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.