frothing at the mouth

Meteorologists,

Holy Camp Boy! 76 points in the game!
Whatever happened to early season defensive work?
Then again, you can understand it, with the mercury tipping 32 degrees in Paddington at the time of the kick off.
The Tigers, in retrospect, were fools to accept the local rules that called for a drinks break every 20 minutes.
After scoring two early tries, Balmain were cruelled by the Bamford when he said "do you want a drinks break, boys?"
Completely lost their momentum, and then The Chooks planted two soft tries on them.
By half time the backs were going ga-ga as their eyes did Marty Feldman impressions, and the forwards were frothing at the mouth like distressed standardbred racehorses, and the second stanza looked like a mere technicality.
You had to feel for the poor Timmy Moltzen kiddie, who had a shocker at full back.
No less than three Eastern Suburbs try scorers found themselves in the in-goal without Moltzen having laid a hand on them.
As the Good Lady Wife commented "maybe it's the metal plate that he has installed in the back of his skull, you know the one, the result of that accident he had when he was a schoolboy footballer; maybe in the heat, it's melted into his brain and sucked out all the 'play good football' hormones and nerve endings?"
As good a theory as any.
In his weekly letter home to his folks in Terrigal, Moltzen would have talked about the rigours of training and everything he'd had for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the week prior, before signing off "didn't play very well on Sunday".
SC Sheens would have pulled the unfortunate boy aside after the game for a quiet talking to, but you wouldn't have imagined that he came down very hard on the bloke.
It's probably too early in the season to send anyone to the Room Full of Mirrors down on the Balmain Road for a good look at themsleves.
Keefy "Bludnut" Galloway was the Tiges man-of-the match for mine, if you look at the pedometer he was carrying measuring the miles he ran, and the number of hit-ups and tackles he made.
On Monday morning, SC Sheens would have pulled out the leather bound Coaches Ledger kept in the Club Secretary's office, neatly ruled into two columns marked "we'll take our wins" and "we'll learn from our losses", and made his customary scratch in the second column.
Not quite back to the drawing board, but The Great Skando as forwards coach would know that he has some work to do, and SC Folkesy would be subjecting the detailed fitness and conditioning charts to some close scrutiny.
The Club Secretary would just shrug his shoulders as he totted up the gate takings dollars and cents at yet another long lunch.
Parramatta will be no cake walk in the park this Friday night, and while you can take an away loss on a bloodied nose, it doesn't take Einstein and his damnable Theory of General Relativity to work out the mathematical value of winning at home, even if the venues, strangely, are the same.

SYDNEY ROOSTERS 44. Tries: Graham (2), Guerra (2), Pearce (2), Aubusson, Minichiello. Goals: Carney (6).
WESTS TIGERS 32. Tries: Marshall (2), Tuqiri, Ayshford, Schirnack, Fifita. Goals: Marshall (4)
At Sydney Football Stadium.
Crowd: 19,021.

a hundred in Wellington and all that

Pot-Bellied Piss-Suckers,

Found myself in The Front Bar at The Local a little earlier than usual for a Friday afternoon after word had filtered through on the bush telegraph that MJ Clarke was in in Wellington.
There was no one there, apart from The Philospher in The Corner who, as is his wont, said nothing, as he sipped his favoured drink of the day, this time a brandy & dry.
Pup was watching his off stump very closely and letting a lot of rubbish go while jamming down on the odd ball that may or may not have got him out LBW early.
Not hard to pick which ones to hit.
Soon enough, a few Big Bloody Brown Brothers, who know their cricket let me tell you, began filtering in from the myriad building and construction sites in the district in their flouro vests and work boots and gaiters.
One commented when Pup had totted up 17 runs in 90 minutes "jeeze, he's going cautious, isn't he, eh bru? But I spoose you'd expict that from someone who's just lost his handbag. Spoose he would have cancelled his credit cards, eh bru?"
Conversation then drifted to the latest model Aston Martin, what's going on this week Up The Cross, and the general ugliness that is The Shire.
No one confessed to knowing anything at all about what's happening in Bondi.
The Philospher remained silent.
After Pup had begun to loosen up the shoulders, wriggle his fingers into his gloves, and fidget constantly and endlessly, and began to smote the ball as if it was some kind of football or something else entirely that was there on purpose for him to take out his frustrations on and posted his fifty, the bar rapidly filled up.
The Brown Brothers lamented long and loud about the pop gun nature of the New Zealand attack, as Pup began to stretch out the Rudolf Nureyev footwork with some trade-mark off cuts.
Ping! At the boundary inside five seconds as the fielder flailed a bit and gave it up.
A few lovely cover drives, as usual.
There's no one else in the modern game who can find the meat of the bat so sweetly as MJ Clarke, NSW, when he's got the time to concentrate on locating it, in a test match.
And then of course, his deft leg side play for one's and two's left the Brown Brothers seriously questioning Vettori's captaincy capacity in the field.
"he might be a nice guy in spuctacools, but......"
Still, The Philospher said nothing.
The Publican could see what was going on out of the corner of his eye, and brought on the happy hour for jugs of Carlton Draught half an hour early.
Bless.
Suddenly, dozens of middies were being poured all round.
There was a slight heart flutter when Pup fished at one way above his, and the keeper's, head before it sailed away to the long stop boundary, but it was by then clear that Pup wasn't hanging around until tomorrow to post his century.
The Deputy Dawg did a good impression of trying to run out the Concept of North, who was spreadeagled at the other end of the pitch, as the main man went through for the single to bring up the three figures.
After the ripple of applause around The Front Bar had faded, the Philosopher got up from his chair and said:
"Good knock, that. Best since Bangalore", before he breasted the bar and ordered a double.

some kind of demented banshee

Sideline experts,

Don't often find myself a hootin' and a hollerin' like some kind of demented banshee while swinging from the clothesline in the backyard of a Monday night, as the spooky MMM radio call of the rugby league blared out from Dad's Shed to the point where all the dogs in the neighbourhood, including mine, went right off.
But, hey, it was the start of the new football season, and Lote Tuquiri had just passed the money ball to That Pom Ellis to score the match winning try.
Apart from losing the Ashes, there is nothing worse in world sport than losing to Manly.
[We could go back to my narrow escape from a savage bashing at the hands of wild-eyed Manly fans by jumping on a Palm Beach bus after the Great Steve "Blocker" Roach had been sent off at Brookvale Oval in '90, couldn't we? Perhaps not].
This year represents without doubt the Mighty Tiges best chance of a tilt at the JJ Giltinan Shield since the Miracle of '05.
SuperCoach Sheens has been doing some very, very astute work in the off season, with a finite cheque book and an open mind.
The first, and easiest thing to do was prune the dead wood, and he didn't hold back with the snippers.
Hiring Steve Folkes, a SuperCoach in his own right having won the '04 Grand Final with Canterbury-Bankstown, as the strength and conditioning coach was a brilliant move, as it allows SC Sheens a lot more time to think outside the box, and spend less time on the training paddock
Finally allowing The Great Skando to retire ["please boss, I'm sick of being bashed up by 120kg 19 year olds"] and install him as the forwards coach gives St. Tim even more time to concentrate on the big picture, as he's always been a bad worrier about how the forwards are going; on the principle of if the forwards are doing alright, then the backs should be able to look after themselves, which only goes to show why the Tigers don't have a designated backs coach.
Royce Simmons has been on the coaching staff for a long time now, being there back in '05, but no one has ever been quite certain as to what he actually does for a living; he always seems to have had the role of Special Minister of State.
The beauty of Royce is that you can rely on him to sort any kind of problem if you ask him to put his mind to it.
To bring a dual international of the likes of Lote Tuquiri on board dirt cheap when he had been all but abandoned by everyone else was a marketing masterstroke and not a bad option in football terms.
SC Sheens made it very clear from the outset that he had signed Lote simply as a second-string back-up winger, who might trouble the soon-to-be-fit-again Taniela "The Human Wrecking Ball" Tuiaki for his spot in the 13.
Everything from there is a bonus.
But, as SC Sheens said on interview after the game [always the master of understatement] it "wasn't a bad effort" that Tuquiri scored a try off his own bat with his very first touch of the ball after seven and a half years away from the league caper, and then set up the last try of the match with his final touch of the ball.
[By the way, what was it exactly that Tuquiri is meant to have done to upset the rah rah boys so badly that they tore up his ARU contract and marked his dance card "never to play for Australia again"?
With the issue sorted by the lawyers out of court, it's never been revealed/leaked. One of the most tightly held secrets in Australian sport.]
To coax Fulton and Cayless back from the dark satantic mills of northern England on the promise of a cut lunch and a couple of schooners before the game and a brown paper envelope stuffed with a few hundred dollar bills after full time each week was sensible thinking.
Fulton is a very serviceable utility and adds plenty of flexibility to the side, while Cayless is one of the better bench players going around, who you'd bring on after the traditional softening up period to continue doing the hard yards.
And there are apparently a couple of junior South Sea Islander forwards hanging about in shadows waiting for a chance at the top grade, who are the size of industrial refrigerators.
If you believe the bio-metric performance boffins, Benji Marshall should be at the peak of his powers this year; no longer a raw kiddie and a sound football brain to go with the trademark jink and step.
Let's just hope his damaged shoulders hold out and he remembers to get his Mum to polish his goal kicking boots.
And as always, it's quite handy to have the Best Leb in The Game running the show at the play-the-ball.
Plenty to love on paper, in theory, but we shall see.
Actually, the week before the season starts is always the best week of the season, as hope springs eternal.

WESTS TIGERS 26. Tries: Tuqiri, Ayshford, Fulton, Lawrence, Ellis. Goals: Marshall (3).
MANLY-WARRINGAH SEA EAGLES 22. Tries: Robertson, Stewart, Rose. Goals: Lyon (5).
At Sydney Football Stadium.
Crowd: 18,421.

spooky girlfriend

"Michael Clarke and Lara Bingle have decided to end their engagement. They ask the media to respect their privacy during this difficult time. No further comment will be made."
Max Markson, Bingle's agent.

Can only think of songlines....
"I could be, I could be, your spooky girlfriend"
"Let's call the whole thing off".

May the shooting match R.I.P.

carry on regardless

Followers of fashion,

MJ "lost and confused" Clarke is not stupid enough to sacrifice his place in the Strayan team for the next test match on account of a girl.
Never mind that he might be a touch down on form, at least he's not a cry baby like Mitch Johnson who blames his mother for single handedly losing the Ashes in England after finding himself all over the shop like a mad woman's breakfast.
Pup'll be on the plane acruss tha dutch on Sunday.
Once he's had a round of meetings with the lawyers [she keeps the two dogs, and the rock of course, worth bit, probably keeps the Aston Martin, worth more; but the expensive Bondi gaff might be something of a sticking point.
Pup wouldn't be that keen to offload it in a fire sale] he's then free to kiss goodbye to The Shire and carry on regardless.
Besides, he knows a thing or two about other blokes circling and stalking him for his spot.
Has a lot in common there with the PJ Hughes kiddie; as Clarkey was dropped for a second time for FIGJAM Watson, and only re-instated when The Great Watto did himself a mischief, and Hughes of course after being dropped once is currently being kept out of the XI by you guessed it...
Remarkable then that The Concept of Which Way's North is a classic example of it being harder to get dropped from the Strayan team, than it is to get picked.
Everywhere else in the world it would be very hard these days to promote yourself as a specialist No.6 batsman without another string to yr bow.
Aah, but not here.
He must have photo's of the selectors.
As a dear friend reminded me, during the last first class game that Marcus played in, KJ Hughes commented on national radio for all to hear that MJ North was "earning" dollars from the game under false pretences.
Always nice to be paid hansomely for doing absolutely nothing at all.
But it's only a matter of time before the cash runs out.
Seen SPD Smith aka Young Smiffy in action in the first class arena a couple of times this season for NSW, once at Newcastle Number One Ground and then at the SCG, and he's the real deal, let me tell you.
Can bat, can bowl, and Joisus, can he field.
Not yet 21, doesn't matter that, like Casey Stoner, he looks and sounds likes a 15 year old.
He'll play in Wellington, as he adds tremendous value to any side at six or seven, his chinaman will confuse the best of them, and he'd be odds on to take a screamer at some point -- so with competition like that, poor ol' Uncle Horrie would be contemplating putting his Baggy Green in a glass case.
The quick bowling department must be very iffy at present if the Chairman and the Three Wise Men scratched their heads and got around to selecting Ryan Harris as the bolter.
More the Man from Mars at 30 years of age and a similar first class bowling average.
Keeping the options open is one thing, but a 14 man squad is a lot to take for a brief two test tour of the Long White Cloud; so there's no shortage of mixed messages when it comes to the next Ashes.
The Evil Englanders would be taking a close interest in the machinations.

Touring party: Katich, Watson, Ponting (Capt), M.Hussey, Clarke, North, Hughes, S.Smith, Haddin (wk), Johnson, Hauritz, Harris, McKay, Bollinger.

Where'd she get those things?

Could go on and on and on and on about The Great Shane FIGJAM Watson copping the AB Medal.
But to spare everyone the indignity, just won't.
Of more interest is Mrs Nathan Bracken causing a stir on the red carpet.
Where'd she get those things?
Completely upstaged Our Lara, apparently, who could only manage the regulation plunging neckline and some "Chanel tattoos", whatever they are.

166 and all that

Takers of the breeze off the Derwent,

It seemed to me a touch ironic that Pup should score 166 in the company of the bloke whose job he's been plotting to thieve for at least the last six months.
A Vice-Captain's knock if there ever there was one; you only had to see MJ Clarke's reaction when Cap'n'Cockhead put on his first 50 of the 200.
Pup just sauntered through on the run and patted Punter on the top of the helmet, as if to say "well done, old man"
No idea what they did on the other milestones, as most people including me, were living their lives over the five sessions or so that it took them to to get the runs!
The Skip has to be credited for a well made double ton, if nothing else, the older person has all the shots, always has, perhaps that's why they keep picking him.
Now no one is labouring the point, as they did endlessly prior on the beckoning of Pup's people, about the dude on the wrong side of 30 losing his reaction time against quick bowling, nay his eye sight.
That said, on this occasion Ponting never really came under any serious incoming from heavy artillery, in an attack that quickly weakened to the explosive power of a pop gun as the days progressed.
Of course, as much can be said for my bloke, but Pup's cover driving, off cutting, straight hits, as good as it ever was, and what more can be said about the footwork that even Rudolf Nureyev would admire from the grave?
Pretty to watch.
Not to mention the fiendishly clever leg side play, forever rotating the srtrike, especially for The Captain, or just keeping it for himself from time to time with the effortless glance for two backward of the square leg umpire.
Wonder if the "whole of the western suburbs cried" on the kiddie making his highest test score, as they did, according to that Complete Loon Roebuck on the radio, when he made his 151 on debut in Bangalore?
Doubt it, somehow.
A rather odd way to get out, bringing the bat down in line with the pitch of the ball all the time intending to leave it, but at the last minute forgetting to offer the pads, only to see the ball sail through under his nose unattended and take out the off peg.
As simple as that.
No one was more astonished than the bowler, the batsman, and the wicket keeper.
Just a stunned silence around the bat.
After so many hundreds of minutes and so many hundreds of balls it only goes to show that the character is human, and no matter how big the ball is looking -- by that stage reaching the proportions of a huge watermelon -- it's still possible to make a fundamental, fatal mistake, made all the worse by the fact that you saw it all happen before your very eyes, and were powerless to stop it.
You could blame fatigue and a momentary lapse in concentration, but thinking the technical term for it is "brain freeze".
Never mind.
In the second innings, seems Pup had pretty much taken charge of the dressing room, refusing point blank to bat at five, or at all, for that matter.
The bloke at his imperious best by dismissively declining to appear before the masses as scheduled.
Of course no one asked why, but if they did, he would have just said "done enough"
So he sent Haddin in with that long handled bat of his that looks more like a Lance Cairns murderous Maori club; nothing in the laws that says it can't be a foot thick, as long as it's only 4" wide.
The wickie puts one onto the hill and is then run out, in comes Joke Johnno, who holes out immediately, and Ponting appears at the dressing room door, looking like one of his dogs had just lost as an odds on favourite at Devenport, signalling to the field to come in, as MJ Clarke has the feet up in the Jason Recliner while the team Entertainment Officer, Douglas "just call me Bubbles, everyone else does" Bollinger asks the Vice-Captain whether he would enjoy a high-ball of Pimms No.1 Cup from the freshly prepared drinks tray.
Mint optional.
Life's good, innit?