harmless and entertaining menial diversion – the cricket selection equivalent of doing a crossword puzzle, claiming to be gluten-sensitive or solving a sudoku. It’s a piece of play not just beloved by the dregs of fandom, but endorsed by as revered a figure as Sir Donald Bradman.
Bradman himself, whose selection of an all-time XI for the book 'Bradman’s Best’ featured five specialist batsmen, two spinners, Don Tallon (Test batting average 17.1) batting at six and, wildly, given the evidence at hand, a cover blurb by Richie Benaud declaring ‘Sir Donald was the best selector I came across in the game anywhere in the world’.
(Bradman, by the way, would qualify for two out of the three XIs mentioned above, and surely only misses out on the third because Clarke was still two years away from his Test debut when The Don passed away)."

You be the judge.

another winter of discontent dissolves into Mad Monday

Exhaustee's,

The insanely fanatical resilience of the rusted-on life-long die-hard Balmain supporter has never been in question, even in the most trying of circumstances. The faithful will travel from miles around to be at the Spiritual Home, Leichhardt Oval, for their religious experience. The devoted will pack themselves together on that Hill, like sardines in a tin, and become this writhing, heaving, screaming mass of humanity that has a life all its own [see above]. Adherents of the Mighty Tiges let everyone know they have come for just one thing. To worship at the altar of a Tigers victory. And still they come, tumbling down from the Balmain Road or climbing "heartbreak hill" up from the Parramatta River and pouring in through the Mary St turnstiles, at even the slightest whiff of more glory for Balmain. At the appointed time, there's a crowd surge as serious pre-loaders leaving the Orange Grove Hotel [where drinking in the middle of the street is not unknown on match days], marching in colours, with flags waving, taking the short cut through the old Rozelle lunatic asylum [which has always been tastefully referred to as the "mental hospital"], arriving at the Glover St gates at the back of the Hill in the unshakeable hope of another magnificent Tiges triumph. And still they come, Balmain supporters are everywhere, and all of them will tell you they'd rather be at Leichhardt Oval on a Sunday arvo. Said it before, say it again, it is without a doubt the best viewing ground for rugby league in Sydney, and possibly the world. The last of the great suburban grounds. Ever since it was literally blasted out of the cliff face as a Great Depression work creation project with the rubble used to smooth out and fortify the Hill and build a swimming pool below in 1934, it's had iconic status. The idea of creating a large artificial amphitheatre for the game - where the spectators are more or less on top of the players - was a brilliant one. Improvements, tho', have been few and far between. Spectator facilities [highlighted by the 1950's era brick latrines without bog holes at the side of the Hill] have always been sub-standard, there's never been any car parking, the desultory scoreboard has its own idiosyncrasies and a famous bar, the Norman "Latchem" Robinson Stand was a 1970's monolithic mistake, and the original white-ant-eaten dinky little wooden Keith Barnes Stand, which holds only a thousand folks or so, has always been occupied by Tiges legends and club worthies on their way to The Pantheon. Most of the hallowed ground is standing room only for the hoi polloi. Despite none of it meeting any of the National Rugby League's criteria as a suitable up-to-code 'stadium' worth having matches at, and despite it being left in wrack and ruin as the autocrats at the Powers That Be have long been threatening it with closure as a waste of maintenance money - to howls of protest - the Spiritual Home endures. It's very hard to close an institution.

The final game of the season was a sell-out a couple of weeks prior, given that Robbie "The Best Leb in the Game" Farah was due to play his 303rd and final game before retirement. And it was do or die, the last throw of the dice to make the finals. Punters flocked to the ground doubts that Farah would even play, as he'd put a hairline fracture through his tibia 26 days previous and therefore had to "play on a busted leg". Robbie was ruled out of the game on match day morning, meaning he would have to do his lap of honour in a suit and tie.Then, ten minutes before kick off, Super Coach Mr Magoo dramatically pulled the trigger and decided to risk being a player down, and he put Robbie on the bench so he would indeed play his final game. Nobody expected the Great Man to come on much before ten minutes from the end and throw the ball about a bit from dummy half, and that's pretty much what happened. Fans got to say their much anticipated farewells to the Living Legend, and whether it was a tactical mistake picking a player who might as well have come on in a wheel chair is neither here nor there in hindsight. It's not every day of the week that your team - with everything to play for before a capacity crowd - is comprehensively outplayed and robbed blind by the Umpires. They had to beat Scummo's Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks by any margin to make it into 8th on the final ladder. [In a quirk of the table, a draw would have seen both teams go through the finals at the expense of Brisbane, but that result would have been clear cut case of match fixing, so it was never on]. It was victory, or nowheresville. But it never looked like it was on. Balmain didn't show up to play, were lacklustre from the off, despite taking the early lead with penalty goals, and then the refs turned against them, with the Bamfords constantly blowing the whistle for obscure technical infractions of the rules that no-one else could make any sense of, and the Sharks were given free ground to get away with four tries free gratis. There is no other sound in the world quite like a deafening Leichhardt Oval crowd going absolutely apeshit when Balmain scores - and in this case there was but one opportunity to go off one's tits.

So, for the eighth season in a row, emotional disconsolate fans filed out of the ground holding back tears, kicking the dirt with their boots. Yet again, no finals appearance. Another winter of discontent dissolves into Mad Monday. The screaming mob had yet again failed to spur the team on, and the usual 10 point home ground advantage at Leichhardt just did not materialise. For those of us who've been around a while, the Miracle Year of 2005, when they won the Premiership coming from stone motherless last mid season to finish fourth on the final ladder, slowly recedes further and further from the memory, the Grand final losses of 1988 and 1989 are in real and present danger of being lost in the mists of time, while the most famous Premiership victory of all in 1969 has now been consigned to the dustbin of ancient history.

Ah well, as they say in the classics..."there's always next year".

WESTS TIGERS 8. Tries: Garner. Goals: Momirovski (2).
CRONULLA-SUTHERLAND SHARKS 25. Tries: Feki (2), Nikora, Morris. Goals Johnson (3). Field Goals: Gallen (1).
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 19,491.