A House of Swans and Fog

Yesterday, I woke to find the AFL had posted on their web site a good news story for the code, in the form of yet another stadium getting an upgrade so more of our sports loving public can go and watch the greatest game on Earth in comfort.

With the recent completion of the Metricon Stadium on the Gold Coast, the near completion of the Skoda Stadium in Blacktown, the earlier announcement of the ‘Perth Stadium’ on the Burswood Peninsula due for completion in 2018 and the upgrades for the ‘Adelaide Oval’ with some fantastic looking facilities for the two AFL teams in SA, and on the 3^rd of Jan, Julia Gillard and NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell proudly announced the iconic SCG will be in for an upgrade, improving seating capacity, better corporate facilities and better player resources.

Soon, every city in the country, and almost every AFL team by association, will have available to them an A-Grade, first rate stadium with state of the art resources. Great news! Exciting times! Another great win for Football!

But hang on. The team over at the Herald Sun grabbed the story. They looked closer. They read between the lines. They asked the hard questions. In the paper yesterday morning, the awful truth has come out.

Neil Cordy has played the part of town crier come out in the town square and decreed: “Hear ye! Hear ye! There comes a darkness! The storms of unjust tyranny are upon us! Woe betide this new stadium announcement! Hear ye Swans fans! For two turns of the Earth around the sun will you have to do battle with an unseemly construction site! And we have been forced under the spiked heel of the SCG Trust, to have our castles capacity reduced from 45,000 to a measly, paltry 34,000! (Albeit at the height of construction.) Townsfolk of Sydney! Friends of Aussie Rules! We only now see the bright streams of sunlight poke through those dark, dark days of 2007 and 2008, when we were forced through the disastrous construction of the Victor Trumper Stand. Have we not been good?! Have we not been fair?! Why have our AFL Gods of righteousness and truth forsaken us!! A plague AFL! A plague on all your AFL Houses!!”

OK, I’m paraphrasing, but the article went something like that. I’ll put aside the fact the Swans will need this for the betterment of their club for now. They’re not the only show in town anymore, and the fight to attract corporate sponsorship in a Rugby dominated town will only get more difficult. Attractive facilities can only assist. As well as state of the art area for players before and after games. AFL is the most professional team sport in the country, arguably. It deserves the best resources to match, particularly if AFL wants to continue to attract the best athletes in the land.

But I digress. The issue isn’t SHOULD it be done. We all agree it’s a good thing. The issue, it would seem, would be the limited capacity and the favoring of the cricket season over the AFL season.

Well it IS the Sydney CRICKET Ground, so credit where it’s due, we are kicking a footy around their stadium. And there are certain facts surrounding the seat capacity that would support their decision.

I would like to put Neil Cordy’s mind to rest, because it really feels like he’s taking this ‘limited capacity’ thing personally. Neil, I’ve got some good news for ya buddy. Here’s some facts I found after reading your article. I found them by using just my iPhone. While still lying in bed.

OK, the capacity will be limited to 34,000, “at the most disruptive stage of the project”. So it won’t be for 2 whole seasons, one can imagine. I wont speculate at what stage we could expect this. Could be in the off-season? Could be in the guts of the AFL season. Who knows? But we’ll work off the basis that we’ll have 2 seasons with a capacity of 34,000, for the sake of argument.

In Season 2011, the highest crowd at a game at the SCG was 33,136 vs. Hawthorn in Round 9.

In Season 2011, the average crowd numbers at the SCG was 25,200 from 8 games.

The last game to have a higher attendance of 34,000 (for a home & away game) at the SCG was 36,554 in Round 21 in 2010 (Barry Halls return to the SCG game).No other game in 2010 at the SCG managed over 34,000.

The highest crowd prior to this (again, home & away games only) was in 2005 Sydney vs. West Coast with 37,071.

In fact, the one and only season where the SCG has averaged a crowd over 34,000 was in 1997 when the SCG managed 35,818 average punters going through the turnstiles. And that was the year after their surprise Grand Final appearance and the great Tony Lockett was still in full force.

The swans have had a total of 7 (home and away) games in the 21^st Century with a crowd of over 34,000 (8 if you include the 2000 season) from a possible 97 games (110 if you include the 2000 season) come through the gates of the SCG.

So Neil, I want you to rest easy mate. Be safe and comforted by the fact that y’know? I think the Swannies will be alright for the next few years.

(facts via the AFL Tables stats website: stats.rleague.com/afl/afl_index.html)

Side note: At 4:35Pm on 03/01/2012 the AFL posted their positive, upbeat “Swans, AFL hail upgrade” story on their website and replaced it at 10:35am on 04/01/2012 with the more negative, reactionary “Swans ruffled but happy” story in response to the Herald-Sun’s fear-mongering.

Evin Bryant

Hopefully Dogs fans will be too busy with a match to attend, but if not, knives out!

TWEET, DAMN YOU!!!

5 Minutes to go in the last quarter. It’s been a tough, dour struggle for the past 100 minutes in a low scoring affair. The Bulldogs have had control of the football and most of the attacking opportunities for most of the game. We have had the lead for the entire game. The Saints have dragged the game down to an old fashioned slug-fest. Tight pressure, hard running, blocking the Bulldogs speed and clogging up the spaces the Doggies so much like to lead in to. A fast break is hard to come by for either side and the Dogs are forced to chip around to find a viable option and apparently a long bomb isn’t a viable option.St. Kilda gets a rare opportunity to try for a long snap for goal. It finds its way through the goals like a ball is a magnet drawn to a point behind the goal square. It’s the Saints third goal in the last 5 minutes and is enough to put them in the lead. It’s a long scrappy affair of man on man with hard fought possessions and desperate bumps and tackles from tired legs as the Dogs pursue any possible course for a last minute grasp of saving this victory.

It’s an important game for the Bulldogs. 3 wins 2 losses, this win over a competition leader would not only set up the rest of the season, but put the football nation on notice: The Doggies are still a force yet.

The Bulldogs were steeled for a hard contest and expected no quarter from the Saints. They came out fighting, and held control for most of the match but couldn’t add the polish to their attacks. Saints hold hard to their lead and chip the ball to any loose man available. The ball is kept close to the boundary away from the corridor to chew up even more valuable time if the ball should dribble over the line. Both sides look dead on their feet but neither is willing to concede a backward step.

I’m watching from Level 2 at Docklands stadium with my heart in my throat. What looked like a foregone conclusion for most of the game was slipping through MY fingers. We need this Dogs. WE NEED IT!!!

The siren sounds. The game is over. Saints by 3 points. The hard work put in by the boys for 3 and a half quarters won’t even be remembered by history. It’s the game we should have won. The one that got away. Our season looks all the more difficult now. Chinks are appearing in our armor. Dogs don’t look like that big a hurdle now for opposition teams.

I sink into my seat, empty and hollow. The hurt is very, very real.

At the point of the siren sounding I see the Dogs players as they all seem to share that group devastation. Some drop to the ground like they had been shot. Players squat on the ground with their heads down, not wanting to look up. I was reminded of the 1997 Preliminary loss to Adelaide. The aftermath on the ground was similar. The hurt, the feeling of tragedy, the loss. Not just of the game, but that loss you feel inside. Like something very personal has been taken from you.

It’s that amazing thing with sport. That human connection of shared emotion between like-minded supporters and friends, of shared consciousness, between team mate and team mate, between team mates and their support staff. But importantly between us the football-going public and the players that pull on that club jumper and give everything of themselves to that single minded cause.

As supporters we cheer every goal, feel every bump and tackle, rue every bad decision our nominated players create out on the field. Their pain is our pain and vice-versa. And our joy is also theirs.

It is a truly symbiotic relationship. They are our representatives on the ground, just as we are theirs with our support, our colors and our voice. Every quarter-year I get a magazine from my footy club with articles outlining club news and progress and a positive re-enforcement of our direction. Every quarter-year there is a written piece by club President David Smorgan. Each quarter-year he reiterates the importance of our membership and the necessity of signing up as a proud supporter. I hear him on the radio urging supporters to come to the games and barrack for the team. I hear interviews from players saying how fantastic it is to hear crowds in attendance pushing and lifting them up to greater feats. We need each other, for it truly is a symbiotic partnership. One couldn’t survive without the other. And the connection can be very, very real. As much as I shared, and I mean truly SHARED, the pain of the Bulldogs loss I can promise you Saints supporters also shared the relief and joy of a victory snatched.

In this day and age, with the popularity of the sport and the growing amount of auxiliary coverage from the many different AFL-related shows and media outlets we have never been closer to the personality of the players. The passage of their careers is just as important to the fans is as it to the player. Their career highlights and low points are pursued and shared with us.

Twitter gives us the beautiful opportunity for us to share that journey together. We do anyway, on the field, in the papers, radio forums and interviews… But with Twitter we would get the opportunity to an insight that has never been available to us in the past. In the rare occasions in which I’ve had the privilege to chat with the players in the flesh it has almost always been a real delight and pleasure. They have been appreciative and gracious. Twitter keeps that experience very real but also enjoys that comfortable cyber-buffer. I applaud players such as Collingwood’s @harry_o (Harry O’Brien) and Melbourne’s @nathan2jones (Nathan Jones). Also the many other elite sportspeople over the world that utilize this opportunity. It really helps bring the supporter into feeling more accepted as part of the team. And as David Smorgan will tell you, supporters are very much an integral part of the team.

The loss to the Saints was gut-wrenching. The trip home was a long one. I imagine the same would have been felt by all the 22 Dogs players that night. I wouldn’t have to imagine if one had a twitter account available. There is a comfort in knowing the players you barrack hard for are also hurting, just as it would be immensely exciting to share the good times on that personal level. Every AFL club should encourage their players to sign on to a Twitter account. That way the journey would truly be ours.

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Malthouse/Nixon

In the wash-up of what historians might call “F___ingrapistgate”, I couldn’t resist this.

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Mick’s Battlers

It’s a familiar scenario. A Collingwood team, seemingly no match for one of the top premiership contenders, comes out hard and turns the game into a high pressure, intense battle. They force their opponent to play the game on their terms with hard tackling and defensive pressure. It’s clear to everyone that Mick Malthouse has sold his players on exactly what is required of them to win, and they’re all playing their roles.

Sometimes this might end with a Collingwood upset, or even break open for a big win, as in 2008 when they gave Geelong their only loss of the season. Sometimes they get closer than anyone expected them to and earn respect even in defeat. And sometimes it comes unstuck as the class of the opposition eventually overwhelms the Magpie battlers. Friday night versus St. Kilda was definitely in the third category.

You could see it from the start that Mick had coached them up for a big effort against the Saints. They were hard at every contest, smothering the Saints with their pressure all around the ground. They managed to keep it a low scoring contest, a style that suited them much more than it did St. Kilda. Then fate dealt them what seemed to be a fantastic opportunity when Riewoldt went down injured. Collingwood were undoubtedly in a position to win.

So how did they lose? Put simply, St. Kilda are better than Collingwood. Collingwood tried to pretend this wasn’t the case, but could only pretend for so long.

Isn’t this typical of the Malthouse years at Collingwood? For ten seasons now Mick has had basically the same team. The players may have changed but the personality is the same: Mick’s Battlers. Like when they lost the 2002 Grand Final to the Brisbane Lions, the story was that Mick had gotten them so close to toppling the Brisbane machine (still the only case I can remember of the losing team pushing the winners from the front page of the Herald-Sun). No one would deny that Mick consistently does an amazing job of getting the best out of the talent he has.

The question is, why don’t they have better talent? This is Malthouse’s team. He has recruited players, drafted them, developed them, so why hasn’t he been able to build anything better than a team of scrappers over ten years? And why haven’t others at Collingwood been asking these questions?

Mick has always had free reign with the Pies. When Eddie McGuire lured him away from West Coast, he’d coached them to ten straight finals series and two premierships, arguably the best team of the ’90s.

Mick was trusted to bring that level of success back to a rock bottom Collingwood team. Whatever Mick needed, Eddie would stand by him. There is no mistaking that this team is Mick Malthouse’s creation, for better or worse.

If I were a Collingwood supporter, I’d be jamming the switchboards at the Lexus Centre with “We want Bucks now, not later” phone calls. Why has Mick been allowed to build a team that needs to be coached up every week? Where players never seem to reach that next level to become genuine stars? The media have a tendency to overhype Collingwood players as soon as they play one decent game, but Mick seems to hang on to these guys for longer than other clubs would bother. Has he ever had any kind of return on these investments? (Please don’t try and tell me Leon Davis has paid off, I watched the prelim)

Collingwood’s faith in Mick is misguided. He has led them to a few almosts, sure, but since when is that enough? The Malthouse model has ultimately been unsuccessful for a decade now. He’s surviving on reputation and the ability to sell fans on a preliminary final appearance as a successful season.

We’ve become accustomed to Mick’s arrogance in dealing with the media and the general football public (highlighted again by his absurd denial that he spoke to any St. Kilda players in the quarter time sledging incident on Friday night). Refusing to make the necessary changes to his style to lift the Magpies that one significant step higher might be his most arrogant act of all. Collingwood need the fresh start that Buckley will surely bring.

When Eddie McGuire became president of Collingwood, he said his job was to return Collingwood to being the most hated team in the league, the logic being that we’d hate them because we feared them, which we certainly didn’t at the time. They were a laughing stock when he inherited them, so you’d have to say Eddie has succeeded for the most part.

But, as Bob Dylan said, “Failure’s no success at all”. Is it, Mick?

P.S. I did vomit in my mouth a little when I wrote “If I were a Collingwood supporter”. Oh, no! I’ve done it again! (*runs to bathroom*)

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An Open Letter to Jason Akermanis

Dear Jason,

Firstly, let me congratulate you on your upcoming achievement of 300 games, and thank you for your brilliant contributions to my club, the Brisbane Lions. You’ve done some amazing things on the field, including a Brownlow medal, two best-and-fairests and a near-Norm Smith medal in ’03, and of course three premierships. No one else has been able to get people on the edge of their seats as the ball rolls over the boundary line in the forward pocket – there was always a chance you might do something amazing with it first. It’s a shame that now I find myself defending you even to my own kids, as they argue to have you scribbled out of old team pictures.

The Departed?

Remember the scene in Jaws where a young woman is swimming alone and gets attacked from below by the shark? She gets pulled all around, blood fills the water and the viewer is left in no doubt that she’s dead.  Well, until today not many people knew about the alternate version of that scene, where the woman is pulled from the water and the Mayor announces that she’ll still be coaching Richmond this week.

Even when I’m wrong, I’m right

Well, I apologise. I wrote all that angry stuff about Heath Shaw based on video that I’d seen of the incident, and now I’ve seen a different angle that’s got me wondering how it ever looked bad to me in the first place. It was nothing, not a push or a grab, just the kind of simple contact we all make with people we’re familiar with. So I’ve gone back over what I wrote and struck out (not removed) the bits that I feel were incorrect.

However, having said that I was wrong, I sure as hell don’t regret what I wrote. That’s because I WAS RIGHT. I stand by what I said about how the tribunal handled it all (even though I agree with their penalty), and even more than this, I stand by what I said about Collingwood’s attitude to umpires. Hey, I was so right that that same topic became headline news.

Complaining about umpiring is about as relevant as complaining about the bounce of the ball (which, ironically, I’ll do later). It could go either way and that’s a part of the game. My issue is with the rule changes and interpretations, not with the practice of attempting to enforce the rules.

I wrote this post weeks ago but didn’t get around to the 2-second job of fixing the old posts, so it’s going up about four weeks late.

Have you got your Anzac Round medal yet?

So Essendon and Collingwood had another exciting Anzac Day match today, with Paddy Ryder winning the Anzac Medal for best on ground. He joins a list of recipients that includes great players from Essendon, Collingwood and… well, no one else of course, because no else is eligible for this award.

AFL introduces “Temporary Insanity” defense

So unless you rely on The Age’s realfooty website for your footy news, you’ve probably heard that Heath Shaw got only a one week suspension for manhandling umpire Michael Vozzo last week.  I’ve already said my piece about this so I’ll keep this post brief.

What a joke.