Not Again…

SYDNEY Swans coach Paul Roos says his team’s performance against Collingwood on Saturday night was its worst since he has been in charge of the club.

Guess where i was on Saturday?

My record. Shocking.

I went and saw Carlton play at the we-are whining-because-we-want-a-braadband-monopoly Dome on Friday night and my apologies to all the Carlton fans for doing so. Yet another club suffers a record loss at my hands. This time it was the wrong end of the Hawks biggest ever win over Carlton.

Is there any club that would actually think it’s a good idea to have me as a fan? I’ve basically spent the first half of the year denying that i’m a jinx, now i think it’s time to have a serious look at my form and fess up:

Kangaroos (L)
Essendon (W)
St Kilda (W)
Melbourne (L)
Hawthorn (L)
Richmond (L)
Geelong (W)
Brisbane (L)
Adelaide (L)
West Coast (L)
Carlton (L)

3 wins from 11 games. The scariest thing is that i am running against form here – i have seen every team in the top 4 and for only ONE win – Geelong. What can i say? Shocking. That gives me 12 points and puts me ahead of only Richmond and Melbourne on the ladder (Melbourne’s only win came when i went to see Adelaide play against them!)

Only the Western Bulldogs, Collingwood, Sydney, Port and Fremantle left to suffer at my hands.

A little quiet around here

Unfortunately i have been a little busy around here in the last week or two. I’ve been spending my days and some of my evenings filming this TV series thing called Not Quite Art that i am working on for the ABC. What i have learnt from that is that walking and talking and trying to sound convincing when talking to a camera is, umm, difficult and it makes me feel like the sort of knob that i regualrly laugh at when watching the teev. The other thing that i have learnt is that updating the blog while doing that is a bit of a challenge.

Apologies for that, but in the meantime enjoy the wonderful archives here.

Hawks or Dreamteam?

I have been seeking out the views of some of the more prominent footy fans that i have met about town about which team i should get on. I crossed paths with author, former Race Around the Worlder and now RRR breakfast presenter Tony Wilson (the ABC will have to start paying me to do this blog if they want me to not plug rival stations) recently and he seemed to think that is should get onto the Hawks.

Well, maybe…

I’m a Hawthorn supporter so always face an uphill battle trying to convince newcomers to embrace the yellow and brown — a colour combination that yet again in 07 is not taking Paris by storm. After a few deplorable years dominated by solarium use, hair gel and shopping, the Hawks are now a very admirable team. Jordan Lewis, Sam Mitchell, Luke Hodge, Shane Crawford, Brad Sewell, Tim Boyle, Ben McGlynn, we boast genuine footballers rather than just twenty-first century super athletes. And in BUUUUDDDDDDDY, we have a twenty-first century super athlete who is also a genuine footballer.

Of course I wouldn’t necessarily urge you to barrack for them. Like the video recorder, we peaked in the mid-eighties and true fans have the1989 Grand Final on both VHS and Beta.

Actually Tony is right about the brown. Yellow and brown were the colour of Charlestown Primary School and then the brown followed me to glorious Jesmond High School in Newcastle. I’ve never really recovered from the trauma of that, i’m not sure i can embrace the Hawks without serious counselling for bad uniform flashbacks from childhood.

Tony did have one great suggestion though:

One option, Marcus, is to avoid picking a team and just have yourself a Dreamteam. It’s a very selfish, me generation thing to do. But I’ve done it, and shit I’m having a good time. Go the Maribyrnong Mustangs!

You can read about Tony’s dream team adventures on his web site.

While the selfishness of it definately appeals to me, i think i am a little short of qualified to be selecting anything. I’m struggling to come to terms with 16 teams i have to see during the week without trying to manage another one. Of course, if you’re also a DT coach team is ahead of Tony’s in the dream team stakes i’d be very pleased to facilitate you boasting about it (he gets all the airtime over there – happy to do my bit to even it up).

Oviously, it may be a bit too late to avoid picking a team now. A caller on the ABC last week made me promise to actually pick a team because he has recently moved to Melbourne and vowed to pick whoever i pick (as long as it isn’t Collingwood – fair enough). I promised him, so wimping out is not an option any more.

OK, so i was cheering…

It was really great to finally see Melbourne and Richmond finally get some points this weekend.

Unfortunately for Melbourne they were playing against my team of the week Adelaide on Saturday so i have been forced to obliterate it from my memory. But i came home and caught the last quarter of Richmond’s thrilling game with Brisbane on TV on Saturday night. I have to confess that i was cheering Richmond on, screaming at the TV and hooting and hollering like it was no one’s business and trying desperately to get Richmond across the line. The game ended with a very empty feeling – a 73 all draw, but i suspect that Richmond would have taken that over, say, the 172 point flogging i witnessed a month or so ago.

While not fully committeed, I was enthusiastic enough to initiate a little text message banter with Terry (who took me to see Richmond) late in the fourth quarter:

Me (before the siren): Go Richmond!

Terry (after the siren as the shock wore off): We’ll get there yet. Was very quiet after the game, as no one knew whether the sing the song or not. Have we won you over yet?

Me: Haven’t won me over yet but i was cheering!

Terry: U didn’t cheer hard enough!

And therein lies the one issue that could be holding me back vis-a-vis Richmond: Why is it my bloody fault?

Now Terry and Faye are very lovely, and i am definately happy to share their pain. However i am a bit reluctant to take too much responsibility for it. Richmond were going pretty bloody average before i took any interest in them and i would like to think that i am somewhere well behind Terry Wallace, the club management, whoever’s been making their draft picks, their groundsman, the guy who cuts the oranges, whoever does the laundry, whoever books the bands at The Corner Hotel and Dennis Cometti on the people you might randomly blame for Richmond’s woes list.

I didn’t cheer enough? I am not even a fan yet! Was watching on TV! I am not sure that i can take this responsibility on for THE REST OF MY LIFE. It already feels like a heavy burden to carry.

Having said that. After nine weeks i still haven’t witnessed a big come from behind win and it feels a lot like the tragic losses have stuck in the memory a little more than the good wins or the average losses. The sheer “what should have been” nature of the Roos loss to Collingwood in Round 1 and the magnitude of Richmond’s record smashing loss to Geelong (where the Richmond team got accidentally substituted for the under 10 Auskick kids from half time) that i witnessed have both left me with a strong feeling of really wanting those teams to win as i have followed them from afar throughout the year.

Read into that what you will.

Big Stats for the idiot

It seems we never managed to track down the beer throwing idiot but it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. Thanks to all the Essendon fans who made an effort to track down the nong among their number from Telstra Dome.

The idiot love child of Kostya Tzu and Jimmy Barnes?

The news is that this post, relative to ALL the other ones that i’ve posted, has rated off the scale! The seed of converting this whole project into a vigilante anti-idiot sports fan site has now been planted. I’m off to check whether dob-in-a-dickhead.com has already been taken.

This post was enough to shoot me up to number TWO on the fastest growing blogs list (curse you passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers – i will get you if its the last thing i ever do!) and number 96 on the “blogs of the day” list (if that only gets me up to 96, i think my life ambition to defeat the evil (but oh-so-cute) LOLcats may never be realised).

Just to demonstrate that i never miss a chance to sabotage myself, i decided to take a long break and not follow up for a couple of weeks. Talk about a momentum killer.

Back after the mid-season break

After knocking off 8 teams and with 8 to go i had to take last weekend off to go to Sydney and do some work on this TV show thing that i am making called Not Quite Art. The good news for me is that the show now has the final green light (i think it’s the final green light there appears to be a lot of stop/go lights in the TV world) and its now likely to be on the ABC on tuesday nights at 10pm in September. The bad news is that i am very busy now.

Sorry about that!