Test cricket in Pakistan is an education after 24 years

 

 Denizens of the bleachers,

It was most gracious & charitable of the Pakistan Cricket Board to admit that the pitch in Rawalpindi had been doctored, given the insurmountable evidence that it was. We've all seen the figures, chaps. Record breaking nod-offery. The Stats Guru was idly flipping the balls on the abacus back and forth when he discovered that there has been no match in Test cricket history, until now, in which century opening partnerships have kicked off the first, second, and third innings of a match. Never mind that they never got close to a 4th inns. Smiffy was also being most charitable when he described the pitch as "dead", when the Ghost of Tony Abbot could have easily been invoked with "dead, buried and cremated". The road to end all roads, akin to a narrow strip of badly graded dust across the Nullabor Plain. Some wag in the stands dubbed it "the worst pitch this century, anywhere". Usman "The Token Muzzie" Khawaja was on the verge of becoming a national hero again (home & away) in the only real highlight of a slumberful match after spending his entire career being so shabbily treated by the selectors, when he got out for 97 with a silly reverse sweep - of all the stoopid shots - that he would have missed any other day. [The Main Man then tonked a big ton at "home" in the next in atonement to silence his critics who said he couldn't play overseas, and only likes it when it's an easy pace coming on. At 35 years of age, the Kid can play, an average of 165.33 this tour says so. Not that there was any shadow of a doubt to begin with, for Chrissake, but he still had to be twice as good as anyone else to make the team in his 11th season, just because he's 'foreign.'] Ironic that as the pipe-opening stanza was being played, a fairly powerful bomb went off  'just up the road' - a suicide dude is hoist by his own petard in Peshawar, blowing up some Shia'a mosque and taking 56 with him to the Gates of Heaven in some tit-for-tat sectarian violence. No worries, you'd have to think the Strayan team bus would've had a few big burly ugly mercenaries toting Kalashnikov's riding shot gun. Tongans, preferably.

As the yawnfest was being played out in the heavy smog of nearby Islamabad, it did get to remind me of the one and only time a sitting US President has witnessed a day of test cricket - Gen. Dwight D.Eisenhower, because of its interminable dullness. There's been plenty of time to leaf through the old record books to while away the time. Poor Ike. For some bizarre reason he happened to find himself in Karachi on 8th December in 1959 on a whirl-wind Asian tour to be gonged with the nation's highest honor and get the huge Star of Pakistan pinned to his already dazzlingly bemedalled chest and was invited to the cricket, as it was unquestionably going to be the best show in town that day. It just so happened to be the fourth day of the third and final test between Pakistan and Australia. The locals dawdled interminably for 104 runs in the full days play for the loss of five wickets with Hanif carrying his bat all day. You guessed it, it wasn't the slowest day of cricket in Test match history, but got close. That happened three years earlier in the first and one off test between Pakistan and Straya in '56, when 95 runs were tonked in a full days play for 12 wkts on coir matting, also in Karachi. It remains the slowest day ever. So, they've got serious form here on giving pitches the medical treatment, going back a long way. It's not known if Mr. President spent the whole day at the cricket, but why not if he had an important round of meetings to hold - everybody who was anyone would've been there. All reports suggest Ike liked the baseball (went to 13 days of MLB matches as President), lemonade and smoked like a two bob watch; you'd reckon he would've been right at home on the local cheroots with few clues as to what was going on. So, there's that.  

Running down a draw for more than a day in the Karachi heat this time round - again breaking all sorts of records down those dusty laneways - Pakistan certainly know how to play on deceased wickets, where the bowlers fail to extract any bounce from the lifeless pitch; even Warnie wouldn't have been make her move. As the pancake and six feet under.  Set 500 to win with all the time in the world and the run rate drops to row after row of maidens and the Pak's bat out a million overs to keep the Benood-Qadir Trophy at 0-0, but only with skipper Babar doing the business. Not taking any chances of getting beaten here, with a match to play, no way José. Just hang on grimly to the bitter end. 3/251 at the finish of the first day with The Usman batting large again set the stage of a watch the ball and bat all day kind of match. All day, every day. It's a labour of love for the bowlers, and don't they know it.

There was no word as to whether His Highness The Legendary Lord Imran Khan Prime Minister of Pakistan made it to the members at Lahore - probs a bit too much other stuff going on at the time; internal factional politics imploding, the Taliban at yr doorstep, bombs going off, war in Europe, you know, that sort of thing. The irony is that with the cricket on the line, the 'Lion of Lahore' found himself in all sorts of deep doggy-do after jailing some riff-raff political opponents - as you do - most of whom have been bailed but remain unhappy about it, he rigged it to narrowly avoid a no confidence motion in the Pakistan parliament, and called for fresh elections anyway saying he's quashed a plot by foreign agitators.  Which still puts him in a rather difficult position, as the way he sees it is the United States "wants me, personally, gone". Poor Imran; he had his heart set on it, with good intentions, but there was always a school of thought on whether it was a wise career move. In that part of the world, that sort of shit always tends to end in tears, especially for a cricket hero. He should have been knighted for his exploits with them mighty quick right arm fast balls on all sorts of decks all over the cricketing world, and left it at that, but that's in "beautiful hindsight", in the now immortal words of the NSW Deputy Commissioner of the State Emergency Service (after he'd earlier told everybody who might have been waiting for a boat that they'd be well advised to "get as high as you possibly can" in the interim). So, there's that. 

But it was a ripe final day in Lahore, to pick up the newly minted trophe 1-0 at the very last gasp, just when you thought that "sporting declarations" in pursuit of risky victory had fallen right out of favour. It's very hard to question Cummins admittance to cricket's Pantheon now - one of the modern greats, and he's had an absolute saloon passage as skipper, like fruit for the sideboard after a stellar career. My Spy at the Ground, who had supa-glued his eyes to a late-night pay-per-view cathode ray tube, remarked that on the last day of the last test, the GOAT showed why he is just that. No argument will be brooked. Never mind that Smiffy and Burbs will soon be looking for other work at their age after glittering, but forever tarnished, careers, let's face it, everybody is getting on; half the team's on the wrong side of 30. For the moment, winners are grinners and losers can suit themselves, but spare a thought for poor ol' Swepso under the circumstances, copping a right education getting picked for his first game in a joint no-one had even seen for 24 years. A bowling average of 133.00 for a 28-year-old leggie on debut tells you that's a very long time.

All power to their oars. Took 'em 15 days down that highway, but they eventually found what they were looking for.

 

 

never in doubt

 

Brave Beserkers,

The plotting of the gargantuan pitch invasion began in earnest at quarter time. Just before the first break, found myself clambering up the steps from Bay 12 to the Doug Walters Bar when the crowd went absolutely apeshit, but daren't look back for fear of toppling over. At the top the staircase, pivoted, and saw The Great Lance Franklin boot his 997th career goal and every man, woman, and child were off their tits. Of course, Buddy got a standing ovation around the ground and there was a palpable feeling in the air that something might be on here, in a joint packed to the rafters and dripping with atmosphere. My Spy At The Ground was also in the house, but at the opposite end in the Members and he reckons they were already having paroxysms in there. Everyone had reviewed the old video footage of Plugger "There's Only One" Tony Lockett sending his 1000th pig skin through the big sticks at the SCG way back in '95, when a few hundred fans ran on and mobbed him from a poorly attended match against a lowly Freo in the second last match of the season in a town that cared little for a losing team, let alone two no-hopers who couldn't make the finals, with the official crowd listed at 10,410 for the Great Plugger's milestone. Plug didn't have the same pull as Bud. The worst thing that happened that day was a goal umpire dressed in a white lab coat & Fedora got bowled over in the fracas as the cops fruitlessly tried to become involved. It was a vastly different world back then; Ron Barassi was coach, for Chrissake, bringing the Swans back from their lowest ebb in 30 years, but the 27 year old precedent had been set, and everyone knew the pile-on would be on for Buddy's Big One. No question. An old bloke just along the row from us was incongruously dressed in a Swans guernsey paired with a tasteful set of gold Hawaiian shorts with brightly coloured pineapples and palm trees on them. He explained before the match began that he'd selected that particular set of togs "so there's a better chance of getting seen on the TV during the rush", even though he conceded his senior citizen status would mean he wouldn't be the first one over the fence. Little did he, or anyone, know what was to come. The only question begging was when? The whispering had been going on for weeks. The Great Man couldn't possibly do The Grand in an away game (oh, no, no, no, no siree, the Swans PR Dept would have banned that outright), the Living Legend got shut out of it anyway in the season pipe-opener against the Pygmies scoring a single goal, his 996th, so the odds were fairly long on four majors to complete the feat at the first opportunity at home. Most of the born pessimists rated the chances of the thing going off against the Cats as very slim. But, only the old time rusted-on diehards know that faith equals hope and they were there with bells on anyway. Tickets were snapped up by a lot more than just the faithful - there were plenty there who were driven by a bad case of Sydney FOMO.

The Ground hadn't hosted a Swans game in nine months, and the old paddock hadn't been graced with my presence for just over five years, so the fever pitched anticipation was ubiquitous. And as the game went on, it got worse. As the maneuvering in the crowd got going after quarter time, the Swans played some mighty fine second quarter football, putting on seven goals to four to let the scoreboard do the talking, knowing that Geelong would have to play catch up football for the rest of the night, and they only had to hold them the in the Championship Quarter and the shooting match was in the bag. It didn't help the Cats that they were caught in the Swans' new-found "McCartin Sandwich" up front, got beaten badly in the mid-field, their back line was in dissaray and their two marquee players were being tagged right out of it. In reality, the Swans were too big, too strong, too hard and a Sydney win was never in doubt at the main break. Of course, The Great Man could do no wrong at any time during the proceedings, despite giving away frees and having rings run round him. A bloke nearby barracked when an opposition rookie half his age beat Buddy cold or better still, when some Geelong 'superstar' dived for a free kick, with "we didn't pay to come here to see you, mate!" Lance kicked his 998th, and now it got interesting.

Having succeeded in beating the traditional three-quarter time rush for the bars and dunnies after The Champo - which the Swans won handsomely - this time found myself a slip-slidin' across on the piss soaked floor in the Gents and was about to push the exit door when the unmistakable crescendoing roar in the house told me that The Buddwah had kicked his 999th goal. Pirouetted on my stick and saw that some boffin in their infinite wisdom had installed a telly on the wall just along from the said shit house, so watched the replay of the goal right there as the last break became this gigantic swirl as folks were darting in every direction like Whirling Dervishes. Nearing the end of three quarter-time it was simply impossible to move in the human traffic jam, and all praise to the Youngest Daughter (who'd flown up from Melbun specifically for the match as she had a feeling in her water that this would be it) for rescuing me and literally wrestling her way through the wild throng to get the old bastard back on his perch ten rows from the fence. Thousands and thousands and thousands of punters had moved down from the stands above and people had been switching seats so young folks were on the ends of the rows pushing the elderly to the middle and the walkways between bays were sardine tin packed with people literally sitting on top of each other in a sea of red & white. Some in the rows behind us had to stand on their seats for the whole last quarter to see anything at all, such was the crush. Security had vanished in the face of this heaving half-to-fully pissed mob in a very happy frame of mind. But things started to get really tense with a sense of intense disappointment looming after all that, as the quarter clock on the scoreboard ticked towards 25 minutes. And Franklin wasn't even on the ground as Super Coach Horse held him back as the ultimate strike weapon, something he's expert at, having done it for the last eight years.

A stupendous commotion went up when The Living Legend was finally released from the bench into the fray, and with minutes left - it seemed like only seconds as time began to warp wildly - No.1 Chad Warner fed Buddy with a perfectly weighted chip kick from 20 yards, delivering the pill for the thousandth moment, then time stood still as the stadium fair shook with the thunder of the screeching, screaming and cheering of thirty thousand plus brave beserkers. The moment Buddy took the simple chest mark, all the Cats players except two sprinted straight for the sheds. Seriously eager fans were already over the fence and crouched on the boundary line like sprinters on the starting blocks at "on your marks". Of all the 999 goals he'd kicked, there was no way in the wonderful wide world of sports that King Full Forward would be missing this one. As soon as His Most Excellent Football Magesty lurched onto his favoured left leg and the ball sailed through the high-diddle-diddle to notch the 1000 - the gifted make it look easy - total pandemonium never before witnessed broke out everywere. And it will never be seen again. Security guards opened the gates for people to stream on, sensibly preventing the potential of a human catastrophe. It was pretty fuckin' dangerous as it was, with legs, arms, and feet catapulted over seats as beer cups flew and half chewed pies dropped as the swollen river of spectators swept towards the ground. It's a plain miracle there weren't more injuries. As more and more punters continued to pour onto the Hallowed Turf, a hand crafted banner with white letters on a red background appeared in the Bill O'Reilly Stand: "Congats on 1000 Buddy! We've loved 420 of them", a reminder of the number Buddy'd actually kicked in The Red & The White (the others were for arch enemies Hawthorn, just saying). And still they flooded onto the ground; fans picking up sods of turf ploughed up by the players as souvenirs and one woman even managed to spread her Nanna's ashes on the centre wicket square amid the chaos as per the dear old rusted-on fan's dying wish last year at 93. After His Glorious Greatness was finally escorted from the field, the fans struggled to get off, there were so many out there. The game, in fact, was in real danger of never restarting at all - due to a lack of players. Of course, every Sydney player wanted to watch the 1000th go through, and apart from a small bodyguard for Buddy, they all then fled for the nearest exit they could find as fast as they could. Warner and Ollie Florent took a wrong turn under the stands and ended up outside the ground, on Driver Ave, clueless on how to re-enter. When the crowd started pooling at the boundary rope waiting to get back into the stands, Supercoach Horse did a head count and found he was five players short. They were all eventually rounded up, and back on they went. In an anomaly, the final quarter clock on the scoreboard kept on running throughout the tremendous tumult. When the players finally reappeared after the joyous riot, it read 51'36". Yep, the sixty minute quarter was on its way.

There was a fair bit of pent up emotion left out there by the faithful; all memories of empty stadiums, fake sound effects, player bubbles, hubs and nubs, restricted crowds where masks off were only approved while drinking heavily - completely & uettrly forgotten. No Covid protocols of any description were observed at any time by anyone in the bleachers for the entirety of the match. It was like the last two seasons never happened. Under the circumstances, with a sub-mutant doing the rounds, it was a technical "super spreader" event. But in the heat of the moment, no one could give a blue root, and as always at the footy, the chances of being gobbed on by someone are high. But no one will ever regret being there even if they get crook, and as time goes by, hundreds of thousands will claim they were.

The last six minutes of the match were played out, as you'd expect, in a rather desultory fashion with The Main Man firmly benched. But nobody had left the ground, so the joint erupted once more in cacophony when the final siren sounded as the scoreboard clock rolled over the sixty minute mark to FULL: 00'00".

And then, for the first time during the night, it rained.

That's entertainment.

SYDNEY:  4.3, 11.3, 15.4, 17.5 (107). Goals: Heeney 5, Franklin 4, Hayward 3, Gulden 2, McLean, Mills, Rowbottom.

GEELONG: 2.4, 6.7,  8.13, 10.17 (77). Goals: Close 4, Atkins, Duncan, Hawkins, Kolodjashnij, Parfitt, Tuohy.

At Sydney Cricket Ground.

Crowd: 36,578.

 

 

 

 

 

it looks increasingly odd

 

Denizens of the Bleachers,

What if anything to take away from the recent 4-0 drubbing of the Poms, and the right to chisel off that miserable little pissant Ashes Trophy from it's prized pedestal at Lord's? Not a lot, if you were looking for competitiveness, but plenty if you subscribe to the laudable sentiment that there's no finer sight in world sport than seeing Poms ground into the dust. The nail biting draw in Sydney aside, and apart from some brilliant, nay breathtaking, individual performances from some of the Strayans - chief among them Uzzie's twin tons - the thrust and parry of the theatre became predictable - not a great deal of fun - with not one, but two, Pink Stink day-nighters adding precisely nothing, or less, to the equation. As My Spy at The Ground in Adelaide remarked as the England batting collapsed yet again in the twilight..."this is like shooting fish in a barrel". All reports suggest the two words that stuck out from the English press coverage of their debacle were "ghastly" and "pathetic", which are fair enough descriptors for a rabble of upper class twits and wally's, given a recent study that's found England's selection policies are even more aristocratic than the House of Lords. Worse! The only worry now is that the Strayan team is not all that strong either anymore, with their best - but now veteran - batsmen and bowlers not that far away from retirement and they certainly won't play Ashes at home again. But there's not exactly a whole bunch of whipper-snappers nipping at their heels, self-fulfilling the time-honoured adage that it's harder to get dropped from the Australian team than it is to be picked. A simple example: if 29 y-o MS Harris is the best they can do to partner an aged Burbs Warner at the top of the order, then the selectors are looking at long term trouble. Let's face it; Australia carried passengers in every game and still won handsomely, only going to show how weak England really are. But it's an impressive list of remarkable ancients who have played test cricket this summer: Warner (35), Khawajah (35), GOAT (34), Smiffy (32), Boland (32), Hazo (31), Starc (31), Neser (31).

Never mind entrenched racism in Australian cricket, only the second blackfella to ever play for Straya, SM Boland (after a decade in 1st class cricket for Chrissake without ever once coming to the selectors' notice), had - according to Alison Mitchell on the telly - a "Dreamtime Debut" at the MCG, and then continued to ram the gigantic tusk up the Pommy runter right through to the finish line. Damn, it was good to watch, but deary me, the bloke'd be as buggered as, after that, at his age. There's no problem bowling well into your thirties apart from bad backs, knees, ankles and blistered feet, if you are fit enough - just ask Jimmy Anderson - but it's alot harder to bat as you get older - just ask Jacky Leak - who wields the willow in spectacles. SPD Smith has over the course of his brilliant career been as bad a fidget as MJ Clarke, who used to touch himself all over his body and poke every bit of equipment he had and all but announce 'am I looking a million dollars here, or what?" before every ball; Smiffy is now even worse. The Good Lady Wife reckons he looks more like a ballerina than a batsman when he pirouettes about at the crease - maybe he has to be that drenched in superstition and routine to keep up the rigourous attention span required for Test cricket? Dunno. Whatever it is, it looks increasingly odd. But there will come a time when even he will have to rest on his not inconsiderable laurels and be admitted to cricket's Pantheon as one of the greats. The youngster in the team, that "enormous human being" Cam Green at 22 has a helluva lot to learn and really only gets a spot due to age old wrong-headed thinking that every Australian team must have an all-rounder, despite the fact that the last two genuine all-rounders were Alan Davidson (last test 1963) and Keith Miller (last test 1956), so there's now precious little, if any, living memory of them ever playing. God forbid poor Green ever becoming another Shane Watson. And what can you say about 27-year-old Marnus "Tanglefoot" Labuschagne? (Max Walker will forever be "Tangles"). He can bat, no doubt, and makes runs like a machine at three - but the dismally comical falling over and leaving all three stumps exposed moment of ignominy in Hobart was a timely reminder to put all those silly antics away and just watch the ball, son. Don't get caught up in the "I'm Number One, so why try harder?" trap. There's only one way from there, and it's down.

After the departure of TD Paine from the Captaincy, and shortly thereafter the team, for the fatal mistake of letting his dick do the talking and thoroughly self-destructing his reputation, PJ Cummins appeared to slide in effortlessly as skipper. He's the first to admit he has plenty to learn, but he's a clever man. After making an unwise choice of dinner venue and missing Adelaide, there was no option but to give the Captaincy back to Smiffy for another lash at it for almost certainly his last hurrah. However, without anyone really noticing,Travis Head was quietly handed the poisoned chalice and named as Vice Captain for the one match. So, what does that tell you? Are the Board (who, as far as anyone knows, still control the appointment of the Captain) saying that 'we're making plans for Travis'? or were they just playing the home town hero card?. Who knows, and there's not much point gazing into the crystal ball of The Chairman and the Three Wise Men, when everything is a day-to-day proposition anyway (in the real world).

Despite the largely dull lop-sided affair and the complete & utter uselessness of the pink ball, Test cricket is far from dead, as the other formats continue to struggle big time. 50/50 is a moribund pyjama game from another era that has just about lost all relevance, while 20/20 now has no pretence about being anything more than a three-ringed circus, where winning or losing is meaningless, as long as the largely unknown players put on a show. The BBL's solid decline in TV viewership continues, and the crowds, Corona or no Corona, are voting with their feet. The official attendance for the Heat v Scorchers match at Docklands Stadium on 17 January numbered an astonishing 480. Crikey, even a bad day at a First Class match would struggle to get that few in through the turnstiles. And in Melbourne, where crowds gather to watch two flies crawling up a wall.

So, with the Stoopid Little Urn back where it belongs, the next Test assignment on the sub-continent will be an entirely different bottle of mussels altogether. It's a place where you can really get found out on doctored pitches, just for a start off. It's also a joint that can mess with yr head and it seems like forever (try 24 years) since they last played in Pakistan, so no-one touring there will have a single clue about local conditions. And if, in these difficult & uncertain times, they are forced to employ local umpires to officiate in the Test matches, then it's goodnight, nurse. The Strayans will need a power of luck against all the underhand tricks on their next jolly jaunt. See you in Karachi in six weeks time.

 

 

missed the mark

 

Disappointee's

'They had their chances' was the call at full-time, so it wasn't as if there was any bad luck involved, but there it is. Ba Boom! End of the section, season over. Just like that. Your ticket is punched. Swans go down in the Elimination Final by a single, solitary point to dash the hopes of the die-hard faithful.

After a see-sawing affair looked like turning into a rout at three-quarter time, and the match was seemingly gorn for all money by any estimation, like everyone, My Spy at The Ground was getting pretty frantic in the final quarter, when the Swans then threatened to have a very good dip at winning the thing after playing catch up football all day. But they missed the mark. Just to prove the Swans made a complete mess of the last quarter a message from the ground sputtered through on the Bush Telegraph in the corner of the lounge room. "Bell out of bounds, Haywood poster, Hickey behind, Wicks hits post, Bell yet another poster, Buddy behind". If any of those had been converted, South Melbourne would have won in a canter. But, alas, it never came to pass. Seven behinds in the final stanza will not win a final. You can talk all you like about whether they shifted from Plan A to Plan B too late, but it really was a shame to go out in the first week of the finals after finishing sixth. The Battle of the Bridge thing fell out of favour a long time ago, as there's never been any if this cross town rivalry thing that can get pretty bitter and twisted in natural two-team towns like Adelaide and Perth, so that passion was missing in Launceston, of all the joints on the face of this Gawdforsaken earth. GWS have no supporters anyway, as they're an entirely manufactured entity. As far as can be discerned from the Pygs opening finals performance, the key thing in their favour seemed to be that demonstrative thug in the form of the now rubbed-out Toby Greene. Please. Do not get me started on Toby "Fucking" Greene. Without the crazed wildman of the west, Geelong should gobble them up like kippers for breakfast in the semi's.

But nah, the game was full of coodabeens, shooldabeens, miteabeens and all that jazz. Buddy needed to go deep into September to really threaten the one million career goals milestone this season, so will now have to wait for the big time pay day - the 9th year of his contract with The Red and The White. Throughout the regular season the Swans never lost or won by very much for the most part - not many thrashings - but the Covid bubble arrangements skewed everything. For the second season in a row, the Premiers will have their name painted in gold on the timber panels down at the clubhouse with an asterisk denoting the *impossible conditions the season was played under.  In the final paralysis, it was a mighty effort just to prove the pundits wrong and make the finals at all. If you told any of the players before the season started they'd be playing a finals match in north Tasmania in search of a crowd, any crowd, they would have laughed you got of the room. Going forward, as they say in newspeak, even with a very solid basis for a Premiership winning side, they'll still need a little judicious off season buying in the player market, some trading away of their consistent passengers, and ushering through a fresh crop of draftee's. You'd have to think the future for the Sydney System looks bright. It's a margin call in these difficult and uncertain times, but maybe even brighter than the future of the AFL itself. Everything is very much kept in-house. The Swans could have done a week long pub crawl around the picturesque Apple Isle dressed in women's clothing to celebrate Mad Monday for all anyone knows, as it wouldn't have made the papers.

'They only had themselves to blame', was the call at full-time. And for once, losing by the slimmest of margins was hardly the fault of the Bamford's; they had a reasonable enough game, so there's that. Damn it. Back in the day there would have been the whiff of me pouring a beer tin over me bonce with smoke pouring outta the ears, but not so nearly as bad as the worst experience in world sport: losing the Big One by a point in a score measured in hundreds of them. It never fails to remind of that time many, many, many moons ago now, finding myself in the kitchen of an ordinary suburban home straight out of 1950's Adelaide with my inconsolable the then first mother-in-law in a distraught stupour. For a woman who only very rarely drank anything at all, she'd managed to put away the best part of a bottle of cooking sherry and was wobbling around attempting to slug some from the neck slurring to no-one in particular "a bloody point, a bloody point, a bloody point, a bloody point", and apart from the occasional grunt of "shit!" was incapable of saying anything else. The 1978 SANFL Grand Final was the cause of her angst and grief. Her beloved dear boys from Sturt, who were unbackable white-hot favourites, had been beaten in a classic snatching defeat from the jaws of victory scenario by those ruffians from Norwood by "a bloody point" with the absolutely insane scoreline of Norwood 16.15 (111) d. Sturt 14.26 (110) before a crowd of 50,867 at the now demolished Footy Park. 41 behinds in a match to produce a result of a "bloody point, a bloody point"...ah well, as they say in the classics...there's always next year.

SYDNEY:  3.2 , 5.4,  8.6, 10.13 (73). Goals: Heeney 4, Franklin 3,
Papley 2, Bell.
GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY:  3.2, 9.3, 11.7, 11.8 (74). Goals: Greene 3, Sproule 2,
Himmelberg 2, Hogan 2, Taranto, Lloyd.
Crowd: 8,635*(capacity restricted).
At York Park, Launceston.

 

anyone's Flag

 

Denizens of the Bleachers,

Things always augure well from the off when you find yrself sitting in front of the colour telly and the marquee player in yr team kicks the Goal of The Year inside the opening ten seconds of the match - and then goes on to boot a bag. Just what the doctor ordered. Lance B Franklin was fed the ball out of the ruck from the centre bounce, dodged a few tackles, steadied about 60 metres out, no leads going on, an open goal, and he thought to himself "I can kick this myself" before honking a whopping left foot drop punt that sailed through the high diddle-diddle with distance to spare. Under usual circumstances, the packed crowd at the SCG would have gone absolutely ape-shit at the sight of something so high, wide & handsome after the season the Swans have had. Instead, The Red and The White found themselves stuck between a rock and hard place in the wastelands of Docklands with not a soul there, apart from what the Germans have calculated at about the 630 people required to run a professional stadium game.

Never mind that Sydney have been on the road now for 70+ days, they can see the light at the end of the tunnel now it's business time in the pointy end of the season to mix a few metaphors. They know the more they keep winning, the more they're kept from home. That's the least of their problems with Sydney littered with beshitten LGA's and sundry hotbeds of infectious disease. If they lose, so be it, but the way things stand with one of the most even top eights in years where everyone's a chance, it wouldn't be hard to motivate them to drive deep into September. At this point, it's anyone's Flag.

Super Coach Horse has been satisfyingly brilliant this year, decamping to the inter-change bench more or less permanently mid-season, leaving the real coaching to Dean Cox up in the box with the legion of assistant coaches, while Horse barks orders and gets in players' ears at ground level while the game is going on. Horse has even been on the curly phone hotline to upstairs. The Good Lady Wife is an excellent lipreader, but she's been stymied by the Super Coach wearing his mask on his chin and only pulling it up when he knows the camera is on him. Longmire can see a golden opportunity here in the twilight of his coaching career - wouldn't it be nice to cap it all off with another Premiership falling into your lap as other teams fall for the trap? The roster, without really serious injury all year, has come good a couple of seasons early by most calculations. Looking back on what the self appointed pundits said at the start of the season they were ranking the Swans to finish in 11th-16th. No-one predicted a 6th placed finish, least of all more than one squandered opportunity to make the top four.

Former Crows coach Don Pyke has to be given a lot of credit for his strategic planning on each and every opposition team week-in week-out all season long. He's the one who devises plans A,B, and C...and rarely this year have they had to go beyond Plan A. Adelaide must rue the day they got rid of him, given they were lucky to finish 15th without him. The "Sydney System" has worked a treat yet again. Bring on a few excellent youngsters through the Academy every year - one out of four has really excelled; Erroll Gulden is but a babe in the woods at 18, but has "long term star player" written all over him. And Sydney's knack of rehabilitating washed up players has done wonders yet again with Tom Hickey at long last fixing one of their long-term weakness - a genuine ruckman. The mid-field is crackling along just in time for the blowtorch-to-the-belly end of the season, and you can't fault a back line who can put up a concrete rendered brick wall whenever required. With Buddy closing in on 1000 career goals, the forward line can suit themselves.

And so we come to Saturday's elimination final against modern day arch rivals the Greater Western Sydney Pygmies at the only place that will have them - York Park, Launceston. Launey, eh? York Park has a nominal capacity of 19,500 but even though Tassy is entirely plague free you won't see them hanging from the rafters. With interstate travel banned, not many, if any, will understand Sydney, as they get all their footy news from Melbourne, where the Swans are rarely, if ever, mentioned; the Pygs even less so. The Stats Guru has been busy with the abacus getting a handle on the run up-to the deciders, and notes that the Swans have won seven of their last eight minor round matches against teams placed 9th, 5th, 7th, 11th, 8th, 10th,18th, and 16th at the time - so they haven't faced a top four side in yonks and there's really no way to get a handle on finals possibilities, but in amongst those wins, Sydney towelled up GWS by 26 pts. If nothing else, it will be one of the weirdest finals in eons, never mind that it should by rights be at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Home ground advantage is long dead now, and will probably never return.

SYDNEY:  6.4, 9.7, 13.7, 21.10 (136). Goals: Franklin 6, Papley 3, Heeney 3, Wicks 2,
McLean 2, Mills, Dawson, Gulden, Hickey, Rowbottom.
GOLD COAST :  0.4,  3.8,  5.9,  6.13 (49). Goals: King 4, Corbett, Sexton.
At Docklands Stadium.
Crowd: 0.

There really are fewer better places than Browne Parke, Rockhampton to bury once and for all the Mighty Tiges hopes of making the finals after playing sudden death for weeks now as they clung onto the mythical "mathematical chance" of sneaking into the top eight. Rocky, eh? With the NRL having been forced to flee to QLD under the Corona protocols and in search of a crowd - any crowd - the Tiges turned up at a ground described in its Wiki page as "the home of rugby league football in Central Queensland since the 1890s". It's just a shame rugby league didn't come to Queensland until 1908. So it's a ground with tickets on itself, for start off. Be that as it may, on the strength of the 50-20 debacle, they would have been eaten like kippers for breakfast if they'd accidentally made the season enders anyway.

So what went wrong in yet another winter of discontent as the poor Tiges blundered on, unable to make the Top Eight for the 10th consecutive season?? That's a long time between drinks for the hard-bitten supporter to not even have a whiff of the finals, let alone a Premiership. It was hardly the fault of Coach Mr Magoo. Madge just didn't have enough to work with, and the "greater than the sum of their parts" thing just never happened for him. It didn't help recruiting a new skipper in James Tamou who had a dreadful season, and is a self-admitted failure as a captain "there are things I have let slip for too long and I put that all on me". At least Tamou knows that he's first in line to take a good look at himself down in the Room Full of Mirrors on the Balmain Road, if not clean out the club's back door without so much as a sausage. A major league blunder they could never fix.

Daine Laurie is a bright young talented full back who's set to go places. David Noafaluma continues to bring vintage brute strength with skilful creativity to the wing, but he turned up still pissed from the night before at training one day recently and he put it down to a lack of genuine motivation and everyone seemed sweet with that; he got a slap on the wrist axing from the "leadership group" - whatever that is - to which he is sure to have said "you can have it". The Mighty Tiges have a very handy goal kicking five-eighth in Adam Doueihi, who's taken over The Great Robbie Farah's mantle as "The Best Leb in the Game", while the pack is a perfectly serviceable unit without being brilliant, but they're more mobile and robust than most with a ranking chief in the Samoan mafia, the 115kg bulldozer known as Luciano Leilua, leading the way - but that does not make 13 players to put out there on the park every goddamn week, Pando or no Pando. You can't do too much with a serious shortage of depth, not to mention talent, on the roster.

Die-hard Tiges supporters would have been quite happy if the Corona had just halted competitive sport altogether, and are now disappointed that'll never happen after Tokyo. Balmain ended up playing too many players trying to fix up the weak links in the chain and plug the holes in the dykes, but it never worked. The miserable crowd at Rocky was testament to the popularity of the match. Given that ScoMo is No.1 ticket holder at the Sharks, it's not that surprising.

The whole shebang is enough to drive the long suffering Tiges punter completely spare, but year after year we still come back for more punishment & insanity, even if all hope was lost in the wilds of Queensland after a decade in the doldrums. And there's still two more rounds to play in the regular season, so they didn't even get to have Mad Monday in the tropics and break out of the Corona bubble - yet. For the truly rusted-on, The Glory Days have well and truly gone away.

CRONULLA-SUTHERLAND SHARKS 50. Tries: Mulitalo (2), Metcalf (2), Kennedy (2),
Katoa (2), Wilton. Goals: Trindall (6).
WESTS TIGERS 20. Tries: Chee Kam, Maumalo, Taulau, Tuilagi. Goals: Doueihi (2).
At Browne Park, Rockhampton, Qld.
Crowd: 2,863.

 

Hamburg Olympic bid 2015

 

Grandstanders,

While "The Quiet Games" in Tokyo were a pleasant enough diversion from more pressing matters, it goes without saying the lack of atmos was palpable. There were some stunning athletic moments and achievements of course, but with no screaming fans going apeshit or legions of that special kind of Japanese lunatic that would have turned out at every venue to marvel at, well, it wasn't the same. Nothing is the same anymore, least of all the future of spectator sports. Let's face it. It's been all downhill since Syderney 2000, and those days have well & truly gone away. The AFL Grand Final to be staged in Perth and the decider in the National Rugby League to be played in Auckland in order to have some kind of of crowd - any crowd - rent-a-crowd - gives you an idea of where this is all heading.

The good burghers of Brisbane better be careful what they wish for just at the moment when everything is nothing more than a day-to-day proposition; the denizens of the city of Hamburg got it spot on a few years back now - seen on the streets of the city in the lead up to the 2015 referendum on bidding for the 2024 Olympics, in which the resounding vote was NO...

...so the Games went to Paris/Los Angeles (LA was meant to have 2024, but they swapped with Paris for 2028. No one asked why). There were no other bidders. The Corona is the only thing that's changed in all those years...and, oh, and the entire lack of interest in staging the Olympics. The deeply privileged & entitled, absurdly ostentatious and astonishingly corrupt multi-billion dollar business that is the International Olympic Committee might have something to do with it...sorry Brisvegas, but there are bigger fish to fry. Never mind the games' impending death knell at the heavily boycotted shambles that will be the winter Olympics in Beijing next year.

 

 

Mr Walker

 

Casual racists,

It's well known that Tex Walker is as thick as a brick and can hardly string a sentence together, but who knew he's also idiotic imbecile? Never mind him always being the flakey show pony who couldn't pull a Brownlow vote to save himself as he only ever had one good game in four and has been pulling the wool over the Adelbrained selector's eyes for years - his comeuppance now comes via the time honoured tradition of calling a black-cunt a black-cunt.

So it's excellent that his football career is now dead in the water; perhaps he could take the lead from Iron Bar Tuckey and go into the hotel-motel trade?