one for the ages, first up, and the return of the Prodigal Son

Rusted-on Balmain supporters,

You can imagine just how disheartening it was for a man who has followed Balmain for more than 30 years [for three Grand Finals and one Premiership] to find them on the bottom rung of the betting boards down at the bookies last week.
After many, many bitter winters of discontent - seven in a row now without making the finals - and there's the Mighty Tiges friendless in the ring, written off by the odds-makers and not rated by anyone - anyone at all - least of all the professional pundits who were loudly proclaiming them as certainties for the Wooden Spoon.
They were at the unbackable odds of $1.15 and favourites to miss the Top 8.
You could get a crazy 14/1 about Balmain making the Top 4.
Can someone please tell me what the fark is going on?
Sure, Balmain did lose the Best Fullback in the Entire World, James Tedesco, who took the superior coin and the chance of a Premiership at Eastern Suburbs, known as the Sydney Roosters, who are the red-hot favourites to win the comp.
And the well known New South Wales prop Aaron "Woodsy" Woods...with his trade-marked hair-do...sold his soul to the Evil Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs in a supreme act of treachery.
But the Balmain/Western Suburbs coach, Ivan "Clearly It's" Cleary, decided to get out the clubhouse broom and do the full sweep out and has been very active on the player market in the off season, with the Club Secretary saving a shitload of cash out of the salary cap, to bring in all sorts of odds and sods and bods to make up an almost entirely new team.
In Round One, Cleary named no less than six débutantes for the Club...Pita Godinet, Ben Matulino, Russell Packer, Josh Reynolds, Robbie Rochow and Corey Thompson.
Now there's some names to conjure with.
Who exactly are these people?
Josh "Grub" Reynolds [who reportedly signed on for three mill $ over four years] is the best buy at five-eighth...half backs are a dime a dozen, for mine...but you've gotta have a good pivot.
Having that huge 6'4" Samoan man-mountain in Matulino and the half-man half-beast Packer [both current New Zealand Internationals] standing at prop, and that's one helluva brick wall in defence and has the potential to be a mighty powerful battering ram in offence.
One of Cleary's best ideas was to rescue that sneaky little nugget of a winger Corey Thompson [a journeyman Queenslander] from the dark satanic mills of northern England where he's spent the last two years earning his pension at godforsaken Widnes.
Corey was very keen to come home and happy to play on a cut-lunch and a couple of post-match schooners contract, and then he turned the incumbent David Nofoaluma out of the first grade starting side on pre-season form.
So the club, at least, has some depth.
And who would have thought that the Great Benji Marshall - a Balmain 200 gamer - would return to Leichhardt after four years of self-imposed exile, which need not have happened at all if it wasn't for an entirely stupid argument over money?
But that's ancient history which chewed up acres of newsprint.
Benj himself admits he's well past his best at 33, and will spend the year as a bench warmer and club elder statesman - but how fabulous is it for die-hard fans to have a survivor of the 2005 Premiership winning team back on board?
According to the club newsletter, Benj has been away for 1,646 days, but now, all is forgiven.

So, found myself in some trepidation fiddling with the long-wave aerial on top of Dad's Shed in order to bring in the crystal-clear wireless broadcast for the season pipe-opener, ironically, against Easts.
It was like being stuck in some kind of time warp.
The match was akin to old school 1980's-style low-scoring defence-at-all-costs rugby league...2-0 at half time...and 65 minutes were played before the Roosters scored the opening try of the game to go 8-4 up.
It was a bold showing to hold out Easts when the Balmain half Brooks was outrageously sent off for ten minutes by the Bamford in the first half for an alleged "professional foul".
The Tiges could have been robbed blind, there and then, but no.
With everyone on both sides completely rooted at the denouement and an Easts win the logical outcome, it was Thompson who went over and took out the corner flag with 90 seconds left in the match to tie the scores, and then the LoLo teed it off from the sideline to send the ball over the black dot after it bounced off one of the uprights to convert it into a 10-8 victory for the Tiges.
Talk about an absolute heart-stopper of a screamer!
Tables turned in the shadows of full-time.
One for the ages, first up.

Perhaps the last word should go to that nasty crazyman former jailbird and now one of no less than five co-Captains, Packer - who on interview after the game said in his trans-Tasman accent - "you know, I've been around football a long while now, and you don't win the Premiership in Round One, so we'll see what happens, eh?"
You can't get better than being a first round winner, but it's sound advice to the staunch supporter who might be getting ahead of themselves.

WEST TIGERS 10. Tries: Thompson. Goals: Lolohea (3).
SYDNEY ROOSTERS 8. Tries: Ferguson. Goals: Mitchell (2).
At Olympic Stadium, Homebush.
Crowd: 18,243.

"flogging the cock"

Bar-room brawlers,

Amid all the brou-ha-ha in Durban, it's easy to overlook the fact that "we won the cricket".
Smiffy and the Marsh Bros. set up Straya's 1st innings nicely on what looked like a road, then Starkers sliced through the kaffir-kickers with unplayable spells of clever reverse-swing bowling, and after the Springboks got rolled to be 189 behind after tea on the second day, it was goodnight nurse.
Game over.
Not even competitive.
118 runs is a handy winning margin for a side that failed to score a century in either innings.
The tourists are all over them and the hosts will have to lift their game considerably from this Friday in Port Elizabeth, with Straya holding a priceless 1-0 led in a four test series, otherwise the they could be finding themselves going down the swirling bog-hole that is Seth Efreaker, while Smiffy ticks another one off the Bucket List.

And then there is all this talk of players fully fighting with each other in the Pav, after the cat-calls on the ground got out of control.
According to the fishwraps, spy camera's apparently show The Rev. Dave Warner in a grandstand stairwell attempting to get Q de Kock in a headlock in order to clock the bloke, after the on-field sledging "got personal".
No one is in any doubt that Burbs has form in this Dept. over many many years - as My Spy at The Ground reported as it happened via the Bush Telegraph, "Dave Warner From The Suburbs caught out on CCTV roughing up Q de Kock in the Players Pavilion. Davey has form with Root, now he's flogging the Cock."
The South African manager, Mohammed Moosajee, was unequivocal in his assessment “There were words said out on the field. If you are saying something you’ve got to take it and that’s the opinion of Quinton. Let the investigations begin and let the match officials decide”.
In other words, Mr Moose, if you want to engage in Psych War, make sure yr on the winning side.
Yippee!
Let the Kangaroo Court begin!
Can't wait.
What would MJ Clarke do in such an egregious situation?
Pup'd probably just go around threatening to break bloke's farking arms, that's all.
[Michael also has bar-room form on The Veldt, apart from doing his Shagger's Back no good at all after breaking a bed with Miss South Africa, but that's by-the-by].
Seriously tho', straight up, the weak-as-piss Bamfords-in-Charge for this one, HDPK Dharmasena and S Ravi, obviously failed miserably to stamp their new-found authority on the match, while the previously clear[ish] role of the Captains in on field disputes is now hopelessly muddied by the ridiculous new "Cake Code" of The Laws, currently in force.
Under the Cake Code [named after the Chairman of the MCC's Laws Sub-Committee, Russell Cake] the Umps now have the power to implement penalties for no less than four levels of miscreant misbehavior.
Four? Why not go the whole hog and make it five, or ten, for that matter.
But, instead of simply going for red and yellow cards, the powers-that-be, in outrageous pandering to politically correct cricketness are tying the Bamfords into all sorts of knots by making them perform hand signals to the scorers, for Chrissake.
Check this for complete and utter gobbledygook:

"under Fair and Unfair play"

Four different levels of offences have been created, with Level 4 being the most serious. The umpires shall determine into which of the Levels an unfair action falls and will apply the appropriate sanction. The four levels of sanction are set as:
Level 1: Warning then 5 penalty runs to the opposition for a repeat offence.
Level 2: 5 Penalty runs to the opposition.
Level 3: Offending player is suspended for a number of overs, depending on the length of the match, plus 5 Penalty runs to the opposition.
Level 4: Offending player is removed from the field for the rest of the match, plus 5 Penalty runs to the opposition.

For all offences under Level 1-4, the umpire will call Time and summon the relevant captain, who will be informed of the breach of Law and the associated penalty. If appropriate, the umpire will instruct the captain to remove the offending player from the field.

New signals for Level 3 and Level 4 offences have been created, which are covered in Law 2.13. The signal for each offence is made to the scorers, not the player, and starts with the umpire putting an arm out to the side of the body and repeatedly
raising it and lowering it. For Level 3 offences, this is followed by raising both hands, all fingers spread, to shoulder height, palms facing towards the scorers. For Level 4 offences, the first part is followed by raising an index finger, held at shoulder height, to the side of the body.

Really?
There's nothing in the Laws pertaining to the behaviour of individuals in the Pavilion, so surely the Match Referee is powerless on this one?
Then Bowling Gary gets fined 15% of his match fee for dropping the ball near, not on, but near some loser who's sprawled out on the ground after just committing the cardinal sin in test cricket - running yourself out.
Unsportsmanlike like conduct?
Not in the "Spirit of The Game"?
NM Lyon, who pleaded no contest, should have been given a gold medal, for mine.
Can someone, please, tell me WTF is going on?

Craves.

As a footnote to all the above nonsense, it was very pleasing to hear not one, but two competing radio calls of the match - an ancient technology making a triumphant comeback in a world flooded with mass communications on a scale unimaginable in Marconi's day.
In the end, it's cheap to make; all you need is a 10khz line into the ground, some microphones, a technical producer, and a couple of clowns rabbiting on endlessly.
In days gone by it was extremely difficult to get any radio commentary at all - nay, impossible - of Australia playing away.
You could pay for TV alright, but the wireless? Forget it.
And now we have two, both for free, after Gerard Whateley sold his soul to commercial radio.
So it's good old fashioned head-to-head, with Whatey taking on Jim "The Foghorn" Maxwell of the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Bravo!
Being an old commercial radio man, don't mind advertisements for hardware products and lawnmowers being played during breaks in play, and sponsor's mentions between overs.
So, found myself of an evening attending to my hobbies various with the digital radio tuned to ABC Grandstand in Dad's Shed, and the live-to-air feed of SEN streaming into my desktop.
Woot!
It's way too early to choose which one is the best; we'll see after four tests when the ratings book comes in.

praccy match at Henno

Fanatical football fans,

After going through the entire summer suffering from the disgrace of not seeing a ball of first class cricket bowled in the flesh, somehow found myself at the historic Henson Park in Marrickville on Friday evening last to watch an AFL "praccy match" between the Sydney Swans and the GWS Giants.
Why, you may well ask?
A very good question.
Getting a bit toey for the new season, perhaps?
Not usually.
It was to be a serious, fully-officiated game of Rules, the Good Lady Wife works two blocks away, it was slated for a 5:30pm start, it was about 26°C with a steady sea breeze in, so why not?
With unlimited interchange, the Swans had a 29-man squad at the ready, and the Pygs turned up with 28, and from the off the Bamfords were very lenient indeed on the holding/dropping the ball rule - no incorrect disposals were paid - just to keep the game flowing.
As you'd expect in a pre-pre-season game, everyone was as rusty as a squeaky gate.
Any amount of time in the gym is a poor substitute for 'match fitness'.
That said, there were a few glimpses of things to come.
It was a willing Championship Quarter in the end as they got into their rhythm and Rohan, Rose, Parker, K.Jack, Towers, Florent all dug in, but of course everyone needs game time.
Buddy took a screamer in the first quarter with two big Pygs hanging off him and punted a huuuuge one from 60m out, handsome it was, high through the high diddle-diddle, bounced off a few cars and rolled through the Sydenham Rd gate.
Lance then ran around in the backs for a while, did a couple of laps of the oval, then came off and didn't return.
Put his feet up in cotton wool.
The Swans dug-out featured two large old-style mist spraying fans that looked like they were formerly film studio machines to keep the players cool, and Buddy stayed near.
Tom "The Pearl" Papley [who's changed his shirt No. from No.51 to No.11 this year - but that's another story] played well up front, a bloke who's always been rated in my book, Callum Sinclair, looked like a solid length of well sculpted teak, played hard, and is obviously out to make the No.1 ruckman spot his own, but they've got all sorts of problems down back except for Rampe.
The man needs help!
The new kid on the block, Ben Ronke, looks the goods with his flippy-floppy haircut, Darcy Cameron is yet another tall to replace the flaky Tipsy - who is now enjoying his much-anticipated well-earned retirement - while Ryley Stoddart, who wears a Woodsy-style head-band to hold in his '90's grunge-style look, is a prospect, and Colin O'Riordan is just plain ugly and is out of his league at present.
Toby "That Fuckin' Pest" Greene didn't play for the Pygs, and wasn't on the sidelines either.
Nowhere to be seen.
So we couldn't heckle him.
Given that it was a "no penalty" game, maybe GWS thought it a good idea to leave him out.
P'raps, yeah, Tobes could go berserk and start decking blokes, doing illegal shirt-fronts, and going the squirrel grip with no fear of suspension.
Could make the papers.
Nah, keep him in his cage for the time being.

During the first half we were sitting in the lower deck of the King George V Memorial Grand Stand, the top deck of which was taken up entirely by the Swans and Giants coaching staff, and Joisus, don't they have a few?!
SC Horse was there, but not coaching, [L'il Johnny Blakey had that task] and Longmire was first spied climbing the steep stairs into the upper deck with a very grim look on his face staring intently at his mobile phone.
Perhaps the Secret Plan is squirreled away in that phone and he was trying to unlock it?
Odd Head McVeigh [Assistant Coach] was very serious looking indeed, and he appeared even more even worrisome of because his impressive, foreboding, bald pate.
The only bloke who looked anywhere near happy was Rhyce "Rick" Shaw [Backs Coach], but with a full-bearded face like that he could burst out laughing at any moment.
You have to wonder what a natural clown is doing in the coaching caper.
Brett Kirk [Forwards Coach] was in the mix, but for some unfathomable reason apart from the general decline in mental faculties that comes with age, and the fact that he's been taking a very low profile in the job after a stellar career, we were struggling to light upon his name.
What the?
Tip of the tongue stuff.
The GLW provided the clue "Gee...who was the only known openly Buddhist bloke with one of those classic Naughtie's bouffants to play for the Swans, eh? That's him."
Stevie J and Mummy, who the Swans pinched from GWS after their retirements last year for jnr coaching roles were nowhere to be seen.
Perhaps it was too early for animosity?
Wait for the third round home game against the Giants to throw them into the box?

The Swans Marketing Dept. seriously underestimated the good-sized crowd.
Word had got out, and everyone was in, from the town drunk right through to the really seriously fully hard-core supporter.
All the sausage rolls in the kiosk were sold out before quarter time, and the beer queue at the only bar open was about half a mile long.
One bloke got sick of waiting, so he went and pinched his kid's scooter and did the one-leg hoik up the hill, then scooted down the lane to the Henson Park Hotel, and was back in his seat inside ten minutes with a choice six-pack of beer tins, having cast the child's scooter aside in a desultory fashion.
It was a free entry practice match after all.
No security.
A couple of really old folk, well into their 70's, in front of us settled in before someone who looked like their son in his 50's turned up and laid out the full cheese and bikkies platter and popped a bot of red.
The best dressed spectator surely went to the lady with wispy braids of multi-coloured hair who arrived on a lavishly festooned bicycle, then walked around behind the dug-outs in three-inch white platform shoes, wearing a short sleeveless red dress with a large white No.5 on the back, and she held a Dalmatian by a leash.
That's right, a spotty dog - a new adornment for a well-known Marrickville eccentric.
And the pooch wasn't the only hound in the ground; wherever people gather there's always canines hanging around on the scrounge.

The players didn't leave the paddock at half-time, but stayed on in huddles being addressed by the various coaches, when the female ground announcer panicked and went berserk on the Tannoy, unaware of the time-honoured tradition at Henson Park of kick-to-kick always being played at half-time [not full-time] in any game, and she started screeching "Will all spectators please get off the ground! No spectators are allowed on the ground! Can everybody please leave he ground now! Everbody, please get off the ground!" and so on.
The thousand or so people playing kick-to-kick ignored the instructions to a point.
Instead they conspired to all congregate at the southern end where the Pygmies were standing around looking at whiteboards, so Greater Western Sydney players were getting donged on the bonce by stray footballs, and kids footies were being kicked into their nuts - but there wasn't a soul playing kick-to-kick at the Swans end.

We moved to the hill at half-time because that seemed to be the favoured wing, and to get a closer view of the electronic scoreboard with our failing eyesight.
Two of the four sets of floodlights had come on as the light just started to fade to twilight, then they tried to turn on the other two light towers and everything went ppphhhttt!
The fuse box must've blown up.
Complete power outage throughout the ground, nothing happening on the coaches computers upstairs, scoreboard black, lights out in the George stand.
The blokes running the scoreboard gave up after about ten minutes and pulled down the shutters, and after about twenty minutes of the third-quarter a single light bulb came on on the edge of the score box, and the ground announcer was going "ch ch ch" then hitting the microphone a couple of times, but there were no words.
The players battled on gamely as it became harder and harder to see the ball, and no-one in the ground except the official scorer knew what the precise numbers were, but the consensus at the third break was that the Swans had kicked enough goals in the Champo to win.
And so it came to pass.
The announcement came on the Tannoy at three-quarter time at about 7:20pm..."Unfortunately due to the ground-wide power outage, we have to end the game early tonight. Thanks for coming".

Don't ask me how the Swans will go in '18 on that showing, you need to see the Gypsy for that - they know what the future holds.
But, with the blackout and everything, you can only say that the probability of going 0-6 again at the start of the season is extremely low.
So let's get ahead of ourselves here; if they go 6-0 - all against good sides too - they're well on their way to The Flag.
Cheer, cheer.

SYDNEY SWANS: 11.11 (77).
GWS GIANTS: 7.9 (51).
At Henson Park, Marrickville.
Crowd: 6,500 [est].
Note: Match abandoned at three-quarter time due to bad light.

Michael Clarke's baggage

Canine Fanciers,

You call that a suitcase? Now THIS is a suitcase!

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/news/free-louis-vuitton-exhibition-coming-to-chadstone/news-story/969ccc6f8410154c1a6f456ffbf945b5?nk=b599541c0f5a55ca8e5829f689b28a08-1518343896

It looks like the kid Pup didn't travel light.
None of this throwing yr cricket gear into a sports bag and humping it to the nets.
When yr the best batsman of a generation and yr Champion of the World, you'd wanna have the bespoke gear:

You have to love how the suitcase/trunk/wardrobe, which must be six foot tall, opens out into four panels to reveal the great man's gear; the draws for the boots and the creams are immaculate, and in goes the tin lid and the bat & pads, and if you look closely there's even a draw for Michael's box.
Outstanding.
It must weigh a ton, and would have attracted freight charges, not excess baggage.
Can't say that the autobiography Michael Clarke, My Story, [ 2017] pp, has enticed me beyond Chapter Three, but there is no mention of Louis Vuitton in the index.
You'd doubt, in the maturity of his retirement, that he'd want to own up to anything so ostentatious, and he probably couldn't wait to loan it back to LV [takes up far too much room in the mansion basement], in the hope that they will take it forever...maybe give it to the Lord's Museum.
Yeah.
That'd be the appropriate place for it.
Pup is, after all, one of the few Honourary Life Members of the MCC.

Ran into the immense power of brand while covering the Louis Vuitton Cup way back in '87 in Fremantle, which that C.C.C. Dennis Conner won in his 12-metre Stars & Stripes, which qualified him to successfully challenge Straya and win back the Auld Mug.
He got the LV Cup alright, but more importantly, he took the merch; worth much more than some ordinary silverware.
No money was spared on anything during the Glory Days with no less than 32 twelve-metre yachts going around in the LV Cup, and if you didn't have the right luggage, you were out of the scene.
Louis Vuitton managed the press very nicely indeed, including a state-of-the-art media centre with coaxial cables, electric typewriters and new fangled fax machines and such like.
But more importantly, LV sponsored the Thursday Five O'Clock Follies, which masqueraded as the weekly press conference put on by the Challenger-of-Record, the Yacht Club Costa Smerelda, for any questions on the week's proceedings, which was attended by upwards of a hundred journalists and lasted about ten minutes on account of out the back of the room were trestle tables covered in endless opened bottles of Moet & Chandon and a mess of Champagne flutes on an open slather basis - pour your own - but strictly only between when the press conference ended and 6:30pm, when the drink would be turned off.
Not a bad word was ever said or written about Louis Vuitton.
They were only sponsors, after all.
Nothing was ever said or written about what happened after The Follies, but when pissed toe-rag reporters and yachting types are let loose on what was then the outrageously expensive carnival streets of Fremantle waving half drunk bottles of Champagne in both hands, you can only imagine the havoc and depravity.
Toot! Toot! On the LV Gravy Train.
"where did I leave my luggage? ah, fuckit, what luggage?"

Looks like y'all have to go the Chadstone Shopping Centre to see this masterwork with yr own eyes.
It aint coming to you, that's the truth.
Down to the mall you go.

two verbs in an old growth forest

Triumphalists,

Utterly and completely exhausted; never did get to the fifth day of the Test match in Sydney this year, as is my wont.
Suffered enough the day before.
Decided the cost/benefit analysis was all wrong under the circumstances and it was not worth the time & effort to go and watch the Engerland captain bat as the last Pommy wickets of the summer fell around him on what turned out to be a hot & humid day [and this was before the news broke that Mr Dudley Root Esq had been a quivering mass of nerve endings on a drip in the hospital after sweltering through the 43 degree heat on Day 4, undoubtedly the most horrific day the pink-faced Yorkshireman had ever encountered].
Everyone suffered, the mercury got up to 44.9°C at my weatherboard gaff in Sydney's armpit, the punkahwallah had gone on strike, so there was nothing for it but to crawl into a dark crevice and hope to die.
Only Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, as they say in the classics.
Boom, boom!
After playing 25 days of Test cricket in six weeks carrying the burden of the Captaincy, at the denouement, Root ran into the hottest day in the Emerald City since the Great Depression at the same time as he was going at both ends, so getting any cordial into him to re-hydrate his limp carcass as it wilted in the thermometer-busting maelstrom was all but impossible.
Root was rooted.
Good and proper, just ask the express emergency dept. up there at St. Vincent's Private, they'll tell you.
Retiring ill [or as a scoreboard graphic seen on the telly called it 'rt. hurt'] twice in the same innings, and not resuming to leave your team at nine down and an innings and a mile behind, before the Bamford's called stumps, there being no other prospect than a resounding Australian victory, must have been truly awful.
The indignity surely would have been unbearable.
It will take a long time for Mr Rooty to recover from his delirium, but he will be forever scarred; put him in cotton wool and push him through an MRI scan while yr at it to see how much his head has been done in by Straya's "psych-war".
The bloke was buggered beyond belief, mentally and physically desiccated.
But never at any stage was there any call for Day 4 to be postponed due to the hellfire heat - the question simply never arose - "play up! play up! and play the game!"
If memory serves, the last time a Test player of any note ended up on a hospital drip due to heat stroke was 19 September 1986 during the tied test in Madras.
Never been to Madras, but it's farkin' hot at that time of year by all reports, and Dean Jones was having a few up-chuck vommies on the wicket square while he was pissing his pants and diarrhearetic-style-shit was running down his trousers and into his batting pads, just like Rooty.
But he made 200+, did Deano.
Tonked his double hundred after putting on 150 on the second day in a 42 degree horror while being goaded by A.B. as a "weak Victorian", and then went straight onto the hospital drip after finally giving up and throwing his wicket away on 210 after 502 minutes in a black hole.
Many crates of very powerful strong beer would not have even cut the mustard.
Asked to recall the day five years ago, Deano said "It wouldn't happen now because of litigious players and workplace safety. Should we be playing in 42 degrees? We go off for rain but we don't go off when it's 42."
Wrong.
Nothing has changed 31 years on.
Match awareness goes missing all the time.
...Deano of course arose from his death bed to witness Greg "Long Donger" Matthews [who had been driven utterly insane by the absurd heat during the course of the match to the point where he wore a long-sleeve jumper throughout the fifth day, even while bowling, taunting the paltry crowd at third man with "you call this hot? Try Australia, matey!"] trapping the No.11 Maninder Singh LBW for a duck to take the last wicket of the match to produce the now extremely rare tie, with Ravi Shastri not out 48 at the other end...
The heat-wave went on for five days in Madras, but there is no extant television footage of the match, not a single frame of history in the making survives.
No lessons learned.
The video tapes hit the bulk eraser and the film is lost, so the last flaming day of a thermonuclear test match in India might as well have been a tree falling in an old growth forest.
It is tempting to say "Poor ol' Rooty - couldn't hack it - but good on the Poms for coming over anyway, showing up, and trying their best knowing that they didn't have a team who were up for it", or "jolly good show, chaps, under trying circumstances" or "bad luck, old cock, better luck next time, carry on regardless", that sort of thing.
A bit of an old fashioned charitable pat on the back. .
Well, bugger that, there is no mercy in cricket - there is no mention of the word in The Laws of the game.
None.
No quarter is given, and no prisoners taken in this caper.
It's all done by the book.
Torture is rampant.
Not only is it tolerated, it's perfectly legal, encouraged, and it's celebrated.
Never mind the out-of-control climactic conditions - said it before, say it again - putting the boot on the throat and grinding Poms into the dust and clean out of the equation, slowly, is one of the finest sights in world sport, and is rightly lauded.
While a win by a single run or wicket will do, and is usually described as "thrilling", putting yr opponents on the rack and getting to work on tightening the screws is generally called a "magnificent effort".
In a sweet irony, by the time the tourists got through the blast furnace of that day, they we're in more trouble than the early settlers, hence the pointlessness of going to the ground on the last day of the tour.
On a lighter note, My Spy at the Ground, who had the Bakelite earpiece in throughout, reported that if there was any doubt that the radio commentary of the cricket is chockablock full of long-winded verbosity and verbiage offered this example as confirmation.
As Straya were piling on the runs on Day 3, Jim "The Foghorn" Maxwell - who'd likely had a glass or three of a thumping good Hunter Valley red cordial at lunch - broadcast to the world "there are two verbs in the England slips cordon - Cook and Root".
Not nouns, verbs, very specific about that.
You've got to forgive the bloke for his momentary lapse - probably just reminiscing about his younger days there in a roundabout way, you'd have to guess.
Who knows?
In the meantime, the Stats Guru has given the beads of the trusty ol' abacus a whirr and will give you any number of powerpoint presentations on how records tumbled left, right, and centre, and how the Poms were outclassed, outplayed, outfoxed, done like a dinner...had - like kippers for breakfast - so it's probably best to just to have a quick lookie at the margins to illustrate the point.
1st Test: The Brisbane Gabbatoir - won by ten wickets - maintaining Straya's unbeaten run at the ground at 29 years and counting.
Jeesh...Skipper Smiffy wasn't even born the last time they lost there.
Must get up there one year in the safe and certain knowledge that it's been rigged so the home side will never lose.
Perhaps that's just the Sydneysider in me: as a tribe we can't stand losing, and are very fickle and flaky when it comes to teams on a losing trot; always overkeen to see a winner.
Smiffy tonking up a classy first innings not out hundred set the tone for the entirety of the series.
Everyone knew where this one was heading after taking a priceless 1-0 lead.
2nd Test: Adelaide's Pink Stink Ep.3 - won by 120 runs - in a silly glow-in-the-dark canter.
3rd Test: Last days at the WACA Ground, Perth - won by an innings and 41 runs - Smiffy's magnificent double century in glorious weather put the issue beyond doubt.
4th Test: Melbourne - tame draw - on a pitch that had been badly baked in a patty pan - the Pommy opener Cooky took 634 minutes going large with a career-saving double century on a six-lane highway, so there was precious little time left for anything else.
5th Test: Sydney - in a heat wave - won by an innings and 123 runs taking the opportunity that presented itself to absolutely murder the opposition stone dead. There is no beating 600+ at the SCG, and then finding yrself batting on the last day on a dust heap turning at right angles.
The Pommy vice-captain Jimmy "wot's the score, Jimmy?" Anderson, standing in for his indisposed skipper who was asleep on a gurney in the dressing room during the presentations, was in deep denial when he claimed on interview post-match that England were not "blown away" [ah, huh?] and that "upheaval" in the team was unnecessary.
[They'll probably just sack their turn-coat Strayan coach in Trevor Bayliss and then blunder on].
The Poms have been sent home packing [via New Zealand] with their tails between their legs after copping a gigantic tusk up the runter.
There won't be any MBE's waiting at the Palace or ticker-tape parades for you lot when you finally get back to the Heart of the Empire, oh no, siree.
That must hurt.
So, that's it, we come to the 8th of January, and it's the test season over, Four-Zip.
Ashes in the dilly bag, until 2019 in the Old Dart - then, watch out!
Now for Seth Efreaker, four tests in March, always a hard ask on The Veldt.
But, winning away is the measure of a great team.
It's on Smiffy's 'bucket list' to join the "Invincibles".
MJ Clarke can only rue the one thing that eluded him as Captain, winning that Stoopid Little Urn in the Britarse Isles, prompting him to fall on his own sword.
But those days have gone away.
Onwards and upwards.

drawn on a flat pillow

Snoozers,


MJ Clarke - who seems to have taken on the role as Channel Nine's official "pitch inspector" on the morning of each day's play - saw the featherbed as the covers were peeled off the pitch on Boxing Day at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and exclaimed "that looks like a one-day wicket! Oh, that is flat, and look at it, shaved, not a blade of grass...that is going to be a beautiful pitch to bat on."
Pup would have been muttering under this breath "what a farkin' belter! Wish I wasn't retired, or I'd fill my freakin' boots".
And so it came to pass.
One of the commentariat called the strip a "bowl of porridge".
In retrospect the match was drawn at the toss, never mind the fact that Straya fell at least 150 runs short in the first innings, when 600+ was ripe for the taking.
The pitch and the scoring were so lifeless and slow on the opening day, how could it be otherwise?
On the morning of Day 5, Clarkey was moved to remark "it's extremely flat, hardly any foot marks at all. This pitch looks just like it did on Day 1”.
Marvellous Melbourne.
It's been 18 seasons now of "drop-in" pitches at the MCG - the pioneers in that Dept. - and they only did it after Australian Rules footballers got weak and sick and tired of being hammered into a concrete hard mud heap in the winter, and whinged and complained about it, after it had been going on for more than a century.
Don't they know football was invented to give cricketers something to do in the winter?
And what's it been good for?
Absolutely nothing.
And as far as Powers That Be down at the ICC go, 40 tonnes of "drop-ins" are now the gold standard.
You'd have to suspect their evil plan is to play all test matches into the night and let the pink ball do the talkin'.
Even the very idea would have the purists apoplectic with fury
This year's model was doing zip, jack shit, bugger all throughout - dead from the opening delivery; deceased, no more, finished up, kaput, carcassised...dead, buried & cremated.
My Spy at The Ground pushed through a message at the start of Day 4 on the Bush Telegraph "bat, bat, bat, and then bat some more, on this flat pillow".
On interview after stumps were drawn early at the denouement, soon after the Australian captain wiped his brow with yet another century, he remarked, "the pitch was slow, although it was good to bat on it wasn't that easy to score runs over the five days. Yeah, pretty slow".
The Stats Guru did a quick whir of the abacus and confirmed as much with an aggregate run rate of 2.75 per over the duration.
Even the old bush cricket ploy, where an opposition captain would lay a well formed log of a turd on a good length at both ends the night before the match, would not have livened things up much or helped that deck.
And the over rate, as usual, got more appalling as it dragged on.
The pitiable bowlers knew there was nothing in it for them from the opening bounce and lost interest for hours on end.
As Smiffy was meticulously getting together his ton, with most it all run, on the last day, the Good Lady Wife reminded me of the great Peter Shanahan, the long serving breakfast newsreader during my stint at Radio 2GB back in the 80's.
One morning during an Ashes test match in the 70's, Shanahan was presented with some sports copy to read and broadcast to the world:
"England's Tony Grieg failed to extract any bounce from the lifeless bitch...er...pitch".
If only he hadn't corrected himself, he would have got away with it; as it was, he never lived it down.
Just lucky it wasn't me who got strangled for writing the copy.
Wasn't there, yr Honour.
As far as tame draws go it was an inconsequential dead rubber, anyway.
The only time the Poms ever got even the slightest hint of a sniff was having Straya four down and 13 runs in front on the morning of the last day, but the result was never in doubt.
NID.
The curator had made sure of that.
Skipper Smiffy's second innings hundred put him way out there into the stratosphere of course, with some plainly ridiculous average for this season on account of he's all but impossible to get out and is making tons at will, double centuries if you don't mind, when they matter.
A good Captain's knock, have no doubt about it - no ifs or buts - but in the Grand Scheme of Things it didn't really matter that much or 'save' the game, as the whole shootin' match slowed to a crawl and fizzled out, with rain taking a couple of bites out of the damp squib.
Not much of a game worth 'saving', really.
Oh well.
Engerland's opener AN Cook, who no-one's really ever rated and everyone thought was one bad game away from being dropped after a long career, of course made 244 not, prompting cries from the most uncharitable of "even my grandmother could make a hundred on that six lane highway", but more to the point, Cook spent every minute of the test match on the field over the full five days.
Never missed a minute.
He fielded in both the Australian innings and performed the rare feat of "carrying his bat" for ten and a half hours in the Poms only innings - saw the lot, he did.
Nothing passed him by.
No time spent in the sheds, no rub-downs, no doing the crossword or having a game of cards, and no chance to slip out the back for a quiet gin'n'tonic.
Cook witnessed every damn one of the 2,325 balls bowled in the match, and closely watched just 24 wickets fall.
There's no rest for the wicked and the poor Pom would have been absolutely buggered and completely rooted after that.
But he would have been miserable even after going very large with a big double hundred as his team still couldn't win.
Not on that road.
Oh, no siree.
Purpose built for Straya not to lose, it was.
It's still 3-nil, chaps, with Sydney to play.
Although the prospect of a whitewashed clean sweep is now gone, and with the Ashes won what seems a long time ago now during the co-coinciding Silly Season, Smiffy will make doubly doubly sure that the Poms go home in the New Year without winning so much as a sausage.
And that's the way we like it.

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

Wackarites,

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

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

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

Craves.