Match Reviews
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)
April 27, 2008
It's Grim Up North
I honestly don't know what to say any more. Over the last two years I've written every single match report about a loss that there is to be had. Just copy and paste any of those reports for today. We fumbled, we bumbled, we looked worse than any team has since the glory days of Fremantle not winning a game until Round 18 under Damian Drum.
Of course TJ had to kick the first goal. Let the "oh we should have kept him!" bollocks begin. Didn't do too much else though. Having said that I'm still not convinced that Jack Grimes is a real person. For all we know he might be the 21st century equivalent of this guy.
You saw the rest on TV, you don't need me to give you any insights. We're awful. We're awfully awful. At one point Matthew Warnock was doing his best work ever in defence - how badly are we going when that's happening?
I was so depressed at watching it that I left and came home to listen on the radio instead. Did I really need to watch what was going to happen next? Even listening to KB and his "I'll tell you why I didn't stuff up the rules" propaganda call on SEN was a more attractive option that being in a pub full of spaz people watching even spazzer football.
Everyone wants to bag Robertson for not being as good as he was, but who's kicking it to him? You can have a forward line consisting of Dunstall, Ablett and Jesus if you want but if you spend two hours trying to get out of your defensive 50 and then give it away the moment it gets to the midfield. God forbid we have any kicks inside 50 they're usually bombed in on his head.
Crowd Watch
I was fairly depressed in my living room.
Stat Watch
Are we on track to break the all-time clanger record?
Coach Watch
Most of the time it looked as if Bailey was on his own in the coaches box. I'm surprised he didn't just walk out himself.
2008 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Bruce
4 - Jones
3 - Wonaeamirri
2 - White
1 - Green
Apologies to Moloney (plenty of touches. Did fuck all with most them), Wheatley (keeps getting it), McDonald, Robertson (at least he runs around a bit) and... now I'm struggling... Jamar, Carroll, Warnock, Dunn, Frawley? Whoever.
Leaderboard
14 - Nathan Jones
13 - Cameron Bruce
12 - Brad Green
9 - Brock McLean
8 - James McDonald
6 - Paul Johnson
6 - Cale Morton (Leader: 2008 Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
4 - Brent Moloney
4 - Aaron Davey
3 - Nathan Carroll (Leader: 2008 Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
3 - Austin Wonaeamirri
3 - Lynden Dunn
3 - Jeff White
2 - Jared Rivers
Next Week
Freo at the MCG. Have you noticed we're the only team that they can consistently beat in Melbourne? Doesn't that fill you with confidence? They're rubbish this year, but like us they put in a good performance against Geelong. Unlike us they almost won. If we get turned over next week I will start to suspect that we won't win a game this year - and the prospect of that makes me want to cry. Is there any danger the crowd will be over 15,000?
Let's hope we don't get stitched up in a thriller. I'm starting to feel like I was in that fortnight of horror last year when Port and North both beat us in close ones and I almost had two nervous breakdowns in the Ponsford Stand.
Posted by Supermercado at 02:35 PM | Comments (1)
April 20, 2008
Crazy For Feeling So Blue
How many different ways can I say that we lost? It seems like that's all I've done here over the last couple of years. If you want to go back to the last time I posted with any actual joy you have to go back to the 2006 finals, when we twatted St. Kilda and I lost the plot at a random moron sitting behind me. Ever since then it's been one depression session after another.
Today I'd like to think that instead of being beaten that we 'failed to win'. Let's be entirely honest Carlton are still completely shite. Yes, they've got Judd and Fevola but they can get stuffed if they think they're going to contend against decent sides. If we'd had any decent setup inside forward 50 we might have won today. As it was they were three goals to zip up before we even fired a shot (where have I seen this before?)
Our first serious shot on goal - in the wake of J**d and Fev having added three between them - was from Jamar. THAT is how badly our forward line is going. Naturally he missed. The next shots at goal were taken by noted goalkicking specialists McDonald (goal!?) and Whelan (not goal!?) Frankly we didn't look like getting close to it in the first quarter - in the end we were forced to go negative to drag ourselves back into it. Looked terrible but surprisingly worked a treat for a few minutes at least, in the first ten minutes of the second quarter we added three in a row through Robbo (in the first three quarters? Remarkable!) and Green (x2) and hit the front. Watching young Bradley G do his nut when he kicked his second was a sight to behold. For all the shit we've given him over the years he hashown, dare I say it openly, leadership qualities in the last couple of seasons that few of his teammates have followed. The players voted Miller into the leadership group in his place - does anyone understand now why we are what we are?
So, hands up if you thought we were going to go on with it - a new sense of enthusiasm and encouragement lifting the boys to the first win of a new era. Well, you were on drugs. Off went Green the moment he kicked the goal, and off the boil we went. Moloney gives away a 50 in the middle of the ground that gifts them a goal and they then kick the next five of the quarter to basically put us away at half time.
Now, Brent Moloney, in his four seasons at Melbourne, has given away 53 free kicks up to and including today and recieved just 30. Is he,
a) Unlucky
b) Overly competitive
c) A conspiracy victim
d) Ill-disciplined.
I'll take D with a side serving of B. He's having a crack, there's no doubt about that but is he going about it the right way? Are we ever going to see his 2005 form again? Doesn't look like it at this rate. Another promising young player dragged into the Melbourne family and destroyed. Watch out potential draftees.
Only two goals were kicked in the massive snoozefest of a 3rd quarter. Neither of them by us, continuing our wonderful streak of high scoring quarters this year. Both came within a few seconds as J**d kicked one and then Whelan decided to give Fevola a bit of a whack in the middle of a brawl and they gave Carlton another kick. Of course the same thing happens every week and nobody cares - if Wheels gets off can we get the goal taken from the official score? He was reported by both the goal umpire and the field umpire so there must have been something in it. I was looking right at it and didn't see anything particuarly fruity so it'll be interesting to get the video on that one.
So, come 3/4 time and we were rooted. So we won the last quarter. Thrillsville. What does it really matter? The only positive for me was seeing Brad Green run riot up front. Neitz hurt his neck in the second quarter and was never seen again. The poor bastard is trying his best but he's damaging his legacy by sticking around and struggling. Anyone else think that he might have been persuaded not to pull the pin at the end of last season due to the 150th year thing? Somebody somewhere thought he'd be more marketable than a McDonald or Bruce as captain. They're almost certainly right but good luck marketing anything the way we're going. You could have Jennifer Hawkins in nowt but a cheeky smile and it wouldn't get us any publicity the way we're sinking.
We were so depressed that even the sight of the sellout J**d running riot against us couldn't muster up any more than the faintest of boos. Somebody suggested he had a certain lethal sexually transmitted disease at one point which may have been excessively harsh but was also quite amusing. My real team might be rooted but at least I had him as Supercoach captain. What a sad world we live in where that counts for anything - if we were winning my team would be full of people on 0 points and I wouldn't give a fuck. Now I'm dissecting like a mad bastard just to try and get some joy no matter how artificial.
It's strange how despite getting closer than the Geelong game that this seems like a cause for mass slashing of wrists, while a fortnight ago we were holding our heads high. What did we learn from that game? Sweet FA by the looks of it. Any pressure that we put on that day was all but gone today. Our skills are still putrid and our forward line structure is an embarassment. It's sad that it took Neitz going off to give it anything - Green going forward was a great option but still too often when the ball went down there we were outnumbered and with nobody at the fall of the ball. Davey and Wonaeamirri tried hard but there was little love for crumbers today.
It might not help the crumb but apparently Bate was good for Sandy today so he's got to come back in and give us another option. Sautner kicked 9 for Sandy - sign him up in a cracking Troy Wilson style move. Even better piss Sandy off and get a real reserves team so we can actually develop our own players. Maric failed to fire in a big win after playing well last week so I can't see him getting a run anytime soon - though you may as well the way we're going.
For the first time today I had to question the Bailey method. It's very unlike me but I'm trying desperately to remain positive about his coaching tenure. I don't want to be looked back on in three years having slaughtered his masterplan before it ever really began if it turns out to be right. Remember - as always - the spaz Hawthorn fans who wanted to hang Alistair Clarkson after three games. But for the first time I'm starting to wonder if it is going to turn out alright.
Maybe that's the fear of 0-22 speaking, but it's also having seen Brad Green kick an inspirational goal to put us in front, doing his nut in celebration and then jogging towards the bench and not getting near it for the next ten minutes. It's seeing Rivers and Carroll keeping Fevola under control before Rivers is for some unknown bloody reason sent to the bench leaving Whelan to take his place with disasterous results. Since when did anyone rotate tall defenders? Especially when we've got bugger all of them to start with.
Crowd Watch
Did we have more than 15,000 of the 43k crowd? And it was our home game for god's sake. I know people don't want to come and see us get trashed week in week out, but how many of us are going to be left if we go through a five year period of slop like Carlton have? I knwo I'll be there, and I would like to think that most of the people who read this would be as well but f'ing hell we might the only ones. Five years of trashbag football (3 and 3/4 to go!) and you may as well put the "for sale" sign up outside the front door. Think that will be enough to get the MCC clowns signing up? If we go out of business I see no other reason to keep their stand intact - firebomb the fucker I say.
On the other hand wasn't it great to see Carlton fans firing up as if they had actually won more than 3 games since 2002?
Meanwhile how wooden was Chris Connolly when he was trying to fire people up before the game? If his coaching addresses were like that it's a surprise he ever won anything let alone made two finals series. I did, however, love Barass coming on the big screen to yell at us. If Allen Jakovich isn't named one of the 150 Heroes of the club then I'm leaving and watching D4 amateurs instead.
Crowd Watch Extra
Rotations are all the rage this year, but now it's spread to the crowd as well. 10 girls showed up and sat in the same row as us, then spent the entire game getting up and leaving 3 times a quarter - including a minute into the 3rd quarter. What were you doing for half time? Watching Little League? Peanuts. At least they weren't wandering back with beers every five seconds like your typically drunken and stupid footy fan.
Feud Watch
Has anyone noticed that we've got two cheersquads now? As if one wasn't enough. Apparently they've had a split and are now operating in competition to each other. I'd like to suggest that every AFL cheersquad is invited to an intervention/mediation session and that when they're all locked in the same room we gas them all like badgers.
What could possibly cause a cheersquad to fracture in two? Debate over what sized pom-poms to wave? Whether to add an extra clap in
So, if anyone knows what the feud between the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA wings of our cheersquad is about feel free to enlighten me. Either way the only solution I'm going to support is throwing them all off a cliff into the sea, but I'd still like to know what's going on. Once when the Collingwood cheer squad fractured into competiting factions (imagine that for terror) Eddie McGuire had to go and get them back together. Any danger that Paul Gardiner might wander into the lion's den and try to broker a solution? Or is he worried that they all might unite and chase him out of the room under a hail of bottles instead?
2008 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Brad Green
*Daylight*
4 - James McDonald
3 - Brock McLean
2 - Cameron Bruce
1 - Jared Rivers
Apologies to White, Robertson, Davey, Wonaeamierri, Frawley, Sylvia and Carroll (fuck off, this is my site and I can do what I want)
Leaderboard
11 - Brad Green
10 - Nathan Jones
9 - Brock McLean
8 - James McDonald
8 - Cameron Bruce
6 - Paul Johnson
6 - Cale Morton (Leader: 2008 Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
4 - Brent Moloney
4 - Aaron Davey
3 - Nathan Carroll (Leader: 2008 Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
3 - Lynden Dunn
2 - Jared Rivers
1 - Jeff White
Next Week
Brisbane away in the 1.10pm game. Here's a positive for you - it will all be over by 4pm again so that you'll be able to do something constructive with your afternoon. Today we held The Urinator for two quarters by gangbanging him with two defenders. Next week not only do you have to contend with Jonathan Brown who is massively out of form, but Daniel Bradshaw who is conversely going nuts and has 18 goals from his last two starts against us. Rivers and Carroll sure. Frawley? Yeah, why not - at least he'll learn. Then who?
Chances are we're going to get farked up hardcore. You know I was actually considering going to this game. Sick, sick man that I am. Thank god for a lack of cheap airfares.
Do you think if I fake my own death and make a wild YouTube video calling on them to have a crack in my honor that they'll get up next week? Then I can make a shock comeback and at least we'll have 4 points!
Posted by Supermercado at 07:11 PM | Comments (4)
April 12, 2008
Saturday Depression Session
Hands up if you still care? Well, me for starters. I can't help it, I just can't. With the travel record standing at Geelong twice, Bendigo, Cranbourne and the MCG three times I have seen Melbourne fire a shot just once or twice. That's probably 2 quarters total (first quarter in Bendigo and about 30 minutes total last week) out of 28 that have been anywhere near acceptable. God help us all, we are living in some very dark times my friends.
For the second time this year I had a speculative $5 on Lynden Dunn kicking the first goal @ 28-1. Hence the first quarter was spent punting him home to make big runs out of defence and get down forward to take a mark. Alas the first 20 minutes were spent with North botching chance after chance without us even getting it near 50. You could tell right there and then that the game was well beyond us. At one point, as North sat on something ridiculous like 0.5 LD drifted forward and was on his own inside 50. Naturally they couldn't hit him. He did end up kicking our first goal, but unfortunately North had already booted four.
We actually went within a minute and a half of not scoring at all in the first quarter. Unfortunately AFL Stats doesn't have any records on low scores in quarters (which is a surprise because they have pretty much every other stat ever), but our all time lowest scores contained a 0.0 or two. Most notably the 1899 shambles at the Brunswick Oval where we racked up 0.2 all day. Sadly I missed it, but I expect that it was almost as painful to watch as the abortion we were served up today.
We are a team without skill. It's official. How do you get a job as an AFL footballer if you can't actually kick or handpass a ball? Draft me next year, I can't play for shit but at least with the 120+ rotations a game off the bench I might even have a chance of getting 20 good minutes before having a coronary. In the first quarter Brad Green, Dunn, Jared Rivers and Aaron Davey were the only players who looked as though they were playing with any confidence.
Brad Miller did his bit for keeping the season entertaining by cleaning some bloke up with a big, and seriously illegal, hit and getting reported. I suggested a life ban, but to be entirely serious he wasn't bad today. Shame that after a rare run of two straight decent games that he'll be spending a couple of weeks on the sideline.
Thank god for North's inaccuracy. If they could kick straight we would have been dead and buried within the first few minutes. As it was we were within striking distance (pending a miracle comeback) at quarter time. Then within a few minutes of the 2nd quarter beginning we, err, weren't. At the twenty minute mark we were down by more than 40 and it was looking very ugly. A minor rally made things look a bit more respectable but everyone could see how it was going to go.
Third quarter? More mince. Everyone is talking up Davey as our best on ground and there's no doubt he was good but I was impressed with the way Brad Green showed leadership around the ground and never stopped running. While all the other peanuts stood around doing nothing he was necking himself to get into space. I'd put him alongside Davey and Rivers in our most important players at the moment.
The backline wasn't too bad. Given that the thing was coming down there every ten seconds they weren't disgraced. Whelan wasn't spectacular upon return, but he's an important player and will get better. Carroll and Rivers lowered their colors a bit in the second half but it certainly wasn't their fault that we were complete trash. What's the point of rebounding successfully if it's just going to come back over your head again? Bell was meh and I would suggest that he's never allowed to kick in again but that would mean more Wheatley action so he may as well stay.
We gained some scoreboard respectability in the 4th quarter when Josh Gibson had exited with an injury and North had lost the will to play. They were still potting goals with the greatest of ease but at least we nailed a couple as well. Robbo, the new junktime specialist, kicked 3 in the last few minutes when it meant absolutely nothing. Having said that I'm sure he's supposed to be a goalkicker and not a playmaker. So how come he ended up having to deliver it inside 50 (or even in extreme circumstances out of defensive 50) so many times? Is this all part of the mystery gameplan or has he just lost the plot?
The umpiring will get flogged, and to a certain degree rightly so (the free against Bartram in the last quarter? W - T - F?) but did it really matter? With all the rorts in the world we still would have been competitive today if we could hit a target or find more than a handful of players who get themselves into space. It's also no umpire's fault that we can't kick-in after a behind to save ourselves, but at the same time let opposition teams advance up the field without any pressure whatsoever. We're shit - even if the dodgy decisions had been going our way we wouldn't have taken advantage of them.
Crowd Watch
Apparently North have 31,000 members. Bullshit they do. 31,000 names on forms but how many of them are the same people twice or three times? Nothing wrong with that of course - if I had the money I'd probably buy ten memberships - but don't go around trumpeting it like it's a great moment in AFL football. Taking into account the 10k (maybe) of our fans that were there, I'd say the Roos are running at a 3 memberships for every person ratio.
On the other hand we've got 10,000 pricks who claim to be Melbourne fans and sit in the MCC members smoking cigars and playing the stock market. The only upside to this is that at least we know that when we finally financially die in the arse that there's a bunch of fat, rich, corporate pricks who will probably put their hand in their pockets for the first time to help save us. If the club get more money when more people show up why wouldn't you go out and come back in again on every membership you own? Could have got another 2k on the door.
Also saw Guy Rigoni there in MFC hat. Come back Riggers.
Staff Watch
Anyone in the Ponsford Stand during the first half would have been treated to the ludicrous sight of the security guard behind the goals attempting to crack on to the female goal umpire. He had "Chubb" on his back, she had "Playstation", perhaps he thought it was an absolute lock. The filthy prick was even chatting her up when she was trying to write in her tiny notebook. May as well have written his phone number under Melbourne's score - they both started with a 0.
Not surprisingly the 'chatter' dropped off noticeably when the goal umpires swapped at half time and he was left with a male.
Web Watch
The AFL website continues to amaze. A few weeks ago it was a link to the press conference that didn't work for a day, and now..
THE KANGAROOS have bounced back in style with a thumping XX point victory over a disappointing Melbourne in their round four clash at the MCG.
How do you know it's thumping when you write it before the game ends you pricks?
2008 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Brad Green
4 - Aaron Davey
3 - Lynden Dunn
2 - James McDonald
1 - Jeff White
Apologies to Bruce (just), Miller (not too bad early), Rivers (good in the first half), Carroll (likewise), Sylvia (great junktime quarter down back), Wheatley (still just thumps it forward to nobody, but then again so does everyone else) and Wonaeamirri (has showed a lot already. Somebody MUST be delisted to keep him on the list when Grimes comes back)
No apologies to Jones (all good to go in and get the thing but you have to be able to use it), Neitz (see "next week" for my tips on his career), Robertson (king of junk time), McLean (very average) and Johnson (not up to it).
Jamar seemed alright around the ground, but apparently he had 0 kicks and 8 handballs. Didn't even consider dropping it on the boot once just for statistical purposes?
Leaderboard
10 - Nathan Jones
6 - Cameron Bruce
6 - Brock McLean
6 - Paul Johnson
6 - Cale Morton (Leader: 2008 Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
6 - Brad Green
4 - Brent Moloney
4 - James McDonald
4 - Aaron Davey
3 - Nathan Carroll (Leader: 2008 Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
3 - Lynden Dunn
1 - Jared Rivers
1 - Jeff White
Next Week
Carlton - probably having just cracked their all-time record for consecutive losses. Think they're not going to be fired up? Even better news is that their undoubted weakness, a shithouse backline, won't even be exploited due to our rubbish forward line. Cue Fev kicking 19 and that sell-out dog J**d running riot. Now is the time for Neita to do his last great act in a storied career - to run out, push J**d over and drop a flying knee right on his head, yell "ENJOY THE FACILTIES AT THE EPWORTH YOU COCK" into his shattered face and then be carried off the ground by a thousand fans as a hero while the Ponsford Stand burns like buggery, the match is called off and we're kicked out of the competition. Beautiful.
Next Season
Bailey and Connolly said they'd wait until Round 6 before delivering their verdict on who will and won't be with us next year. Why wait another fortnight? I'm here to tell them now,
Jace Bode - GONE.
Simon Buckley - Gets another chance due to the substantial turnover elsewhere.
Colin Garland - Likewise.
Ben Holland - GONE. Even he's know that. Good luck in the Supreme Court.
Mark Jamar - GONE. Especially if Paul Johnson comes on and we finish last with an allegedly gun ruckman in line to be picked first.
Chris Johnson - GONE. The best father son selection since Shane Burgmann.
Brock McLean - Could we get a late first rounder for him?
Brad Miller - Stays I suppose. We should have traded him out last year, but next year in a presumably inexperienced team at least he'll be somebody with experience.
Brent Moloney - I like the man, but he's got to fire soon. If we had a good list he'd be in all sorts of trouble.
David Neitz - GONE. Can't positively contribute any more in this awful team - may as well play the kids.
Juice Newton - Will last next year, but he'd better fire up and show more than he did in Round 1.
Russell Robertson - I doubt we'll sack him after handing over a 2 year contract, but hopefully there's some chance of pulling off a dodgy Steven King like trading manoeuvre to move him on or convince him to pull the pin. Still has something left in him but we have to rebuild.
Colin Sylvia - See McLean, Brock.
Matthew Warnock - GONE. If you can't get a game in this backline just give up.
Isaac Weetra - On the strength of his first two games he'd want to have a dip pretty soon or he'll be the new Hayden Lamaro (look it up)
Paul Wheatley - Survives undeservedly due to the clearout.
Jeff White - One more year maybe.
Adem Yze - GONE. In 6 weeks when Grimes is off the long term injury list, ooze had may as well do something selfless and pull the pin so Wonaeamirri can stay on the list.
At the risk of losing any chance I have of being headhunted by the Herald Sun to boost their currently awful Melbourne "blog" may I just say FUCK I AM DEPRESSED.
Goodnight and thankyou.
Posted by Supermercado at 05:12 PM | Comments (5)
April 06, 2008
Highway To Hell
What a week. Surely no team has copped such a sustained pounding in the media than we did in the last seven or eight days since Fitzroy in 1996. And look how well they're doing now. Of course this wasn't without some justification as we had spent the last two weeks being beaten to a pulp, whilst our opposition have spent the last year winning pretty much every match/competition they have been involved in. Shitting it? Was I what.
Occasionally somebody would point out some freakishly absurd result from 1953 or something that would point to the fact that we were a chance. Didn't convince me - I expected ten goals minimum. As did the rest of the world. And of course as a moderately passionate (!) Melbourne supporter, well known locally for becoming exceedingly depressed over footy, friends, family and work colleagues were kind enough to spend the week forwarding emails and articles about how awful we were and how we were going to get tonked. Did I need to hear for the thousandth time that we were $31 to win the game? Especially given how that was clearly a gimmick market set up by peanuts trying to - successfully as it turned out - get their name in the paper. Hope they go bankrupt.
So down the Geelong Road we went. A day in Geelong? Oh Gnarly (skip to 1.08). Talk about wasted time. Were history not on the verge of being made I can think of 172 things that I would have rather been doing than visiting rural and regional Victoria. Usually I catch the train to the Kardinia Slops but damned if I was going to catch freaking V-Line home after we'd been tonked.
So, we were going to get hammered. Then we kicked the first goal. And second. And bugger me the third.
It's no wonder we jumped them early. After a week where they've been disrespected from every angle the boys were always going to come out at a million miles an hour, and when the opposition have spent the previous half an hour standing out on the arena waiting for some peanuts to parachute in with a Premiership flag they're hardly going to be 100% prepared for the first bounce. Most importantly, though, we scored first. Which meant that for those of you who joined me in having the $3.60 on Centrebet for that to happen then at least congratulation on winning a motza.
Still, no matter how obvious it was that it wasn't going to last I'll admit that I did start to wonder at 3 goals to squat whether or not we could pull off the miracle of the millenium. Of course we couldn't. First three to us, next seven to them. The first three of which came directly from our mistakes. The highlight of which was Carroll attempting to rush a ball through for a point, botching it and presenting Hawkins will a sitter. Jones was getting plenty of it but was seriously clang happy, with most his kicks more likely to murder a passing seagull than hit a teammate. Wonamierri was lively on debut and looks a good bet to play a fair bit this year, and both Miller and Johnson were surprisingly effective.
All in all the first quarter gave me hope for the rest of the season. Sure we were going to get beaten today - and probably flogged for that matter - but at least they were all over the Cats and forcing them into making mistakes. They made enough of their own to write a book (or at least a second rate blog post) on but everyone knew that was going to happen - the goal was to make sure everything the other way wasn't smooth sailing.
Incidentally, on Hawkins, welcome to the Kent Kingsley Klub. A moderate player who will show up once a year and play a decent game against us. May as well get fitted for your Richmond jumper now son.
To be entirely honest we were lucky that we didn't get blown to buggery early on during the second. After such a positive start we were generally abysmal and allowed them right back into it. Eventually we put the brakes on and stayed in touch. May I say how bizarre it was to see us dragging somebody down to our level rather than the other way around? Usually we're the ones who totally drop our bundle and look like tools when trying to play awful teams, but now that we are an awful team ourselves we uglied it down from a massacre to a mere serious beating instead. Wonderful!
A couple of late goals made it respectable at half time before something bizarre happened and midway through the third quarter we were within a goal. Now the locals were really panicking. Think bad to Sydney snapping their 20 something game losing streak against us in '93. I still haven't gotten over that now. Of course any sane person would sit there and go "congrats on your upset victory, by the way have you won a premiership recently?" but as we all know footy fans are generally stupid. Of course it didn't last long and after flirting with disaster the Cats fired up and took a four goal lead into the last quarter. Still not insurmountable (Essendon from 42 points down with Salmon after the siren anyone? I've got miserable results to cross reference until the cows come home), but not when you're a slopfest trying to take on a well oiled machine.
So in the end they won. What else do you need to know? I should point out at this time that the combined records of the teams we have played this year is now 9-0 after a possible 9 games. The gods of scheduling have thrown us straight into the footy woodchipper over the last few weeks. Today showed that we are not THAT bad. Just lacking the X Factor to do anything important this year. Somewhat reminscent of Carlton really where half the side are threatening to run riot and win a flag, but the other half wouldn't get a game in the D4 Amateurs. In fact if you combined us with Carlton that side might just make the 8 in the AFL while the ones left behind would probably run 7th in the Barnawartha League 2nd Division.
My kingdom for a forward line. Neitz isn't what he used to be - you can't rely on him to do everything on his own and Robbo is running around like a headless chicken a bit. Even though I don't particuarly rate him I'd love a big bastard KPP forward like Hawkins (or, if I can really play "Fantasy Wankfest" Franklin or Brown) down there to take some of the focus off Neitz. Look how much better our backline is with Carroll AND Rivers and imagine the same scenario up front. This should have been Miller's role - and while I liked his game today it's obvious that he's never going to be the forward target that he needs to be.
At least the AFL have fixed their website so that you can watch press conferences. A big round of applause to the reject who asked whether DB was tempted to shut the game down at 3 goals up. What was he supposed to do? Try and win 30-25? Stupidity. Four quarters of footy and that's the best question you can come up with? Die in hell. The way Bailey treated the question with contempt made me like him even more. I reckon when we finally win a game I'm going to run around and jump on him. In 2010.
Philthy Watch
There's a segment you never thought you'd see again eh? Well, it's not like I ran into the great man but I did find out that he apparently showed up last year, played one game for the Cats VFL side and pissed off. This leaves us asking where he is now. If he's somehow shacked up with Allen Jakovich I'm in.
Crowd Watch
Scored a free ticket off a friend to sit on the Hickey Stand wing. Good seats, good views, good times all around except for the footy. While I'm sure boganry was running riot on the terraces it was strangely absent. Maybe not so strangely when you consider I was the only Melbourne fan seemingly in the entire section, and that after our quick start the Cats fans were too shitscared to fire up in case we pulled off the comeback of the millenium.
They did spend the last quarter having kittens over the umpiring and calling for holding the ball whenever a Geelong player went within 2km of an opponent. You fell over the line against a nothing team - deal with it and get on with your life.
2007 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
This is a massively hard one, because I think we had about 10 players who are worthy of one or two votes and very few who were worthy of the maximum. How, then to seperate them? Go with gut feeling I suppose.
5 - Cameron Bruce
4 - Brock McLean
3 - Paul Johnson
2 - Cale Morton
1 - Jared Rivers
Apologies to Green, Miller, Wonamierri, Carroll, Dunn, Jones
No apologies to Wheatley (AT LEAST AIM FOR A TARGET!), White (decidely average) or Robertson (?!?!)
Leaderboard
10 - Nathan Jones
6 - Cameron Bruce
6 - Brock McLean
6 - Paul Johnson
6 - Cale Morton (Leader: 2008 Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
4 - Brent Moloney
3 - Nathan Carroll (Leader: 2008 Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
2 - James McDonald
1 - Brad Green
1 - Jared Rivers
Radio Watch
K-Rock have the worst commentary team in the world. At times it was more like listening to the community radio call of a Diamond Valley League game than AFL. Even the lunatic who sat at the top of Telstra Dome and recorded his own call of the game at the North Melbourne game last year had a better grip on reality than these guys.
However, I will agree with them on one point. When it comes to McLean and Morton getting a thousand possessions each they DO NOT MATTER if they don't go anywhere. As Brock got his 20th one of them said "he can keep them, he's done nothing with them", and he was almost right. Still didn't excuse the fact that they didn't know who half the players were and spoke complete bollocks for four quarters. John Barnes is lucky that Andrew Jarman is still allowed near a microphone, because Jarman is the only person between JB and the title of "worst commentator in sports".
Mind you, on the strength of the first quarter of the Adelaide/Port game that I heard on the way home you'll have to go a long way to top Jars as the most irritating man in the world. I was seriously embarassed listening and had to turn off.
Next Week
North at the MCG. So, everyone excepts an increasing better performance and we show up to get flogged by 200 then instead? Don't you know it baby. I'm there. Nervous breakdowns all round!
Posted by Supermercado at 05:56 PM | Comments (8)
March 29, 2008
I Hate You So Much Right Now
So, when I threatened to throw myself off the Westgate if we lost by ten goals again this week do you think I underestimated it a bit? Were I a man of honor, and my word, I'd either be in a car speeding down the freeway towards destiny or landing on the roof of a Norweigan cargo ship. Unfortunately I'm not, so here I am.
What do you say? After two weeks our percentage is 36 and our average losing margin is 99. It was ok to get pounded last week because I rate Hawthorn, but today it hurts even more coming against a side who are not only average at best but that we have already played once this season. Were lessons learnt? Who the hell knows.
I had Lynden Dunn to kick the first goal at 30-1. Why? Buggered if I know to be honest. In a massive shock and horror result we actually did kick the first and looked for a second like we were going to fire a shot. In fact for the first quarter we were all over the Dogs and it was showing in their performance - they were nervous and their key players weren't getting much of it without some serious pressure. Did we capitalise? Of course we fecking didn't. By quarter time they'd got their noses in front and unlike us came out for the second quarter with some intention of playing. From there it was pretty much a circus.
Want in-depth analysis? Bad luck. I spent too much time with my head in my hands to know what was really going on. All I know was that every few seconds the Dogs were going inside 50 and usually scoring but that when we did the same thing precisely f'all happened. AFL Premiership Season 2008 - go and get stuffed. Pretty much the most exciting thing to happen all day was when I went for a slash, came back and forgot where I had been sitting. It was like an episode of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego inside the MCG.
When Davey hit the deck in the 3rd quarter and looked like he'd done his knee I was ready to pull up stumps and just start crying, but it doesn't look like it's so bad after all. Maybe he just cbf turning out in this horrid season?
Who do you blame? If you're a retard of the highest order you start going off about how it's all Dean Bailey's fault and call for him to get the sack. If this is your opinion after two rounds I suggest that it might be you who needs to be forcibly lobbed from the Westgate. We've botched our recruiting over the last few years - there is absolutely no doubt. For all the gnashing of teeth over Craig Cameron's departure, and fawning over him while he was there, what have we ever really had delivered? Eventually even I'm going to admit that Brock and Sylvia are never going to be superstars - they will be good players at best but neither of them is ever going to go out and win a Brownlow. What a heartbreaker. Maybe I'm just bitter because he laughed at me once when I suggested we should never have delisted Darren Kowal? One way or the other if he can bring the same level of success to Richmond then he has my best wishes.
Changes? Weetra has got to go - 82% of the game for 2 possessions, and generally wandered around looking completely lost. I'm all for playing the kids in a suicide season, but at least give him a run in the 2's for a few weeks to get some confidence into him. If Rivers is ready to return (please god, be ready to return) then Miller should probably be following him out the door. At least you can have some hope that the new #28 might improve as his career goes on - Miller will still be "about to explode" and "fulfilling his potential" when he's played 300 games.
Bode isn't good enough - will probably go if Whelan comes back. Paul Johnson followed up his best game for us with an absolute shocker but might survive unless Jamar and/or Meesen runs riot for Sandy tomorrow. Hardly the platform on which to create greatness is it?
Radio Watch
I rarely ever listen to the radio during games, but today I subjected myself to Triple M because I felt I needed some sort of analysis of just how bad we were. Danny Frawley's assertion that "under Neale Daniher Melbourne were a kicking team", which somehow insinuated that handballing too much was a DB invention, irritated the shit out of me. Did these peanuts not watch us at the start of last season? Didn't we break the all-time record for handballing at some point?
And the ads after each quarter for Pete and fucking Myf almost caused me to lose it. No wonder nobody is listening to them despite hundreds of thousands of dollars being pumped into promoting them - he's a criminally unfunny bastard and she has the most annoying voice in human history.
Crowd Watch
Presumably all the softcocks stayed at home, because there were about 37 Melbourne fans in the house. A big round of applause to the absolute lunatic in the Melbourne scarf who was dragged out of the bottom deck of the Ponsford by a combined security/cop force whilst waving his scarf in the air and trying to lure Footscray fans into a fight. Points lost for the traditional football fan move of pretending you could snap at any minute and drop somebody when you're clearly incapable of getting away from your 'escorts', but a big bonus for completely losing the plot just as I felt like doing.
2008 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Nathan Jones (Winner by default for the second consecutive week)
4 - Cale Morton (Being the future of this side is like being the reserve captain of the Titanic)
3 - Nathan Carroll (Did a few stupid things, but also took a couple of grabs down back)
2 - James McDonald (Put in for four quarters)
1 - Cameron Bruce (Alright on Johnson)
Wheatley is going to get votes elsewhere, but last year's Defender Of The Year winner can fuck off in my book. Cheap touches as a loose man in defence don't mean squat unless you actually do something with them - he was mince.
Leaderboard
10 - Nathan Jones
4 - Brent Moloney
4 - Cale Morton (Leader: 2008 Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
3 - Paul Johnson
3 - Nathan Carroll (Leader: 2008 Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
2 - Brock McLean
2 - James McDonald
1 - Cameron Bruce
1 - Brad Green
Next Week
Geelong in Geelong. Ahahahahahha go and get fucked. I'll be there - do you think there will be more than thirteen other Demon fans present? Basically this shit is going to go down like Gallipoli - we're going in knowing that we're going to be massacred. Here's to heroic defeat, rather than the disgraceful slop that we're likely to be served up.
Next Life
I will be a French aristocrat who spends every cent of the family fortune on whores, brandy and having underlings ripped apart by horses. It will be spectacular.
Posted by Supermercado at 05:04 PM | Comments (5)
March 24, 2008
The Day After The Night Before
I suppose I could have added this as an additional to yesterday's post, but it deserves it's own space to be heard. I've realised exactly what the difference between disappointment and outright panic over yesterday is. The answer is 5 points. The psychological barrier of 100 points is what has caused the internet to melt down overnight. If we'd lost by 99 points I can guarantee that the reaction would have been half as savage. People would still be losing the plot, but I doubt they'd be ranting and raving like complete freaks as they are now. But the barrier was broken and freakdom reigns - I've been responsible for enough it, I should know.
We can slaughter the players until the cows come home, but where's it going to get us? Same with murdering the coaching staff. Yes, it's the first time since 1952 that a coach has debuted in Round 1 and lost by a hundred, and yes it is a massive disaster but what do you want Bailey to do about it? Whether his gameplan works or not is anyone's guess but I sure didn't see him out there yesterday kicking balls to opposition players and personally letting Hawthorn run riot. Give him a few weeks (at least) before you start sticking the knife in. I seem to recall some particuarly spaz Hawthorn fans having kittens over Clarkson about 10 minutes into his coaching career, and now they're probably whopping off over his picture in excitement at the fact that they're seemingly a top 4 side. Who would you have in the booth instead? Yesterday's hero Sheedy? Give me a break, the man hasn't fired a shot for five years.
The next 23 weeks - all star game (any danger we might have a representative?) and mid-season break included - are going to feature a lot of heartbreak. At some point you may actually question why you bother spending money, and investing effort both emotional and physical in watching it. But if you're sick in the head like me you'll be back and secretly somewhere deep down loving it even when we do lose to Carlton by 300.
The world is a horrible place. There are more important things to destroy ourselves over than football. Fire up.
Posted by Supermercado at 05:03 PM | Comments (3)
March 23, 2008
The Winter Of Our Discontent
"Shouldn't death be a swan dive? Graceful, white-winged, and smooth, leaving the surface undisturbed?" - Johan Grimonprez, Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y.
At about 2.20pm yesterday as I was walking towards the city down Wellington Parade two things struck me. One was why, ten minutes into the first quarter there were so many idiots in Collingwood jumpers casually wandering to the ground - and the second was how excited I was for footy to be back. About how much better I feel to be able to listen to a game on the radio, and how the expectation of a new season is enough to give you a tingle even when everything looks as if it's going to go horribly wrong.
See, despite the abortion that has been our pre-season, you just never know what's going to happen in round one. Maybe The New Junkyard Dog DB was going to shock the world and unleash a footballing juggernaut the likes of which had never been seen again. Neitz with 13! Brock has 72 touches! Simon Buckley participates in a live sex show in the centre square with three supermodels and a polar bear! Well, it'll always be the dream.
So we got there, we sat down and we waited for something to happened. And frankly even though I've sat for four quarters and returned home I'm still waiting for that 'thing' to occur. All I saw today was a vomitous performance that made me embarassed to walk out in a Melbourne jumper. I've seen a lot of horrific stuff over the years but never before have I actually considered covering my colors up to avoid embarassment. It was THAT bad. But I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.
In the first few minutes an important trend was established. The ball would go into our forward line Juice, Neitz and Robbo would all jump for it - nobody would actually connect and the ball would drop straight into the hands of a Hawthorn player who would clear it with ruthless efficiency and run it unchallenged to their attacking 50 where they would score. Again and again it happened. At half time when we'd kicked 1 goal and were down by 50 we'd only had a couple less inside 50's than the Hawks. On paper we should have been a chance, but the reality was much more obviously that we were going to get smashed.
It's just that the delivery to the forwards was so abysmal that they couldn't get near it most of the time, and even when they did they either botched it or had it 50m out on the boundary line. It was so abysmal I couldn't even manage to get upset about it. At one point we were even winning the free kick count by a ratio of 2:1, and when you can't even capitalise on that to get within a million points then you know something is wrong. Part of the problem with the forward line was a complete lack of crumb - I know Weetra was playing his first game but he needed to be there more at the drop of the ball. As much as I love Davey in the midfield I'm afraid that for us to rack up any sort of decent score this year he will need to be hanging around the forward line both creating and delivering scores.
To be entirely honest the backline wasn't awful. Wheatley was mince, and Garland didn't show much but given that the ball was down there every 30 seconds the likes of Bell and Carroll didn't completely disgrace themselves. We even, shock horror, looked alright from the kick ins. Result aside I can't believe that there would be anyone who was dying for a return to the Travis Johnstone led kicking efficiency shambles that we suffered coming out of defence last year. In fact getting the thing outside 50 was probably the best bit of our performance today - it was just that Hawthorn had the center of the ground locked up like Fort Knox so that we had to go wide from there and usually cock it up. It we didn't find someway to screw it on the wing then it was usually the ball that went inside 50 and not near anybody.
Maybe they let us get the first couple of kicks in so they could take the piss afterwards? Who knows. Would make sense knowing that we're likely to panic like schoolkids and completely botch it.
In the last quarter, after taking it out to a game high of 115, the Hawks did their bit for intra-club relations by taking their foot off the pedal at the 20 minute mark of the last quarter and allowing us to close the gap a bit but even with their help we couldn't manage to get within a hundred, and for only the 20th time since 1896 we managed to get turned over in the regular season by the mythical 100 points. First time since Round 18, 1997 (Mark Bayes? 6 goals?) if you're keeping score.
And that was that. The siren went, the Hawthorn fans did a load and we skulked out like the losers that we were. The New Junkyard Dog became the first coach since 1952 to lose his first game in Round 1 by more than a hundred and a little bit inside of me died. I'd love to bring you a full report of his press conference, but thanks to the new and improved AFL website, run by the monkeys at Telstra this is what happens when I click the link to view it,
Warning: mysqli::mysqli() [function.mysqli-mysqli]: (00000/1040): Too many connections in D:\Apache\bptv-iad\libraries\db_api\mysqli.php on line 46
Makes even less sense than our gameplan.
This is the lowest moment of my MFC supporting career, there's no doubt. Having been too young to really appreciate the last time we put in a performance like this - and having been exposed to John Longmire kicking 14 in a 130 point loss in about the second game I ever went to - it's heartbreakingly awful. Especially after so much build up, and so much off-season planning towards today. We should have known from the practice matches that it was going to be an apocalypse, but just how much is a shock to me. The guy who made this prediction must be feeling pretty justified now,
Originally Posted by Supermercado
Scoreline: Hawthorn plenty, Melbourne not much
Genius.
In the immortal words of Mene Gene Okerlund. Fuck it.
Logo Watch
Hawthorn's new one looks like a startled chicken, but when you win by 105 points you can afford to get away with having a giant cock on your jumper I suppose. After all, we've got about 20 of them in ours *boom boom*
Crowd Watch
Second level of the Ponsford there was a surprising amount of Melbourne fans, especially given that outside the ground I spotted about seven. We were also treated to two clown Hawthorn fans who didn't shut up for the first three quarters - before mysteriously disappearing after somebody told them to shut the fuck up - and delivered one of the worst double comedy acts since Mel and Kochie.
Bonus points in the crowd watch category for the guy sitting behind me who had a nervous breakdown every time Newton went near it, lost the plot at everyone for everything and yelled "HE'S A LEFT FOOTER!" intermittantly throughout the first half. I've said it before and I'll say it again - the only thing that ruins footy is footy fans.
You knew we'd hit rock bottom when some tart in a Carlton scarf in front of me said "this is embarassing". When they can see it you know it's all over. Speaking of Carlton, I wonder why exactly Chris "DO YOUR KNEE YOU TRAITOROUS DOG" Judd didn't want to come to us? The crunt is obviously a fortune teller.
Fanbase Watch
I'd like to think that everyone reading this is a paid up member of the club, but I'd still like to address this to the wider community.
If you are sitting at home trying to decide whether or not to buy a membership or not and have decided, on the strength of today's performance, that you are not going to sign up this year then I have a message for you. Fuck off and die. The scum who only jump on when we're winning are the cancer that eats at the heart of this club. If we're going down in 2008 then we're going down with all hands on deck. I don't care if we're 0-22, I will be there every week other than when I'm overseas. In two or three years when we're decent again there'll be another 10,000 people who suddenly discover their love of Melbourne - and every one of them should be force fed into a cement mixer.
2008 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Nathan Jones (By default for having a crack)
4 - Brent Moloney (Enjoy him before he necks himself again)
3 - Paul Johnson (?!?!?!?)
2 - Brock McLean (Meh)
1 - Brad Green (Double meh)
Apologies to Carroll (shaded by a superstar with little support), Morton (not great, but for a first gamer he showed signs) and Dean Bailey (I'm sure your lawyers can get you out of your contract)
No apologies to Yze (still unwilling to bend over and pick a ball up), Neitz (no delivery, but not much from him either), Weetra (not good enough yet), White (28 H-Outs but F-All around the ground), Newton (pff, look interested),
Leaderboard
What do you think?
Karma Korner
Now, don't you feel a little bit bad about laughing at Carlton's performance on Thursday night? Actually, neither do I - we've still got about three more years to go to reach their level of slops.
Next Week
Footscray at the MCG on Saturday. We didn't do too badly against them in the pre-season - in the first quarter at least - so you never know. One way or the other it's going to be a horrific season so strap yourself in and get used to it. Stay firm in the bad times.
Changes? In - Sylvia, Dunn, Rivers, Whelan. Out - Garland, Weetra, Yze and a player to be named later.
Additional
Do the Herald Sun even bother watching these games?
Melbourne: S Buckley B Moloney B Green. Buckley? Six kicks and thirteen handballs? You're taking the piss.
Posted by Supermercado at 07:39 PM | Comments (2)
March 08, 2008
Southern Suburbs Suicide Saturday Special
Geelong, Bendigo, Cranbourne. No, it's not the Discovery Channel's "World's Worst Holiday Locations" special - it's where I've wasted my time watching Melbourne this pre-season. At Geelong it was ok to lose by ten goals, afterall most of the squad weren't even old enough to get into a nightclub. When we got done by Richmond in Cairns it was ok because none of us could get any real updates so we didn't know what the hell was going on. Then last week, despite having to go 150km to watch the lights go out it was ok to lose to the Dogs because we the squad was still undermanned and we had a great first quarter. This week it's ok to lose because.... we're shit and we know we are?
I don't know what's wrong. I really don't. On paper we look ok. On paper I almost think that we could make the 8, but once it gets let loose in the field it all just lacks something. Maybe I'm looking at it through the most rose-tinted glasses this side of Dame Edna but I don't honestly believe in my heart of hearts that we're that bad. I can't blame Bailey, because he's been thrown in at the deep end to try and rescue a side who are almost to a man injured in one way or ill-disciplined on and off field knobs.
Much like last week we were ok in the first quarter before it completely died in the arse. Unlike last week we were all over them in the last ten minutes of the quarter. Signs were good. Aaron Davey, especially, was running riot - as his brother sported a pink polo shirt and pushed a pram around the boundary line - and Colin Sylvia was tackling anything that went near him as if he was subduing a streaker at the cricket. The man looked as if he had a spring loose. I like it.
Then the second quarter started and the Slop-o-meter was cranked up to eleven. This season I will be introducing a special Demonblog feature where the top of each report will feature it's very own Slopometer reading so that, like the terror alert ratings, you'll know just had bad I rated the performance without even having to read this bullshit. Each week we will award a different player the right to be the match sponsor of the slop medal. If we have a ten goal win (AHAHAHAHAH!) and it was only two parts slop we'll wheel in a Todd Viney or a Glenn Lovett to present the award, but if it's a 127pt defeat then ladies and gentlemen we present you Mr. Scott Chisholm and the Glenn Molloy All-Stars. Like most special events that I promise this will, presumably, last about three weeks before I drop it and it's never heard of again.
In case you need a scapegoat to explain our performance look to the skies. It was hotter than buggery for the first three quarters. Didn't appear to hinder North though as far as I could see. Especially when they were running riot through the midfield and treating us with contempt. Maybe when the weather loses the plot in about Round 8 we'll run riot and win 14 in a row going into the finals? Where we will then get stitched up by Spring and knocked out in straight sets. Bollocks.
Highlights of the middle two quarters included Paul Johnson jumping up in a ruck duel and slapping the ball straight into the hands of Hamish McIntosh who gleefully accepted the gift. It's moments like that which tell you "this will not be a good season". With Meesen and Jamar both committed to the Sandy game, you'd think this means that DB is considering him for the backup job this season. On the strength of the pre-season so far I'd have to go with Jamar, though we haven't seen that much of Meesen actually rucking.
Does it really matter anyway? We haven't had a tap to advantage all bloody year anyway. I'm starting to fear ruck contests even more than kick-ins because you just KNOW we're going to botch it. We must be cursed. If anybody reading has shagged a witch and caused this to happen I ask that you admit it immediately so that we can attempt to do something about it before we finish 0-22 and the whole club is wound up.
A legitimate highlight was a corker of a goal by Davey in the 2nd, and more manic Sylvia tackling. The only downside was Big Col landing a few choice shots in a brief melee. Let's hope Channel Seven don't narc us out and give the footage to the league because he got a couple of tasty blows off before it dispersed.
During the last quarter Robbo was reported again. I totally missed what happened, but it looks like he's decided in the off-season that he's not only going to try and take mark of the century but that he's also the reincarnation of David Rhys-Jones and will attempt to be reported once a week. I turned around just as the North player was lying on the ground so I've got no comment about the 'actionability' (if that's a word) of it, but Robbo certainly didn't look happy to have been booked. So unhappy in fact that he copped a 50. Didn't really matter by that point. Then he kicked three goals - maybe violence excites him?
Basically the entire last quarter was junk time. You could tell by the clouds of dust kicking up from the carpark during the final term that everyone had given up. Can't blame them really - even with the ground announcer desperately trying to get people to stay for the Scorpions/Sandy game.
Ground Watch
Not too bad a place to watch a game. I was impressed by the lacksidasical approach to selling tickets that was employed at the gate. "Members come in this side", she said and then didn't even look at my membership card. I could have been showing her a Blockbuster Video card for all she knew. You'd have thought they'd want to milk every cent they could get out of the contest.
I noticed that the field had the old school trait of rising in the middle and dropping at either end so that if you stood behind the goals you could see bugger all at the other end. The wing wasn't bad to watch from, but the scoreboard was absolutely shithouse and impossible to read. Though I expect to never have to go to the ground again I insist that they fix it immediately.
And why in god's name did we wear the silver jersey against a team that has white in it's top? Utterly pointless. Maybe they're trying to sell a few of them to try and keep the club afloat for another fortnight. At least until Round One so that we can get some value out of these memberships - the fourteen of us who have bought one anyway. And let's be honest on the strength of the putrid displays delivered so far nobody else is going to be queuing up to drop their hard earned.
Crowd Watch
A fairly big crowd, but then again if you'd said there were 7000 there last week I'd have laughed. I'd say that of people you could work out it was probably 40% North, 35% us and 25% drunken locals who had no idea what was going on and proceeded to yell "It Takes Two" related komedy komments© at Robbo. Firstly the irony in fat, hot dog eating peanuts in the crowd abusing somebody for being on a 'talent' show is too much to bear. Along the same lines as fatties in the crowd bagging players for being unfit really. Secondly would you openly admit to intimate knowledge of television reality programs unless you really had to? I hope he does whatever he has to do to win it but I'd rather watch the first two months of the 2007 season on endless repeat for the rest of my life than two minutes of the show.
There were also more tatts on show today per capita than anywhere else on the planet other than an actual tattoo show. Chief amongst these was the famous mad North fan who, at the MCG in 2004, screamed "I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" and walked out while North were winning and was next seen cooking a BBQ in the carpark. A legendary figure who deserves his own Joffa style cult-following amongst TV stations.
Zebra Watch
As we start the 18th year without Camberwell I'm still not taking the VFA seriously and stayed for only ten minutes of the 2's game. The most important thing is that in those ten minutes Jared Rivers showed exactly why he is such a crucial player to our structure. Poor old Nathan Carroll took a lot of shit last year for his performances - from me as much as anybody - but really when you're in a defence and your only compatriots are Miller and Holland you're hardly going to look like a superstar. Provided he doesn't die in the arse this year Rivers could be the difference between finishing 12th in the AFL or bottom of the D4 Amateurs.
Apparently Whelan went alright as well, though Bartram struggled. Personally I still get a bit sad when I see Chris Lamb playing for Sandy - surely he could have done some decent work in our backline with the emergence of Rivers. God knows that just like how Carroll doesn't look like a star without some great players around him, Lamb was never going to come off looking particuarly well when he was expected to be leading a two man defensive front with Al Nicholson. Coincidentally if you want to pay homage to the man who held our backline together for the second half of 2002 and got no credit for it whatsoever you can catch him pulling pints at the Bridge Hotel in Richmond. If there was any justice in the world he'd be pulling women in nightclubs like other footballers.
Paul Prymke Plate for Pre Season Performance Votes
The gap between 5/4 and the rest is astronomical, but whoever said this was an exact science?
5 - Sylvia
4 - Davey
3 - Moloney
2 - Carroll
1 - Bell
Apologies to Robertson (junk time goals aren't enough to get you votes), Wonamierri (chased hard), Jones, Petterd and Newton
Leaderboard
12 - Davey
11 - Jones
8 - Sylvia
5 - Buckley
5 - Newton
5 - Valenti
4 - Miller
3 - Moloney
2 - Garland
2 - Carroll
1 - Johnson
1 - Bate
1 - Bell
Davey wins pending some kind of intra-club match to give votes for. Congrats on this prestigious award.
Next Week
Anything? Intraclub? Soul searching sessions? Mass (Nathan)Jonestown-esque cyanide laced Kool-Aid suicide in the centre of the Junction Oval? I'm in.
The Next Week After That
Oh jesus, we're all going to die. Have I ever told you how much I hate footy? Even with half the Hawthorn team out of action we're still staring down the barrel of getting slaughtered. Franklin to kick 28 - you heard it here first. All we need is for somebody crucial to go down with a serious injury in the first five minutes and you'd may as well shake hands with those around you, walk out of the ground and straight into the Jolimont rail yards because there will be no point subjecting yourself to the next six months of slop. Good thing that I'll be away for most of June and will, therefore, be able to avoid four games in person. There will be something comforting about watching us get slaughtered from somewhere in Singapore where nobody else knows what's going on and the act of walking into the street and yelling "FUCKING HELL DOES ANY BASTARD KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING?" would lead to a $5000 fine and a public caning.
If any of my bosses are reading this I'd like to apologise in advance that I am going to be very depressed for the next few months and my work performance may suffer accordingly.
Posted by Supermercado at 09:39 PM | Comments (3)
March 01, 2008
The Night the Lights Went Out In Bendigo
... and on our 2008 campaign if you ask me.
A hysterical reaction to an otherwise meaningless game in rural and regional Victoria? Perhaps, but to appreciate the full horror of our second half performance tonight you just had to be there. Maybe it was the strain of already having been to Geelong, attempting in vain to get any decent reports from the Cairns game, driving two hours to Bendigo and the prospect of a game in Cranbourne next Saturday that sent me a bit over the edge.
Anyway, this is how it all progressed;
We welcomed back a host of stars who hadn't been seen yet this season. Amongst them Neitz, Brock and Nathan Carroll who I half expected to make his entrance to "I Fought The Law" by The Clash and jump on the bonnet of the police car doing a pre-match lap of the oval before punching a German tourist in the face. Instead he opted to express himself through another ludicrous haircut. Which is, I suppose, the sensible thing to do. Speaking of haircuts I didn't even recognise Jamar at first. I thought he was ZOMGer or somebody else. Pre-season and I'm already losing the plot.
From the first bounce the opening minutes were an arm-wrestle. The Dogs had better chances, but they kept botching them. Key offender was Will Mince-on who had a couple of abysmal shots early on and then opted for a sideways pass when 50m out on a decent angle. This will not happen every week. Lloyd would have had 4 in the first five minutes tonight. Quentin Lynch would have had 1.8. Either way it's not good to play teams with decent forward lines, but get used to it kids.
Then, all of a sudden and against all odds, the Sexy Football Machine went into overdrive and we started slaughtering the dogs all over the ground. Nathan Jones was running riot in the centre, doing what he liked, and no matter what combination of ruckmen we tried (yes! even Mark "50 games and less than 5 average possessions" Jamar!" it worked a treat. Goals from Robbo, Neitz, Bate and Davey had us rocking. Weetra was showing a bit in the centre and between them Miller and Carroll were turning back anything that went inside the Footscray attacking 50. Bate added his second and we were 34-9 up and cruising.
Then the Dogs remembered what they were paid to be doing and decided to put some pressure on. Sexy football machine OFF, slop machine ON. There was one last bit of beauty with Jones finishing off a move started to by Davey to extend the margin to over thirty points but that was pretty much it. Suddenly balls started coming inside the defensive 50 again, and we started giving away free kicks and ludicrous 50m penalties to get the Dogs back into the game. Bode was particuarly stupid to give one away, and it did his game no favours because he was pretty bad in all aspects on the day.
After Jamar cleaned some peanut up the resulting free-kick down the ground put another goal on the board and before you knew it they were winning. Suddenly it was our side who were shitting themselves. Even Jones, who had been so dominant at first, was throwing handballs around to nobody. We were getting rorted in the centre of the ground by the umpires, but the ones that caused us to concede goals were generally there.
Pretty much the last highlight we had was Davey taking a handball with his back to goal and turning around 45m out and slotting it at the sleazy motel end of the ground. Neitz got one from a free inside 50 but the horse had already bolted. We lacked an absolute superstar to stand up in the middle and just grab the game by the throat. On the other hand the Dogs had Akermanis going nuts.
Paul Johnson did very little, but he did manage the most impressive dummy that I've ever seen a big man achieve. Running down the wing right in front of us he ran at his opponent, quickly switched the ball from one hand to another and back again and ran straight past. Awesome. Robbo goaled from a tricky kick but it was pretty much wasted. By this point Neitz had gone off - apparently rested not injured - and our forward line was left looking bereft of any inspiration. After the first quarter both Bate and Sylvia moved away from the forward line, and none of Jamar, White or Meesen could make a serious impact up front. Too much left to Davey.
Come the 4th quarter we turned the Slop-O-Meter up to eleven. Not only did we fail to do anything of any note with the ball but Robbo got himself reported for charging. Now, I'm not tribunal expert but I'd say he'll get away with a high points reprimand. This probably means he will get a life sentence on Devil's Island.
Then, as the fourth quarter wound to an end and the only interest was just how many goals the Dogs would pile on the lights went fizz and we were thrust into darkness. Did a shadowy Asian betting syndicate have money on Melbourne +40? Or didn't they put enough coins in the meter to cover four entire (albeit shortened) quarters? Whatever it was we were sadly denied scenes to rival the great Waverley Park fiasco when the lights went out and everyone burnt the goalposts down. I was hanging for it.
Incidentally this makes the second time that I've seen a match played for the Tynan Eyre Cup, and the second time that it has been abandoned. Is this a record? At least this time there was no old man in the announcers booth telling people to go home and think about what they'd done. Just an old man presenting the best on ground award to Jason Akermanis.
Then, err, I went home. What do you want me to do? Go out and enjoy the thriving nightlife? Catch the nightrider Bendigo tram to a throbbing gin palace and drinking myself into a coma? Bollocks to that. 154km of hot two-lane blacktop action was all that stood between me and civilisation. I was out of there ASAP. Goodbye Bendigo, see you next year.
Now, the reason I'm so depressed about this whole thing is not just because we lost and our last three quarters pre-blackout were utter trash. It's not because our paper-thin backline only looked because they were against an equally paper-thin forward line. It's not because I'm convinced we'll be the lowest scoring team in the competition. It's because when everything was going backwards barely anyone put their hand up to try and stem the tide. Davey was the only one who ran himself into the ground trying to get something going. Miller did well down back more out of necessity than inspiration, and the likes of Valenti, Jamar, Bate tried hard but there wasn't anyone there to do the job. Akermanis and Eagleton did for Footscray exactly what we needed somebody to do, and when their youngsters (especially the #20 who was gifted but nervous) started believing in themselves they cut us right up.
I don't rate the Dogs at all this year - especially in a season where there are only about four contenders for the spoon - and they're as much of one as we are. But on the strength of tonight's performance they're better than us. Maybe 15th instead of 16th, but that's a fair difference in the grand scheme of things. Apparently the #1 prospect for the draft next year is a gun. I don't care. I want some pride in my football club.
Morton was ok for us. He was getting it even if he wasn't using it particuarly well. He went hard, that's all you can ask for.
Goals
Bate 2, Robertson 2, Neitz 2, Davey 2, Jones
Notes from a scandal
* Footscray were listed on the scoreboard as "Western Bulldogs". We were "t Melbourne" because they'd just covered up the "Por" and used the card for the Borough instead. Why does the Queen Elizabeth Oval have a Western Bulldogs card and not a Melbourne one? Is that how far we've fallen? May as well shut the bloody club down now.
* Speaking of Queen Elizabeth how do we know which one it's named after. I know the country is generally a few years behind, but are they actually celebrating the reign of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558 to 1603? Let's hope so, football is in desperate need of some culture.
* The ground was neatly spit-roasted between a sleazy motel (not surprisingly entitled "The Oval") and a corker of a waterslide. It was not an unpleasant place to watch a game, even if the elevation anywhere other than the 20 seat grandstand was a maximum of about five feet meaning that you had no idea what was going on across the other side of the ground.
* Fans of the D-Generation's Late Show, and in particular the Commercial Crimestoppers segment, will be pleased to know that All Tools (who's ad it was decided featured 'all tools') is not only kicking on but also advertising at the ground. Sadly there was no time to go searching for the holy grail of all Commercial Crimestoppers stores, Sandhurst Machinery.
Crowd Watch
* I wasn't intending to stray into any tired cliches about country people wearing wifebeater singlets and/or flannel. Then I showed up and 2500 people were wearing either wifebeaters or flannel. I will say no more. Terrifyingly, from some angles Cale Morton appeared to be sporting a rats tail which one can only assume was some sort of twisted tribute to local fashion.
* For some reason there were a bunch of kids dressed in yellow who spent all pre-match cheering for "yellow" and then sat there in silence for four quarters when the game started. Idiots.
* Speaking of kids I don't think there was a child under the age of 18 in Bendigo tonight who wasn't there. 95% of them unsupervised and running around making idiots of themselves. Justice was served when one of them fell off his skateboard and on his arse. Skateboards at footy games. Just fuck right off now. I tell you what there were a lot of parents who shipped the kids off to the footy so they could stay in and have a dirty night. For one night only QEO rivalled The Neverland Ranch for unsupervised child behaviour.
* The contrast between the "wet" and "dry" areas was remarkable. The pissheads may have been lovely people, but they looked like the Bradley John Murdoch Apprecation Society. During the fourth quarter a fight started behind the goals we were (not very well) defending. This led to a massive charge by the aforementioned children, as well as the fattest security guard ever employed. He not so much charged as ambled in ten minutes later once the rest of the ground had beaten him to the action.
Paul Prymke Plate for Pre Season Performance Votes
The best thing is that because most of the newspapers will never actually write a legitimate report I can pretty much put anything in here and you'll believe it. Let's just say I struggled after the first three.
5 - Davey
4 - Miller
3 - Jones
2 - Valenti
1 - Bate (struggling...)
Leaderboard
11 - Jones
8 - Davey
5 - Buckley
5 - Newton
5 - Valenti
4 - Miller
3 - Sylvia
2 - Garland
1 - Johnson
1 - Bate
Next Week
North Melbourne in Cranbourne on Saturday. I might have a scotch beforehand. This season is depressing me already. Let's compare and contrast the performance of the backline with tonight when Thompson and Edwards are thrown into the mix. In my humble opinion a decent season by the backline is all that stands between us finishing 10th or bottom. We are going to struggle to kick goals, and by the looks of it our 'superstar' midfield is going the same way as our 'much vaunted' forward line of the 90's which looked good on paper but rarely ever did any freaking thing.
Posted by Supermercado at 12:32 AM | Comments (2)
February 23, 2008
Twat's Entertainment
So, we lost again last night. Not that you'd know from the shithouse reportage of the event. For the record Richmond beat us by 35 points in Cairns, but you'd hardly know it had even taken place. One pissy story clearly written by an agency writer who probably wasn't even at the game has been reproduced on every single website without any insights whatsoever. Who kicked the goals? Who played well? Actually, who played full stop?
Yes, in a week where the AFL have decided that they're going to add new teams and make a shitload of money they can't even be bothered to give you proper updated scores (even quarter by quarter) or a decent report on a game. So what if it's a practice game, if you're going to give it some gimmick name like the NAB Regional Challenge then at least treat it with some respect. It's bad enough that we get such shithouse coverage that we don't even get to watch drafts, but this is complete balls. They're probably making millions out of their website every year and they can't even get one of their officials on a junket in Cairns to phone through some scores for the website every once in a while.
When you're reduced to reading forums where people are posting information that they're getting from somebody at the ground who is sending them text messages, then you've got to start wondering what sort of competition you're actually following. Can you imagine that kind of a scenario in the NFL or Premier League? Sure, if the practice match is Melbourne vs the Diamond Valley D4 amateurs then fair enough leave it alone, but when you pit two legitimate AFL sides against each other (though having seen both Melbourne and Richmond last year there might be some argument against legitimacy) at least put some effort into it you peanuts.
Where does this leave us? Well, I'd like to be able to tell you - I really would. Talk to me next week.
All I know is that Juice Newton necked himself and went off in a brace. We wish the great man all the best.
Paul Prymke Plate for Pre-Season Performance Votes
Who the fuck knows? 5 for Phil Gilbert, 4 for Trent Ormond-Allen and spill the rest between Andrew Lamprill, Vin Cattogio and Fatoui freaking Atata for all I know
Next Week
I think it's Footscray in Bendigo on Friday night. I'm not taking any more chances, I'll be there. Hook me up with a wireless modem by then and I'll liveblog it. Otherwise I'll just sit there (possibly in a car, honking the horn whenever there's a goal) and self-harm for four quarters.
Of course, given the farcical nature of scheduling in this competition we may very well turn out to play the Nashville Kangaroos in Bangkok.
[b]UPDATE[/b]
The Sunday Age presents us with a best players list. I have every suspicion that it's a complete fiction, especially because it lists our best player as a "C. Newton", but given that they're a newspaper and Demonblog is - err - not I'll take their word for it. Votes and leaderboard are therefore as follows,
5 - Newton
4 - Jones
3 - Davey
2 - Sylvia
1 - Johnson
Leaderboard
8 - Jones
5 - Buckley
5 - Newton
3 - Valenti
3 - Davey
3 - Sylvia
2 - Garland
1 - Johnson
Posted by Supermercado at 11:39 AM | Comments (1)
February 17, 2008
(Geelong) Road To Nowhere
So, welcome to season 2008. Are you depressed yet? Well, the good news is that I'm here to tell that we might have been well and truly touched up by Geelong at Kardinia Park yesterday but we were almost 50 points better against them than Port Adelaide managed in the Grand Final. Therefore we are the second best team in the competition. Yes!
Complete horseshit I know, but the story of yesterday's game is clearly more one of an absolutely sensational team, with a huge spread of senior players available toying with an already inferior squad lacking most of it's leadership group and half a dozen crucial players. Scoreline aside we weren't entirely embarassing today, and once you throw (deep breath please)..
Neitz, McLean, Rivers, Davey, Bruce, Wheatley, Carroll, Miller (I suppose..) etc.. etc.. back into the mix we already look like a better side. Maybe not top 8, but definately not the bottom of the harbour style performance that the score might have indicated.
A game review? Must I? I spent more time with my head in the record trying to work out who the hell half of our players were.
Paul Prymke Plate for Pre-Season Playing Performance (!?) Votes
5. Buckley
4. Jones
3. Valenti
2. Garland
1. Sylvia
Votes for other pre-season games will be as awarded by the newspapers, unless I'm actually there and then I'll make the decision. God forbid we play an intra-club anytime soon I'll hand out some votes there as well and make this well and truly confusing.
ZOMGer Watch
Well, now that both the Philthy and Byron Watch's are redundant we need somebody else to focus on. Unfortunately Zomer is unlikely to feature in more than a handful of matches this year so it's going to be a bit of a waste.
Crowd Watch
Early in the week the AFL, those bastions of truth and fairness in reporting, told us that the game was rapidly selling out and that we'd better buy tickets in advance to avoid disappointment. Sounded like a massive scam to me, and indeed it was. 10,000 people "packed" the ground to watch their returning heroes in their first post-Grand Final run out. Let's assume there were a thousand MFC fans, a thousand Cats fans from elsewhere, and 500 neutrals. That means that 7500 of 160,000 locals got down to the game. Wonderful stuff. Support the game. Harked back to the glory days of the late 90's when they were going down the tubes at a million miles an hour and were all set to join Pyramid and the Geelong Supercats in the list of local icons that had gone tits up financially.
Some twat behind us kept yelling "wooden spoon! wooden spoon!" every time we cocked something up. Amazing how after forty years of mediocrity people start to get cocky after they win once. I want to win once so I can be a complete bastard as well.
Next Week: Cairns for the NAB Regional Challenge. Did you know that there are "Regional Challenge" games being played at Princes Park? Who knew that Carlton's rubbish form over the last few years had turned so many people off that we have to go on a mission to reintroduce the game to the people of Parkville. Meanwhile given that we're the club who are pioneering an international student membership, and so many of them live in the area why can't we play there?
Maybe they're planning to add another few teams on top of the Gold Coast Goast and West Sydney Wankfest in a few years? The Cairns Crunts might be in the mix along with the Port Moresby Pedos. I can't wait.
Next season: We could be a contender! This season, however, we are going to be flotsam. Get used to it.
Posted by Supermercado at 09:15 AM | Comments (1)
September 05, 2007
Every Day Is Like Sunday: Year In Review
Round 1 vs St. Kilda or "Give Me My Friday Night Back"
Where we lost to St. Kilda and made the prophetic statement "Yes, it's going to be one of those years", after Brock necked himself in the first quarter.
Vote Leader: Neitz (5)
Round 2 vs Hawthorn or "Marjorie Wilson Appreciation Day
Where we gave up a massive start to Hawthorn and almost nailed them in the last quarter before falling apart again and I started to question ND's tenure as coach.
Vote Leader: McDonald (8)
Round 3 vs Geelong or "My Brain Hurts"
Where I discovered that our entire lineup were gumbies, that I hated sports and that we had no fans left.
Vote Leader: McDonald/Bruce (11)
Round 4 vs Fremantle or "Dia De Los Muertos" (Day Of The Dead)
Where everybody else discovered we didn't have any fans either, and to the consternation of fantasy football players everywhere Matthew Pavlich failed to kick 19 despite having chances to do so.
Vote Leader: McDonald/Bruce (11)
Round 5 vs Sydney or "Road Trip Rage"
Where our guest reporter Tom discovered that the family atmosphere at the SCG was rubbish, and that you should never compare Steven Tingay to Darren Kowal in front of a Febey twin.
Vote Leader: McDonald (12)
Round 6 vs Port Adelaide or "The Spanish Inquisition"
Where we almost broke our losing streak, and I lost the plot with AFL football in one of the biggest sprays of all time. We lost the game, I lost the plot and so it went on. For those of you reading in the future we were zero and fucking six by this point.
Vote Leader: McDonald (12)
Round 7 vs Footscray or "Watching The Defectives"
Where we lost another close one but apart from punching the ground and almost breaking my hand I felt strangely zen about the whole thing.
Vote Leader: McDonald (12)
Round 8 vs West Coast or "Throwing yourself off tall buildings is fun"
Where I cracked the shits, wrote the worst report of all time and refused to post a votes leaderboard due to my angst. Peter M later chipped in with a real report, tastefully entitled "Rack up the lines, we're off to Subi"
Vote Leader: Would have been McDonald on 15 had we bothered to do a leaderboard.
Round 9 vs North Melbourne or "Beat Me, Hurt Me"
Where we lost a thriller in the last couple of minutes again, and I had a nervous breakdown which led me to write one of the most bizarre reports of all time featuring mentions of Sylvia Plath and Vichy France.
Vote Leader: Bruce (16)
Round 10 vs Adelaide or "We Fought The War, And We Won (a game..)"
Where we finally won a game (IN JUNE FOR FUCK SAKE) and unbridled joy ran riot at the MCG. It was honestly like we'd won the Grand Final, not limped to 1-9.
Vote Leader: Bruce (19)
Round 11 vs Collingwood or "From the Rubble to the Ritz"
Where we won two in a row, Robbo ran riot, Pies fans blamed the umpires for everything despite getting more free kicks and people started to think that we'd turned the corner and were going to win the flag.
Vote Leader: Bruce (19)
Round 12 vs Richmond or "Why bother?"
Where it all came crashing down in a screaming heap during a second quarter that was described by David Stratton of the Movie Show as "an excremental zero star performance that nobody should ever be forced to sit through again without access to hard drugs and a suicide machine".
Vote Leader: Bruce (19)
Round 13 vs Essendon or "The hits just keep on coming"
Where Neale Daniher quit and almost got the send off a lifetime until we lost with six seconds left in the match. We also saw the debut of the cult hero of the millenium one Mr.MJ Newton.
Vote Leader: Bruce (19)
Round 14 vs Carlton
Where I was overseas listening to the game from a Bangkok internet cafe and missed us actually winning. Instead I got to see the Australian soccer team lose instead - inept bastards.
Round 15 vs Brisbane
Where I extracted myself from a dodgy Thai taxi driver in time to get to an internet cafe at the 20m mark of the first quarter, only to find out that we were 40-0 now. Cuntarific!
Round 16 vs North Melbourne or "Notes From A Scandal"
Where we were played off the park in front of about 13 people in Jeff White's 250th, and I tried to lobby (ultimately unsuccessfully) for Dean Laidley to be appointed as coach.
Vote Leader: McDonald (27)
Round 17 vs Port Adelaide or "Character Assasination"
Where we went to Adelaide and got massacred whilst wearing a "clash strip" that actually clashed more with the opposition than our normal one would have. For the first time in a decade we went 100 points down before recovering for a "respectable" 80 something point loss. Adam almost slashes wrists in loungeroom while watching.
Vote Leader: McDonald (27)
Round 18 vs Sydney or "Roadtrip Fever"
Where I went to Manuka and wrote a report before totally forgotting to post it. Therefore the above link is it's world premiere.
Vote Leader: McDonald (27)
Round 19 vs Footscray or "Saturday Night Fever"
Where Ben Holland ran riot up front, and we handed out a spanking to a completely mediocre side in Russell Robertson's 200th in front of another abysmal crowd.
Vote Leader: Jones (29)
Round 20 vs Collingwood or "We could have been a contender"
Where we suffered the biggest injury crisis in recorded history and yet still almost managed to mow Collingwood down from 40 points behind. There were spontaneous outbursts of pride amongst our fans at the showing - except that 90% of our fans didn't bother to show up even though it was Neitz's 300th because they're spineless dogs.
Vote Leader: McDonald (32)
Round 21 vs Fremantle or "Super Saturday Slops"
Where we went to Perth and were competitive for the first 20 minutes before falling apart like a Russian apartment block and completely embarassing ourselves again.
Vote Leader: McDonald, Green, Jones (32)
Round 22 vs Carlton or "Thank god that's over. When does next year start?"
Where despite playing an absymal team of rejects who didn't actually want to win we showed enough to provide optimism for next year, and to send Biz, Brown and Pickett off in the right fashion
Vote Winner: Jones (34)
Posted by Supermercado at 08:46 AM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2007
Thank god that's over. When does next year start?
So, another season of wasted dreams comes to an end. At least in one of the rarest occurances in VFL/AFL history both sets of fans left the stadium happy tonight - we realised that being a couple of draft picks higher in the order is essentially fruitless and sent Bizzell, Pickett and Brown off in great fashion, and the spineless dogs on the other side of the ledger got to punt against their own side and get a prized draft pick.
After an early scare for everyone when Lance Whitnall was taking marks inside 50 at will we all realised that he couldn't kick straight if his life depended on it and while they racked up behinds left, right and centre we banged on seven at the other end without reply. The dream scenario of beating them by so much that it went from a triumph to a humiliation was starting to look like it was in with a chance until they decided to show some fight at the end of the first and the start of the second. Travis Johnstone was running around getting possessions at will, Nathan Jones was cleaning everything out of the centre, Jamar was enjoying his best game of the season (albeit against a ruck division with less prospects for 2008 than Fitzroy), and Miller was playing a good game against a defence with a combined age of 13.
The game ebbed and flowed a couple of times but it pretty much remained the same, somewhere between 20 and 40 points. The players on both sides were trying to win, but it was obvious that only half of the fans really cared. Thankfully none of our fans were stupid enough to be sitting there punting the enemy home but the Carlton fans certainly were. Calling for holding-the-balls on your own team is such an obvious gag that it's always going to get some reaction. When you do it once it's funny, when you do it for four quarter it's fucking irritating you twat. I condemn these people to the same circle of hell that will have the people who ironically demand deliberate for everything for the rest of the game after their team has copped it once.
Juice Newton will enjoy an extended pre-season break after nailing one of the Carlton players with a perfectly pointless bump to the back after he'd marked. In Benny Hill style scenes one of the umpires then reversed the free after a melee and tried to award Juice a 50 before somebody else stepped in and pointed out that he'd just run through a guy at a million miles an hour and been reported for it, so Carlton had better take the free. Speaking of frees is it some kind of record that we didn't score one until halfway through the second quarter? I didn't think they missed too much, and it wasn't hurting us on the scoreboard but it was an unusual stat.
Meanwhile if I were a Carlton fan I'd be worried that Kreuzer was going to neck himself rather than be forced to play for them, because they were a rabble. I know they're all about 13 years old, and that they've got Stevens and Fevola to come back but let's hope for everyone's amusement that they manage to somehow keep wrecking themselves and subjecting us to the grim spectacle of chucking an entire second half of the season year after year.
Crowd Watch
Not sure how 26000 ended up showing. 30 minutes before the first bounce there would have been no more than 5000 in the ground. Ross "arrive early to avoid disappointment" Oakley would have been slashing his wrists. Except that every Melbourne fan is already used to disappointment anyway so we tend to rock up at the last minute as a matter of principle.
In a final example of what a crazy night it was, as we were walking out some granny in a Carlton scarf started with something along the lines of "arghh I thought Robertson was supposed to be good. He only kicked five goals". Obviously she'd hobbled out to put her false teeth in before he nailed his sixth on the siren, but I was so speechless at this random and nonsensical commentary that I never even managed to tell her to piss off and take her medication. All I managed was a casual "What do you want him to do next time? Kick 15?" This is probably for the best, as the last time I verbally abused a senior citizen at Waverley Park in Round 2, 1999 I was almost beaten to death by a platoon of St. Kilda fans.
Congratulations also to the Carlton cheersquad for belting out their song after they'd lost, and proving once and for all why cheersquads of all persuasions should be taken into Port Phillip Bay in a boat and then sunk.
So it's farewell to the Brown Dog, Bizz and Choppy Pickett. Obviously Browny spent the longest with the club, and has been an inspirational figure with his courage. Word is that he's going back to Adelaide for good, which is a shame because he would have been great to have around the club in some capacity and we'll miss him, but you may as well go out playing decent football rather than exiled in the seconds.
Clint Bizzell played a great role in defence over the years. He missed last year entirely, and was in and out of the team this year but provided a vital part of our (relatively) successful 2004/05 squads. A genuinely nice guy who will be missed.
Finally Byron spent the least time with us of the three retirees, but for a guy who was almost universally loathed by our fans when he played for Port, and who showed at the club with an arse bigger than Greenland he won our hearts. The writing was on the wall the moment he was dropped midway through the year, but his mere presence in our squad has been positive over the last couple of years. Having said that it's strange to farewell somebody who has won two flags, and played most of his senior football at other clubs. You almost expected him to rip off the MFC jumper and have a North/Port version underneath.
Good luck to all the boys in whatever they choose to do next.
Finally, a big vote of thanks to Mark Riley as well. I was critical of the team's direction in a couple of matches but I like the guy's attitude and I hope he stays around and plays a big role under the Bailey Adminstration.
Votes
A crucial set of choices given the traffic jam at the top of the leaderboard, but we're happy to say that somebody has snuck in for a vote tonight and taken this year's title home.
5 - Johnstone
4 - Robertson
3 - Jones
2 - McLean
1 - Miller
Apologies to Bate, Bode, Brown, Bruce, Dunn, Green, Chris Johnson, Newton and White.
2007 Allen Jakovich Medal - Final Results
34 - Jones
32 - McDonald
32 - Green
19 - Bruce
17 - Bate
17 - Johnstone
16 - White
16 - Wheatley
15 - McLean
10 - Rivers
10 - Davey
10 - Holland
10 - Brown
10 - Robertson
9 - Neitz
9 - Miller
8 - Godfrey
7 - Sylvia
6 - Bizzell
6 - Moloney
5 - Yze
5 - Bell
5 - Petterd
5 - Newton
5 - Carroll
2 - Dunn
1 - Frawley
1 - Pickett
1 - Ferguson
Nathan joins previous winners Travis Johnstone (2005) and Brock McLean (2006) in capturing the most prestigious award in world sports. Congratulations to this exciting new superstar, and we're sure there are many more honors to come in his career.
In other news Paul Wheatley captures his first Marcus Seecamp Award for defender of the year, joining Nathan Carroll/Ryan Ferguson (2005) and Jared Rivers (2006) on the honor roll, whilst Ricky Petterd and Juice Newton share the Jeff Hilton Rising Star award, which was won by Matthew Bate in 2006.
Next Week
Demonblog will have a year-in-review post collection and a hits/misses/neither here nor there analysis of the squad before presumably buggering off again all summer and leaving the impression that the whole site has been shut down. Hopefully I can climb off my ass at some point to cover delistings, draft and trade week. Then it's smooth sailing again until the glorious pre-season and our inevitable Bailey-led revival in '08.
Apparently there's some kind of finals series on in the next few weeks. Bollocks to that, I'd rather play Club Cluedo and try and guess which one of our players will make headlines on Mad Monday. I'll go for Nathan Carroll with the fire extinguisher in Bar 20.
Next Year
We do have a frightening amount of people to come back... And if we don't re-sign Robertson I'll have a nervous breakdown.
Posted by Supermercado at 09:06 PM | Comments (6)
August 25, 2007
Super Saturday Slops
Well every man and his dog knew we were going to lose this week anyway, so I don’t think any of us are surprised at the result today but what a traditionally Melbourne move to tease us by playing a competitive first 20 minutes before completely falling apart. I’m so disillusioned by this season that despite looking at the teams on Thursday night and Friday I was still surprised that Buckley and Johnson were playing – nothing against them personally I just want it all to be over.
So for most of the first quarter Fremantle looked flat and we were more than a match for them. Usually I’m terrifically negative about football, but every once in a while even I get sucked in and start to think that maybe something remarkable is going to happen. But this is Melbourne we’re talking about here so it didn’t. In fact after taking a two goal lead in the first quarter it went horribly wrong.
So wrong in fact that the Dockers kicked their highest second quarter score ever. Not tremendously impressive given that they’ve only been around for 12 years, and have spent most of that time losing, but significant nonetheless. Internet connection in Australia almost overloaded during the week from everyone making Pavlich the captain of their fantasy footy team, and he didn’t let them down by ripping Carroll to shreds. You can’t blame NC, after all Pavlich is a freak, but what other options have we got? Ferguson has put on weight this year but still appears to be more emaciated than an anorexic who has been on a desert island for ten years.
I half expected that at any minute Jakovich (not the good one), Shaw or Casey would start talking about how Chris Connolly built the Freo team, and how he could do the same to Melbourne as well. That would have been the cue to pick up the phone and start abusing some poor call centre monkey at Foxtel. Somebody has to feel the wrath for this season, and if it has to be some poor bastard in a call centre in Micronesia who can’t tell the difference between a footy and a coconut then so be it.
For the person who wrote in last week to whinge about my massive anti-Brad Miller agenda and claimed that I never blamed anybody else for being useless this one’s for you. Mark Jamar must go – he is completely inept. Jeff White massacred it in the centre during the first quarter, then the moment he went off for his ‘rest’ and Jamar came on it all started going backwards. We had Paul Johnson in the side as well and it took until we’d copped about five goals in a row until he got a chance. Sad. Miller was surprisingly respectable, but at the same time there is no way that we will have him in our team next year if we’re serious. Johnson ended up on Chris Tarrant at the start of the second half, which is exactly the point he should have walked out, told Mark Riley to piss off and never come back – it’s one thing being played wildly out of position but when it’s on the shittest player ever you have to make some sort of statement. Daniel Ward would be another one dissecting the Adelaide phone book to find an SANFL club to play for next season – he is pretty much G-A-W-N GONE. Though who fucking knows what’s going to happen next year – we’ll probably end up with the same team and win the flag with Miller kicking 12 in the Grand Final for all I know.
The tide was stemmed in the third quarter, but like the woman in The Club who was belted for saying the old guy got shaded in the grand final, the damage was already done. It was good to see some of our guys randomly starting fights to keep themselves amused while the world crumbled around them. The best move was Neita running from inside 50 to belt Ryan Crowley for daring to rough up Lynden Dunn. Nobody believes that we’ve got a team of hard-nuts, but the least we can see is a bit of violence no matter how manufactured it is.
Shockingly enough we actually outplayed Freo in the third, but just like the first we couldn't put the goals on the board to get it closer than five goals. Then the Norwood bound Ward gave away a completely pointless fifty that led to a Jeff Farmer goal and the door was well and truly jammed shut. Against the odds Ferguson did alright on Pavlich, and the wrists of fantasy football players all over the nation were slashed. Ward gave away another free kick, leading to another Farmer goal and Daniel ignored his opportunity to at least leave a legacy by not walking over and dropping the crunt. What's a ten week suspension when you're getting the sack anyway? Suddenly they kicked four in nine minutes and we were 50 points behind again. Either it's a cruel sport or we're inept - and I know which one I favour.
There were signs today. Ignore the second quarter and we went alright. There's some danger, injury plague notwithstanding, that we might be competitive next year. I wouldn't talk finals unless I was extremely drunk but I think