poor, poor Pup

Bean Counters,

Poor, poor Pup.

The Great Man has failed to make this year's AFR Young Rich List https://www.afr.com/leadership/afr-lists/young-rich/atlassian-cofounders-lead-young-rich-list-2018-20180918-h15jji

Weep my friends, Clarkey didn't even come close. $26 million [the net worth of one of the co-founders of Pedestrian TV of all things https://www.pedestrian.tv/] is the cut off point for 100th in the top 100 richest bastards in the country under 40.

At last report, MJ Clarke's net worth was only $16 million and falling, what with the real estate market going Antarctic, and Pup now consigned to being an unpopular unemployed former cricket 'celebrity' who is not asked for his opinion on anything anymore, you'd expect any sponsorships he still has will dry up over the coming year and he'll be lucky to have two bob to rub together in another 12 months.

To add insult to injury, complete & utter wally's in the form of Shane FIGJAM Watto Watson and Mitchell Joke Johnno Johnson are both richer than Pup, while other former Strayan skippers in Mr Ponting [$65M] and Mr Waugh [$27M] are now old men on another obscenely wealthy planet entirely.

In a list containing an astonishing number of millenial shonks and shysters [e.g.: tech wack-jobs, dodgy beauty products, and useless snake oil merchants aside, who would have thought there's a fortune to be made in leasing cars to Uber drivers?], My Mate Smiffy has done alright, despite suffering in disgrace after being sent shame-faced to Purgatory due to all that fuckery with a cricket ball on The Veldt.

While SPD Smith may have dropped between 5 and 10 mill on a few sheets of low grade South African sandpaper, the best batsman on the planet is still worth $27 million. DA Warner may well have squeezed onto the list also, if not for Tamper Gate, but still has a dilly bag with 17 mill in it.

However, both of them are very heavily exposed to Sydney real estate [and as everyone knows, anyone can do that standing on their heads] with at least half a doz negatively geared gaffs each, although Smiffy has taken a 10% share in "on-line furniture company Koala" https://www.koalaliving.com.au/ as a spot of speculative insurance.

It'll be interesting to see where Smiffy and 'Burbs square up after doing their time in exile.

But at 37, Pup can only stare at the slippery slope in hope.

lost in the frenzy of Grand Final Fever

Skeptics,

Lost in the frenzy of Grand Final Fever last week, the faceless men on the Australian Cricket Board, in their infinite wisdom, decided to appoint, not one, but two Vice-Captains for the upcoming test matches in the desert.Unprecedented, alright. Never before in the history of the world has Straya had two Vice-Captains.
Hazo and one of the too many Marsh Bros. got the nod to take up the Poisoned Chalice, after going through a rigorous and exhaustive selection process which included submitting a job application and then being interviewed by a seven-man panel of luminaries consisting of GS Chappell MBE, MA Taylor AO, JL Langer AM, TV Hohns, the "sub-standard" Chairman of the Board, Mr David Peever Sir, the "high performance manager" Pat Howard - who's never played a game of cricket in his life - and "Cricket Australia psychologist", Dr Michael Lloyd.

Lord, save me.
Cricket Australia employs a trick cyclist? Well, blow me down. Did they do a psychometric test on the applicants?
Fat lot of good that's done them. Doc Lloyd obviously didn't make the right reading of the minds of Smiffy, Burbs, or the hapless Barmy Bancroft viz-a-viz what kind of mad-dog devil got into their heads what made them done it.
Had no idea. No inkling that their brain-boxes had been so done in by the Kaffir Kickers that they were compelled be evil incarnate to go down to a hardware shop for some sheets of fine grain sandpaper for a few Rand.
Useless.

How the hell did that superlative hanger-on, Paddy Howard, keep his job, when he should have gone straight out the back door with Boof, without so much as a sausage?
Not much "performance" there, you'd think, eh, Paddy?
Thought they were making a clean break with the past? You were wrong. Dead wrong.
Howard must have FIGJAM Watto's negatives of photo's of the selectors.

Gone a bit off track here, as usual, but back to the point - what is the point of having two Vice-Captains? What is the point of having a Vice-Captain at all? Pakistan, for example, has never seen the need to have one, and don't bother, as they go through Captains with alarming regularity as it is.
The Laws of Cricket make important mention of the "Captain", but they are silent on the subject of "Vice-Captain".Under the Laws, if a Captain needs to leave the field of play to strain the potatoes or chug a quick nerve-settling gin & tonic, any old Joe Blow can be Acting Captain, just a long as there is one on the field at all times.

One thing is for certain, Pup would never have had any truck with the concept of a dual vice-captaincy back in his day - as far as he was concerned you can leave Captaincy by Committee up to the Poms, who have a long and proud history of including clapped-out former Captains' in their sides - just ask Nasser Hussain [remember him?], Freddy Flintoff, Athers, Big Daddy KP, the Cookie Monster etc etc etc, who all played on after resigning the Captaincy, but somehow, never assumed the Vice-Captaincy.
That's not the way leadership has worked Down Under over the eons, but now there's two deputy dogs each rattling the chain and champing at the bit.
What on earth is this all about? Beats me.
This nonsense about "leadership teams" [an oxymoron in itself] is finally falling out of favour in other codes - Co-Captains used to be all the rage in football teams, but no more, as they came to the obvious conclusion that no-one knew who was actually in charge. Cricket, in the meantime, goes backwards.

So, now no-one knows who's 2IC anymore and you'd love to see the Job Description, Essential Qualifications and Key Performance Indicators of an Australian Cricket Co-Vice Captain, in the unlikely event that there are any.
No one appears to have asked TD Paine what he thinks about it, now having two subordinates snapping at his heels. What if he's forced from the field for any reason, or embroiled in some imbroglio? Are Hazo and Swampy meant to put their hands up like good boys and say "pick me! pick me!". Smacks of no succession plan post-Smiffy, something awful.
Seen a lot in my time, but this one is a real hum-dinger that will no doubt go a long way to restoring Straya to their rightful place as the No.1 cricket team on the planet.
If that wasn't enough, after the Grand Finals, the same gutless faceless men finally made the move to replace that old honky James Sutherland as Chief Executive Officer, after he'd been in the gig for eleven years too long [on the standard HR principle that six years in any job is enough.]
And what a choice choice they have made in one Kevin Roberts, who played 23 first-class games as an opener with an average average for New South Wales, but failed miserably to achieve his main aim in life - to Captain the Blue Bags - a long time ago now.
You'll remember Roberts as CA's chief attack dog in the bitter and protracted pay dispute with the players. A nasty peice of work.
In the end Roberts got Sutherland to do a lot of reverse-pedalling and humiliating backing down after he locked-out the players without pay for a whole month to howls of protest [in the end the Player's Association refused to work with Roberts on account of his utter intrangience], but now that he's the Big Kahuna, all he rabbits on about is "developing and achieving trust" with the players, after he rat-fucked them good and proper last year.

Can someone please tell me what faark is going on?
The man obviously has the widest of support in the greater "Cricket Community" as he goes about smoothing over the troubled waters he played such a big part in creating.
Not.
Roberts is a lap-dog Peever protégé in the dark arts who comes to the Boss Cockyhood under deep suspicion that "the culture" at the Board has not changed one iota since SandpaperGate.
They made damn sure the findings of the two inquiry's into "the culture" that were set up in the wake of the 'scandal' were sidelined.
Shelved, shoved under the carpet, not to be seen or heard of again, and everybody in the "Integrity Unit" has now jumped ship after being treated like offal.
Cricket Australia is a seething behemoth bureaucracy with hundreds of employees and scores of spongers that spends over $45M a year on Media & Marketing alone.
Lord Crikey, if the governing body doesn't need proper steerage, nothing does.
It was a classic case of the need to bring in a highly-qualified talented outsider to sweep the place clean with a bloody great SABCO broom, but that was never going to happen with so many people desperately clinging onto their power trips and bloated stipends.

God help the poor blokes in the god-forsaken United Arab Emirates, who now have a new "in the Chairman's pocket" CEO they hate with a passion, and two Vice-Captains who no-one has any idea of what their responsibilities, if any, are.
What a mess.
SNAFU.

"he is an awesome Australian"

Hillites,

Now that the football season is over, it's perhaps time to turn our attention to the forthcoming season of the summer game and look forward to wasting whole weeks at a time during the Silly Season to the soundtrack of the thwack of willow on leather and the ripple of polite applause, by asking - what would Pup do?
The Great Man has been unusually quiet of late, apart from copping a right bollocking for endorsing some fly-by-night get-rich-quick scheme being offered by Dodgy Bros. Pty Ltd of Brisbane.
No one has asked for his opinion on the cricket lately, and Michael has certainly been entirely silent on the subject of being so rudely brushed by Channel Seven for their brand spanking new commentary team for the you-beaut whizz-bang cricket telecasts we'll all be enjoying this summer.
Clarkey was always very leery of being a selector; he voluntarily gave up the job that had been foisted on him when he was skipper on the well grounded principal of "you pick 'em, I'll play 'em", but would Pup have come up with this mob of 14 to play Pakistan in two tests in Abbers and Doobers next month?

Tim Paine (c), Ashton Agar, Brendan Doggett, Aaron Finch, Travis Head, Jon Holland, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Shaun Marsh, Michael Neser, Matt Renshaw, Peter Siddle, Mitchell Starc.

Labuschagne [what kind of South African name is Marnus, anyway]? Neser [another South African]? Dogget? Has anyone ever heard of these people?
31-year-old Jonny Holland [played two tests two years ago] in a battle with Ashton Agar [four tests on very friendly tracks] for the second spinner's spot?
But most remarkably, the ranks of the quicks must be very thin indeed with the selection of Peter Siddle, who'll be 34 in November.
OK, Cummins and Hazo are both very flaky and prone to being rooterised by injury, but where are the young tear-aways coming through the ranks? Nothing to see there.
Must have been under the misapprehension that Sids had given the 1st class game away yonks ago, or was he brought out of retirement for this one?
In any case, did spot the brand new Strayan coach Alfie Langer on the telly [he had the decency and sense to wear a sports coat, wisely eschewing Boof's ill-fitting bag of a track suit] saying that Sids had been picked only because "he is an awesome Australian".
A tried and true servant of the game is Sids, a class bowler in his day, with vast experience being the perennial bridesmaid at 12th man - no doubt about that - but "awesome" is a much overused word these days Alfie. Maybe he's just trying to stay in toon with the Yoof of Today?
No idea.
GJ "The Big Show" Maxwell has been cruelly snubbed again [Alfie: "there's a method to our madness"] due to him bagging the selectors.
As usual, there are too many Marsh's in the squad, and note also, that no Vice Captain has been named.
Perhaps they have done away with the meaningless office, after it was so was thoroughly put through the wringer by 'Burbs Warner of sandpaper infamy?

Of more import is this year's major touring team, India, so it's pleasing to see that they have continued their grand tradition of being unable to win away from home, being tidied up very nicely by the Poms 4-1 thank you very much.
The Evil Viral Rat had excuses galore after India were tipped for their best showing in the Heart of the Empire for a decade, but the fact remains that the Poms are as good at pitch doctoring as the Indians, and the Sub Continentals will never do no good on bouncy wickets in the Wide Brown Land, because they don't like it up 'em, don't like it all.
There are now inevitable calls for Kohli to be sacked as Captain...the Times of India said in an editorial that he "dons the roles of chief ball polisher, sledger-in-chief, DRS caller, umpire chatterer, schedule decider, huddle addesser, and media hater" implicating he's too busy to actually lead the team.
It's also come to my attention that India has a player called Pant, so no doubt he will be dubbed "Trouser" by the louts on the hill in Straya...as in "oi, drop ya daks, Trouser, and gissa look".

So there is hope yet to avenge Straya's last tour of India, the sheer absurdity and stress of which drove Smiffy off his rocker, out of his mind, and over the edge.
But not much.

On a side note, it should be put on the record that Alastair Cook CBE knocked up yet another ton in his final match in the test caper [33 tons at an average of 45], so he's now a dead-set certainty for a knighthood...but did overhear someone saying the other day about Cookie "I cannot remember a single shot he played, but I do remember watching him bat for a very long time".
And James Anderson is now the leading all-time fast-bowling wicket-taker in Test matches - that's probably just a function of the number of games played these days [Jimmy's been going around for 15 years] - but he aint no Ooh Aah Glenn McGrath, who he's just overtaken on the record list, oh no, siree.
After playing with him for 12 years, Cookie was asked what he thought of Jimmy, and he just called Anderson "a freak"...enough said.
There's also been some Pommy song and dance about a ball that the Englishman Adil Rashid bowled being comparable to Warnie's "Ball of the Century".
Absolute poppycock. It was a good nut to be sure, that turned at right angles a country mile outside off [could well have been called as a wide] on a made to order pitch, but it had none if the sheer poetry of Warnie getting Gatters, so that's all that can be said about that.

At least the Powers That Be have thought far enough ahead to give the Strayans a two-test warm-up in over-cooked far-away lands ahead of the Indian summer, but it's a shame that the magnificent old Sharjah ground is no longer in use.
It's an approrite metaphor for the state of cricket Down Under at the minute; the ground was abandoned, left to rot in ruins and was over-run by goats and chickens, but it did manage to rise like a phoenix from the ashes in time to host the 2018 Blind Cricket World Cup final back in January, and nothing of note has been played there since.

the true horror of the debacle in all its ghastliness

Fellow aghastees,

Out-muscled, out-played, out-smarted, out-foxed...GWS Pygmies too strong, too fast, too good on the day.
Sydney Swans taken apart.
That's about the truth of it.

Never mind not turning up on the day, Sydney were worried out of it from the very first bounce.
After spending the whole season losing at home and winning narrowly on the road, the Swans have a knack of losing finals badly when absolutely nothing about Plans A, B or C goes right.
Finals footy is never pretty, especially in his day and age when the main plan of attack seems to be to try to trap the opposition in a sandwich press and prevent them from scoring at all costs.
Little wonder people north of the border call Rules "aerial ping-pong"; apart from rugged tackling and fully-fighting, there's not much skill on show or joy for the spectator seeing the ball being aimlessly knocked about in a rolling maul of flying bodies, as no-one has enough time to hang onto the pill and do anything with it before being crunched into the turf.
The fans pay to see long kicking and high marking in good strategic play, but that seems to have fallen right out of favour in the now hyper-defensive game, where goal kicking has been reduced to the rovers banging it on the foot in hope, or just soccering goals off the ground.
It could have been worse - a whole lot worse - for Sydney, if the Greater West had kicked straight - 10.19 is a stoopid winning score, and there were 25 behinds in the match, the same number as the Melbourne/Geelong final the night previous, which was similarly unattractive.
In four finals over the weekend, 101 behinds were scored [and how many of them were "posters"?], with just 74 goals booted.

Reports started coming in at half time that the ground was eerily quiet as the faint strains of the Fat Lay singing could be heard wafting in over the Randwick End.
Only minutes into The Champo and it was plain for all to see that there wasn't even any point in praying to the various patron saints of Lost Causes, because it simply would do no good - they were shot birds.
No Nick Davis Come To Save Us here.
With two goals on the board, and despite some highway robbery by the umps going on, soon after half-time My Spy at The Ground shot through a message that got the Bush Telegraph in the corner of the lounge room chattering "don't think you can even blame the Bamford's for this one".
The Swans can usually carry a few passengers and still get by with a narrow win, but not when the whole team is travelling in steerage.
In the 'best' column in the scorebox they might as well have put "All Played Poorly", as it was impossible to pick out a Best on Ground for the Swans.
By the last break, Super Coach Horse had pulled great tufts of Ashley & Martin hair out of his bonce, and with still only two maximums on the scoreboard, he started to feel sick in the guts.
There is a school of thought that says it's better if your team fails to make the finals, rather than risk making utter fools of themselves by being bundled out of the picture in the first week in a right royal trouncing of a thumping.
No one saw it coming, least of all Longmire - he was trying to hide his face from the cameras in shame...oh...the sheer embarrassment of kicking only four goals, total, for the match.

While all this was happening the Stats Guru was completely apoplectic and going off his rocker on the beads, predicting all sorts of total shockers for the record books.
The Guru began to make loud strange wailing sounds, when the abacus revealed the full enormity of the disaster: At three quarter-time, the Swans still needed another goal just to equal their worst ever finals showing in the history of the known universe, which was way way back in the mists of time in 1899 Grand Final when South Melbourne managed to kick 3.8 [and lose by a single point to Fitzroy at the Junction Oval].
In the pathetic denouement when the "mercy rule" should have been invoked, if there was one, it became apparent that the true horror of the debacle in all its ghastliness had not happened in a very, very long time...the match was, just for starters:
*The Swans' lowest score at the SCG in 385 home games over 36 years since South Melbourne were relocated harbour-side for the 1982 season.
*The lowest score by any team in a final since Collingwood's 2.2 (14) in the 1960 Grand Final which was played in an atrocious mudbath.
...the list goes on and on and on, down to the very last funny-ha-ha one *The lowest score by any team that has included Lance Franklin.

Only one player needs to be singled out by name, and of course, that's Toby "Fucking" Greene of the GWS Pygmies
This bloke has a rap sheet as long as your arm over the years, is the dirtiest of filthy arseholes, and the most hated player in the game at the minute.
Never mind his "Russian Cossack dancing-style marking technique" - putting his studs in the chests and guts of the opposition at least three times [it's plain old kicking - with intent - and should be a reportable offence, for mine] - going in with a knee to the head is just low dog act, and yet he got off with a paltry $2.5K fine.
With his form?
WTF?
What were the Bamfords doing, where were they looking?
Greene should be hounded out of the game altogether as he will never learn, and in the interim, rubbed out for the rest of the finals series just for being a cunting rabid animal.
The very worst of the worst.

Some football boffin somewhere spouted the true-ism "the Swans are good enough to make the finals, but not good enough to win them".
So, quite obviously, Sydney need to be ruthless in the off season, letting below-average players go without so much as a sausage, and then getting into the market to buy/trade at least another ruckman, another tall forward at a minimum, and some half-way decent midfielders, all with at least 50 AFL games under their belts, then try to pick up some more gun rookies in the draft, and that's just to be competitive in 2019.
A very tall order indeed.

In the meantime, after Sunday Smoko down by the Magic Waters of the winter ocean baths, which involved a fair bit of navel gazing, Mad Monday was cancelled.
With steam coming out of his ears, SC Horse took the entire team to The Room Full of Mirrors down on the Balmain Road to take a good, hard look at themselves.

SYDNEY: 1.4, 2.4, 2.6, 4.6(30). Goals: Papley 2, Parker, Ronke.
GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY: 2.3, 4.7, 7.11,10.19(79). Goals: Greene 3,Cameron 2, Himmelberg 2, Coniglio, de Boer, Ward.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 40,350.

John Longmire, Press Conference, SCG, Saturday 8 September 2018.

the one percenters

Speculators,

Super Coach Horse is the master strategist; we know that.
But you can imagine the gasps of horror a fortnight or so ago, when he decided at the last minute to leave Buddy and Luke "'Parker!" Parker in the stands for the crucial game against Hawthorn and a crack at the double chance in the finals.
After saying there was no room left for playing Ducks & Drakes, we all cried out - what was he thinking resting [managing, wrapping in cotton wool, or whatever] the All-Strayan Captain and the best-on-ground from the previous week? So what if they're riddled with niggles? Give 'em a needle.
In retrospect, though, it was a simple ploy. It doesn't take a genius to work out that Horse is a genius. It's now bleeding obvious that Longmire had long concluded that the double-chance was all but jack-shit worthless.
There was little or no point in beating Hawthorn in the final match of the minor round to finish 4th, as that would have only set up a meeting with the run-away Minor Premiers and red hot faves for The Flag, Richmond, in the qualifying final.
Nothing to be gained there, as Those Bastards from Punt Road would most likely have had the Swans like kippers for breakfast, and they would then go into the second week of the finals as losers.
So, why not manufacture yet another heart-stopping cliff-hanger of a typical Cardiac Kids narrow loss to the Hawks and drop down to 6th, and then get into death fight with the down-on-their-luck injury-ravaged out-of-form Greater Western Sydney Pygmies, who the Swans easily beat away three weeks ago?
Good thinking, 99.
After week one of the finals it's all sudden death anyway, and it's much better to go into that a winner, baby, and delay a meeting with Richmond until the Prelims - you never know, anything could happen, the wheels might fall off the Dusty Martin Juggernaut in the interim.
It's all rather clever. Now they just need some more football spies - intelligence gathering and planting fake news goes on all season, but it's now at a premium.

The only conceivable fly in the ointment in the gin-soaked Master Plan is the damnable SCG, and having to play a bloody final there.
What a shit-hole of the home ground that is.
Of the Swans eight losses this season, no less than six were suffered at home. WTF? That qualifies as a hoo-doo in the making.
Its' still difficult to believe Sydney reneged on the final year of their contract to play three home games at Cathy Freeman Stadium, where their record has been excellent. Why? Too close to Sydney's armpit and the GWS "heartland?". Just across the road from Spotto? No one from the Eastern Suburbs will travel there? There's nothing wrong with the ground.
And the Swans can't play at the MCG for nuts, either.
But that's neither here nor there at the minute.

When it's all said and done, it's an eight-armed octopus from here on in, until seven are rudely chopped off, leaving but one curling the cup aloft.
The Stats Guru was aghast when he read that some bloke that no one has ever heard of, "sports data scientist Darren O'Shaughnessy" - who's apparently been running the algorithms over the writhing Cephlapod - came up with the following predictions based on irrefutable pure mathematics:

Sydney Swans

43.4% chance of winning the first final.
3.3% chance to make it to the grand final.
1.0% chance of winning the grand final.

The Guru asked "how come the Swans aren't 100/1 down at the books, then? The best you can get on The Red and The White winning against all odds is 15/1".
He whipped out the abacus, set it a'whirring, ran all the combinations along the beads yet again, and when asked about the calculations of Sydney's chances of being triumphant on that One Day in September, replied "anyone can win on their day, so, ah, about 50/Fifty, even money."

HAWTHORN: 2.4, 3.6, 7.8, 12.11 (83). Goals: Puopolo 3, Gunston 2, Henderson 2, Morrison, Roughead, Worpel, Breust, Schoenmakers.*
SYDNEY: 2.3, 6.7, 8.8, 10.14 (74). Goals: Heeney 2, Papley 2, Sinclair, Cunningham, Kennedy, Jack, Florent, McCartin.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 39,660.

Meantime, over in rugby league la-la land, any tiny mathematical chance the Mighty Tiges had of making the Top 8 were kept slightly alive with the 22-20 win over the Silvertails from Manly-Warringah, but all hope was finally dashed by other results, and in the final match of the 24 game season, Balmain suffered the appalling indignity of being flogged mercilessly by the hated evil arch-rivals South Sydney to the cricket score tune of 51-10 in a miserable denouement.
On that form alone, the Rabbitoh's are a top chance of taking the pennant, for mine.

In the final paralysis, The Tiges finished 9th on the ladder, two wins out of the finals, with a negative for/against. Suppose that's better than 14th last year, and even though home crowd numbers are up, that's the seventh consecutive Winter of Discontent without a finals appearance for us long-suffering die-hards.
Given Balmain's last game of the season was on a Thursday night, at least the players had a full four days to celebrate Mad Monday, and any atrocities that did occur were insufficient to rate a mention in the papers in Sydney - where becoming a disgraceful drunken rabble is de rigueur.
Coach Clearly It's Cleary's methodology of basing the game almost entirely on defence early in the season was all very well and good, but as the year got out to the pointy end, numbers on the scoreboard started to count against them coming up against good attacking sides, who all made the top 8.
Those with a negative percentage, apart from the Tiges, all deservedly finished in the bottom 6.
It's very pleasing to see that club Life Members, The Great Robbie "The Best Leb in the Game" Farah and The Great Benji Marshall, both sign on for another year in 2019, at the ages of 35 and 34 respectively. Only Farah has said that 2019 will be his last season. Benji, of course, thinks he's immortal, and why not?
It's just fine and dandy to have some sage old football brains and legends of the game hanging around the club to teach the young kiddies right - but where are the new generation of children coming from?
Crikey. Even Chris "The Try Scoring Freak" Lawrence might go around again at age 30.
Luke Brooks will do nicely at half-back thank you very much, and the mid-season buy of The Gambian, Moses Mbye, as a full-back utility was an astute long-term move, but apart from the 6'4" 115kg Samoan Refrigerator in Ben Matulino in the front row, the pack needs more oomph, and the backline could do with extra pace and punch in the outside centres and out on the wings, where they were found out this season.
And the much-heralded marquee buy, Josh Reynolds, proved to be an absolute shocker as he was completely rooted by injury throughout and hardly played a game.

All things the Club Secretary has to consider very closely in the off-season.
Longtime Loyalists are sick and tired of weeping into our beers, and you can lay to that.

SOUTH SYDNEY RABBITOHS 51. Tries: Jennings, Reynolds, Crichton, Walker, Graham, Johnston, T.Burgess, Sutton. Goals: Reynolds (8), Clark (1). Field Goals. Reynolds (1).
WESTS TIGERS 10. Tries: Lawrence, Nofoaluma. Goals: Marsters (1).
At Sydney Olympic Stadium, Homebush.
Crowd: 12,037.

King of The World

Buddhists,

It comes as no surprise that B.Franklin has been named skipper of the team that never plays.

Obvious choice...

Onya Lance. He knows that he's King of the World, and that's all that matters, baby. "Kick it to me!"

As the only Swan in the made-up pretend side, it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that The Red and The White are a Champion team, not a team of Champions, so of course The Bud should be honoured as the greatest player who has ever walked upon this earth.

On a side note - god, you've gotta love the snubbed Tex Walker when he opens his mouth...

"I understand that Adelaide or South Australia in general, it's hard to get people here," he said.

http://www.afl.com.au/news/2018-08-29/tex-wants-answers-from-unhappy-mcgovern?camefrom=EMCL_2463199_110558209

Buddy shifted himself to this side of the island many a long year ago. Look where it's got him now.

Wise move.

a wet sail in a six goal gale

Grand Standers,

Complete and utter chaos! There's a footy match to get to! Imagine the horror!
It's quite extraordinary, but not surprising, how a city of five million is paralysed by a total shut down in the railway system - yep good ol' Shitty Rail had excelled themselves beyond measure this time, a "network tech upgrade" had gone horribly wrong and the whole communications network was gorn. Meltdown. No trains. None. All day. All they could do was to revert to manual signalling to get any choo-choos running.
Always planned to drive to the ground so the ol' crip could take advantage of a cheeky, free, corporate car parking space close to the stadium, but as the motor was inching along in a stupendous traffic jam - rat-running along the the main western railway line to Homebush - big crowds of people were milling around bus stops outside the stations looking at their phones trying to find out just what the fark was going on as the odd bus jammed-packed with sardine-like punters rumbled on by without stopping.
And the transport authorities had plenty to move on this Saturday, with a full house expected at the Royal Agricultural Society Showground "Spotto!" in the afternoon, followed by the 66,000 who eventually made it to Cathy Freeman Stadium for the evening Bledisloe Cup rah rah across the road.
Joisus.
A total cock-up is always a great way to start your one and only afternoon out at the ball park for the season.
It was the third consecutive year me and the GLW have turned out for the Swans away game against the GWS Pygmies, this time with both Favourite Daughters in tow.
Finally eased the carcass into my choice seat on the Green and Golden Bell Frog wing 15 minutes before the opening bounce, but at least half the crowd missed the first quarter as they continued to pour in - not to worry - they didn't miss a thing.
Captain JPK made a shrewd decision to kick into breeze from the off, so the Swans would would be going with the wind in the final stanza, and what mighty blow it was.
A classic example of that weather phenomenon peculiar to the Emerald City at this time of year known as "The August Winds" - a bitterly cold westerly gale pushing 35 knots whipping across the vast outback and funneling over the Great Dividing Range and onto the Cumberland Plain - the denizens of Sydney hate it with good reason - it's plain shitful. The ambient temperature never got close to ten degrees and plummeted as night fell.
It's the sort of weather where the foam on beer cups is blown into the faces of the punters in the cheap seats.
The first half must have been one of the most boring exhibitions of Strayan Rules seen this year, as both teams seemed intent on trapping their opposition inside their defensive 50's, and the play quickly degenerated into a fully-fighting arm-wrestle, with scrimmages and stacks-on-the-mill galore - and by half time a Swans flag we had with us, that had been in disuse since the TV broadcast of the 2016 Grand Final, could only be waved four times for Swans' goals.
WTF?
And to add Sydney's woes, they were carrying more than a few passengers, who, as usual, shall remain nameless. You know who you are.
At the main break My Spy at The Ground, who was sitting right next to me, was making dark mutterings about being two goals down in a very low scoring match and the likelihood of the Swans being run over with a steam-roller in the second half as GWS are younger, stronger and much faster...but soon enough wounded Pygmies began making their way to the bench and down the race and suddenly, after Sydney did mighty well to draw the Champo at a single goal a piece, the Red & The White broke free and came home in a storming last quarter with a wet sail in a six goal gale.
The crowd, who were 85% Swans supporters, went absolutely ape-shit.
Sydney decided to bomb long on the breeze into full forward and hope for the best - and the best is what they got with L.Franklin throwing his weight around.
At one stage Buddy even went for the ol' one-two; marking in the forward pocket, playing on, hand-balling to a team mate, running around him to pivot onto the left foot, getting a hand-ball back and banging it on the boot, the opposition bamboozled...but the shot was a couple of inches off line.
For the second week in a row, Buddy kicked more than half the team's goals.
What with SC Horse revealing n interview post match that Franklin has been riddled with niggles and is a 'week to week proposition', his effort in the denouement was worth being gonged with the Brett Kirk Medal for Best on Ground alone.
Haven't seen Luke Parker in the flesh for a year, and he was all but impossible to recognise as he's bulked up into the size of the Sherman tank. and the thought kept running through my head "good god, the man must be on steroids."
It was a pleasure to see young Tommy McCartin perform; at 18-years-old he already has a stature of and plays like a grown man, and has plenty of footy smarts about him, and seems to have a stellar career ahead of him.
Without a shadow of doubt, draft pick of the year.
Llooooyd and Odd Head McVeigh toiled like sheepdogs all day in the backs, but the Swans are desperately missing Reg Grundy's love child.
Richie Cunningham made some brilliant penetrations when it counted, while Old Jack Jnr and JPK took it upon themselves to marshal the mid-field and round up some Pygs.
The forwards could have been better; they really didn't get smart until the last quarter putting two very clever positional switches that resukted in certain goals - but, hey, eleven goals won't win in September, Lads.
In the stands, two boys of perhaps 11 or 12 years old were sitting behind me - one was fully dressed in Swans merch, the other had all the Giants gear, and they were at each other tenaciously throughout, while urging on their favourite players.
It warms the cockles to hear the fine art of barracking still alive and well among the Yoof of Today.
Despite the result, the GWS kiddie got the best of his mate on the day. And he didn't see himself as a loser.
There's just no hatred in a Sydney Local Derby, unlike other two-team towns such as Perth and Adelaide.
However, being a cruel bastard, just couldn't help myself but to break out into a rousing rendition if "Wot's it like? Wot's it like? Wot's it's like to lose at home? Wot's it's like to lose at home?!" to howls of derision.
With an injury list as long as your arm, the Pygmies are shot birds at the pointy end of the season for mine...the Swans aint doing much better in Sick Bay and now there's absolutely no room for sandbagging or playing ducks and drakes for final ladder positions - the equation is very simple - beat Not Bloody Hawthorn Abloodygain this Saturday at HQ and they're in the top four with a second bite at the cherry reserved.
The Stats Guru, who is a student of Pure Mathematics, will tell you, do the Hawks over and the Swans are, in theory, just two wins out of the Grand Final.
But that would be getting way ahead of ourselves, and everybody knows the evil dangers of glittering baubles and false hope.


GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY: 3.3, 6.6, 7.9,8.12 (60). Goals: Cameron 2, Himmelberg 2, D. Lloyd 2, Shiel, Bonar.
SYDNEY: 1.2, 4.3, 5.9, 11.14 (80). Goals: Franklin 5, Jack 2, Parker, McCartin, Hayward.
At Sydney Showground, Homebush.
Crowd: 21,433.

Found myself straining the potatoes in the dunnies behind the old Kiosk at three-quarter timer at Henson Park in Marrickville on Sunday afternoon, when two blokes were overheard at the urinal discussing how the beer cans were freezing into their hands and the merits of the match in question - the 2018 Reclink Community Cup - when one said "but this match is massively wind assisted". The other bloke replied "This? Oh, yes, fuck-yes..."
The August Winds had got even worse than the day before, with a very tough sou'wester now howling in over the Sydenham Road End.
Such a pity really, as Reclink is a very serious, full-umpired mixed-sex game of amateur charity Rules.
The Wailers [musicians] and the Sailors [media] train for about six weeks for it. There are local rules. Each team can only field nine men and nine women at a time, but there's unlimited interchange and both teams boasted a bench of twenty or more.
The Ladies come in for special treatment; it's women only ruck contests, same-sex contested marking, boys can only tackle girls around the waist, but the gals can go in as hard as they like, and boy, didn't they, with a fair few Christmas Holds and Squirrel Grips going right in there and up the cloaca.
Luckily we'd got there early, drove through the back gates, swung the motor onto the hill, and set up a tail-gate party on the back of the Hyundai Stand, which offered some protection from the gale that was chilling the bones of this old man, who was turning 61 on that very day.
The only saving grace was the bright winter sunshine.
DJ Albo, the local member who's now retired from playing for the Wailers, had a go at some commentary on the Tannoy in the second quarter and sounded like the consummate politician that he is: "ooh, he's got him in the...oh dear, aaah", "and a Wailer's gone down! Surely an illegal tackle Umpire!" and "very controversial...that will be spoken of at the after-party, no doubt".
The foul weather certainly saw crowd numbers well down on previous years, but still people made valiant attempts at picnicking on the hill and there were more dogs in than ever before, with scores of loose hounds bounding around; one or two flipped out over the boundary fence and had to be shooed off the field of play.
The match itself was a see-sawing affair - check out the scorebox! - the Sailors won the toss and kicked with the wind but failed to capitalise while keeping the Wailers scoreless.
The muso's then used the breeze well - which by this stage had blown out to 40 knots - and by the third quarter it was blowing so hard any ball kicked into the gale would go straight up and down, while the likes of Travis "The Lunatic" Blanco, Harry Hervey and Timothy Fernandez booted balls for the Sailors in the Champo that caught the wind and sailed a clear 70-80 metres through the big sticks, but the Wailers were always going to win with that howler at their backs in the final stanza.
Brrrrr. Take me to the nearest log fire.
Streaking has a long and proud history at the Reclink Cup, but with the wind chill factor plunging the ambient temp to less than 5 degrees there were fears it might not happen this year.
The Ground Announcer, apart from describing in detail the antics of the various canines on the hill sniffing complete strangers and singing the praises of the local booze, constantly urged someone - anyone! - to their to get their gear off; "drop the daks", "feel the breeze", "just go nude", "get on there and freebag", "hang out the flapping bits", and it took until the final 40 seconds of the close-run thing until some lanky bloke finally jumped the fence.
He stripped off on the boundary line, did a run through the play and around ground - entirely unmolested by anyone - jumping on the backs of two Sailors players as he went. The game just went on as if he wasn't there, then the final siren hooted, and Fat Lady sang.
But, as the GLW later commented "crikey! if you were minding your own business playing football, it would scare the living shit out of you having a naked man jump of your back without warning, surely?"
There is suitably-edited video of the streak somewhere in the cloud to conceal the identity of the perp if the cops ever try to book him for "indecent exposure".
The Great Scandal of the Reclink Cup 2017 in Melbourne was that someone complained about the streakers, and can you believe this, they were duly booked and issued with fines for "public indecency".
What an appalling travesty of justice!
To make matters worse, an offer by Reclink to fund their legal expenses was ruled illegal as the organisation gets Govt. funding...the thing eventually blew over and out, and the fines were just paid.
Disgraceful.
What puffed-up starched-shirt silliness. It's the difference between the two towns; something like that would never happen in a place like Sydney, where you can go around completely un-noticed dressed as a jester if you want. Anything goes.
When all was said and done, the now rather pissed Ground Announcer thanked the crowd on the Tannoy for their attendance and good behavior throughout, and ended with "and it's always good to see the bloke in the Responsible Service of Alcohol vest look like he's just wandered in from the Wayside Chapel".

WESTERN WAILERS: 0.0, 4.1, 4.1, 6.4 [40].
SYDNEY SAILORS: 0.6, 0.7, 4.9, 4.9. [33].
Best on Ground: "The Bison" for the Wailers, Antonovic for the Sailors.
At Henson Park, Marrickville.
Crowd: 3,500 (est).

While all this was going on, a shadow of bitter disappointment was cast over Balmain's spiritual home, Leichhardt Oval, as the home side were soundly beaten fair & square by a well-placed St. George side before a full house of the faithful.
The Mighty Tiges have yet again, for all intents and purposes, failed to qualify for the league finals, losing their second last match of the season, and will now most likely finish in 9th or 10th place on the ladder.
Arrrrg. Agaaaain.
Just like last season.
So near, and yet so far.
It's now been seven long long years since Balmain have made the Top 8 - said it before, say it again, jeez they're a hard team to follow - in fact, since Balmain won the Premiership in the Miracle Year of 2005, the Tiges have qualified for September only twice.
It's worthy of a thousand word essay, but the less said about it at the present juncture the better - Mad Monday is still to come.
For the moment, let's just allow a tear-drop to roll out of a cornea and down the cheek as us true-believing die-hards trot out that useless freakin' platitude "there's always next year!!".
Gawd, help us.

WESTS TIGERS 10. Tries: Lawrence, Naiqama. Goals: Marsters (1).
ST GEORGE-ILLAWARRA DRAGONS 20. Tries: Pereira, Leilua, Frizell. Goals: Lafai (4).
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 18,387.