May 17, 2008
Adelaide's Finest
So, you thought the AFL Grand Final did it badly? Never thought you'd see anything which would top the abortion they served up in 1999 when a "spaceship" crashed into the MCG and a fake Russian cosmonaut with the worst accent ever got out of it to do a tired catchphrase.
We present the 1990 SANFL Grand Final halftime show. Fast forward to 1.45 for chicken suits, the Birdy dance and the most unenthusiastic and out of time child performers ever.
Then at about 4.45 the tone changes entirely and the marching band starts playing porn music as a cavalcade of scantily clad tarts enter the arena.
Then the crowd does the wave. Anyone who does that at a football match (of any code) should be garotted. All the time while this is going on the marching band are playing "Hey Big Spender" and the woman in the chicken suit attempts a bit of sexy dancing. Then some ten year old kid does - HELLO FEDERAL POLICE? ARE YOU WATCHING?
Then, sensibly, Nine's Wide World of Sports goes to an ad and we're spared. I'm surprised the AFL didn't see this, ring up the Adelaide Crows and tell them that they weren't allowed to join the competition. Actually I'm even more surprised that they didn't steal these ideas for their own Grand Final 'spectaculars'
Posted by Supermercado at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2008
Match Preview: Melbourne vs Adelaide
Preview the Adelaide vs Melbourne game they said. Ok, I replied. You may as well write a full match report on Lions vs Christians for all the good it's going to do us.
If you'd been locked in Guantanomo Bay for the last few years and were released just in time to turn the TV on for the second half of the Melbourne vs Fremantle match two weeks ago (has it really been so long? Thanks Novelty "Everyone vs Victoria" game!) you'd have been forgiven for thinking that Melbourne was the greatest team ever to have taken the field. Or that Freo were the worst. Ignore for a second the fact that we were about a thousand points down at half time after serving up some of the most putrid football seen since, well us the week before actually, and concentrate for a minute instead on the improbable comeback. Even better, just watch it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA110Y3TS2Y. I almost threw up at the final siren. There has never been anything like it (if you choose to ignore the 1950's like I do) and there's precious little chance anyone is going to forget it.
Now, reality. We were absymal in the first two quarters. At half time we'd kicked three goals. Consider this, in the first seven rounds we have kicked 11.16 in first quarters TOTAL. In the last quarter of this game we put on 9.2. What changed? What went right for once? I'd like to think that it was all down to our much maligned (and that's being generous) game plan of handballing in circles for four quarters finally finding some purpose and run, giving us the opportunity to finally put some pressure on an opposition team and get some decent delivery to our forwards and that's definately part of it. But let's not overlook the fact that Freo are like a Hollywood starlet who has lost her looks, gone flaky and now wanders Sunset Boulevard offering blowjobs to German tourists. Our comeback was not so much premeditated murder as assisted suicide. They wanted to lose, we did our best to help them.
It was glorious, but let's not get ahead of ourselves and think that it's the start of a great revival. We looked better, and one day we might look back and go "ahh, that's where it all started" but the renaissance is very much in it's infancy. Mark Harvey had probably never even heard of Austin Wonaeamirri before the young lad tore his purple heart out in the Punt Road end goalsquare, but Neil Craig is hardly likely to offer him the same courtesy. For the first time in his promising career Austin is going to be under heavy scrutiny, and one of the stories of the day from our perspective will be how he copes with it. The most important thing is that his emergence frees up Davey to go into the middle of the ground whilst still retaining some pressure inside the attacking 50.
There were 20,000 people at the MCG that day (hey, it's 19,000 more than will watch the game on the Gold Coast this weekend). In the future all 21,000 Melbourne fans will claim they saw it. Such is the stuff of legend, and to be frank I'm still not quite over it yet. Wonderful eh? Loves conquers all? Well, briefly but let's not get too excited yet. Had the third quarter not happened there's everybody possible chance this this preview would be darker than Leonard Cohen doing Sylvia Plath covers down a tin mine. Hell, had Freo not completely dropped their bundle in the last few minutes when we amazingly gave them a sniff, we might be talking up heroic failure and an impending 0-8 record.
Our major downfall this season, as you would have seen if you'd watched even five minutes of one of our matches, has been a lack of ball skills. Fairly crucical for an AFL footballer you'd think, but apparently not down at Demonland. Despite a few pastings the backline has battled gamefully in the face of relentless pressure. Obviously if the ball goes down there enough you're going to cop a beating. Stopping the opposition from getting it first hasn't been the problem, it's what we do with it once it hits the deck. Cue an endless comedy montage of handballs to the wrong person, mid-punches of the ball when there's no opposition players within ten metres, comical kick-ins and balls sliced so far over the fence that they're in danger of smashing windows in the car park. I'm far more concerned about Burton, Porplyzia et al doing us damage than I was of a Freo side that consists of Pav and not much else (Chris Tarrant? You're having a laugh! Hold on, what do you mean we now employ the man who did that trade?)
[b]Adelaide vs Melbourne fun facts[/b]
Matthew Collins had the best tatt in AFL history and Peter Vardy was the reason I was so good at AFL 2004 on the Playstation. And that's about it...
The forwards have similarly been handicapped by abysmal delivery inside the attacking part of the ground. Despite being slaughtered by pretty much everyone for being past it and 'not trying' Russell Robertson remains a dangerous option up-front when actually given the chance to get the ball. When it's hacked from the pack at a million miles an hour in sheer panic (I'm looking at you Brent Moloney) to a 3 on 1 with no crumbers you wouldn't expect anyone to kick goals. At last he got some decent service last week and, along with Brad Miller playing his most commanding game ever at CHF, the forward line looked a lot better. However, ask yourself exactly what Freo's defence was doing to stop them. Not freaking much. Compare that to the likes of Rutten and Bock and it's a completely different story. Possibly in the horror genre. For mine we can't kick a winning score. Matthew Bate (the Ranga, for those of you who have come in late) will be a million times better for the run last game. In his first half of the season he was, frankly, unwatchable. Five touches and six clangers in one of the most Supercoach-unfriendly performances in living memory. He was, however, integral to the wild comeback. I'd expect him to chip in for a couple of goals here and there over the weeks. Brad Green has also been handy for a few this season as well as playing a vital role in our midfield. In fact he's probably shown more leadership this year than anyone in our played-voted leadership group - what does that say about us?
[b]Random Trivia Corner[/b]
I went to school with somebody who decided he was an Adelaide fan in 1991. Then suddenly after you won two flags he declared himself a Hawthorn fan. I suggested he should be thrown over a cliff. The next time they beat you in a final find him and hit him repeatedly in the head with a tire iron if you see fit.
Then there's the midfield. You may as well have Jekyll and Hyde on opposing wings considering what we've seen this season. There's a reason why the handful of people at the G erupted when we got a centre clearance the other week - it had been a quarter and a half in the making. Guess what? It lead to a goal. Bugger me sideways there's a novelty. Our ruck division have battled manfully, but like everyone else have been coming up with bugger all reward. Paul Johnson (or to you Adelaide fans "Who?") was in career best form before he busted his hand, and even had some questioning whether he was about to leapfrog Jeff White for the top job. White himself has been solid if unspectacular, and despite being a magnificent servent of the club for the last decade must be starting to see the writing on the wall and pumping his fist in glee that Jolly and Simmonds both walked out all those years ago. Mark Jamar (hey, there's a big South Australian footy name. Let's make a deal!) did a good job last week negating the human giraffe that is Aaron Sandilands, but he'll have to string together more than one performance to get any love from our fans. We also traded for some bloke called John Meesen who, as far as I can work out, is a purely fictional character (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taro_Tsujimoto).
On the end of the occasional tap to advantage have been a midfield which, on paper, are pretty good. James McDonald tenacious as always, Nathan Jones ruthlessly throwing himself at everything, Brock McLean punching German backpackers in the face but it hasn't always come together like it should. Turnovers have been the order of the day, and for every piece of outright Jones magic he seems to turn the bloody thing over twice more. McLean gets a lot of it but there's precious little sign of the smarts and silky skills that has us hailing him as a future captain, Brownlow Medallist and Pope at the start of last year. Green and Davey have chipped in with effective cameos, but you can't expect them to carry the side. Moloney is... Well, I want to say misunderstood but even I'm not sure anymore. Ill-disciplined is probably a better way of putting it. Then there's Colin Sylvia - he's such an interesting character that Grant Thomas went on radio and said that he'd heard a hot tip that he wanted a trade back to Adelaide. Which is strange because Sylv is from Mildura.
Compare and contrast to the experience and poise in the Adelaide midfield. If we're to have any chance of getting up we need to at least break even here. The most bitter pill of all will be getting stitched up by Scott Thompson. Nobody here has any problem with him going home - which says it all about how passive we are, we should be throwing full slabs at him - but it says it all about being in a one or two team town as opposed to the crowded Melbourne market. When ST wanted to go home you only had to roll one team for his signature, when Chris J**d decided to come back (and there's a man I would throw a slab at) he decided he couldn't possibly sign for the team he supported as a kid because we didn't have any facilities and Dick Pratt gave wicked head. It's not unfair, it's reality - but it's painful.
No matter what happens you've rolled us in the comic name stakes by naming somebody called Jarrhan Jacky. How's anybody supposed to top that without Rochford Devenish-Meares (http://stats.rleague.com/afl/stats/players/R/Rochford_Devenish-Meares.html) coming back from the grave to line up on a flank?
So, form says we're going to get porked. How about history? Apparently since 1991 we have won just five games at Football Park. Notable highlights amongst the 18 losses include,
* Getting tipped over by Port by 89 points last year.
* Racking up a grand total of 46 against the Crows in 2005. But hey, Shannon Motlop kicked three and you don't see THAT too often. Or indeed anywhere else ever.
2004? Flogged by both local sides. IN A GOOD YEAR.
2003? Lost both games. You may as well rename the place The Bermuda Triangle as far as we're concerned. Remember Ian Perrie kicking four in the first quarter? Chris Lamb sure does - he never played another game.
2002? Guess what happened? And I'll ask you not to mention the finals either.
Yes, you have to go right back Round 2, 2001 for the last time we won a game at Football Park. http://stats.rleague.com/afl/stats/games/2001/011120010407.html Sure, that was the wild match which featured Andrew Leoncelli kicking a goal with two seconds left to win after we'd surrendered a four goal 3/4 time lead with a few seconds left. It was Darren Jolly's debut - he's done well for himself since despite not getting a touch. In fact even if you take into account our remarkable knack for trading or delisting future premiership players (Bishop? Armstrong? Ormond-Allen?) he's the only person who stepped out for us that night that has ever lifted a Premiership. I know, I'm as shocked as anyone that Ben Beams and Steven Pitt never achieved the ultimate honor.
Some may also remember Neale Balme getting the arse after we kicked 3.9 against your beloved friends the Power in 1997 (http://stats.rleague.com/afl/stats/games/1997/111319970523.html). Leigh "Juice" Newton with two goals on the night. Look out for him having a kick during the warmup in his new role as a member of staff. Don't bother looking for his namesake Michael "Juice" Newton, because he's kicked on from taking Mark of the Year to doing nothing in the 2's.
As you can see even in a year where we're competitive you can almost bet your house on us not getting within five goals over there. In Melbourne it's a different story. Then we're competitive. God help us all we even beat you at the MCG last season. Before that we were robbed out of at least a draw on the Gold Coast by 'questionable' goal umpiring. Cross into the Central Time Zone, however, and suddenly we're beaten to a pulp. Why is it so? Does this mean we'd still lose if the game was held in Broken Hill? And how would you feel to be a Melbourne fan in Adelaide who only gets to see two games a season and knows we'll get flogged in both of them? Personally I'd move.
[b]Coaches Corner[/b]
Dean Bailey returns to Adelaide at 1-6, but he's still stoked that he doesn't have to put on his resume that he was in the coaches box when Port lost the Grand Final by twenty goals.
Neil Craig has a gleam in his eye like a headmaster who particuarly enjoys beating students with lengths of wood. I like that in a coach, and I wish the man well, but nobody can ever take Dean Laidley's place in my heart as the AFL coach most likely to be found with bodies under his floorboards. Why do you think I lobbied so hard for us to sign the Junkyard Dog after we sacked Daniher?
Anyway... If you want to know the real story about why the Crows will win handily this week you just had to watch the Gimmick Challenge Cup on Saturday night. Adelaide had half of their defence down there AND Burton up front. We had... Paul Wheatley sitting in his loungeroom. Jeff White was in the original squad but that said more about the rubbish ruck stocks of the Big V rather than anything we've done this year. I'd make a case for Jared Rivers, but that's because he's my favourite player. And guess what? He's a South Australian! At what point does he get frustrated at being the defensive lynchpin of the footballing equivalent of the boat from Gilligan's Island and demand a trade back to Adelaide to join Scott Thompson in the latest installment of the "sucked in hard" club of former MFC players to win Premierships elsewhere.
Someday I'll be invited to write the match preview for a game that I think we're going to win. This isn't the week. Crows by 50 - and this time there will be no comeback.
Posted by Supermercado at 07:20 PM | Comments (3)
May 05, 2008
Enough Said
Posted by Supermercado at 10:17 PM | Comments (2)
May 04, 2008
I Feel Love
In the famous words of Rex Hunt "You have floored me. Absolutely floored me" The man who was alleged to have run down city alleyways with no strides on and payed for his rooting in coins might not have been talking about football that day but he may as well have been.
I've seen something today that I'm not sure actually happened yet. Like a soldier who ends up behind enemy lines, sees half his unit butchered and somehow guns his way out to glory I'm still not sure what the long term effects of this feeling I'm having will be, but for now it feels great to be alive. Like Rambo killing 500 people single handedly what Melbourne did today is something that nobody would believe in real life. Except it was real life, so screw you it's in the books and it happened.
If you didn't go to today's game you missed something special. Are interstate or overseas, permanently crippled, or had to work then you have an excuse. If you simply didn't show up because you didn't expect us to win then give yourself an uppercut, because the second half of today's game was one of the most special I have ever seen. It was like the fall of communism - after being oppressed for so long the people finally saw hope, and just when you expected it to be crushed by tanks the oppressors stepped aside and let them experience freedom. Of course, I would have preferred the Romanian model where we seized power violently and killed a few people along the way rather than doing it peacefully, but when you're living in a repressive dictatorship you take freedom wherever you can get it.
(Demonblog - the only website that gives you the Cold War footballing analogies that you need to get you through your work day)
As previously discussed I've written every single word that there is to describe a loss in the last couple of years, so let's almost completely ignore the first half. We were awful. Absolutely mince. Matthew Bate played one of the worst halves that I've ever seen, Pavlich did what he does best - stitching us up inside 50 - and Chris Tarrant of all people was murdering us. When you're being rumbled by the most overrated player of all time you may as well pull the pin and move the club to Orbost. We simply couldn't put a score on the board. The defence did reasonably well as usual given that the ball was down there every 30 seconds, with Jared Rivers - officially my favourite player - all over the place spoiling, hassling and doing all the stuff that you would never know about if you just looked at the stats. Moloney was shite, and Brock was getting plenty of the ball without actually doing anything with it.
We turned for half-time 51 points behind, and with all of three goals on the board. Everyone knows what was suppoeed to happen from there - another hundred point loss and nervous breakdowns all over the place. Then, something miraculous happened. Take this stat into account, you will hear and read it everywhere in the next few days, in over 110 years of VFL/AFL football only one team had ever come back from that far behind at half time to win. So, history and form were against us. That's what made that third quarter so much more amazing.
Suddenly, Freo stopped winning everything out of the centre. Mark Jamar played one of his best games ever in shutting down the Freo ruck department which, led by freaking giraffe Aaron Sandilands, had dominated the first half and almost carried the Dockers to a win over Geelong last week. Goals from Green, who had been kept quiet in the first half but played a great second, and Miller who had what must have been the best game of his career dragged us to within 40 points. Exactly what we'd seen every other week of the season - a bit of work in junk time when it didn't matter. Then Robbo kicked one before Aaron Davey put his annual contender in for goal of the year by selling more dummies in a 30 second period than ANY PLAYER EVER before goalling from 50 and we started to believe that maybe, just maybe something was going to happen.
Moloney and Bate, who had been putrid early came out all guns blazing and with the likes of Wheatley finally backing themselves to have a kick or take time to throw a handball around things were starting to look up. It's amazing how confidence was suddenly injected back into the players and the fans simultaneously. The announced crowd of 19.5k seemed to be suffering from the same sort of creative accounting that is usually only seen in the A-League, but with the majority of Freo fans below us in the Ponsford Stand the place was rocking when we started to climb back into it. The pressure of a weight simultaneously lifting off 15,000 people at the same time was infectious, and when Davey goalled again it was ON LIKE DONKEY KONG. With a quarter and a bit to play we were running riot over the Dockers. They had stopped. Then, just to take the piss Pavlich bobbed up after not being seen for the rest of the quarter to kick two in a row and blow the margin back out to five goals at the last change. We were still a chance but I honestly though that sank us. In retrospect it was probably better to cop them just before 3/4 time rather than after it because it meant that their momentum was stopped by the final change rather than gaining ground in the first few minutes of the 4th.
So, how about a third quarter comeback? Well, 32 points wouldn't have been our best ever but it would have to go close. In recent history only our wins at Optus Oval in 2003 and THAT final in 2000 have even produced comebacks of more than 20 points in the last quarter. That's in 2161 games since 1896. TWO FREAKING THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED GAMES PLUS. Are you starting to realise how unlikely this was?
Then, the last quarter starts and we erupt like I have rarely seen a Melbourne team before. This shit was like if they'd dropped the atomic bomb on Krakatoa. First Moloney made amends for some of his crimes early on, then Wonaeamirri - the biggest cult figure since early period Davey - got one. Miller added another, amongst some more great work around the ground and Robbo finally applied his 4th quarter heroics to a real situation rather than junk time to put us within ten points. Then down the other end douchebag Farmer (more on him later) benefited from Garland's wildly shite attempting at a spoil to steady the ship and give them back a double figures margin.
Enter the Robbo and Wona show. Robbo snaps one from the pocket to cancel out the Farmer goal, and then Wona adds two in a minute to put us in front and debut some of the most exciting goal celebrations seen in recent years. Seriously, he could get a government grant to do a tour of the flying, spinning frog dance move that he was pulling off today. He had four - he is a gun in the making. Still, it could have gone horribly wrong. How many times does a team drag itself back out of horror to stick it's nose in front and then get rolled anyway? Well, given that we had NEVER BEEN IN THIS SITUATION BEFORE (if I forgot to mention that...) I guess we weren't going to find out. Davey marked in the square and put us 8 points in front, but worrying there was still 6 minutes left. Plenty of time for us to shit it and give the game away. Green had a chance to win it and depending on who you asked either had the ball touched on the line or got jibbed out of a goal by an umpire who was on crack and couldn't see it cross the line. We weren't out of the woods yet, and suddenly Freo charged. Douchebag and Mundy both kicked points before Bruce had another chance to nail it and missed. 32 minutes in, the ball lands in Pavlich's arms down the other end and with more than enough time to get it out of the centre again things start to look grim. Thankfully with an unguarded goal square and time rapidly running out he hurried it and missed. Then we needed to get our kick-ins right for almost the first time in a decade. We turned it over once more for douche to add another point, and Daniel Bell was forced to kick out with just 1 second left. Game, set, match and some pretty wild scenes.
Actually I felt more like spewing than celebrating, but it was such a weight off that it wasn't funny. We will not be the first team in 40 years to not win a game, we are a chance of winning more than Fitzroy did in 1996. My mum did her bit for the family record of heart attacks by not being able to move post match due to massive back spasms. We're like that. Before she met me (!) she'd never been to a game and loosely claimed to be a Collingwood fan due to some family bullshit. Now she's losing the plot and having spasms over close results - I feel somewhat guilty.
Meanwhile, in a special Demonblog message to Jeff Farmer I'd simply like to say. COP THAT YOU PRICK. I was looking straight at your lips when you said "look at the scoreboard to one of our guys during that last quarter". Well, for your benefit lets take another look at that scoreboard now. If you're waiting for the replay, look away now...
Didn't quite get that? Put off by the chaos on the ground? Let's have a closer look.
Read my lips Jeff. If they hadn't been showing the 2000 Prelim on the big screen pre-match (which, may I say, is a great innovation and I would like to send a list of requests for them to show next) that featured you running riot and kicking 8 then it would have been even sweeter to watch you crash and burn.
2008 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
For the first time in so long it was a struggle to hand out votes. Under the Big Footy "vote for as many people as you want" system, I also had Davey, Green and McLean in as well. Davey was very stiff, Green played a great second half and McLean got a lot of the ball even if I'm not convinced he did as much with it as he could.
5 - Miller
4 - Rivers
3 - Wonaeamirri
2 - Robertson
1 - Jamar
Apologies to Bate (second half only), Carroll, Davey, Green, McLean, Warnock, Wheatley, White
Leaderboard
14 - Nathan Jones
13 - Cameron Bruce
12 - Brad Green
9 - Brock McLean
8 - James McDonald
6 - Paul Johnson
6 - Cale Morton (Co-Leader: 2008 Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
6 - Austin Wonaeamirri (Co-Leader: 2008 Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
6 - Jared Rivers (Leader: 2008 Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
5 - Brad Miller
4 - Brent Moloney
4 - Aaron Davey
3 - Nathan Carroll
3 - Lynden Dunn
3 - Jeff White
2 - Russell Robertson
1 - Mark Jamar
Next Week
Nothing. Enjoy an extra week of being on a one match winning streak.
The Next Week
Adelaide away. Any danger of two in a row? I wouldn't hold your breath, you can be sure that Neil Craig and the other boffins at the Crows coaching institute will be doing exactly what I did and concentrating on the second half. They'll be as interested in where the Dockers went wrong as Mark Harvey will be. On paper they thump us, but after today who the fark knows what is supposed to happen anymore?
Weekend Watch
Last night - AFC Wimbledon win their promotion playoff 2-1 after being a goal down until the 83rd minute. Today Melbourne smash records to come back for a win. To quote Rex again.. "HOW GOOD IS THIS!"
Posted by Supermercado at 05:33 PM | Comments (5)