buy yourself a new Captain

 

Long sufferers,

After a strange, weird, bizarre, and quite frankly very disappointing Test cricket season, the footy has crept up on us with barely any warning. The pre-season hoop-la normally reaches fever pitch this time of year as the back 12 pages of the papers obsess over who in, who's out, and who's up who and for what. Things have been oddly quiet as folks really don't know what to make of anything in these times of plague; everything remains a day-to-day proposition, let alone making far flung predictions who will win the Grand Final in September  - which seems like an epoch away, and probably is.

So one day recently found myself leafing through the various rugby league rags, and in the official National Rugby League fish-wrap there were 12 pundits who were asked for their predictions on where the various teams might end up on the Premiership ladder at the end of the season. Only one of these so-called experts put the Mighty Balmain Tigers in the final top eight. One out of a dozen people who allege they know what they're talking about. Oh no, don't tell me, not another long, cold, bitter winter of discontent? All anybody seems to say about the Tiges chances is it's been ten years now since they last made the finals and the long-suffering fans have had it up to here. Can they break the decade old hoodoo? Can they unexpectedly rocket up the ladder? Can they give rusted-on supporters a break? The consensus of opinion is, ah, no, not this time, amigos. Shit.

It seems like coach Mr Magoo has been busy in the off-season with the Football Dept. recruiting left, right and centre. However, you can imagine my surprise to learn that they've shelled out for a new Captain, to replace The Great Benji Marshall who, at age 35, has now left the club for a second time in yet other stupid, silly, easily resolved dispute over money, to become a bench warmer and some kind of "whisperer" over at South Sydney. Be that as it may, it's a serious admission about the lack of leadership in the club if they have to buy in a new skipper in the form of James Tamou. He's played 263 games for the Cowboys and the Panthers, and played the last of his 14 Origin games for NSW five years ago. No shortage of experience there, but at 31 years old he's in the twilight of his career and there's not much on paper that says he's born leader - he skippered the losing Penrith grand final side last year. Mmmm. Five new recruits made their debuts in Round One...and what a motley crew they are. James Roberts is the quintessential journeyman having played for no less than five clubs - this is his sixth - since 2011, but has only played 150 games, so must be injury prone or not good enough. The others were unwanted. Balmain pulled a right swiftie to steal  Daine Laurie from Penrith, where he was the third-rated full back and couldn't get a game. Brisbane couldn't wait to get rid of Joe Ofahengaue, a hundred gamer with two Origin appearance to his credit, but he was released from the last two years of his contract to come to the Tiges, while the 19-year-old Tukimihia Simpkins was also let go by the Cowboys.

Balmain have never had much luck with marquee players (Josh Reynolds has been shoved out the back door without so much as a sausage after two dreadful seasons and has pissed off to England), and it seems that this year's recruits were largely unwanted elsewhere, so were snapped up for a song by the Tiges, who are technically broker than broke with no leagues club and survive on cash handouts from the NRL and the magnanimous support of wealthy patrons who have nothing better to spend their clams on. The Western Suburbs side of the "joint venture" appears to have all but disappeared. But money is still too tight to mention, and despite the so-called salary cap, if your mob is not cashed up to the hilt, they have little hope. None of this augers well for the eternal pesssimist. After the superstars, the lesser ranked players will go anywhere just to make a quid after they took a savage Covid haircut on their bloated stipends last year. 

So given all of the above, the new look outfit actually acquitted themselves rather well in the season pipe-opener against the Raiders - who are being widely tipped as likely Grand Finalists. (No crowd restrictions in the ACT, so they had a goodly number of non-socially distant fans in the stands gobbing on each other). It was no shellacking. Balmain put on some very effective defensive drills in the first half to keep the score at 6-6 at the break, but lost the plot early in the second half and the Fat Lady started singing. The forward pack has the potential to develop into a formidable unit, while there are plenty of points in the back line with proven try scorers. But the diehards have been saying exactly that for a decade and more, and it hasn't helped. At least the Tiges run into some crack teams in the first four rounds to get their act together and test themselves against some quality outfits before hopefully devouring much easier meat as the season rolls on. Everyone will know soon enough.

CANBERRA RAIDERS 30. Tries: Rapana (2), James, Young, Nicoll-Klokstad. Goals: Williams (5).
WESTS TIGERS 12. Tries: Liddle, Nofoaluma. Goals: Brooks (2).
At Canberra Stadium.
Crowd: 15,680.

 

 

a tremendous loss of face - "they are nothing without Kohli"

 

Innocent bystanders,

What a very curious state of affairs we have reached in Strayan cricket.

Perhaps the pivotal moment of the recent Test match series came late on the second day at Adelaide, when My Spy At The Ground  - who was actually in the stands, and not pretending to be making pithy observations while watching television - sent through an urgent telegraph message: "I'm really pissed now. What's the score, Jimmy?" Be that as it may, what would Pup do now it's all over? Not many folks ask for MJ Clarke's opinion these days given his blockbuster breakfast radio show is garnering an impressive 1.6% of the available Sydney audience. That's almost like talking to four walls, but after Adelaide, he was said to have said "They are nothing without Kohli". Oh, for the benefit of hindsight.

Surely, surely, the pink test experiment is finally dead, buried and cremated? Yet another two-and-a-half day game in Adelbrain featuring an average 140 runs per innings, and a wining margin of eight wkts, employing a pink ball that explodes off a good length when new, rears up into the teeth at night, but goes soft after about 20 overs and slows up on a pitch with way too many grass clippings rolled in with the aid of the heavy roller. Hazo and Paddy were just licking their chops with glee when they saw the ball doing really stoopid things swerving all over the shop, and got into the way of thinking "we're towelling them up here", otherwise called "momentum", but it's way way short of a "fair contest". If you get caught batting at night with a pinkie, you're dead and gone.The chief tactic seems to be get as much daylight batting in as you can.

Third grade teams don't get bowled out for 36 on decent pitches unless there's something very seriously wrong. The common line in the papers of it being "inexplicable, pathetic, incredible" doesn't wash with me, or the Stats Guru, who was quick to exclaim "Oh!  Such a slow over rate! Absolute shocker! What about the glacial accumulation of runs!" after India were 3/107 at tea on the first day. Perhaps there should be a push by the Stats Guru to have all pink ball test matches expunged from the records and stripped of test status on account of just being not right, while admitting all the five-day games played in World Series as official test matches, accommodating a new test playing nation called Rest of The World or something or another. It's time for change, and the Pink Stink it's now well beyond being a failed experiment. Just ask Kookaburra, who've been driven completely nuts by it for years. Can anyone at Cricket Straya or the ICC spell F-A-I-L-U-R-E?

But, of course, you are not allowed to argue with 'progress' or the honky dollar that's tied up in the now fading right's deals; the paid-out commentariat over at the Kezza Stokes stable at Seven are not permitted to get critical of the pitch or the ball, not even when the pill is all but unplayable in the hands of a couple of the best fast bowlers going. Damo Fleming came closest on the telly when he couldn't contain himself for a moment longer and blurted out "Oh! I love these bowler dominated Test matches!". India has plenty of excuses for the woeful second innings in the City of Churches, chief among them "yeah, a shit score in shit conditions in a shit game".

Found myself about to say to some child on Xmas Day, that Boxing Day has been a long-standing rite with me since the age of nine. Ooops. That was until being reminded by the Stats Guru that this Boxing Day at the MCG "tradition" didn't become a thing until after 1969-70. Christ! Age hasn't caught up with me that quickly, surely?  Anyways, Boxing Day was always going to fall flat this year on account of the plague  - we knew that - but the crowd even fell short of the maximum allowed under the Covid regulations on every day of the game. So that's about as much interest as there's ever been in going to test cricket on the later days (after the mad mad crowd who traditionally Get On The Beers on Boxing Day). Back in the day, under normal circumstances, that'd mean long beer queues and all-in brawls, but in these conflicted times of social estrangement it's a "why bother?" People are still a bit leery of crowds, as you'd expect, even as my Spy at The Ground remarked "cricket is a very good Socially Distant game with the positioning of the players, isn't it?" And besides, folks simply don't go to the ground to watch the stand-by visiting skipper Rehane make a statement after the Adelbrain fiasco, and bat all day, do they? 

So the tourists win solidly by eight wickets in Melbourne in what? An unremarkable Test match, over in under four days, on a dodgy drop-in, with the tourist's temporary Captain's knock the deciding factor, and what else? Oh, that's right, dropped catches lose matches. Who had a lazy Xmas in the bubble, then? Oh, dear. So, Straya goes and squanders a priceless 1-0 lead in a four test series, which suddenly becomes one-all with two to play.

Then comes Syderney. There was never any serious consideration given to actually gracing the ground with my presence this year as it would have been an entirely futile exercise. There was a shitfight over the regulation size of the crowd before a ball was even bowled. Even after the Avalon Clusterfuck, there was no debate about whether the match would go ahead - oh, no siree - that was a promise that the Ruby Princess made, and promises made by the Ruby Princess are promises kept. First it was going to be 50% capacity, then they knocked that back to 25%, then 20%...at one stage during the panic, found myself reading the SMH who in all seriousness suggested the crowd would be limited at 2,000. Then came the final word that it would be 10,000 and that's it. But from the outset, they got 7-8 thousand daily crowds, mainly the Swami Army on the drink. The Ruby Princess has obviously never been to a Test match after tea on any given day, when things tend to get a bit rowdy, tired and emotional. And besides, who'd wear a mask throughout an exhausting seven-hour day while drinking beer through a tube? They were slung around most people's necks by then anyway, after they'd decided from very early on that they'd Get on The Beers.

Sydney was once again dropped catches lose matches. Don't they have some of those practice slips catches machines in iso? Never mind the much publicised "racial abuse" from behind the picket fence at the SCG; it got me to thinking what Yabber would have thought of Captain Paine being too busy yabbering behind the stumps and calling Indian batsmen dickheads instead of concentrating on the matter in hand - winning the match - while dropping three catches, and fumbling a stumping which could have cracked the game wide open very late in the five day piece. Who's the dickhead now? India batting out the last day for a draw is so unusual these days in Test cricket it was hailed as truly remarkable - but a draw is still a draw - even if the tension can go sky high if there's the slightest sniff of victory.

Onto Brisbane, humid ol' Brisvegas for a game on a pitch on which a million AFL matches had been played over the months prior. The joint looked like a cow paddock pockmarked by the removal of the cow patts. Of course the curator couldn't do much more than turn out a road - nay, a four lane highway - from the mud heap he was given. The look of the 5th day pitch was of cracked concrete - they were too scared to put the heavy roller over it. After the Indians so miraculously performed three run outs in a single innings, which is perhaps chief among the cardinal sins of Test cricket, Paine's missed stumping on the final day in the tropics is where the whole shooting match aka the Border-Gavaskar Trophy was lost. Once again, Straya snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, when the Troph was theirs for the taking. Someone has to take responsibility, and that somebody should be the skipper falling on his sword, Kim Hughes-style, but without the sobbing. It's only a game.

Pup likes India - where he's treated like royalty and being an MCC Life Member gets you places - and he knows all about how India were so much more flexible and adaptable to the highly usual playing conditions than Straya ever were from beginning to end. And about Straya's initial complacency through the pink prism of a day/night fantasy all came crashing down around them in the lengthening shadows of the Gabba, and how much the sudden end of "the Gabbatoir" era means in terms of tremendous loss of face. Pup is a serious student of the game and he knows how losing the 33-year-long non-losing streak at the Brisbane Cricket Ground is enough to really shit to tears the aficionado, not to mention the home supporters at the Woolloongabba ground, who've been well used to winning for nigh on a generation.

Given that the epidemiologists are saying that everybody knows shit's fucked, and 2021 will be just as crapola cornflakes as 2020, you'd have to think that an Strayan tour of The Veldt next month for a couple of test matches must be problematical, surely? The dropping of Wade for Carey makes sense - one's on the way out, the other's coming in - but the news that Travis Head and Moises Constantino Henriques might be "fighting it out or the No.5 spot" is of genuine concern. Joisus, Moises??? The middle order ranks can't be that thin, surely? Never mind the best pace attack in the world right now, the GOAT is starting to get long in the tooth on unhelpful pitches, and he has no understudy. The list of problems goes on

So, perhaps now it'd be a good move to just unilaterally ban the Barmy Army from travelling to Straya in any way, shape or form for next summer's Ashes. Visas will be denied. Then we can just on get with what Strayan's were born to do -- unmercifully goad and sledge the Poms in peace - invoking derogatory racial stereotypes to the point of vilification. Everything else is just training for taking on England.

couldn't hack it

 

Fellow Exhaustee's,

So, it's come to this.

Heard some chattering on the weekend that suggested "it's a minor miracle that the AFL actually got to a Grand Final under the circumstances" and attendant heads were nodding in agreement. Yep, the legion of doubters and naysayers - the Eternal Pessimist chief among them - have all been proven wrong yet again. Here were were back in April/May fearing that the season might just sputter to a halt and be abandoned before a conclusion could be reached. Remember back then? When they shut down the game for eleven weeks - no footy at all - and if you recall, folks were saying during that time that they weren't actually missing the footy that much after all, and were prepared to write off this season and think about next year. It took the Powers that Be a full two months to work out what fark to do to "save" the shit show, before resuming in empty stadiums. The deathly quiet didn't last long, as they suddenly needed professionals to mix real crowd noise as fake sound effects, making sure they didn't play the laugh track by mistake. No, there was far too much money on the line just to let the thing go, call it off as a bad joke, and ponder how to reshape it again next year. Nah, far too much cash in the balance. Too many people wanted the rent. And what a tortuous road they were forced to go on while still losing a fortune - coaches, players, strappers, runners, roadies, toadies, hangers-on...trapped for hundreds of days in the Corona Bubble, permanently on tour with the wife and family in tow in a fair degree of Iso Luxury, but no stray roots for the single player or anyone else for that matter. Hanky panky entirely out of the question. Exchanges of bodily fluids strictly prohibited. Still, they never had to cook a sausage; just train and relax in the resort pool with the swim up bar (no shortage of those on the Gold Coast). After the complete evacuation from Marvellous Melbourne, it must have come as a shock to go home.

The Dear Ol' Swannies (16th) didn't make the grade for the second year running - couldn't hack it, Covid Hub life was not for them. Mad Monday pretty much passed without incident, given that they would have been drinking so much piss in Iso anyway, that it barely mattered any more. And no one has ever mentioned whether drug testers were also embedded in the Bubble. But at least there was no necessity to dress up in women's clothing and get utterly shit-faced, as was the usual course of proceedings just a few short years ago. With so much tradition and hallowed turf junked by The Covid, it's surprising there's been hardly a whisper about the fact that the MCG's god-given and holy right to host the Big One of a Saturday afternoon - the last one in September to be precise - has been so shockingly trampled upon. Most footy fans you'd suspect - afraid of being labelled as 'whingers' - would say "ah well, if they have to play it in Brisvegas, it is what it is", not realising that they're opening the floodgates. Never mind that it'll be played at night at the 'Gabba with a full house at the end of October. They could have played and televised games from Woop Woop for all it mattered and The Lord Gillon made damn sure they did, as footy blundered on relentlessly in an unprecedented spree of daily games, yep, footy, seven days a week. Anyone remember 33 games in 20 straight days? Me neither. But when the Swans were asked to play not one, but two games at the world famous Cazaly Stadium up there in Cairns in The Build Up to the wet season, well - that was beyond the pale as far as severely disadvantaging a team goes, for mine - playing in the tropics in the Build Up? WTF? That's when folks go troppo. Weirdness on a stick - just too much to ask of a club even in a 'home & away' season that will forever be remembered for its strangeness. The game may well have been 'saved' against all odds, but the 'brand' has taken a big hit. The Age - the paper of record down Mexico way - ran a story headlined "The Fairest AFL Grand Final in History"...outlining no home ground advantage, no rabid fans frothing at the mouth, no one has ever played a night grand final before...blah blah blah - well, what utter tosh. Even putting to one side those boring-as-batshit defence-driven low-scoring games, if nothing else, unless you are a native Melburnian on fragile ground or a member of the Mickey Mouse Club, it was a shit season, nothing more, nothing less, never mind it being the "season from hell".The Age then backed that up with yarn "as Grand Final preparations warm up in Brisbane, we take a walk around an empty MCG". Oh dear...

So, here we are now.

Melburnians can look forward to Friday off, for what's now morphed from a Grand Final Public Holiday into some kind of Thank You Public Holiday for putting up with so much shitfulness for so long, with even the Govt. claiming the footy forestalled a mental health disaster in the Athens of the South. Hang on...it'll be the Melbun Cup in a minute, betting turnover will break records and nervous bookies will see huge cash plunges reaching untold heights. Then that's followed by the traditional Silly Season and Xmas music in lifts, you know how it goes.

So, what would Pup do?

Go to the races, that's what. MJ Clarke was spotted at Royal Randwick over the weekend for some hastily cobbled together race worth a tasty $15M for the express purpose of debuting his latest lie-down for the magazines, after some amicable divorce proceedings left him short of a house in Vaucluse and a few million lighter. He now finds himself in very much reduced circumstances, forced to use that whiny voice of his on a breakfast radio show that no-one listens to - deliberately. Currently attracting 0.4 per cent of the available Sydney audience. That's a tough life. Podcasts on how to cook kale have better ratings. Unfortunately, the former skipper, best bat of his generation, and MCC Life Member is rarely asked for comment by the papers these days so yr unlikely to hear his broadcast position on the revenge now due on that turd Viral Rat Kohli. You'll remember the little shit masquerading as Indian captain, who drove Smiffy completely bonkers in India in '17 with some outrageous antics that will never be forgotten or forgiven. The prick sent Steve so far round the twist, a year later he'd spiralled into the madness of sanctioning Sandpapergate. Smiffy has now well & truly served his two year ban from the Strayan captaincy and could well decide to come back as skipper and monster that peasant Kohli, employing the use of the gigantic tusk up the runter in an unfriendly and unwieldy way. Could be an interesting summer. Who knows, when everything is a day-to-day proposition?  At least overcrowding on the bleachers shouldn't be an issue in an Iso cricket world; Test match fifth day crowds will still be Test match fifth day crowds, pandemic or no pandemic. Bring on the lazy, hazy, plaguey days of summer...

 

 

on the retirement of The Try Scoring Freak

Aghastee's,


Amid the chaos of the of the up-for-grabs Grannie going to Brisvegas and the ensuing uproar over why it wasn't "given" to brand new Perth or "desperate" Adelaide, there are, believe it or not, bigger fish to fry. Of course The Powers That Be selected a certified shithole as the venue, where the dog racing track was only removed in 1993, and nothing much else has changed since. The AFL knew full well the value of the enormous sacks of Palaszczuk Pineapples stacked on the back of trucks that would be coming their way for graciously awarding That One Day in September to the Gabba. The QLD Premier herself says "it's a proud moment for Queensland" and that's that. Despite the howls of protest from everywhere except north of the Tweed, the 'other contenders' should have known all along that after bleeding money left right and centre during this frightful season for the football authorities, cash is king and the honky dollar does the talkin' from now on. Either way you look at it, it's history in the making or the thin edge of the wedge with the divine right of Melbourne to host The Big One finally and so rudely stripped away. The first night Grand Final means that will now never change back to Satdee Arvo.

Depending on who you talk to, Lord McLachlan is either the shining knight on a white steed who "saved the season!" against all odds (and will no doubt lap up the plaudits along with his considerably bloated stipend), or he'll leave the game with a permanently damaged 'brand'. To be fair, good on them for getting this far with all the incalculable number of unexpected twists and turns thrown up by The Corona, as well as contributing to the mental well-being of the poor poor punters in the Melbourne metro area, but for everyone else, there's that nagging feeling of a set up here. As My Spy At The Ground remarked about whoever wins this year's convoluted Premiership flag "their name will always have an asterisk next to it in the history books". At the end of the day, when its all said and done in the final paralysis, there is no getting away from the fact it's been a shit season. You do have to wonder what kind of drugs the schedulers were taking if they reckoned sending the Swans to the "build up" to the wet season in the tropics was a good idea. Folks go Troppo in that weather, for Chrissake!

SYDNEY: 2.0,  7.2,  7.4, 10.7 (67). Goals: McInerney 2, Parker 2, Clarke, Hayward, McLean,

Rowbottom, Taylor, Wicks.
MELBOURNE:   2.3,  2.4,  3.7, 6.10 (46). Goals: Brayshaw, Brown, Harms, May, Neal-Bullen,

Spargo. 
At Cazaly's Oval, Cairns.
Crowd:  3,119*.

It's been yet another winter of discontent as predicted - virus or no virus - when both yr teams were out of contention weeks ago. The Dear Ol' Swannies are rotating rookies to "blood" them in the big time, with the season that long gone, while over in rugby league la la land it would take a mathematical miracle of which the Stats Guru would be proud for the Mighty Tiges to make the finals, what with their "horror run home". Never mind the weekend's stunning upset 34-32 win over the evil Silver Tails, the recriminations and blame game at managerial and dysfunctional board level go on as usual - Balmain, as always, the soap opera of footy politics.

No, at times like these, when all hope is lost and there is very little if anything left to cling to, it's always comforting to find shelter in nostalgia. So it would be most remiss of me not to mention the impending retirement at the end of the season of Chris "The Try Scoring Freak" Lawrence.
When you clearly remember him being the youngest player ever to debut for Balmain at age 17 (the year after the Miracle Year and Premiership in 2005), and recall most everything he's done in a storied 14 year career at the top, it tells you just how rusted on yr fandom is. If memory serves, he scored a load of tries from outside center in his early games and there were cries from commentators numerous of "Chris Lawrence! Untouched and under the black dot! The kid's a try scoring freak!", and the nickname stuck. Around the club he is known by everyone as "Rowdy" due to his quiet off field demeanour, but on field he becomes this brute of a demon. A 6'2" 100 kilogram bulldozer with a genuine turn of pace and legs like farkin' tree stumps. The Freak is a very solid unit for a centre, and he's always reminded me of those kind of people who can just waltz through solidly locked doors, let alone anything left ever so slightly ajar. The 250 gamer has never had much of a jink or a weave on him, but Rowdy's got one of the best "steps" in the game; at his best he could pivot on a sixpence any which way he liked, and he's got a great eye for the slightest gap in the opposition defences and would dart his way through, touch the ball on the ground in the in-goal, and then just throw the pill away. And when he didn't have the ball he liked to throw his weight around. Particularly so when he lost a yard in pace and made a calculated and clever late career change to switch to the pack and play in the second row, which prolonged his playing days by five years. He was always very rugged in defence, but as he matured he made opposition players pay with some tremendous hits - he liked to line blokes up from a long way out and smash 'em shitless in a shirtfront, but he was as good if not better at the try-saving flying-tackle around the legs. The longevity of his career has surprised even the man himself - he's come back from his fair share of serious injuries, including a dreadful late-career face re-arrangement with eleven fractures, and he lost count long ago of how many times he's just broken his nose. And now it's time to take a bow and leave the battlefield at the age of almost 32, with the body finally giving up him.

A superlative clubman, he achieved the now rare feat of playing every single one of his 250 games in The Black & Gold. The one club man is hard to find these days. The Freak is already a Life Member at Balmain after playing 200 games, and easily reserved his place in the Pantheon - that special place for old champions to rest of their laurels somewhere out there on the Balmain Road. Lawrence somehow managed to get picked for Australia six times in his stand out 2010/11 seasons, but he never got the nod for State-of-Origin and it will be difficult for anyone to take the moniker of "the best player never to play for New South Wales" off him. Vale - The Try Scoring Freak. Like part of the furniture for 14 years, you will be sorely missed.

MANLY-WARRINGAH SEA-EAGLES 32. Tries: Harper (2),Taufua, Gosiewski, Funa, 

Trbojevic. Goals: Cherry-Evans (4).
WESTS TIGERS 34. Tries: Nofoaluma (3), Doueihi (2), Mbye. Goals: Doueihi. (5).
At Brookvale Oval.
Crowd: TBA.

the complete evacuation of Melbourne

Brave Beserkers,

The Australian Football League has completely outdone itself in these difficult and uncertain times. Footy has gone from being a simple Satdee arvo game to an utterly meaningless sideshow...20 days straight, yep, football every day for 20 days, with 33 matches including double headers. That's more like a Big Bash cricket hit'n'giggle, but with rain. Too much confusion. If it wasn't in doubt before, it's now exposed for what it is - a desperate bid to keep the TV rights alive and some cash coming through the front door to offset the enormous cost of the bubbles - and we're not talking Bollinger here - and everything else. The stated aim of these shenanigans is to further compress the season by two weeks in order to prevent the Grand Final clashing with the Cox Plate. It will now be on the same day as the Caulfield Cup, which immediately prompts the question - which is the most important, time-honoured race? Remember, by now, we should be deep into the pointy end of the season and debate should all be about who will make the top four. As it is, the poor folks remaining in the ALF Fixtures Dept. are pulling the hair out of their scones in great tufts. Of course, all this has absolutely nothing, zilch, zip, to do with the fans.

The AFL did very well to implement the complete evacuation of Melbourne well before it became a super Covid hotbed in order to save the season, but everything remains a day to day proposition - anything could happen to entirely derail the comp tomorrow. Things becomes more farcical by the hour it seems, especially with the Ladies Football level of goal scoring seen at present. Week before last, the Swans posted their lowest score in several decades, but there's no way of knowing exactly when they kicked fewer goals, because the Stats Guru is asleep at the abacus as we speak.

Now, if you think you are the only one who reckons this is all bullshit, think again. According to several articles by well-respected sports writers seen mid week - you should ever underestimate tribalism and it's just so great to have the footy back, and fabulous football is the one thing that keeps the desperate, but Marvellous, Melbourne alive in winter, and there are legions of fanatics down Mexico way who's mental health literally depends on it, in an "anything is better than nothing" scenario.

Gawd crikey - we all know that Melbourne is the only city in the world where people will turn out in good numbers to watch two flies crawling up a wall, but this is well beyond a joke - given that Melbournians now have no chance of going to any ground anywhere in the world this year.

While the numbers in at the SCG hasn't been published, some crowd figures are starting to filter in - and the "open the gates and they will come" theory doesn't stack up. Take the local derby in the Golden West where the new Perth Stadium has a nominal capacity of 60,000 and there were no restrictions as WA hasn't had a case of The Covid in yonks - and yet only 25,306 turned up. Over at Adelaide Oval (capacity 53,500) only 13,579 showed to see the Pride of South Australia go 0-7 for the season to be firmly rooted at the bottom of the table, running stone motherless last (just behind the Swans).

SYDNEY:           2.1     5.3      9.3         9.6 (60).      Goals: McCartin 2, Aliir 2, Papley 2, Hayward 2, Clarke.
GOLD COAST:  2.3     6.7     10.13      13.14 (92).  Goals: Weller 2, Rankine 2, Day 2, Anderson, MacPherson, Sexton, Lukosius, King, Swallow, Holman.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: Not published.

The Rugby League is making a better fist of things being confined to the East Coast and NZ, and at least they won't need daily footy to scurry through it. Rugby Union, in contrast, blunders its way to bankruptcy and oblivion,
and the less said about that code the better. It's always mightily pleasing to see the Mighty Tiges win to nil at the Spiritual Home, but the television commentary became very tiresome as the boffins kept moaning "it's just so, so,
sad to see the legendary Bronco's reduced to a shadow of their former selves". That's true - Brissy is really struggling - but there was no "that's not to take anything away from the Tigers who are putting on a brilliant football 
exhibition here", which they did. Yet again, Balmain take for granted.

Under normal circumstances in pre-plague days, folks would have been fighting with each other to get into Leichhardt Oval for this one. But with a nominal capacity of 20,000 (any more and Leichhardt is downright
dangerous with the serious potential of crowd crushes), they couldn't even fill the 5,000 cap on spectators - there was no turning them away from the turnstiles, with just over half the allowed number of fans turning up and
braving it.
Nobody is in any great rush to expose themselves here.

WESTS TIGERS 48. Tries: Luke Garner (2),  L.Leilua (2), Grant,  Marshall, McIntyre, Walters. Goals:  Mbye (6).
BRISBANE BRONCOS 0.
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 2,633.
   

footy joins the mickey mouse club as the walls come tumbling down

Fearers,

You have to be surprised that there are apparently no howls of protest from Essendon fans about their Bombers being effectively rubbed out for the season. It may be because the season is already rooted, and has been from Round One, and few of them, if any, still care.

Connor McKenna. Very flakey. Negative last Wednesday, irregular Friday, positive Saturday? Mmmm. He must have got himself into some nitty-gritty situations where there was the deliberate exchanging of bodily fluids, otherwise how else would have he picked up the killer virus? Touching a contaminated door knob during an open inspection as he looks to snap up some bargain Melbourne real estate on his bloated stipend? McKenna has issues with homesickness - we know that - but sending him back to Northern Ireland again would probs be going a bit too far. That said, there would have to be some old school die-hard Bomber's supporters who'd reckon it's a good idea. Then, lo & behold, Connor tests negative yesterday? Cured in four days? WTF? Is that a double false positive or a double false negative, or both, or what? Too much confusion.

The intrinsic unfairness that The Corona bought to the new 'season' has been amplified into a meaningless echo chamber. There's no fixture list beyond Round 5 for a start off. Certainty is at zero. Essendon are down a game (as are Melbourne - has anyone asked them how they feel about that?), and no-one has any idea if it will ever be played. The AFL Boss Cocky glibly said last Saturday "we may have to treat it as a bye". Neither side would be happy with sharing the points. Some say it's lucky McKenna only took out one other player as a "close contact", but how so? He's still out of the Bomber's next game through no fault of his own. Is it just lucky that their whole backline didn't get ruled out? Do we now consider positive players and their close contacts as mere 'injuries'? How does the rest of the comp feel about the new outright ban on 'contact training'? Or the absurd notion of splitting up your backs and forwards in tactical training, so they don't lose a whole swathe of the team front or back in the event of a mass outbreak. Really? Those struggling with match fitness - and there are plenty of them - might as well kiss their year goodbye. A lot of players don't have their hearts in it as it is, and even less will now, as they ponder whether being a footballer was the right career move after all. It's a severely time-limited career for most and will never ever be the pot of gold it once was. The AFL is like a flexible and agile free-form globule at the moment, capable of mutating into a dead loss at the drop of a hat. 

With most of the players living in Melbourne (and how many of those live in the recently declared 'hotbeds'?), you'd have to suspect that the only reason the AFL season hasn't been postponed yet again is the TV rights; they have to keep playing to fulfill their new contractual obligations. Otherwise it's another shitload of dung flung into the spinning blades. And how Seven must be kicking themselves...gleefully announcing before the start of Round 3 that they'd renegotiated the TV deal, saving themselves $87M in the process. That's the first time since 1971 the broadcaster has paid less. Then, almost as soon as the signatures are affixed, a player tests positive. The television rights instantly deteriorate even further in value as yet more gawkers at the telly slip away and continue to find something more entertaining to watch/do than a Mickey Mouse comp with no crowds apart from wankers in private boxes and a badly mixed canned soundtrack. Never mind the AFL being down another $87M flogging a dead horse - their business model was a shot bird as soon as it was bitten on the arse by The Corona - and no one has any clue about fixing it, because there's no certainty, going forward, about anything in this crazy mixed up world, anymore. By rights, the AFL season should have been up to Round 15 by now, in a 23 Round season. That's two-thirds done and we should be talking about who's going to be who in the finals. It's cold. You do the math.      

NORTH MELBOURNE   2.3,   3.9,   5.11,    8.12 (60).  Goals: Brown 3, Zurhaar, Ahern, Hall, Dumont, Simpkin.
SYDNEY                         2.1,   5.3,  10.8,    10.11 (71). Goals: Papley 2, McLean, Hayward, Dawson, Blakey, Heeney, Rowbottom, Taylor, Parker.
At Docklands Stadium.
Crowd: 0.

As Dapper Dan down Mexico way makes it even tougher for the AFL, the rugby league caper continues on its merry way undaunted as the walls come tumbling down. It's not a 'national' game - limited to the East Coast - with outliers in Melbourne and Auckland, so internal hard borders are of no consequence. 'The Bubble' was burst after last weekend's games, and they're letting the players loose on an unsuspecting public for the first time in months. They're free to get up to all kinds of hanky-panky. God, help us all. Teams return to their usual home grounds, with the exception of the NZ Warriors, who stay in flip-slops on the Gold Coast because they are stuck, and can't go home. And from the first weekend after EOFY, up to 25% of a ground's capacity will allowed to be opened up to suitably distant mug punters. There's been no directive on whether the bars will be open.  Not that they will come in their droves, but pre-Covid, 10,000 (+) in a modern stadium was the size of a 'pretty good crowd' in Sydney. Then again, as soon as one spectator tests positive - which is highly likely - the gates will slam shut again and the turnstiles will rust over.

Don't mind a great deal where we are really - do you?  The care factor is starting to bottom out - but it's not very often in any season of following two teams, that they both win on the same weekend. Balmain and Townsville have history, so this is good too...although with the half-time score at 34-0, the Mighty Tiges took the foot off the pedal, when back in the olden days when things actuially mattered, they should have won by a cricket score.

WESTS TIGERS 36. Tries: Musgrove, Leilua, Brooks, Aloiai, Jennings, Mbye. Goals: Mbye (6).
NORTH QUEENSLAND COWBOYS 20. Tries: Feldt (2), Drinkwater, Marsters. Goals: Feldt (1).
At Campbelltown Sports Ground.
Crowd: 0.

try of the decade

Grizzlers,

How the Mighty Tiges could lose to a team that hadn't won a match in almost a calendar year, after scoring the Try of the Decade! is beyond me. Two kicks and nine sets of hands to put the pill under the black dot, then they took their foot off the pedal, potted a field goal thinking it's all wrapped up - then they lost interest, only to be pipped on the hooter. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in a classic mixed metaphor.

In truth, it's not quite beyond belief - it was complacency pure and simple - and it would never have been allowed to happen at the Spiritual Home in front of a full house. Coach Mr Magoo did not like it. He's wielded the axe, weeding out five passengers, saying he is sick to death of inconsistency. Aren't we all? It's been going on for years. But it was very sad to see The Great Benji Marshall among the scapegoats and dropped for the next game. The Living Legend is not having a bad season, but he's not livid about it. Benj is "shocked and disappointed" as you'd expect and the less said about his replacement in Josh "The Imposter" Reynolds the better. Coach Magoo has either lost his nana, or partaken of mushrooms, or both. Then Benji causes a "bio-security scare" by kissing a female reporter who'd been sent to Balmain to check whether the story really was true. You can't make this shit up. In any case, can someone please tell me what-the-fuck is going on? The only thing certain about any of this is the utter uncertainty about everything. Holy cow.

GOLD COAST TITANS 28. Tries: Proctor, Don, Hipgrave, Kelly, Sami. Goals: Taylor (4).
WESTS TIGERS 23. Tries: Nofoaluma (2), Doueihi, J.Leilua. Goals: Marshall (4). Field Goals: Marshall (1).
Crowd: 0.
At Lang Park, Brisbane.

The AFL makes a triumphant return to the paddock this week, and will struggle big time with no fans. There's more at stake here than in the league, which is a far superior game for television, as the aim is too keep the ball in the centre of the frame - there's not much need for wide shots, let alone panning across the non-existent crowd. The host broadcaster certainly got the cost of the TV rights way way down - while there is not a mug punter in sight and the Fat Lady can't be heard singing. The AFL's suffering revenue took another huge hit, right there. While the excitement among footy fans about the season resumption hasn't exactly reached fever pitch, the players are stuck in a bubble waiting to burst under a no bonking scrubbers regime - surely even they will lose interest soon enough under the circumstances, if not from first game game back. You do have to wonder what they do for their jollies locked up in that hygiene-driven bio-security hub. It's only a matter of time until some idiot busts out of there like a wild boy breaking free. Mark my words.

Being a chardonnay socialist to the bootstraps, my views on letting a few suited corporate types back into their poncy private boxes as the first bunch of spectators allowed in the ground are well known. WTF? That really got on my goat. Rich bastards whose interest in the game is minimal get first suck of the sauce bottle? Really? Utterly outrageous. Splash some cash and the dollar signs on the hungry tills at AFL HQ light up like Xmas trees, while the poor, broke, busted football loving pensioners freeze their arses off in the grimy blocks of inner suburban Melbourne as they wait to be pushed out of the igloo. That's not to mention the die hard fans who renew their club membership year after year after year because that's what their father did, and his father before him. What of them? The rusted-on life-long loyalists? Snubbed, brushed and ignored, they might as well be dead to the Powers That Be for all they care. The honky dollar is king.

Just on a pragmatic basis, with maybe a 1000 limit on spectators, surely you'd have the cheer squads as the first folks back in for a bit of action on the beaters against the advertising hoardings as some opposition loser is attempting a lousy kick at goal, and then going all delirious when he misses. That's what the TV viewer wants. Crazy club lunatics! The ones who make the banner every week, those kind of people - but no, it's oh, thanks for yr decades of work chums, but we forgot about the banners the players run through to get onto the field to start the game. Jesus. If the TV broadcaster really wants action, why not bring back the dancing girls? How old schoolers pine for the long lost good old days and all those terrific dance moves that the Swanettes used to put on. Marvelous stuff. When the crowd limit goes up to a couple more thousand, then you can put on the half-time entertainment! The little leaguers doing the run around, but this time you broadcast the childish madness in full. It'd be terrific! As it is, the color and movement extends to card board cut outs in the stands, complete with the faces of serial killers and even Mein Führer after fans paid to have their images put on the dummies' faces. The last person left in marketing has been taken out the back and shot. At least they didn't use Judy dolls.

The corporate types should be the last people you'd let back into the ground. Have you seen how these entitled people behave? Have you seen the unconscionable conduct they get up to with access to a free full bar? Nah, let the real fans slowly drift back into the ground to resume slurping pies and pouring warm beer over themselves. The NRL will return to "normal" sooner than the AFL too, given a 15K+ crowd is a good one in suburban Sydney, but is unheard of in Melbourne where ordinary games get twice that. The glorious "re-opening" of football is going to get very touchy when The Members start getting antsy about it - and they will - after HQ went without them playing "ghost games". And it's not as if there will be any great rush back either; it won't be a case of open the gates and they will come. Punters will still have the fear up them, with good reason - this coronavirus can kill a dude. "He went to the football, and never came back alive" will become a wild viral meme hashtag thingy. Complacency doesn't only extend to Balmain losing the unloseable game.