2011: Are we there yet?

Is it just me or does the 2010 AFL season seem like a distant memory? It may as well have been the 1998 season as far as my brain is concerned. Maybe it was because Geelong got knocked out in the Prelim. Maybe it was all the travel I was doing at the time. Maybe it was that I came back to not one, but two Grand Finals that I had no interest in.

(Note: After watching Collingwood choke away the first one, in which I loudly proclaimed early in the third quarter “the choke is on!” it was hard to really pick a horse for Giant Douche vs Turd Sandwich part II. If anything, I was barracking for another draw, multiple ACL injuries and for someone from the crowd to a launch a 55-metre barrel into Lionel Ritchie’s head.)

For whatever reason, I was ready for the footy to finish and was completely locked into some sunshine, getting stuck into the mountain of duty-free booze I had accumulated and watching Brad Haddin repeatedly loft Graeme Swann over mid-on. Fast-forward three months and the Ashes are lost, half the country is underwater and my recycle bin has more empty Bombay Sapphire bottles than Michael Clarke has single figure scores.

But guess what? The most exciting AFL season in recent memory starts in two weeks.

West Coast and Richmond remain relevant due to their massive, and largely delusional, supporter bases and for the controversial revelation/push-to-get-back-into-the-spotlight by Ben Cousins that I’m tentatively pencilling in for round 6.

Essendon have just hired golden boy James Hird and his gravity-defying ears to coach, plus they sneakily lured Lips over to fill some sort of managerial role which I assume will be about showing Hird the ropes of senior coaching, isolating and antagonizing your best player and the correct etiquette for swingers parties.

Meanwhile, players have spent the off-season scrambling to get out of Brisbane faster than people leaving the cinema after watching “Little Fockers”. Sherman’s gone, Brennan’s gone and half the coaching staff are gone, who, I’ll point out, were largely Voss’ ex-premiership-teammates. Oh, and Fev got arrested again, may have some sort of a David Schwarz-esque gambling problem and has done his pre-season training from inside a rehab centre. If I’m Neil Balme, I’m waiting until Brisbane hit 1-12 and then sending Jon Brown a “Season 2009” DVD, a map showing Geelong’s proximity to Warnambool and an outline of the plan that has allowed us to pay Bartel, Chapman, Selwood, Scarlett and Ottens outside the salary cap for the past 5 years.

Melbourne, North Melbourne and Carlton all showed signs of life at various points last season and are all probably fighting for eighth spot and the chance to get smoked in the first week of finals. Off the field, Stynes is hanging in there, Brayshaw has added some life to Channel 9’s cricket team and Chris Judd has already slipped one past Twigley and through to the keeper. (By the way, a friend of mine pointed out the greatest potential AFL story of this year: Melbourne makes the Grand Final inspired by Jim Stynes, only, and here’s the rub, for it to be a true tragedy/triumph, Stynes would have to die Grand Final week before the Dees capture the flag. A little morbid? Sure. But I can already see Channel 9 casting Callan Mulvey as Brad Green in the mini-series.)

Port Adelaide will remain irrelevant as the Cornes brothers will mail in more performances this year than Billy Bob Thornton’s last 5 years of cinema, whilst Adelaide have reached deep in to their bag of tricks and produced Richard Tambling as the man to turn things around… Let’s just say I’m looking forward to Neil Craig’s work on Footy Classified in 2012.

Hawthorn’s never ending search for a ruckman led them to David Hale who once kicked 8 goals against Geelong, which is akin to a Golden Retriever parallel parking a 1979 Ford Cortina. And due to the 2008 aberration they will continue to be talked about as “a premiership chance” until Doc Brown picks me up in the Delorean and I can go back to kidnap Lips’ kids until he agrees not to play Matthew Stokes on Luke Hodge.

Fremantle finally got their shit together this year only to be pumped by The Cats in the semi-final, which led to Geelong hiring Freo’s assistant Chris Scott as their new coach. Good times?

Sydney traded for Andres Everitt, Spider Everitt’s son or younger brother or something, and also will give us the first look at the how the pre-arranged “coaching handover” goes. Although, has anyone actually seen or heard from John Longmire in the past 6 months? Don’t be surprised if he turns up hogtied in the boot of a car somewhere as Paul Roos continues pulling the strings MI:2 style in a Longmire mask.

The always thereabouts Bulldogs are finally free of Brad Johnson, who was so washed up that he ended last season with a whole cutlery draw sticking out of him, including the mystery “fifth slot" which contains anything and everything that isn’t a fork, knife, tea or table spoon.

Then there are the two top teams from last season, who were so evenly matched we needed an extra week, and an extra slab of Coopers Pale, to sort it out. Collingwood have started their premiership defence by adding a former washout and much maligned full-forward to presumably come in and play full-back, and a former Richmond player, WAFL Sandover medallist and Wooroloo inmate to join their already impressive array of small-forwards/criminals.

And then there’s St. Kilda, who have had a pretty quiet off-season. Yep, just business as usual down at Moorabbin. Nothing to see here… (For round one, can someone please arrange for a banner that reads “It looks like a penis, only smaller”? Thanks.)

Which brings us, finally, to Geelong. Speaking to Mrs Watson a few weeks back, he pointed out that for the first time in at least three years he has no idea how The Cats will go. They are no longer the best team in football, no longer have the best player in football and no longer have the coach that led them to three Grand Finals and four broken marriages.

Besides the changes to game-plan, or subtle differences in zoning and set-up, etc., and ignoring the number of times this year my Dad will call him Brad Scott or Robert Scott, the most interesting thing to watch about Chris Scott is how he goes about selection. Will Dawson Simpson elbow Mark Blake out of the way, or is Nathan Vardy a real chance? Is there room for Byrnes and Stokes? How will he squeeze in Taylor Hunt, Mitch Duncan and Daniel Menzel? And how about the latest crop of draftees? According to Brenton Sanderson, the rookies are coming to the AFL more and more prepared to step straight in every year. And Nigel Lappin has already said most players on the list will get a run in the pre-season; that’s at least five chances for Mrs Watson to come up with convoluted nicknames.

Add to this a Lightning premiership type pre-season set up, an insane new “super-sub” rule, a full year of prickly Mick Malthouse interviews as Buckley sizes up his chair, the endless sledging of St.Kilda, the on-going unintentional comedy of “Rexona’s Greatest Athlete Challenge”, the chance for me to make at least two Tom Selleck references before his new show gets cancelled and did I mention A WHOLE NEW FRIGGIN’ TEAM featuring Gold Coast Gary and the Schoolies!?!

And it all starts in two weeks. Just enough time to see if I have more Gin & Tonics left in me than Michael Clarke has runs.