We present the 1990 SANFL Grand Final halftime show. Fast forward to 1.45 for chicken suits, the Birdy dance and the most unenthusiastic and out of time child performers ever.

Then at about 4.45 the tone changes entirely and the marching band starts playing porn music as a cavalcade of scantily clad tarts enter the arena.

Then the crowd does the wave. Anyone who does that at a football match (of any code) should be garotted. All the time while this is going on the marching band are playing "Hey Big Spender" and the woman in the chicken suit attempts a bit of sexy dancing. Then some ten year old kid does - HELLO FEDERAL POLICE? ARE YOU WATCHING?

Then, sensibly, Nine's Wide World of Sports goes to an ad and we're spared. I'm surprised the AFL didn't see this, ring up the Adelaide Crows and tell them that they weren't allowed to join the competition. Actually I'm even more surprised that they didn't steal these ideas for their own Grand Final 'spectaculars'

If you'd been locked in Guantanomo Bay for the last few years and were released just in time to turn the TV on for the second half of the Melbourne vs Fremantle match two weeks ago (has it really been so long? Thanks Novelty "Everyone vs Victoria" game!) you'd have been forgiven for thinking that Melbourne was the greatest team ever to have taken the field. Or that Freo were the worst. Ignore for a second the fact that we were about a thousand points down at half time after serving up some of the most putrid football seen since, well us the week before actually, and concentrate for a minute instead on the improbable comeback. Even better, just watch it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA110Y3TS2Y. I almost threw up at the final siren. There has never been anything like it (if you choose to ignore the 1950's like I do) and there's precious little chance anyone is going to forget it.

Now, reality. We were absymal in the first two quarters. At half time we'd kicked three goals. Consider this, in the first seven rounds we have kicked 11.16 in first quarters TOTAL. In the last quarter of this game we put on 9.2. What changed? What went right for once? I'd like to think that it was all down to our much maligned (and that's being generous) game plan of handballing in circles for four quarters finally finding some purpose and run, giving us the opportunity to finally put some pressure on an opposition team and get some decent delivery to our forwards and that's definately part of it. But let's not overlook the fact that Freo are like a Hollywood starlet who has lost her looks, gone flaky and now wanders Sunset Boulevard offering blowjobs to German tourists. Our comeback was not so much premeditated murder as assisted suicide. They wanted to lose, we did our best to help them.

It was glorious, but let's not get ahead of ourselves and think that it's the start of a great revival. We looked better, and one day we might look back and go "ahh, that's where it all started" but the renaissance is very much in it's infancy. Mark Harvey had probably never even heard of Austin Wonaeamirri before the young lad tore his purple heart out in the Punt Road end goalsquare, but Neil Craig is hardly likely to offer him the same courtesy. For the first time in his promising career Austin is going to be under heavy scrutiny, and one of the stories of the day from our perspective will be how he copes with it. The most important thing is that his emergence frees up Davey to go into the middle of the ground whilst still retaining some pressure inside the attacking 50.

There were 20,000 people at the MCG that day (hey, it's 19,000 more than will watch the game on the Gold Coast this weekend). In the future all 21,000 Melbourne fans will claim they saw it. Such is the stuff of legend, and to be frank I'm still not quite over it yet. Wonderful eh? Loves conquers all? Well, briefly but let's not get too excited yet. Had the third quarter not happened there's everybody possible chance this this preview would be darker than Leonard Cohen doing Sylvia Plath covers down a tin mine. Hell, had Freo not completely dropped their bundle in the last few minutes when we amazingly gave them a sniff, we might be talking up heroic failure and an impending 0-8 record.

Our major downfall this season, as you would have seen if you'd watched even five minutes of one of our matches, has been a lack of ball skills. Fairly crucical for an AFL footballer you'd think, but apparently not down at Demonland. Despite a few pastings the backline has battled gamefully in the face of relentless pressure. Obviously if the ball goes down there enough you're going to cop a beating. Stopping the opposition from getting it first hasn't been the problem, it's what we do with it once it hits the deck. Cue an endless comedy montage of handballs to the wrong person, mid-punches of the ball when there's no opposition players within ten metres, comical kick-ins and balls sliced so far over the fence that they're in danger of smashing windows in the car park. I'm far more concerned about Burton, Porplyzia et al doing us damage than I was of a Freo side that consists of Pav and not much else (Chris Tarrant? You're having a laugh! Hold on, what do you mean we now employ the man who did that trade?)

[b]Adelaide vs Melbourne fun facts[/b]
Matthew Collins had the best tatt in AFL history and Peter Vardy was the reason I was so good at AFL 2004 on the Playstation. And that's about it...

The forwards have similarly been handicapped by abysmal delivery inside the attacking part of the ground. Despite being slaughtered by pretty much everyone for being past it and 'not trying' Russell Robertson remains a dangerous option up-front when actually given the chance to get the ball. When it's hacked from the pack at a million miles an hour in sheer panic (I'm looking at you Brent Moloney) to a 3 on 1 with no crumbers you wouldn't expect anyone to kick goals. At last he got some decent service last week and, along with Brad Miller playing his most commanding game ever at CHF, the forward line looked a lot better. However, ask yourself exactly what Freo's defence was doing to stop them. Not freaking much. Compare that to the likes of Rutten and Bock and it's a completely different story. Possibly in the horror genre. For mine we can't kick a winning score. Matthew Bate (the Ranga, for those of you who have come in late) will be a million times better for the run last game. In his first half of the season he was, frankly, unwatchable. Five touches and six clangers in one of the most Supercoach-unfriendly performances in living memory. He was, however, integral to the wild comeback. I'd expect him to chip in for a couple of goals here and there over the weeks. Brad Green has also been handy for a few this season as well as playing a vital role in our midfield. In fact he's probably shown more leadership this year than anyone in our played-voted leadership group - what does that say about us?

[b]Random Trivia Corner[/b]
I went to school with somebody who decided he was an Adelaide fan in 1991. Then suddenly after you won two flags he declared himself a Hawthorn fan. I suggested he should be thrown over a cliff. The next time they beat you in a final find him and hit him repeatedly in the head with a tire iron if you see fit.

Then there's the midfield. You may as well have Jekyll and Hyde on opposing wings considering what we've seen this season. There's a reason why the handful of people at the G erupted when we got a centre clearance the other week - it had been a quarter and a half in the making. Guess what? It lead to a goal. Bugger me sideways there's a novelty. Our ruck division have battled manfully, but like everyone else have been coming up with bugger all reward. Paul Johnson (or to you Adelaide fans "Who?") was in career best form before he busted his hand, and even had some questioning whether he was about to leapfrog Jeff White for the top job. White himself has been solid if unspectacular, and despite being a magnificent servent of the club for the last decade must be starting to see the writing on the wall and pumping his fist in glee that Jolly and Simmonds both walked out all those years ago. Mark Jamar (hey, there's a big South Australian footy name. Let's make a deal!) did a good job last week negating the human giraffe that is Aaron Sandilands, but he'll have to string together more than one performance to get any love from our fans. We also traded for some bloke called John Meesen who, as far as I can work out, is a purely fictional character (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taro_Tsujimoto).

On the end of the occasional tap to advantage have been a midfield which, on paper, are pretty good. James McDonald tenacious as always, Nathan Jones ruthlessly throwing himself at everything, Brock McLean punching German backpackers in the face but it hasn't always come together like it should. Turnovers have been the order of the day, and for every piece of outright Jones magic he seems to turn the bloody thing over twice more. McLean gets a lot of it but there's precious little sign of the smarts and silky skills that has us hailing him as a future captain, Brownlow Medallist and Pope at the start of last year. Green and Davey have chipped in with effective cameos, but you can't expect them to carry the side. Moloney is... Well, I want to say misunderstood but even I'm not sure anymore. Ill-disciplined is probably a better way of putting it. Then there's Colin Sylvia - he's such an interesting character that Grant Thomas went on radio and said that he'd heard a hot tip that he wanted a trade back to Adelaide. Which is strange because Sylv is from Mildura.

Compare and contrast to the experience and poise in the Adelaide midfield. If we're to have any chance of getting up we need to at least break even here. The most bitter pill of all will be getting stitched up by Scott Thompson. Nobody here has any problem with him going home - which says it all about how passive we are, we should be throwing full slabs at him - but it says it all about being in a one or two team town as opposed to the crowded Melbourne market. When ST wanted to go home you only had to roll one team for his signature, when Chris J**d decided to come back (and there's a man I would throw a slab at) he decided he couldn't possibly sign for the team he supported as a kid because we didn't have any facilities and Dick Pratt gave wicked head. It's not unfair, it's reality - but it's painful.

No matter what happens you've rolled us in the comic name stakes by naming somebody called Jarrhan Jacky. How's anybody supposed to top that without Rochford Devenish-Meares (http://stats.rleague.com/afl/stats/players/R/Rochford_Devenish-Meares.html) coming back from the grave to line up on a flank?

So, form says we're going to get porked. How about history? Apparently since 1991 we have won just five games at Football Park. Notable highlights amongst the 18 losses include,

* Getting tipped over by Port by 89 points last year.

* Racking up a grand total of 46 against the Crows in 2005. But hey, Shannon Motlop kicked three and you don't see THAT too often. Or indeed anywhere else ever.

2004? Flogged by both local sides. IN A GOOD YEAR.
2003? Lost both games. You may as well rename the place The Bermuda Triangle as far as we're concerned. Remember Ian Perrie kicking four in the first quarter? Chris Lamb sure does - he never played another game.
2002? Guess what happened? And I'll ask you not to mention the finals either.

Yes, you have to go right back Round 2, 2001 for the last time we won a game at Football Park. http://stats.rleague.com/afl/stats/games/2001/011120010407.html Sure, that was the wild match which featured Andrew Leoncelli kicking a goal with two seconds left to win after we'd surrendered a four goal 3/4 time lead with a few seconds left. It was Darren Jolly's debut - he's done well for himself since despite not getting a touch. In fact even if you take into account our remarkable knack for trading or delisting future premiership players (Bishop? Armstrong? Ormond-Allen?) he's the only person who stepped out for us that night that has ever lifted a Premiership. I know, I'm as shocked as anyone that Ben Beams and Steven Pitt never achieved the ultimate honor.

Some may also remember Neale Balme getting the arse after we kicked 3.9 against your beloved friends the Power in 1997 (http://stats.rleague.com/afl/stats/games/1997/111319970523.html). Leigh "Juice" Newton with two goals on the night. Look out for him having a kick during the warmup in his new role as a member of staff. Don't bother looking for his namesake Michael "Juice" Newton, because he's kicked on from taking Mark of the Year to doing nothing in the 2's.

As you can see even in a year where we're competitive you can almost bet your house on us not getting within five goals over there. In Melbourne it's a different story. Then we're competitive. God help us all we even beat you at the MCG last season. Before that we were robbed out of at least a draw on the Gold Coast by 'questionable' goal umpiring. Cross into the Central Time Zone, however, and suddenly we're beaten to a pulp. Why is it so? Does this mean we'd still lose if the game was held in Broken Hill? And how would you feel to be a Melbourne fan in Adelaide who only gets to see two games a season and knows we'll get flogged in both of them? Personally I'd move.

[b]Coaches Corner[/b]
Dean Bailey returns to Adelaide at 1-6, but he's still stoked that he doesn't have to put on his resume that he was in the coaches box when Port lost the Grand Final by twenty goals.

Neil Craig has a gleam in his eye like a headmaster who particuarly enjoys beating students with lengths of wood. I like that in a coach, and I wish the man well, but nobody can ever take Dean Laidley's place in my heart as the AFL coach most likely to be found with bodies under his floorboards. Why do you think I lobbied so hard for us to sign the Junkyard Dog after we sacked Daniher?

Anyway... If you want to know the real story about why the Crows will win handily this week you just had to watch the Gimmick Challenge Cup on Saturday night. Adelaide had half of their defence down there AND Burton up front. We had... Paul Wheatley sitting in his loungeroom. Jeff White was in the original squad but that said more about the rubbish ruck stocks of the Big V rather than anything we've done this year. I'd make a case for Jared Rivers, but that's because he's my favourite player. And guess what? He's a South Australian! At what point does he get frustrated at being the defensive lynchpin of the footballing equivalent of the boat from Gilligan's Island and demand a trade back to Adelaide to join Scott Thompson in the latest installment of the "sucked in hard" club of former MFC players to win Premierships elsewhere.

Someday I'll be invited to write the match preview for a game that I think we're going to win. This isn't the week. Crows by 50 - and this time there will be no comeback.

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!"

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.

Brisbane fans may see something of their own history in the Melbourne side that runs out at the Gabba on Sunday afternoon. For those of you who were Brisbane Bears fans, think of pretty much any year between 1987 and 1994 but without the scoreboard that had the jaunty little bear dancing around even when you were losing by 150. If you're a Fitzroy fan think 1995/96 - but don't think about it for too long or you'll have a nervous breakdown. If you were neither of these and joined the party just in time to enjoy triple premiership glory then the only way you'll be able to have any reference point to the way we're playing this season is to go outside, tip your garbage bins onto the road, wait for a car to run into the wreckage and then stand there surveying it in all it's glory for a few minutes.

We have been THAT bad this year. It says it all that our best performance of the year was against the best team in the competition. Twin massacres at the hands of the, still, unbeaten Hawthorn and Footscray had us worrying that we were going to leave Geelong having stolen the Bears record for the most points conceded in a game and given away Fitzroy's record for the biggest winning margin. Somehow we dragged the Cats down to our level and almost got away with a competitive result. All signs pointed to improvement and rebirth against North Melbourne but if they hadn't kicked themselves out of it early they could have beaten us by 80 points. Next stop Carlton - take out the farce of a match that they "accidentally lost" in Round 22 last year and we couldn't even beat them when we were good - even if half their team are still completely useless how were we supposed to turn them over with Judd (finally running freely after leaving his bulging wallet on the sidelines) and Fevola in the side? Despite 15 of their starting 18 still being generally inept we barely fired a shot and they did us over by six goals.

So, that brings us to this week. Oh the humanity. In his last two starts against us Daniel Bradshaw has kicked 17 goals - in years we were supposed to be good. With 23.13 in the first five weeks this year I shudder to think what he's going to do this time.

Last week we managed to stem the Fevola tide after a quick start by double teaming him with both Rivers and Carroll. Then we, err, stopped doing that and he kicked about 5 more. Was nice while it lasted. Sure, we might implement the same strategy on Bradshaw this week but I don't think anyone - let alone Dean Bailey - would have any faith that we've got the numbers to stitch him up and not leave Jonathan f'n Brown free to run riot and kick 13. He'll be keen to play himself back into form this week after having a shocker against Hawthorn, and what better team to do it against than the one who would struggle to beat the Noosa Tigers with a 30 point headstart?

Usually on BigFooty club forums there are always two competing factions - one who thinks their team's backline is shite and one who think they're underrated. The good news is that for one week only you'll all be united in getting together and realising that at least they're better than our forward line. Consider the fact that we kicked four goals in three quarters against Carlton - a team with a defence so lost and leaky they may as well be called Gilligan's Island. Neitz is out and the alleged heir apparent Juice Newton (though I've not seen much of it other than mark of the year) was suspended in the 2's last week. This leaves us with Robertson, Robertson and, indeed, Robertson. His performance against Carlton was a million miles removed from the first four rounds but it wasn't until Brad Green joined him inside 50 that we looked even moderately potent. Last week our first two shots at goal were taken by James McDonald and Matthew Whelan who have kicked about 15 goals between them in a decade - most of them I'm willing to bet not from set shots. We broke down so many times across half forward that I was almost nostalgic for one Brad Miller to return from suspension. He's back this week, and hopefully being in his home state will cause him to run riot in unprecendeted fashion. Don't hold your breath.

The one thing that I ask for, in knowing that we're going to get done, is that Travis Johnstone is kept quiet. I don't think I can stand having to log onto the Melbourne boards and see a hundred threads about how we should have kept him and "who's sorry now?" etc.. God knows we've already had the muppets posting that Bailey should be sacked and that we should have hired Sheeds as coach instead - I can't take any more revisionist BS. I hope TJ does well in Brisbane. He can win four Brownlow medals, a flag and the Cox Plate for all I care, but everyone could see that he was never going to progress any further with us. We got a first round pick for him, and yes in true Melbourne recruiting fashion the player we selected is currently residing on the Long Term Injury list (in the company of none other than our captain), and time will tell whether we won, lost or drew on the deal but I can't see what having Travis would have done for us this year or into the future. Now watch him get 47 possessions and kick 8 goals. On a similar note is it just me or have we not exchanged very many players between clubs over the years? Nick Carter did the trifecta and played for Fitzroy, Brisbane and Melbourne in a successful two game stint, and John Northey coached the Bears but have we swapped that many other players in the last twenty of so years? Perhaps, they could play for the Marcus Seecamp Cup?

The verdict? Well, almost all of the key indicators point to a crushing Brisbane win. Your forward line is ace, ours is slop. We can't play interstate, confidence is at an all-time low and the captain has just done himself a serious injury. Not that Neita has done anything this season but at least his misfortune has given us some chance to blame injury for our abysmal start to the year. Shame about the first four weeks, but go with it anyway. I fail to see any way in which we can match up, but at least if they're going to be two steps behind in everything else the boys will (hopefully) have a massive crack to make up for it.

What can we take advantage of? Well, according to this thread you can't kick in. The good news is that neither can we, so get ready for a fruitful afternoon of seven point plays. Please don't tell me you're letting TJ take the kick-ins either? I think he hit a target once in a decade. I'm trying to come up with another positive but I'm struggling. Cale Morton has been promising as you'd expect from a top 5 pick without ever going overboard, Brock McLean and Nathan Jones have been solid in the midfield and McDonald has done what McDonald has always does - chased like a greyhound, thrown himself into tackles like a lunatic and still been ignored by everyone.

Season 2008? I'm depressed. If you're an expert on contractual law and think you can find a way to get Dean Bailey out of his contract I'm sure he'll be more than happy to hear from you before he becomes totally depressed and throws himself out of a 3rd storey window.

P.S - Any chance you might re-draft Llane Spaanderman so I can finally use the Enter Spaanderman headline I've been sitting on for four years?

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 *clap* *clap* *clap*? Disappointment over the inability to create a banner message that is as good as the all time classic "DO THE WORLD A FAVOR, GET RID OF DON SCOTT"? Any way you slice it cheersquads are the biggest anachronism in footy ever - the sooner we forcibly disband them (using violence if necessary) the better.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

MELBOURNE'S Russell Robertson and Carlton's Marc Murphy have been cleared by the AFL Match Review Panel of any offences in weekend pre-season matches.

During the action, the panel said Robertson was watching the ball at all times and did not turn sideways to bump Swallow.

Cheers to there only being one shonky Channel Seven camera at the game. He's gotten away with it two weeks in a row - if we have luck like that throughout the season we might win two games.

Well, the second half of our forward line is cleared. Thank god for that, now we can concentrate on some of the few shining lights of our pre-season campaign. Hey, I hear that much maligned Colin Sylvia fellow has been playing well. Hold on a minute, what's that?

GUILTY!

Shit!

MELBOURNE has been rocked by another off-field indiscretion, with forward Colin Sylvia suspended for the club's Round 1 clash with Hawthorn.

"This is disappointing for Colin and the playing group," Neitz said.

At least when the entire West Coast list were making dicks of themselves, admittedly in a more serious fashion, they had success to look back on. We're running the risk of finishing bottom and having half our squad on parole.

My theory is that he knew he should have been suspended for this,

so he didn't show up to the session to make up for it. Sucked in with the $5k fine though - that's one night's worth of drinks at Motel.

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.

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.