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.

Don’t push me, coz I’m close to the edge.

Heath Shaw should go for about 5 weeks I reckon for pushing umpire Michael Vozzo on Thursday night.

For all of the “it was nothing”, “it’s not like he hit him” or as I saw in one online comment “you should stick to playing soccer”, you just can’t touch umpires. I can see how people might defend incidental contact, like the player who accidentally bumps an umpire while going for the ball after a ball-up, but that’s not what this is, is it?

The Rise And Fall Of A Collingwood Media Empire

What’s more disappointing? The Richmond flogging or the Collingwood loss? Thursdays game was between 2 teams, neither of which made the eight last year but with huge expectations this year. Add the obvious Cousins / Judd “Rivalry” and we were all foaming at the mouth for an epic arm wrestle. What we ended up with was an epic drubbing.

Saturday afternoon. MCG. Beautiful perfect football weather. 2 teams that made the 8 last year. Collingwood lose. All of a sudden, The End Is Nigh…

The Collingwood army obviously love them. Supporters of 15 other clubs hate them. The magpie army love that we hate them. The rest of us love watching them get their comeuppance. The media LOVE all of the above. Because they sell news papers. They sell commercial airtime. They sell controversy.

Preseason is over!

Footy is back for real now with tonight’s exciting (snickers) rematch (chuckles) of the 1980 Grand Final. (Laughing openly now at the unlikeliness of anyone old enough to have been there also being able to use this interweb thing. Has it really been that long since Richmond were relevant?)

So now that the serious business begins, let’s look back at some of the things we failed to cover during what I like to think of as the circus part of the season:

Keeping it one article at a time

Akermanis, Fevola , Nathan Brown, Cousins, Didak… They’ve all got a lot to answer for.

In today’s AGE there is an in-depth one on one interview with Carlton Captain and AFL superstar Chris Judd.

On Ben Cousins: “I, like most footy fans, am looking forward to seeing him play this year and hope he goes well.”

Which would you rather: Grand or Super?

This weekend, two former AFL stars are one win away from the biggest game of their lives.  NFL punters Sav Rocca and Ben Graham face each other in the NFC Championship Game with the winner going to the Super Bowl.

Both Rocca’s Philadelphia Eagles and Graham’s Arizona Cardinals were underdogs coming in to the playoffs, but somehow made it through to each be a game away from becoming the first Australian to ever play in the biggest event in American sports (and, by extension, the world, at least TV-wise).