From Saints to Demons

A very quick update today to let all Demon fans know that i will be going to their game at the ‘G tomorrow to check them out. I must confess that life has got away from me a bit this week – i have been interstate for half of it and dealing with some bigger (and better) things for the last few days… But i would love it if any Demons fans want to give me a run down on some of the better features of their team?

I haven’t had time to do my research yet, but given that i expect to be living in an area broadly known as Melbourne for the forseeable future perhaps the general ambiguity of their location could be a decisive factor.

Again, apologies for the tradiness of updating, but have been somewhat sidetracked by my life!

Oh, I want to be in that Rumba, when the Saints go over there! Oh over there!

Oh When the Saints…!

Having been – quite frankly – spoilt and sucked up to for the first two weeks of my adventure almost everything about the Saints experience has worked out a little wrong by comparison.

If you have been following the Saints saga, you’ll know that I’ve already commented several times over about the general reticence of Saints fans to convince me to join them. The fan forum over at Saintsational has seemingly flat out refused to approve my registration or even answer my emails after about a week. So all the banter and dialogue I had with the Bombers fans last week and has been pretty much non-existent. The handful of Saints fans that have contacted me have been using words like “disappointment”, “tragedy” and “despair” and made it very clear that supporting the Saints is not something you go into lightly and probably isn’t something that you go into at all if you take the time to think about it.

Saints Shrink My Shorts…

Fortunately it was nice night weather-wise on Saturday because i managed to track down some Saints gear before the game after all. As regular readers will know, i’ve managed to find some quality bargain merchandise in the previous weeks but i wasn’t having much luck with the Saints. Rather than resigning myself to defeat (as is apparently the Saints tradition) i decided to have another quick search on Saturday morning before the game. Surely there was some sort of Saints gear out there in my strict under 10 dollars price range? The Panda of Opportunity must have been smiling on me (or at least toying with me), because i managed to find the ugliest pair of shorts in the Universe for a meagre five dollars over in the sports fan merch shop on Smith Street.

 

Look, Saints shorts, only $5… bargain!

Oh my god, they are ugly, no wonder they aren’t selling…

Saints Soft Sell?

Is it just me or are Saints fans much less likely than the fans of other clubs to proselytise their team?

After the Bombers and the Roos fans both sold me aggressively on the merits of their clubs over the last two weeks i have been struggling to find anyone who will express much enthusiasm for the idea that i should support the Saints.

Compared to the almost overconfident Bombers, it has been quite a contrast to have die hard Saints fans telling me things like this:

Over the course of the year you may have supporters fighting over which club you should support. As a Saints supporter I’d say don’t choose us. Get out while you can. I love everything about the club including our colourful history but you’ll have to get used to a lot of disappointment.

Obviously, that could just be the attitude of any random fan, except for the fact that it comes from a guy called sainter who is the moderator of the St Kilda forums over at Bigfooty.com. The “colourful history” he is referring to is that since their foundation in 1873, the Saints have only won the VFL/AFL Flag once in 1966. In contrast they have finished last no less than 27 times! I think it would be fair to describe them as underachievers.

Stratospheric ratings!

My big news of the day is that whatsmyteam has cracked it for number 55 on the WordPress’s global list of fastest growing blogs.

There I am right between (and you click on these at your own risk!):

# 54 frum girl = ? the dirty mind of a should-be frum girl…. and,

# 56 Blogfolio do Julio We are hypocrates, and yes, this includes you!

Obviously coming in number 55 in something is about as good as it has ever gotten for me so i am ludicrously excited.

It also says a few important things to me:

Firstly it says a lot about the traffic that i’ve received from the Bombers fans over the last week or so – so thanks Bombers!

Secondly, it says to grow any faster than that a future club is gonna have to pull out some big guns.

Eddie: the TV rights to WhatsMyTeam have not been sold yet. Whoever buys the rights writes the ending if you know what i mean… CALL ME EDDIE!

When the Saints Go Marching In…

My game for the week this week is the mighty St Kilda Saints v. their evil rivals the Western Bulldogs – who traditionalists like me still refer to as Footscray. It’s “rivalry round” this week so i’d appreciate any extra information that readers or listeners might have about why the St Kilda v. Footscray rivalry is fierce enough to qualify as a “rivalry round” clash. OK, i get West Coast v. Fremantle, Port v. Adelaide, Carlton v. Essendon, but i am at a bit of a loss for some of the fierce history between these two clubs. Fill me in, please!

Any Saints fans that would like to be my host for this week’s round will need to call the ABC 774 drive program on Friday afternoon to nominate themselves.

See the Bombers Fly…

I received a record amount of traffic yesterday – sadly very little of it was for my heart-felt tribute to rugby league legend Andrew Johns (what is wrong with you Victorians?). So before i move on to my team of the week for this week, i have to say how impressed i am by the support that the Bombers fans have shown for their team by reading my exploits. Since my drug fueled bombers match review was posted yesterday, i have received a record number of visits to these pages (ok, it was only about 500 visitors, but that’s 4 times the average around here) and according to the wordpress stats most it was coming from the good folks over at Bomberblitz.com.
Everyone else: A benchmark has been set!

Vale Andrew Johns

Ok, so it is definitely not the done thing to even acknowledge the existence of Rugby League in an AFL related blog. But until this quest is over, i remain a paid up member of one team only and that’s the Newcastle Knights.*

Due to a neck injury, Andrew Johns has announced his retirement, effective immediately from the game.

If you don’t know anything about Rugby League, the closest thing i can imagine in AFL to Johns is what Gary Ablett must have experienced in Geelong in his heyday. If Ablett is God in Geelong, Johns is the entire Holy trinity in Newcastle and gets all the same scrutiny and then some. Without question he is one of the truly great players ever to play the game and he has been the focus of the hopes, fears, aspirations, prejudices and dreams of most of the population of Newcastle for over a decade. On the field, at his best he was without par. Almost perfect. Off the field he was imperfect, but given the scrutiny, the rumours, the temptations, the accolades and the standards set by Gary Ablett it would be unfair to say he was particularly imperfect.

I have met Andrew Johns once and once only. It was the Thursday after Newcastle had an extraordinary win in the 1997 ARL Grand Final – their first premiership. That game was one of the greatest games ever played. With BHP about to close in a city with double digit unemployment, the poorest club taking on the richest, the working class versus the silver tails, and with Newcastle’s players having rejected Murdoch’s Super League raid, it was a game loaded with all the symbolism you could ever invest in a sporting event. Johns had famously played the game against medical advice after being released from hospital days before with a punctured lung. In no small part due to Johns, Newcastle had triumphed in the last seconds.

Bombing with the Grog Squad

I found Neela outside the dome and he led me to the Grog Squad lair behind the goals (and the official cheer squad) at the Phone Dome. After several attempts to take a photo of myself on the tram that didn’t make me look like a dweeb, the solution to my dweebyness was waiting for me when i arrived in the form of a very fetching bombers guernsey that was lent to me for the afternoon by the Grog squad crew. Apparently it instantly made me 200% sexier.

Wow! 200% sexier when i put this on than before…

To the dome…

Mid twenties, wrong day for a scarf…

I went off to see the Essendon Bombers (“us”, “we”) play and it was a very different experience on the tram on the way in than last week. After being outnumbered about 10 to 1 by Collingwood fans last week (even though it was actually a Roos home game) it was quite a contrast to see a tram full of people wearing the same gear as me.

Apparently the Bombers are the most supported club in Victoria (or at least so a Bombers fan told me) – although the title of the most supported clubs tends to back and forth between Essendon and Collingwood. As a fan of neither team explained it to me on my way out the door, “Essendon supporters are like Collingwood fans with jobs.”

A good search around and i could only find one Freo supporter on the tram…

He’s the guy reading the newspaper, with the earlplugs in looking down and refusing to make eye contact with anyone…