The Award Winning Return of The Captain

After a long wait I have finally returned, just in time to hand out some awards before the season kicks off.

The Port Adelaide Memorial Award (Because Someone Has to Finish 2nd)
Although this almost went to the team it was named after, I have to relent and give this one to St.Kilda. Not because I believe they’re the 2nd best team in the AFL, but because everyone else seems to think so.

But why exactly will they be any better this season? Let’s see, they’ve added Steven King, Chas Gardiner, some Sydney impostor and they convinced Fraser Gehrig to spend another year staring at umpires and pissing on women. They are still breathing life into the corpse formerly known as Michael Gardiner and they apparently had Matthew Ball killed so they could transplant his groin into his much more talented brother, Luke (I mean, that’s the only way he’s ever gonna walk again, right?). Not to mention Brendan Goddard is coming back an ACL injury, Robert Harvey just turned 62, Maguire has broken down again and Justin Koschitzke has grown a suspiciously Adam Hunter-esque mullet, presumably to help protect him from goal posts, boundary umpires and David Schwarz interviews.

But congratulations on another pre-season premiership, Sainters, I’m sure it will look just as good as the other three you’ve won in the past 10 years when you choke in the second week of September again.

The Scarlett Johansson Award (To the Young, Over-Rated, Media Darling Team-Du-Jour)
This award is there to remind us that for every ‘Lost in Translation’ there is a shithouse Woody Allen film just around the corner. And with the amount of hype being thrown at Hawthorn this year, don’t be surprised to see Buddy Franklin release an album of Tom Waits covers.

Alistar Clarkson, I hate you.

The $10 Parma Award (To the Consistently Inconsistent)
At ten dollars you’re not over-paying, yet it’s not incredibly cheap. You don’t expect too much and yet there doesn’t seem to be too much wrong with it. And sometimes they’ll surprise you. You’ll say, “Geez, that was an excellent $10 parma; I’m gonna come back here more often.” And you do. And that’s when you end up spending the next three days in Epworth hospital on a saline drip, swearing off the $10 Parma forever as your stomach feels like its being Camel-Clutched by The Iron Sheik. Ladies and Gentleman, the 2008 Western Bulldogs!

The Werribee Award (To Victoria’s Shittest Team)
And the nominees are; Essendon, Melbourne, Carlton, the Kangaroos and the winner… Richmond! To accept the award on behalf of the Richmond Football Club is Coach Terry Wallace! “Well, first of all I just want to point out that we didn’t expect this award until 2011, I mean, we’ve had Mark Coughlin out for 2 years now, not to mention Troy Simmonds had a limited preparation, then there’s Browny’s injury, and so on… But this year we’re going to let our footy really do the talking, in fact that’s why I’ve called this press conference...”
Hats off to Terry Terrific, I mean, really, I’m thinking about taking this guy to my next job interview. Let’s review, shall we? The five year plan is 4/5s of the way through, they haven’t played finals since Frankie J Holden was a serious musician, their big off-season move was Brett Deledio’s hair extensions, the midfield group has worse skills than the Anglesea 2’s and is now being anchored by a midget who has had one good season and a guy coming off back-to-back knee reco’s (hereby to be known as ‘The Luke Darcy’).

Good luck Terry, I look forward to cutting and pasting this preview next season.

The Harbajahn Singh Award (For Whinging About Something You Brought on Yourself)
Congratulations Collingwood, you travelled interstate a grand total of 4 times last season and played something like your last 12 games in Melbourne. You then schedule a pre-season game in Dubai, probably to appease your United Arab Emirate sponsors and grow Eddie’s increasing empire to Bond-Villain levels, not to mention flying the entire list to Arizona to continue your high-altitude training and experiments with the effects of HGH on Anthony Rocca’s forehead. When your next NAB Cup game is scheduled in the faraway and exotic location of Perth, you dutifully lodge a formal complaint with the AFL, publicly criticise the fixture and then send a half ass squad over so the rest of your team can beat up on Geelong’s VFL reserves team. Hat off, Collingwood, all you need now is a mesmerising ‘doosra’ and you’re a lock for the next touring Indian cricket team.

The Jeff Fenech Award (For Most Inexplicable and Unwanted Comeback)
To Stuart Dew, who has gone from an over-rated, overweight, cheap-kick-getting, hangout, loose man at Port Adelaide, to Hawthorn. Seriously, do you remember the player he was at Port? He was like Patrick Bowden, with the body of Kirstey Alley. If Clarkson pulls any more of this shit he’ll have to start scheduling weekly press conferences and unveil his ‘5-year plan’.

Honourable Mention: Fraser Gehrig. The G-train is injured already and in his absence his team captured a flag. Way to go there Frase, you’re in-line for a spot on the All-Australian “addition by subtraction” team, along with Barry Hall, Ben Cousins and Nathan Ablett.

The Wayne Carey Award (For Most Bad Publicity in a Single Calender Month)
Let’s see, Brock McLean and Nathan Carroll beat up some foreigners, twice, before McLean returned home to do burn-outs in the car park at the club family day. Colin Sylvia stays out on the piss past his curfew and misses a compulsory training session. Then, to add insult to injury, Russell Robertson teams up with Scientologist extraordinaire Kate Cebrano to sing uber-cheesy duets on Channel 7’s “It Takes Two”. Hasn’t the club gone through enough, Robbo? Your starting full-back beating up Germans is one thing, but this is just embarrassing. Melbourne fans, SMS now to cancel your 2008 memberships.

The Current Affair Award (To the Most Shocking Scandal That Was Actually Not Worth Reading About)
The worst Brownlow Medallist of all time, Tony Liberatore, the upstanding citizen, this pillar of the community that he is, has accused the Carlton Football Club of BEGINNING TO PREPARE FOR 2008 IN 2007!!! Let’s see, they were roughly 10 games outside the top eight with 3 matches to play so they dared to do the following: book any injured players in for surgery, experiment with positional changes and tactics and try out some of their young, untested players. How dare those slanderous heathens! We all know how the priority pick system works, but thanks for ruining any chance that we’ll ever have to see you employed by an AFL club again, Libba, seriously, thanks for that.

Honourable Mention: Paul “Let’s stop betting on NAB Cup games so I can say whatever the Hell I want to my players without some 60 year-old water boy misinterpreting what might be the last 3 words of an entire conversation that I had with Jared McVeigh” Roos.

The Wooderson Award (For Getting Better By Staying the Same)
To your 2007 AFL Premiers, Geelong, who looked so much better than anyone else last season that to get near them this season someone is going to have to improve out their skin. The Cats produced one of the most dominant seasons ever, losing only once (on a last second goal by Dominic Cassisi, in the last round of the season, when The Cats had nothing to gain and several key players out) after starting 2-3.

So who has improved enough to challenge them? Perennial Grand Final threats Sydney and West Coast have declined, look for a big slip from Collingwood this year, Hawthorn don’t have the experience or the midfield and Port Adelaide must still feel like Marcellus Wallace in Zed’s basement.

So who’s with me? Who’s up for a repeat? The Captain’s back, and so are The Cats, and it all starts again this Thursday. Port Adelaide, it’s time to wake up the Gimp.