Risky Business

About five minutes into the second quarter I paused before taking another mouthful CUB’s finest and proclaimed to Steve, my football viewing partner for the day, “Port are gone; they’re second to the ball every time.” And as soon as I said this, I knew what Steve’s response would be; not due to Steve being predictable, but due to Geelong supporters being predictable and because I was thinking the exact same thing; “Don’t jinx it.” For whatever reason, Geelong supporters seem prone to this line of thinking and I am no exception: If I was watching any team other than Geelong I would have confidently and correctly called the winner even earlier.

But after saying it, and after having the usual reaction, I thought about it; yes, there was a long way to go in the match but Geelong was looking quicker, stronger and hungrier. They were forcing the pace, they were making things happen and Port Adelaide was being made to look like they didn’t want to be there. (Its times like these I wish I had Mark Williams phone number – hows the tie, Mark? A little tight, Mark? How’s ‘Tredders’ doing, Mark? Ready to drop your captain, Mark? It worked out alright for us, Mark…)

I then reached the conclusion that, after a while, the success of a team must change the mindset of their fans. They expect victory instead of dreading a ‘let-down’ loss to an inferior team. If they lose, they accept being beaten on the day and move on. Eagles or Swans fans, for example, have tasted the ultimate success which brings with it, not only that level of confidence, but also that ‘grace’ period

It’s a bit like a movie studio hiring Tom Cruise for their latest blockbuster; odds are it’s gonna sell tickets, and if it bombs, then the odds are even better that the next Tom Cruise piece of shit is raking in $200 million.

We Cats fans have neither such luxury; we’re more so your Vince Vaughn type of actor, mostly good, (Thumbsucker) capable of greatness (Swingers) but prone to mental lapses (Dodgeball). We may also have a slight alcohol problem. However, we should still be able to muster some positivity.

As I wrote not long ago, looking back at Geelong’s losses, they haven’t been too bad considering the form of the opposition. And in the past 3 weeks the Cats have knocked off West Coast, Fremantle and now Port Adelaide in Adelaide. That’s pretty good form too.

So as we come up against an injury depleted Saints outfit this weekend (Colin Farrell – been the next big thing for a while but when you check imdb.com there’s not much worth watching) we’re going to be red-hot favourites. Let’s embrace that favouritism. Let’s say we’re gonna smash ‘em. I mean sure, we didn’t play finals last season. And sure, we haven’t won a premiership since Australia was on the pound and women weren’t allowed to vote but who cares. As Tom Cruise himself once said, "sometimes you just gotta say 'what-the-fuck’".

State of the Nation: An Interstate Survival Guide

By now we should all be well aware of Geelong’s poor away from home record; only three wins outside of Victoria since 2004 and only three victories total, from 22 attempts, at AAMI Stadium. They have a chance to improve on that this weekend, albeit against a very good Port Adelaide side, but why the poor road performances? Why do Geelong, and others, find it so difficult to play outside Australia’s no. 1 state? Let’s look at what makes each non-Victorian destination such a difficult proposition:

Adelaide
The first thing visiting teams must deal with is the mental hurdle of having to involuntarily visit Adelaide. And I don’t mean because it’s ‘boring’ or any such trite, no, I think the city of churches is a fine town, it’s more the idea that it is, in fact, an interstate trip. These days players are flown everywhere and the flight to Adelaide from Melbourne isn’t much more than an hour; you hardly have time to undo your seatbelt and bang Ralph Fiennes in the toilet before your landing again. And this is a mental hurdle that needs to be overcome. My solution is to make the players drive themselves to Adelaide. It’d give them a sense of the distance and be a great team building exercise. You could make players who don’t normally hang out with each share the car too; imagine Matty Scarlett, Mark Blake, James Kelly and Matthew Stokes all piling out of a 1992 Mitsubishi Magna for a counter meal in Mt. Gambia. The players would bond, build morale, and develop character, maturity and resourcefulness. And coming into town on the roads, through the suburbs, would give the players a feel for the lay of the land and give them a chance to get in touch with their inner-bogan.

Perth
The sheer distance to Perth means driving is out of the question, but there are other things players have to deal with in the West. First of all, Perth is 3 hours behind Melbourne, so traveling west is actually going back in time. This is most apparent on the haircuts of Eagles players who apparently all visit the same salon, situated in 1994. Then, of course, there is the rampant Ice epidemic which has already claimed WA’s no. 1 son Ben Cousins, and is waiting to sink its flaky, crystal meth claws into unwelcome visitors from the East. The way to combat all this is send the team plane East-bound and completely circumnavigate the globe before landing in Perth. This way the players will have traveled ‘with’ the spinning of the globe, although at a much faster rate, allowing them to have traveled forward in time, safe in the knowledge that they have already played well.

Brisbane
While Queensland is on the same time as Victoria, it is still a harshly different climate, both meteorologically and politically. The crowds in the sunshine state are generally made up of three contingents; ex-Victorians to weak to deal with our robust weather and penchant for black clothing, rugby league fans who’ve wandered into the wrong venue and confused Asian tourists. Visiting teams would be well advised to play to these factions, in a Gladiator style, ‘win the crowd, win your freedom’ type ploy. The ex-Victorians will be easy to win over as they will want to rub their Melbournian heritage in the noses of their new Queensland neighbours. The rugby guys respond best to anything resembling their game, so Hawthorn and St.Kilda chipping the ball backwards should do quite well. While the tourists will be grateful if the players simply stop for a photo every now and then. Once the umpires feel the crowd is turning they will, in typical Queensland style, go with the majority, claiming they had always been so inclined anyway, and the free kicks will begin to mount for the visiting team. Later an AFL inquest will return no findings based on a lack of evidence and all will be swept under the rug. If a corrupt peanut farmer can be bestowed with a knighthood in this backwards hell-hole, Victorian teams can surely get away with four points.’

Sydney
The first thing teams preparing to visit Sydney need to do is adjust their training regime. I’d suggest using the Auskick sized grounds they set up at half-time to replicate the SCG dimensions. Next, invite any crowd members watching training to sit inside the forward 50 instead of the grandstand and get them to deliver random, off the ball cheap shots to your forwards. Next, get the remaining crowd members to cheer at completely random moments, complain about the most basic umpiring decisions and secretly wish they could have afforded tickets to the Dragons-Bulldogs game.

So there you have it; an AFL interstate survival guide. And if all this still fails to help the Cats get over the top of Port this weekend, let’s just blame Adelaide’s awful, awful tap water.

A Quick Look Back, or, 7 down, 15 to go

Well alright. It wasn’t a 35 goal, 200-plus point thumping but we can’t play Richmond every week; no, we have to share that yellow & black percentage boost around. But beating the league’s top team by a healthy 39 point margin is alright. It puts things in perspective a little bit, namely Geelong’s ‘interesting’ record up until that point. But before I elaborate, let’s quickly review the Cats results so far this season:

Rd 1: A 20 point defeat to the Western Bulldogs.

Rd 2: A 78 point victory over Carlton

Rd 3: A 52 point victory over Melbourne

Rd 4: A 4 point loss to Hawthorn

Rd 5: An 18 point loss to the Kangaroos

Rd 6: A 157 point victory over Richmond

Rd 7: A 39 point victory over the Eagles

Overall, Geelong has a 4-3 record, a league leading percentage of 149 and have copped a hammering in the media (up until now, I would presume) for underperforming while perennial under-achievers (and their coaches) Fremantle, Melbourne and Richmond have somehow escaped the blowtorch.

But examining the record a little more closely may show it’s not as bad as it may have previously appeared.

First off, the three victories over the bottom three sides (Richmond, Melbourne, Carlton) were written off as Geelong being ‘flat-track bullies’ and accredited more to the oppositions failings than the Cats strengths – the classic, ‘its-not-you-its-me’ routine. But the Cats did exactly what you would expect a good side to do to a poor one, namely, tear them a new asshole. A lot of other sides have also played these three teams and none have beaten them as convincingly.

Secondly, let’s look at 3 loses, in chronological order. Against the Bulldogs the Cats never really seemed in it, slaughtering the ball in a ‘Playfair-esque’ display of disposal, and yet still stayed close, having the same amount of scoring shots as the Dogs. On radio this week Rodney Eade said this was the best game his 4-3 Dogs had played all season. Also, Brad Johnson kicked 8, mostly on Tom Harley and out of his ass. (Mercifully Tommy went down with an injury in the next game and I only hope the Geelong medical staff is being ‘very, very cautious’ in regards to the skippers return.)

The next loss occurred to Hawthorn, in Geelong’s first look at Aurora Stadium in Launceston, with its ‘silent alarm’ siren. The Hawks have a 9-4 record there and Geelong lost a nail-biter by 4 points in windy conditions which the locals later described as "fuckin’ windy".

The very next week the Cats went down to the Kangaroos, at home. No excuse for that, however, the Roos have rolled Sydney and Essendon in consecutive weeks, and are in the midst of a 4 winning game winning streak, so their form’s not bad. Geelong ended up losing by 18 points, a margin bumped up by a Kangaroo goal on the siren and the fact that the Cats showed up for about 15 minutes. Seriously, I haven’t seen anyone mail-in a performance as badly as that since Vince Vaughn sleep-walked his way through ‘Dodgeball’.

So to recap, Geelong has lost 3 close games, one to a highly-rated outfit in their best game of the year, one to an up-coming team in shit conditions on a foreign ground and one to the form team of the competition. Geelong has also pumped 3 shit teams by an average of about 16 goals and beaten the reigning premiers and previously undefeated West Coast. Granted, the Eagles were without their best ruckman, their Brownlow medallist Robert Downey Jr., and it was played at KP, but still, the Cats took care of business (or, T.C.B.). And, isn’t that about what you’d expect?
I’d say the only game they were genuinely ‘beaten’ in was round one; the Hawthorn game was a coin-flip and let’s call the Kangaroos game their ‘brain-fart’ moment, where, for whatever reason, they just weren’t switched on mentally. And that’s ok, I mean, it happens, Hell, Edward Norton willingly agreed to do ‘Keeping the Faith’.

So maybe the Cats were never going as badly as everyone thought. Regardless, T.C.B. Cats, T.C.B., and let’s get that media blowtorch pointed in its rightful place; the faces of Terry Wallace and Chris Connolly.

Win or I'll Stab You in the Face With a Soldering Iron (Happy Mother's Day)

This Sunday, when Geelong tackles league leaders West Coast, I’m not going to be watching. I could, but I won’t. It’ll be on the radio, but I won’t be listening. I have access to a big screen, foxtel enabled TV, but it won’t be switched on. I even have a standing invitation to join a certain underperforming Big League contributor in the outer. A warm May afternoon, a couple of cold beers and the company of the great Mrs. Watson; pretty hard to say no to, right?

The fact is I’ll have plenty of opportunities to watch the game Sunday, but I can’t do it. I can’t watch what it is essentially the season, or even era defining game for this team. I just can’t do it.

To beat the undefeated, reigning premiers would win the Cats back lost respect, put them above .500 and instil a massive amount of self-belief. Lose, and they’re the ‘flat-track-bullies’ that Wallsy and everyone else thinks they are. As Christopher Walken would say, “this one’s for all the marbles, boys.”

I know I’m supposed to want to watch it, but this team has made me more nervous than David Hasslehoff’s agent.

I was there last year when the Cats were leading the Eagles by 54 points during the 3rd quarter. And as goal after goal sailed over Matthew Egan’s head in that last quarter I thought to myself, ‘well, that’ll just about do it for the season’. I don’t need that stomach-dropping feeling again.

It’s not the fact that it’s the Eagles again; it’s just that it's happened before. Geelong has a history of falling over in big games. And they need to win this to prove to themselves that they’re good enough.

Last week they beat up on the Tigers about as well as any team can, but Richmond were back on the bus about halfway through the first quarter. I know you can only beat the team they put out there but seriously, Harold from Neighbours would have kicked a couple against Richmond last week.

I still reckon they can win the Cats, hell, I believe that every week. But they have to win this one. They just have to. And I would just prefer to be informed of this after the fact rather than risk having a major coronary in the back row of the Ablett terrace. It’s hard enough getting down from there to take a piss.

And besides, it’s Mother’s Day, so I’ve got a ready made excuse. But I’ll have that TV warmed up for the replay on Monday morning. After all, I wouldn’t want to miss the season defining game.

35.12 (222) to 9.11 (65), or, Terry, Giesch & Goodes.

Richmond actually won the very first centre clearance of the match and scrambled a kick to their centre-half forward position. From there, of course, Geelong rebounded the ball and kicked a goal. And then another one. And another.

The Cats ended up with 7 goals on the board before Richmond scored. Good start, thought Mrs. W and I, who had been hospitably invited to watch the game with some sympathetic foxtel subscribers (they put on a nice spread too), but surely it will slow down. Nope. 10 goals in the first quarter. 10 more in the 2nd. 9 goals in the third quarter. I lean over to Mrs. Watson before taking a pull on my Corona, how good is this?

It’s not every day you see your favourite team score over 200 points (it’s the first time it’s been done since 1995). And it’s not everyday you watch em get within a couple of goals of the all-time scoring record (239, held by Geelong against Brisbane in 1992). It was actually quite bizarre to watch, the Cats just did not slow down. (Well, not until the umpires had seen enough and started paying Richmond every free kick they could muster in the 4th quarter.)

It was good to ‘Dog’ Johnson back kicking goals and opposition players in the coin-purse (see photo). Good to see Nath and Hatchet get amongst the goals again and Varcoe too. It was good to see Joel Bowden kick it directly to the man on the mark from a kick-in and it was good to see Mark ‘William’ Blake (Mrs. Watson’s new favourite player) continue his good form. What else is there to say? Everyone was good, Richmond were shit.

The only disappointing thing was, due to him staying in the rooms with his players longer than usual, foxtel was unable to stay with the coverage long enough for us to see Terry Wallace’s press conference. We sat through what felt like hours of uncomfortable post-match rubbish, hoping to see the self-deflecting excuses and distractions Terry Wallace would come up with. We were quietly hoping for a spread sheet or a pie graph. Not to be. (By the way, the Tiges face back-to-back trips to AAMI stadium in the next two weeks. Good luck with that.)

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It’s not often that us Big Leaguers publicly complain about umpiring. We know and accept that they are imperfect and prone to the odd mistake like the rest of us. What we don’t like seeing, however, is when they are put in a position to fail by ridiculous, over-dictated laws put in place by a back-stabbing, failed coach who seems to be intent on feeding his ego at the expense of the quality of the game itself. Yes, I’m talking about head of umpiring, Jeff Gieschen.

The whole ‘hands-in-the-back’ rule didn’t need to be introduced – we already have a ‘push-in-the-back’ rule – but I don’t think he’s gone far enough. We don’t have a ‘legs-in-the-back’ rule, so can you kick your opponent under the ball? And remember the Mark McVeigh screamer a few weeks back? The media were pointing out that his hands did actually go to the back of his opponent. Gieschen came out with some sort of ruling, saying that the hands were only touching for 0.3 seconds, and that was ok. Ridiculous, just ridiculous.

As I’ve said before, the game needs less strict interpretation and more leeway allowing umpires to pay a free kick for common sense ‘infringements’, be it high contact, impeding a player without the ball, incorrect disposal, a genuine push in the back or some grey-area combination of the three. We all know what’s fair. Let the physicality of players play some part in the contest.

And just recently, the Giesch has come out and said that the league’s top players may be getting better treatment from the umps. I, however, tend to think he’s put the cart before the horse there (not to mention caved-in to an off-hand comment made by a coach immediately after a loss and also completely undermined all AFL umpires). No, perhaps the best players in the league are getting the free kicks because they are the best players in the league. And if you’re a great player you get to more contests, you get in first and you don’t have to cheat to be effective (hello Steven Baker). Maybe now the umpires are just finally giving them the free kicks they have deserved all along.

So thanks, Giesch, thanks for your petty, useless contribution to football. The sooner the AFL fucks you off the better.

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The other body of the AFL we rarely touch on is the tribunal. In recent weeks, however, the hypocrisy has gotten to Gieschen-like proportions. Apparently the whole ‘head-high contact’ thing is out the window, I mean, we all knew the first reportees of this new rule would be dealt with harshly, (see Stokes, Matthew and Kelly, James) but to just disregard it completely, after only 6 rounds, seems beyond absurd.

Likewise, it seems that if your name is Adam Goodes and you run and charge a completely unaware player, with his back to you, 15 meters behind play and knock him to the ground you will be alright to play next week. No suspension, no fine, no worries. Of course, if your name is Byron Pickett and you lay a perfect, textbook tackle on a player who then happens to knock his head on the turf, you will be reported immediately. And Paul Roos wonders why people boo Adam Goodes.

Trade Reviews, or, Subtraction by Addition

In 2004, Richmond, coming off another sub-par season, were looking to make some changes and invest in the youth movement. They were shopping around their former all-Australian ruckman/forward Brad Ottens, who had just finished 8th in their best & fairest, and wanted two 1st round draft picks in return.

The Cats had also come off another sub-par season and at was apparent to all that they needed a key marking forward. So, after moving on turn-over and terrible haircut prone Brent Maloney to Melbourne, the Cats had the requisite draft picks and thus pulled the trigger on one of the most high-profile draft day trades in AFL history.

While Ottens has not been dominant he has been more than serviceable. Playing mostly in the forward line he has been at the mercy of the midfield, and to say he could use some better midfield delivery would be akin to saying Nicole Richie could do with a decent feed.

Ottens’ value to the team has yet to be fully realised, but that’s a blog for another time and probably another writer (I’m looking at you, Mrs. Watson). In 2004, although it cost us draft picks and a promising young midfielder, I believed Geelong had to make that trade. I still do.

These days, clubs are highly unwilling to part with first round draft picks at all and trades for established players are coming at an increasingly cheap rate. So, was Ottens that highly rated at the time, or are clubs now over-valuing the worth of first round draft picks? Or, a third option, are teams simply being fooled into taking other teams’ trash? Let’s take a look at early candidates for ‘Most useless off-season addition’.

Peter Everitt, Sydney.
After haggling about the price for several weeks, Sydney finally relented and gave Hawthorn the 2nd round choice it wanted for the big ruckman. At the time I was critical of Sydney for not wanting to give anything up but now I think I see why. Everitt looks about as mobile as a Lou Richards does during the 'Sunday Footy Show' handball comp. (Seriously, how long til they're wheeling out Lou hooked up to an iron lung?)

Jason Akermanis, Western Bulldogs.
Let’s see, the Bulldogs have a team of lightening quick, slightly built players who don’t miss a target and run all day, but are lacking midfields who can win their own ball and any quality sizable players. Hmmm, what to do? I know, let’s get another player who is exactly the same as the other 35 on our list, only he’s past his prime, injury prone, overpaid and a loud-mouthed team cancer. Almost a Grant Thomas-esque move by the Bulldogs.

Michael Gardiner, St.Kilda.
On the negative side, he’s played zero games on an underperforming team that desperately needs a ruck presence and the current coach can’t blame Grant Thomas for his injuries. On the positive, from the same amount of games played this season he has one less arrest than Jeff Farmer.

Paul Medhurst, Collingwood.
Medhurst was the main player traded for Chris Tarrant? Really? What was Fremantle’s first offer, a toasted cheese sandwich?

Kent Kingsley, Richmond.
You didn’t think I’d forget about the Great Kent of Kingsley, did you? Granted, Kent was picked up in the pre-season draft and not in a trade, but so far he’s played no games due to an on-going hamstring complaint and is supposed to fit into a forward line at a club where their spearhead with 700 career goals is constantly maligned and slagged by his own supporters? Do you think Kent will be around for ‘Richmond: Operation 2011’?