Why I’m never going to the football again, or, the Cats ruined Easter.

It was going to be the perfect weekend; four days off work, Mrs. Watson’s birthday, a friend visiting from overseas, the annual Easter Bender (a four day drinking event, conceived by Mrs. Watson some 3 years ago. It commences Thursday night, continues Good Friday, and reaches its peak Easter Saturday before winding down Sunday night. Just like in the bible) and a Geelong home game against Hawthorn, which I assumed would be another victory. Well, you know what they say about assumption being the mother of all fuck-ups.

It’s my own fault, really, it is. I’m not superstitious by any stretch, but there are certain things that shouldn’t be messed with during any kind of streak. Ask any gambler, they’ll have some weird set of rules about upsetting the status quo during a run of luck. You might even do it yourself. Have you ever been watching a game on TV, and your team is losing, so you go to the kitchen, to get a drink or something, and when you come back you sit in a different seat and they immediately start playing better, chipping away at the lead, and now you can’t leave the new seat, because you think your slight change of seating has affected the very fabric of the universe itself, that it has somehow changed the course of this particular sporting event and you’d never forgive yourself if you moved again and they started losing? No? Oh… me neither. Anyway, what did I do wrong? Well, where do I start…

Firstly, I went to the game. The last two matches have been on a Saturday, at Kardinia Park and televised on Fox Footy, exactly the same as Round 3. The past two weeks I have watched from the relative comfort of my uncomfortable couch. And Geelong has won both, handsomely.

Secondly, I wore a Geelong beanie, (a gift) which has only been worn once before. The first time I put this beanie on was immediately before the NAB cup grand final. Adelaide kicked about the first 4 goals, I took it off, and the rest, as they say, was on the front page of the Geelong Addy.

And thirdly, I took a friend of mine with me, not just any friend, no; this was a Hawthorn supporter, who hasn’t been to Kardinia Park in about 5 years. Geez, talk about a deal breaker, this is like rocking up to an open bar with Robert Downey Jnr. and wondering what went wrong. I don’t think I could have been given a bigger sign unless I had seen an actual hawk swoop down, grab my neighbour’s cat, eat it and shit it out all over my windscreen.

So yes, the Cats ruined my perfect weekend, ruined Easter, in fact, and I’m never going to another game again. Unless…Unless this is exactly what they wanted, unless the Geelong Football Club want to keep people from coming back to Skilled Stadium. Why would they want to do that, you ask? Listen up.

GFC membership sales have recently topped the 30 000 mark, somewhere around or above the capacity of Skilled Stadium. The Hawthorn game was a sell out, with people being turned away at the gate. A winning team means more fans, so if they beat Hawthorn, the demand for tickets to the next home game would have been even higher. So, with 30 000 members, plus general admission sales, what happens when the people who want to come to games at Kardinia Park just won’t fit? Would they turn away GFC members? Refuse to sell tickets to home games to the general public? What if buying a Geelong membership can not guarantee you’ll get in the gate at KP?


While you’re thinking about all of this, let me just raise the fact that Hawthorn was paying $6 for the win on Sportsbet. That’s 6-to-1 in a two horse race. (You think Frank Costa couldn’t come up with a lazy ten grand in unmarked, non-sequential 20’s and split it between 15 different bookies? Have you ever seen The Sopranos?)

Now remember, they didn’t appeal the Scarlett suspension and Steven King went off after 5 minutes with a mysterious hamstring injury, leaving the great Mark Blake to carry the ruck duties against the no. 1 tap ruckman in the league, ‘Spida’ Everitt. And have you ever seen any AFL team drop that many uncontested marks? Or kick 10 straight behinds? At their home ground where they have won 17 of their past 19? Plus, before the Hawthorn game Geelong were flag favourites, and favouritism, that is, being expected to win, is not something Geelong has a historically handled well. Perhaps they saw a chance to kill a few birds, albeit not Hawks, with one stone.

But before I tell you that I saw Hansie Cronje buying Cam Mooney a beer at the George & Dragon, let me just say that I will be back at the football, might even go this week. I just need to find a Geelong fan that hasn’t been to the Telstra Dome, a haunted Footscray beanie and a bulldog small enough to be eaten by a cat. Well, either that or Frank Costa’s bookie.