and the flavour is tart

My Fellow Aghastee's,

Please excuse my apoplexy, but.
The Bullies didn't win the Grand Final.
The Swannies didn't lose the Grand Final.
Sydney were robbed.
Plain and simple.
Robbed blind by the Umpires.
Highway Robbery, in fact.
Something the national folk hero, Our Ned Kelly, would have been very proud of.
Now, if you think this is all starting to sound like a bit of sour grapes, then you are dead-set right.
And the flavour is tart.
Makes your lips curl into the shape of a cat's arse.
My Spy at The Ground was onto it early, as we all were, and pushed through a message on the Bush Telegraph machine at half-time saying "Bamfords give 12 free kicks + 2 x 50m penalties to Scraggers. Swans? 4."
Sydernee were lucky to still be in it at the main break.
The Stats Guru was quick on the phone post-match - you could hear the sound of the abacus whirring in the background building the prosecution case - saying the total free kick count went 20-8 in favour of Footscray.
And the Swans were worried they were the cleanest team in the comp.
That was just the plain stats, never mind the no free kick and no report for trying to break the Hannebery Kiddie's legs; K.Jack being thieved of a free at a critical moment in the last quarter, etc etc etc - the list goes.
Never knew that Bulldogs had been put on the protected species list.
And most of Footscray's 13 goals, apart from the outright gifts from the officials, came as a direct result of the passages of play from free kicks.
Everyone knows, in a game where kicks are hard to come by, every free one counts.
Admittedly the Bulldogs coach "Beery" Bevo was very clever, as he knew the only way to get their way through the Swans defence was to knock the ball to ground inside their forward 20m, and then pick it up quick smart, and snap it over your head in hope; and in the miracle of miracles, they all went through the big sticks
Must have been practicing that set-pay all week prior.
The Bulldogs didn't kick more goals than behinds for nothing, and they knew it takes more than ten maximums to win a Grand Final.
The Stats Guru also said something about the Swans being awarded no free kicks at all in the entire second and third quarters - none, zip, zero.
Also worked out that against the five interstate teams the Bulldogs played in Melbourne in this year's regular season, they got a free kick count in their favour to the tune of 111-70.
Even Blind Freddy could see the fairytale ending was not achieved honestly.
The most shameful display of downright biased Melbourne umpiring seen in living memory.
The Fraud Squad would have been through the Bamford's rooms looking for potato sacks jammed full of fat bundles of pineapples, if they hadn't been paid off.
It all smacks of an elaborate joint criminal enterprise, for mine.
My lawyer agrees.
And didn't they nick Our Ned on that charge [oh, and murdering a few cops as well, just by and by]?
And we all know what happened to Mr Kelly...hung by the neck, until dead.
The same fate awaits the umpires.
When the revolution comes.
After such a stellar season and winning the Minor Premiership, only to be shockingly shaken down by corrupt officialdom at the final hurdle, is insanely insufferable.
On interview after the game, asked about the standard of the umpiring, Super Coach Horse sensibly said he "hadn't seen the video" and would consider it in the "the cool light of day" [rather than go ballistic which he was perfectly entitled to do], and left it at that.
But, you can just imagine Horse fronting up to AFL HQ on Tuesday morning and asking ever so politely to see the Boss Cocky of The Bamfords.
When he was shown up to The Grand Poohbah of Umpiring's office, Mr Longmire would have gone utterly berserk; chuckin' chairs, overturning tables, smashing computer terminals, video machines; umpiring memoriabilia of all kinds flying hither and thither, leaving the place looking like a mad woman's breakfast after he'd finished with it.
That John Longmire, when he's in the mood -- Christ! can he break things.
However, when it's all said and done, you have to graciously but grudgingly allow that Footscray was probably the better team on the day.
Shame.
The Swans were carrying far too many passengers who were barely sighted all day, and Buddy got his kicking boot stepped on by a team-mate early.
Of all games for it to happen in.
Excuses, excuses.
But to add insult to injury, JP Kennedy had the Norm Smith Medal scandalously stolen from him by just two votes.
He was shattered.
We were gutted.
How can you possibly win, when you are playing against a pretty good young football team for the Premiership, and the umpires as well?
The odds are simply impossible.
Could go on, but won't.
The Stats Guru also had a cursory look for chinks in Sydney's amour in the season just gone - and found the most most telling of them to be the fact that of the five games Sydney lost in the regular season and the two they lost in the finals series - the Swans went 0-7 after trailing at three-quarter time.
Which suggests Sydney are first-class front runners in defending leads, but can't play catch-up football when it really counts.
A problem.
It's plain the Swans roster needs a good off-season shake-up if they are to stay competitive in the Brave New World, which starts next year, with the GWS Pygmies having "stolen all of Collingwood's money" well on their way - just as an example of the future.
Sydney are well supplied with juniors, but with retirements and de-listings to come, they need to pick well again in the draft, use their smarts to buy in the free agents market, and do a few shady swifty's on other clubs and pinch some of their really good players.
They have form in that regard,
Otherwise, SC Horse will stay as Mad As Hell for the next five months.
And that aint a pretty sight.
But, in the end, all things being equal, it will be - trust me on this one - it will be onward to victory in '17.
Us loyal, time-honoured, die-hards will go through all the joy and suffering, all the pleasure and pain, yet again, just to put that damnable thing - The Flag - in the dilly-bag.
You know it makes sense.

SYDNEY SWANS: 1.2, 7.3, 8.5, 10.7 (67). Goals: Kennedy 3, Mitchell 2, Parker, N. Smith, Rohan, Franklin, Hewett.
WESTERN BULLDOGS: 2.0, 7.1, 9.7, 13.11 (89). Goals: T. Boyd 3, Dickson 3, Picken 3, Cordy, McLean, C. Smith, Stringer.
At Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 99,981.
Norm Smith Medalist: J.Johannisen [WB].

no banjo, no cigar

True Blue Bloods,

On interview after the Preliminary Final, Mr Longmire was asked by some blowie in the Press Gallery:
"Was it better to play three hard finals in a row or have a week off, win a game, have another week off, then...well, in Geelong's case, lose?"
Super Coach Horse replied "I don't know. I just don't know. I don't think anyone knows".
That's a lie.
Of course he does.
He's been a planning and a scheming for this for a whole season, and making a closer study of Sun Tzu's The Art of War in his spare time.
Lets face it - football - it's all about conflict.
Nothing less.
How best to strategically shove the tigantic tusk up the runter of the enemy.
Strengths and weaknesses, adaptability, the lay of the land, horses for courses, defensive arrangements, attacking with fire, heavy artillery, surprise, the use of spies...it's all there...has been since around the 5th century BC.
Horse has done it all this year - looked at it with an eye that's used to gazing out to sea down by the Magic Waters at Sunday morning smoko.
The Big Picture Man.
The Big Kahuna.
Having won the game at quarter time against Geelong, My Spy at The Ground pushed through a telegraph message saying "best finals coaching effort since '05".
Hard to argue with that.
Did SC Horse throw the Qualifying Final, so that his troops would be battle hardened going onto The Biggest Stage, safe in the knowledge they could beat anyone else left in the race?
Did Cleverman reckon on not playing the Pygmies in the Grand Final from Game 1 this season?
Also asked on interview after the game who he'd prefer to meet in the Grand Final, SC Horse said "Don't care, I'll just go out there and see who it is".
That's a lie.
He's planted spies all over the shop, especially at Puppies HQ, so he knows that they don't know that he knows what they intend to get up to.
When you've got the enemy's plan of attack slipped under the hotel room door, the defensive seige mentality is pretty simple:
"If a side can't kick goals on you, they only win rarely".
On that basis alone, they didn't take out the Minor Premiership for nothing.
Build the brick wall and they will come - to throw themselves against it, time and time again, hopelessly in vain.
Old Man McVeigh, Ace Aliir, the weirdest looking man in football, The Great Teddy Richards, Rising Star gongee "Saw" Mills, along with J.Laidler and H.Marsh, all know they're not certainties to be picked in the backline for the Granny.
It's that good.
Yoof and Experience is a two-way street.
Said it before, say it again, the Swans mid-field can look after themselves.
Do like how "Pearl" Papley seems like he's grown another leg in the finals series in the forwards, the way he gets out the 9 iron, swivels and chips through traffic, off two or three steps, and bang!
The pill sails straight through the middle of the big sticks, landing many rows back in the second tier.
The perfect rover for Franklin.
And it's very handy indeed to have that hugely expensive genuine marquee bull-in-a-china-shop up front; not only does Buddy kick straight from 70m through to 2m and throw his weight around like there's no tomorrow, he reads the game so uncannily.
No one man in any opposition team can mark the monster with a massive football brain.
Helps to have Heeney the Cardiff Zucchini, in form, and loitering with intent in the forward line, also.
Any number of Swannies can play in the ruck at a pinch, and have, through the year.
So why not have the tallest man ever to play for Sydney or South Melbourne in Big Sam Naismith at six foot ten in there?
It goes without saying, as it did last week - JP Kennedy can do as he pleases, he don't need no coach to tell him what to do - a major cog in the wheel, the key to the lock to That One Day in October, for mine.
Ring up the Stats Guru and he'll tell you the Bulldogs have far too many voodoo's on their plate.
Most people alive today were aint even born when Footscray won their last Flag [1953].
And for them it's been "bleak ever since".
That is, since birth.
Fairytales do come to an inevitable conclusion, and they mostly end in tears.
7th has never beaten 1st since the Hare-Clark-McIntyre-Duckworth-Lewis finals system was introduced.
No team ever has won four hard finals in a row, all of them sudden-death, to pinch The Flag.
Teams don't come out of being bashed up senseless in a cliff-hanger of a Prelim, and then go on to win the Premiership against a side coming home with a wet sail on the back of handing out two consecutive hidings.
The list goes on.
The Dogs have already played their Grand Final, and will continue to do so in their heads all week - a trap the Swans fell right into two years ago - there is no fear like the fear of fear itself.
And no club with a team song as bad as the Bulldogs 'tune' has ever won the Premiership in living memory.
Sorry Footscray - no banjo, no cigar.
Loyal supporters have long memories, so being beaten by the Bullies twice at the SCG in the last two regular seasons, and the Swans being unbearably ashamed after the 2014 Big Dance is like modern history to us.
A little birdy has been singing that Andrew Ireland - a living legend in own own right, and the Wise Old Man among the the Swans' long-serving adminstrators - having personally lost three grand Finals himself as a player at Collingwood - admits in private that 2014 "burns in our guts".
Failure is not an option.

GEELONG: 0.5, 2.8, 7.10, 8.12 (60). Goals: Taylor 2, Hawkins, Bartel, Selwood, Caddy, Dangerfield, Stanley.
SYDNEY: 7.2, 11.3, 14.4, 15.7 (97). Goals: Papley 3, Parker 2, Tippett 2, Franklin 2, Rohan 2, McGlynn, Heeney, Richards, Naismith.
At Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 71,772,

"take pleasure in suffering"

Self-flagellators,

Nurse! Brandy!
After a frightful first-class floggling at the hands of the Pygmies the week prior, the truly magnificent win by Sydney on Saturday night to be one game out of the Grand Final begs the question -- for how long can we hold our breath?
Was it better to be a Hawthorn fan and go out in straight sets and resume a "normal" life until next year?
Why do we put ourselves through the fear, the anxiety, the tremors, the agony and the ecstacy?
For what?
Because football is much more important than the very minor issue of life and death itself, that's why.
To quote the introduction to John Arlott's How To Watch Cricket:

"Many different people, though, derive different pleasures from the game. Some, indeed, seem to take pleasure in suffering; the partisan, overjoyed by his team winning, is likely to agonize over their defeat. Everyone who even remotely understands the game will respond to its drama."

Applies to all sports and all crazed fanatical fans.
In retrospect, it was one of the best decisions of my life to spend the entirety of September 2014 - when the Swans also brought the The Curse of Minor Premiership upon on themselves - in north-western France, where they don't care for football and there are no scoreboxes in the back pages of Le Monde.
Best not to make any predictions or give away money to bookmakers, you have to see a Gypsy for that, because they are the only ones who know what the future holds.

SYDNEY 7.3, 10.5, 12.9, 18.10 (118). Goals: Franklin 4, Papley 4, McGlynn 3, X. Richards 2, Rohan, Parker, Hannebery, Mitchell, Heeney.
ADELAIDE 3.2, 4.4, 8.9, 12.10 (82). Goals: Betts 3, Cameron 2, Lynch 2, Walker 2, McGovern 2, Thompson.
At Sydney Cricket Gound.
Crowd: 38,136.

a lot of thinking caps

In the wake of the Sydney Swans appalling 6 goal loss to the Greater Western Pygmies in the Qualifying Final last Saturday,Tipsy and "Saw" Mills have both done themselves a mischief, and are out for the semi-final.
From the look of the rap sheet submitted to The Tribunal, Swans appear to be the only team that didn't play dirty on the weekend.
Fat lot of good that did them.
Here's a word cloud of some of Super Coach Horse's comments during post match presser.
Was he trying to say "beaten by a really good team on the day"?
He's got a lot of thinking caps to put on this week.

the Curse of the Minor Premiership

Eternal Optimists,

So, the Swans go top.
Much to the chagrin of the Mexican papers who grudingly put it on the back page in small print, while it barely raised a ripple in the Sydney fishwraps.
Go figure.
Everyone's confused in a mad, mad world.
Sydney win the Melbourne Strayan Rules minor premiership, while Melbourne win the Sydney rugby league minor premiership.
Go figure.
Back in the day when Super Coach Sheens was in charge of the Mighty Tiges in the rugby league, everyone remembers he kept a Coach's Ledger in the Club Secretary's office with one column headed "We'll take our wins", and the other "We'll learn from our losses".
He didn't really care how many you won, it was all about the ones you didn't.
So it pays to have a quick lookie at Sydney's five losses this season.
1. Rd4. Adelaide. 10 points. Robbed by partisan local umpires. A blip on the early season radar.
2. Rd8. Richmond. 1 point. A 40 second brain-fade allowed Richmond to kick a goal after the final siren. The little fish that got away - big time.
3. Rd12. Greater Western Sydney. 42 points. Beaten fair and square by the better side on the day. Complacency to blame. Swans only thrashing of the year. Only AFL game, most unfortunately, graced with my presence all season.
4. Rd15. Western Bulldogs. 4 points. The curse of the bye. Underdone. Super Coach Horse charged with telecommunications vandalism, after destroying the dial-up telephone in the coach's box in a fit of rage. First loss at home.
5. Rd17. Hawthorn. 5 points. A low-scoring ding-dong battle all day. Once again done in by a moment of madness just as in Rd8. Second loss at home.
On that record, they could have gone through the season unbeaten, if they'd really put their minds to it.
SC Horse is right onto it - Swans never lost consecutive games all year - and he would have been driven crazy by the last two beatings as he's a firm believer in the vital importance of winning at home.
Sydney has possibly, only possibly - how can you compare era's? - a better side than the ones that took the flag in 2005 and 2012.
Bloody good footballers, all of 'em.
You can't go top with any passengers on board.
And SC Horse was content to play around with the starting 18 all season until he thought he got it right.
Take Sam Reid, after a bad injury last year, played almost all of this year in the reserves - couldn't get a game under the big top when he'd get a game in any other team - just ask Keiran Jack's brother, Brandon - can't get a game either.
Swans have a genuine marquee player up front, a mid-field to die for, and a defence outfit full of hard nuts expert in building concrete walls.
Talls to burn, three out of four rookies all found a regular place in the side ['Saw' Mills won the Ron Evans Medal for the best rookie of the year in the AFL], and second year players like Heeney - well he plays with a white sea anenome perched atop his head - so he must be pretty good to be able to do that, and the Hannebery Kiddie, now incredibly in his eighth year with 150+ senior games under his belt, is only nearing the peak of his powers.
Mark my words, one day that bloke will win the Chas Browlow Trophy.
JP Kennedy appears to have been given a free rein by SC Horse "just play where you like, son, do what you think is appropriate" and he gets a thousand possessions per game, week in, week out.
The ultimate "loose man everywhere".
And talk about playing about with the ruck all season until Naismith - the tallest man to ever play for the Swans at 6 foot 9 - popped his head up late in the caper, after Sinclair did himself a mischief after Tipsy also did the same, and made it a new game in the hit outs.
Seeing him up against Mummy in the First Qualifying Final will be worth the price of the $35 walk-up pay-on-the day tickets to Cathy Freeman Stadium alone.
It's a home final for the Swans, and yet neither side has played at Cathy's Place all season.
Go figure.
Apart from assembling a top notch footy side, SC Horse [who is worry personified] is sensible enough to know that finals football is a different bottle of mussels altogether, compared to the regular season, and the only course of action open to him is to try to get the saloon passage through to the Grand Final, and you have to be very brutal to do that.
Finals football is as close to ugly all-out conflict as you can get, short of a fully-armed gun-fight.
And on a stray, but related, topic - the end-of-season bye was pure marketing genius.
If you are going into the pointy end of a war, to its chaotic, climactic conclusion, you'd want to go in battle-hard, because if you don't, you won't survive.
Simple.
Instead, football players and other ordinary men, and a lot of women too, were having the first and only Father's Day BBQ of the year on the only weekend when there was no AFL being played, at all, anywhere, all season.
Massive fail.
Go figure.
As my correspondent in the Colonies remarked "legions of men all over the country re-discover their backyards".
One for the text books in the course "How Not To Do It" in Marketing 101.
Of course the PR boffins will try to whip up some kind of cross-town rivalry shit for the derby final, which will fail...as did the miserable "Battle of the Bridge" promotion.
Sydney is not a "cross-town" city; it's more like six distinct cities, all quite different from each other, but in very close proximity, containing not much less than a million people each.
The rugby league has a team for each one, and then some, and tribal loyalty runs very deep here at a local suburban level.
But cross-town rivalry?
Anyone in the strange Eastern Suburbs, where a vast portion of the Swans fandom resides, would never dream of going to Greater Western Sydney [whatever that is - it's actually a hastily cobbled together moniker for another football team that means nothing to anyone - the place doesn't actually exist] and they wouldn't know how to get there even if the knew what and where it was.
Everything hinges on the No.1 showman, for mine, when it comes down to business time.
Buddy knows all too well now about redemption.
There is also fear to be expunged and instill in others, and revenge, where necessary, to be taken, cold.
That's why you would never want to meet Lance Franklin in a dark alley, and that's why the Swans never forgot losing by a bloody point to Richmond, and kicked a million goals on them in the very last round just to prove a point.
Didn't have to.
Just did.
Still, it was so close at the top, it was a shame SC Horse never really had the option to play ducks and drakes and do a bit of sandbagging to finish second, which under the Hare-Clarke-McIntrye-Duckworth-Lewis finals system used by the AFL, is the ideal place to be, because you never play the minor premiers until the Grand Final.
Over the years the Stats Guru has come to the firm conclusion that the minor premiership, on average, is a curse.
Just ask the Swans team that went 'round in 2014; we all know, and would prefer to forget forever, what happened in that year's Grand Final.
And it goes without saying, that is the only thing that counts.
That One Day In September.
Which now - in a world hurtling ever increasingly forward at a frightening pace - has become 1 October.

Meantime...over at the rugby league...the Mighty Tiges went to the bitter end, Round 24, to wait - up against insurmountable odds - until there were finally fully cooked for the year.
That's after an allegedly "gallant" comeback late in the season, after Robbie "The Best Leb in the Game' Farah was dropped to reserve grade, never to come back.
The great man was shoved out the back door without so much as a sausage to pay for promising youngsters inside the salary cap.
Club loyalty, it seems, is not worth a brass razoo.
In the end the Club Secretary has to be pragmatic and admit it's really all about the money.
Balmain again finished a disappointing ninth [they only had to win the last game to go 8th], going out with an awful 10-52 thrashing at the hands of Canberra at the Spiritual Home.
Dudded by a single Premiership point.
No-one listens to me, but Coach "Squeak" Taylor must go.
Must be sacked.
Bucks stops here, Jason.
Ninth [again] is simply not acceptable.
As if apparantly destroying Robbie Farah's career - just like Benji Marshall's career was destroyed, yet he plays on as a shadow of his former self someplace else because he needs the money - was not enough.
There should be more blame game going on at board level, for mine.
But there is hope for long suffering Tiges fans...if they can keep their young halves in Brooks and Moses out of the greedy clutches of shonky Silvertails, afford to pay the best full back in world, The Tedesco Kiddie, to keep him in the style to which he has become accustomed, and remain overstuffed with very fast over 20 yards oversized refrigerators on the wings, all they need are some quality genuine article forwards.
But, have they got the cash to buy a new pack, with Chris "The Try-Scoring Freak" Lawrence and that quintessential journeyman [everyone forgives him for being a Kiwi], Dene Halatau - the very last survivor of the glory days, having played for Balmain in the '05 Grand Final, the last one that they won - both being made Life Members of The Club upon their graceful retirements?
Who knows.
And then there's the conundrum of a new coach.
They looked a million dollars on paper this season, but the investment just didn't pay dividends.
Oh well.
Shit happens.
"There's always next year".

MJ Clarke reaches the pinnacle

Heroes & Flannelled Fools,

Amid all the brou-ha-ha surrounding the Olympics and the fevered frenzy in the build-up to the football finals, it was easy to overlook the fact that, in a complete surprise to everyone, MJ Clarke has reached the very pinnacle - Honorary Life Membership of the Marylebone Cricket Club.
That is way, way better than a knighthood; it's more akin to being admitted to the life peerage - you have to wait until someone dies before you get in.
Pup is certainly in rarified air up there at the summit, with MCC Honorary Life Membership currently numbering just 36 persons.
30 former cricketers [including one Lady cricketer], one former Umpire, one former British Prime Minister and four members of the Royal Family - Phil The Greek being principal among them, the Queen couldn't give-a-fuck.
However, always found it odd that Membership of the MCC is so prestige and so coveted and sought after [current waiting list for Full Ordinary Membership is 27 years], when Lords has always been known as a sunny place for shady people, and a drinking club with a cricket problem.
The MCC Membership is chock full of shysters, conmen, hucksters, outcasts, shonks, cads and bounders.
Just look at Thomas Lord, who made his fortune from gambling on cricket, and schemed and cheated his way to thieving control of the game off the Hambledon CC, back in the day.
[In stark contrast, Kennington Oval - the Prince of Wales' Own Ground - he happens to own the land which he leases to Surrey CCC - attracts a much more knowledgable crowd of cricket punters and has a decent respectable Membership].
But, suppose everyone wants in, because the MCC has clout.
They have clout because they make The Laws.
A power closely and jealously guarded by the club even in these days of the ICC.
No one does nothing in the game without the say-so of the MCC.
As the great man enters the Pavilion the doorman will say "Good afternoon, Mr Clarke", but he'll be greeted in the Long Room with "G'day Pup! Good to see yas cobber, my dear old chap. What's been shakin', mon? A G&T perhaps, Clarkey?"
Also, from a crippled person's personal point of view, very pleasing to see that Clarkey has also taken on chronic pain as a cause, recently being appointed an Honorary Ambassador for Pain Australia.
He now admits that he's been suffering from Shagger's Back since he was 17 [started early] and has come to realise that over the past six months or so he's needed help in retirement, as there is simply no point in grinning and bearing it, because it is eminently treatable.
Don't get me started about the sheer agony of just putting your shoes and socks on of a morning.
After 40 years experience, probably should give him a ring and let him and the chronic pain folks know that about 2 grams of Cannabis Sativa per day pretty much does the trick - bugger the opioids and all that shit.
But since Pup's been down to the clinic, he will likely be right into it.
The bloke has always been on drugs, without even knowing that all you need is the herb superb.
Sir Vivian Richards can't be wrong.
Bong or scoob on, and yes, you too, can live a normal life.
Onya, Pup.

not usually in the bailiwick

Not usually in the bailiwick of this blog-blog-bogitty-blog, but here goes anyway.
Some scribblings from Crazy Craves during the recent Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.