Some acknowledgements before i wrap this up…

My quest is at an end! Before i make the big announcement: To everyone that has followed my quest over the course of the year or taken me to a game or tried to sell me on their team, i would like to say thanks. For the fans of the other 15 teams that i haven’t picked – a little part of me will be happy for all of you when you taste success – particularly the long suffering ones.

In the end, there were a few teams that were more seriously in consideration than others so i feel like i need to acknowledge them before i reveal my final decision: Geelong, The Kangaroos and Essendon.

Geelong came in very close – i loved the experience of footy at Kardinia Park much more than anything i saw in the corporate worlds of the MCG and Telstra Dome. Your team this year is amazing and if you weren’t so god damn far out in front (so i could be safely not accused of bandwagon jumping) i think Geelong would be right up there. After meeting so many long suffering Cats fans this year i just don’t think it would be right to jump on board a few weeks before what i hope will be a red hot finals campaign. You deserve the flag, your fans deserve the flag and i really hope you get it.

The Kangaroos – way back is round one i went to see the team that was the favourite for the wooden spoon. Everyone had written them off before the season started and expectations were low. Everyone i met on that fateful afternoon tried to explain to me the elusive concept of the “shinboner” spirit and i didn’t quite get it. As i have watched that bunch of supposed no hopers turn that around and determinedly fight their way towards this year’s final series, I can honestly say that I get it now. Unfortunately, i just can’t bring myself to sign up for a lifetime supporting a team on the Gold Coast. I hope the spirit and the culture don’t get lost in whatever the future may hold because it is the best in the league.

Essendon – you guys have done my head in this year. I’ve loved you, i’ve hated you, i’ve drank with you in victory and defeat. You will always be my favourite team to play against. I’ve spent most of this year admiring the club’s history, its winning culture, the confidence and passion of its fans, and – more than just about any other individual in the game – its coach and the way he connected the club to an age and an era when the game was just a little less a business than it is now. Don’t get me wrong – i recognise that clubs must move on at some point but there’s a right way and wrong way to go about it. It seems like entirely the wrong time to be jumping on board.

Good old Collingwood forever

Lindy’s back, i’m back and i’m on the pies. The hot pies. The mighty pies. The glorious pies.

Collingwood are a good prospect and apparently they know how to play the game. Which will be good after god knows how many weeks of enduring teams that didn’t have a f***ing clue which game they were playing. I sure hope that “the game” the pies know how to play is actually Australian Rules football and not, say, that one they play in Mongolia where men on horseback throw a decapitated goat around. Richmond, Carlton or the Swans might be very good at that.

They’ll be playing the bombers this weekend and if they can give me my first win over the Bombers i will be eternally grateful. [Grog squad, i love you all but the gloating ends here!]

These teams hate each other so it should be fierce!

Actually, now have a few good mates in the Essendon grog squad i thought i might do my bit for world peace and take it upon myself to heal the harsh rift of rivalry that runs between these two teams. Then I am flying to Glasgow on Sunday so i thought i might also fix the factionalism between Rangers and Celtic supporters while i’m over there. On the way back if i can change my stop over from Singapore to Jerusalem i thought for a bit of fun, i thought I’d solve the Israeli – Palestinian thing on the way home.

Anyhow, to get in the mood I’ve been listening to this.

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
St Kilda
Melbourne (L)
Hawthorn (L)
Richmond (L)
Geelong
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.

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.

Does anyone know this idiot?

Has this guy poured beer on your Grandmother? (click to enlarge)

This is a call out for anyone who might be able to help me – particularly my friends from Essendon. I want your help to find this idiot who seems to have emptied his beer over an elderly lady’s head and then spent the next couple of minutes yelling abuse and gloating about it.

Anyone who has been following this blog or my saga on ABC radio will know that I have no team bias. I am new to the sport of Aussie Rules and am spending the winter trying to pick a team by “trying out” being a fan of each of the 16 teams each week.

I went with some great fans of Essendon in an earlier round and last Saturday i went along with some old Fitzroy fans to see their team play as Brisbane. I sat with the Brisbane cheersquad behind the goals at the away end. To be frank, it wasn’t the most thrilling game i’ve seen so far because Essendon totally dominated in the second half and ran away with it. Like every other group of fans i’ve been with, The Lions fans weren’t quite congratulating Essendon on their win but they took it their stride were good humoured about it and came up with a bunch of slightly unconvincing theories about how it was still a good omen for the future.

For most of the game i sat next to Ros, a woman well into her sixties who had been following the Fitzroy (now Brisbane) Lions for over 55 years. She is the sort of woman who is the backbone of any club and i’m sure the sort of person that any true fan of any team and any sport would respect and appreciate. During the game she proudly showed me the collection of old Fitzroy memorabilia that she has carried in her purse for the decade or more since the Roy Boys moved to Brisbane and told me stories about following the club as they moved grounds and ultimately cities over the years. I”m not sure she’ll like me saying that her playing days are probably behind her – she gets around with the use of a walking stick and would struggle to pass the pre-season fitness test.

Big in Serbia?

Another one of those moments when i realise that I’m wasting my time by attempting to post detailed match responses here. I should stick to the stupid and sensational. My post of yesterday about Essendon winning the Eurovision song contest was the 75th most popular blog post in the world in the last 24 hours according to the good folks at wordpress. I’ll never cease to be amazed at the wonders of the Internet – given i posted it late last night it only existed for 8 of those 24 hours anyway. Actually, given that “Frum Porn” is still one of the most popular search terms that drive people to this site as a result of this post, i probably shouldn’t be that suprised by anything.

Congratulations Essendon!

Serbian Eurovision winner Marija Sheedyvic
sings her stirring anti war power ballad “When the bombers fly up up up, the bombs come down down down”

Let me be the first to congratulate Essendon on their win in the Eurovision song contest. Nice work bombers. Not sure how they’re tracking for the flag this year but a win in a major competition is not to be sneezed at.

I’ve picked my team…

… in the VFL that is.

Real footy by the bay…

Before everything went wrong at Richmond on Sunday evening i was having a great afternoon. If you listened to the ABC last Friday would have heard that my regular bit got hijacked. A bloke called Trevor Monti, the President of the Williamstown Football Club in the VFL competition called in to try and get me to come and check out some “real footy” last weekend. His Seagulls were taking on the Bombers of Bendigo and he wanted me to check out a bit of it…

Apparently, something similar happened to John Harms (who was also not doing anything about VFL at the time) over at The Age:

A FEW weeks ago, I received a phone call from someone called Trevor Monti. I had never met him before. He was ringing me in his capacity as president of the Williamstown Football Club. He kindly invited me to the lunch before the Seagulls’ opening game of the season against Werribee. He was very friendly.

I am always attracted to a bloke who is free-spirited enough to drop the Kennedy crow call into the opening minutes of his first conversation with you, and by the time I put the phone down, I had made a mental note that he was one of the more creative users of the word in its various forms. So I accepted.

Fortunately Trevor didn’t drop any F-Bombs on the sensitive folks over at ABC radio although he did drop a few after lunch. It looks like Trevor’s on a mission to preach the Willi word and if he needs to commit more hijacks than Al Qaeda to achieve it then so be it.

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 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.