Fellow disappointees,
Had to park about ten minutes walk further away from the ground than usual due to the huge crowd who were already in, and just as we were getting out of the car, a red Ferrari flashed by.
Turned out to be a good omen for later in the night, but not for the afternoon!
As we were walking along the foreshore we spied a Tigers fan who was putting his chairs and esky into his boot, while his family were getting in the car.
“What’s the matter mate, couldn’t get in?”
Oh no, the bloke explained, they had been in the ground for quite a while before the sardine effect came into play, and he found it was just far too uncomfortable and his view of the playing arena had become obstructed, so he decided to pack up and leave; “rather watch the game on television in the comfort of my own lounge room, thanks mate”
Thought the bloke was mad at the time, but as it turned out, he made an excellent decision.
The very steep hill you have to climb to get up to the Mary St entrance to Leichhardt Oval has taken its toll on many a punter over the years, but spotted a Souths fan barely struggling up the incline with a very wobbly boot on.
When we got to the top we saw the same Rabbitoh’s supporter had fallen over between two parked cars, and due to his paralytic state, was unable to get up again.
A couple of security guards were yelling at him “just keep still mate! just keep still! who are you with? who are you with?”
His mates eventually twigged as to what had happened, went back over and picked him up, and with his arms draped over the shoulders of two blokes, the dead drunk was admitted to the ground.
No problem.
Oh dear.
As we were waiting to be admitted, noticed a gate attendant tearing the stubs off a whole bunch of tickets and dropping them into the box office bin.
[The turnstiles at Leichhardt are so ancient they don’t count the patrons as they go in, and the ticket stubs have to be counted by hand].
The gate attendant loudly announced to the couple as they went through the turnstiles “have a great afternoon with your 12 children”
First hand evidence of crowd figure tampering.
That said, if there weren’t 20,000 in, the joint was still jumpin’ and packed to the rafters with the standing room only crowd on the hill extending way beyond the scoreboard bar [where it usually ends] up to the very back of the hill and then up into the Moreton Bay fig trees!
There were about 50 people on top of the old blokes toilet block, before they were eventually dragged off by the cops.
Most disappointing for everyone concerned that the crowd, as it turned out, had nothing to cheer about, and most disappointing for us to find that we had crap seats.
Right in the very first row between the 20 and 10 metre lines at the southern end – this for buying tickets on the first day they became available?
Can only now assume that most of the concourse area is taken up by Members.
So we had to look through the three strands of wire that top the fence there [presumably to prevent ground invasions and players from flipping over the sideline and into the crowd?], but at least we had a good view of the state of the playing surface – accurately described by the ground curator as looking like “the rolling green hills of Ireland”.
A good opening foray from the Tigers was butchered with a silly forward pass with the line wide open, and it was all downhill from there with the Rabbitoh’s garnering a massive weight of possession that would inevitably lead to points on the board.
Hardly saw the ball at all down our end of the field in the first half.
It’s hard to score when you have next to no possession, and the forwards are failing to provide any go forward and subsequent field position, to let the backs do their magic.
Add to that a brittle defensive effort, and the Tiger’s looked like done dinners from the moment Farah went off and never returned.
As we learned later, he had suffered a bad reaction to a pain-killing needle, and lost all feeling in his leg.
So my suspicions the kiddie has been playing injured for several weeks turned out to be right.
Only high point in the game came late in the first stanza, when Benji turned on a bit of trademark brilliance with a kick and regather, and with a jink and a step, found his winger with only the full back to beat.
But at 18-6 down at half-time, things were looking very ominous indeed.
Especially as the grand stand bar had by then run out of Carlton Draught, and could only offer luke cold VB.
With all the tackling required in the first half, the Tigers had had the stuffing well and truly knocked out of them, and it was only a matter of time before the floodgates opened for Souths.
Tigers fans voted with their feet about fifteen minutes into the second half as hundreds of them began pouring off the hill and making their way for the exits, declining to take the torture anymore.
Must be very demoralising for a team to see that, knowing that your fans had given up on you.
Taniela Tuiaki had a lovely game, but he was a shining light in an otherwise awful display.
The long and the short of it was that they just didn’t turn up to play.
About ten minutes before full time a most unusual thing was observed – a full can of beer thrown onto the ground from the Latchem Robinson stand into a huddle of Souths players right in front of us after they had scored yet another try.
The cops quickly moved in and threw out the perpetrator.
Would have thought it was just a case of the frustration boiling right over rather than anything really malicious.
On interview after the game SC Sheens was moved to apologise to the fans – and so he should.
“We've taken what was going to be our own destiny today, and we've blown it. It's very disappointing, 20 minutes before fulltime, to see people leaving. On behalf of the team, I apologise for that. We were embarrassed by it”
From talk of a home final just a few weeks back, the Tigers have now got themselves into a terrible pickle.
You would have thought they could beat the next-to-last placed Newcastle next Friday night, but then they have to rely on Parramatta beating Brisbane just to squeeze into the eight.
But on that performance, they will go nowhere in September.
As the sun started to set on Leichhardt, we lingered a while, pondering what went wrong.
The old wags in the scoreboard, at least, had a sense of humour with a sense of history.
They took down all the numbers from the Souths side of the scoreboard, left the tries and goals up on the Tigers side, and then dropped the numbers 5 & 2 into the score frame, so to anyone who had not seen the game, it would have looked like the Tigers had won 52-0.
If only.
WESTS TIGERS 12 Tries: Fitzhenry, Tuiaki. Goals: Marshall (2).
SOUTH SYDNEY RABBITOHS 37 Tries: Gordon (2), Yileen, Sutton, J.Smith, Dean, Asotasi. Goals: Williams (6). Field Goals: Williams (1).
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 20,232
What can you say about the rubbish trotted out by the Swans at The Home of the Grand Final on Saturday night?
The less said the better, for mine.
Again, a season cruelled by injury; no Kennelly, no Ball, no Ugliest Man in Football, leaving the defence in a state of considerable disarray.
Luke Brennan appeared to be entirely out of his depth, and ended up injured anyway.
It was sickening to see Magic land heavily on his back while taking a mark, and then appearing to cough up blood before being ushered off the ground by the Bamfords.
Buchanan, the fool, is looking at being rubbed out for about three weeks for mine, for a very crude late hit in the final quarter.
That brain explosion epitomized what had been going on, really.
Collingwood played a very clever Championship quarter, winning it three goals to one, and there was really never any practical chance of coming back from there.
In an irony of ironies, The Goods Train was undoubtedly best on ground in a losing team and would have collected the maximum Brownlow votes to add to the meager handful he would have gathered this season.
From my reading of the premiership table, the Swans will still make the eight, even if they go down to the Hawks next Sunday, but top four was done in [probably well before] by last week’s draw, and any hopes of another flag have evaporated in the fierce Melbourne sun.
Will probably end up playing Geelong again at Kardinia Park in the first week of the finals!
There would have been much scratching of heads and chins at the Sunday morning smoko, and you would have thought the first thing SC Roos would have done on return to Sydney would have been to book a session in at The Room Full of Mirrors down on Balmain Road.
COLLINGWOOD: 3.6, 9.8,12.10,
15.11 [101]. Goals: Rusling 4, Rocca 3, Didak, Burns, Clement, Medhurst, Thomas, Pendlebury, Swan, Bryan.
SYDNEY: 4.0, 7.4, 8.6,
11.10 [76]. Goals: Hall 4, Davis 2, Schneider, O’Keefe, Jolly, Kirk, O’Loughlin.
At Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 63,842
