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May 20, 2007
Throwing yourself off tall buildings is fun
In the all-time league table of shit weekends this one should be in contention for the double chance. For the last two days I've been as sick as a dog with my head feeling like it's going to fall off. The first indication of this was when I, for no apparent reason and despite being embarrasingly sober, puked everywhere in a taxi on Friday night. And didn't that cost me? Then after two days of barely being able to move, with my neck and shoulders feeling as if they've been beaten with a baseball bat I get to drag myself off my deathbed and watch Melbourne play, and presumably be murdered by, the premiers in Perth. The only thing that could make it any worse - other than not being able to chuck a sickie tomorrow due to a work schedule that a WW2 POW would flinch at - would be if I was the victim of a violent home invasion sometime this evening.
Shall we see how this one goes? Well christ we may as well, I'm sure that even 15 minutes before the game starts we all know what's going to happen next. Even the Fox Sports program guide is mocking our chances of winning. Rightly so too may I add. Is it too defeatist to just ask for a big effort?
And duly the game opened with anything but. Had the Eagles been able to kick straight we would have been looking at an apocalypse of Richmond-esque proportions. The gap between the two sides was embarassing as for all the tagging and cheating in the world the Eagles midfield carved us to shreds. How many sides have had 3 inside 50's in one quarter recently. Even teams who score nothing in a quarter usually get it inside more, it just comes out more often. This was 30 minutes of pain and suffering. 5.8 to 1 straight with Sylvia dropping one in the goalsquare, Bate failing to make the distance from 50 and Nathan Carroll not travelling in the same time zone as his direct opponent all pointed to evil being afoot.
The second quarter was more of the same. Nobody was fooled by us kicking the first goal it continued to be an apocalpyse through the centre, and again only wonky kicking kept us within a respectable margin. James McDonald kicked one after the siren - after obviously marking it after the siren as well - to round the quarter off but as we went into half time more than 40 points down you had to wonder just how ugly this was going to get - especially when our midfield started to tire later on. You know it was a game exactly like this that Neale Balme got the sack after. Just saying. That night Leigh "Juice" Newton kicked two of our three goals, now he sits in a coaching box that must be inches away from shut down under the Trade Practices Act for false and misleading advertising.
So we came back in the third. Got to within four goals and then fell apart faster than Michael Jackson's proverbial and got belted.
Votes? Fuck must we?
5 - Johnstone
4 - Sylvia
3 - McDonald
2 - Green
1 - Petterd
Leaderboard? We don't need no god damn leaderboard.
Posted by Supermercado in Match Reviews at May 20, 2007 03:21 PM
Comments
I have a confession to make: I am to blame for Melbourne's abysmal season. You see, it's all to do with my lack of observance of rituals this year. Last year I found that if I sang 'It's a Grand Old Flag' (quietly to myself, obviously) the day before a match we would win... and what do you know: we acquired a considerable winning streak... until, of course, we lost. But this year I forgot to sing in the early rounds and after our act of footballing seppuku against Hawthorn in Rd. 2 I was just too dispirited to notice. After that I've turned up to what used to be the House of Pain (the MCG) to either have the match stolen from us (a la Port) or witness the football equivalent of prison rape (a la Geelong and Fremantle). But today I received, alongside a bit of advertising for The Age from MFC, shiny new member stickers. I don't know about you, but I noticed that the stickers started to fade around quarter time during the match against St Kilda from a proud red and blue to a cowed and nauseous green. Now you seem pretty smart so I'll spare you the explanation of the bitter metaphorical poetry of it all. Naturally I affixed them post-haste, conscious all the while of the likely sniggering I might expect from passers-by for wasting my entire life with something as soul-destroying as the Melbourne Football Club. But I perservered, and my efforts were rewarded by the blaze of colour the stickers offered. All of a sudden Melbourne was red and blue again, not a withered greyish gloom. I had a sort of atheist's epiphany: we're going to win on Sunday. I actually feel we might turn things around (i.e. not come last). If I'm wrong then I shall move to Montenegro and adopt an ascetic existence (let's face it, can a hair shirt really be as irritating as supporting Melbourne!) In any case, I will be quietly expecting victory on Sunday, and if I'm wrong, please free to rub it in my face!
Posted by: Mark at May 25, 2007 08:34 PM