Rodger's AFL Wrap-Up

Rodger’s Wrap Up - Round 6

We’re the pride of South Australia, kinda sorta

I was going to open this week with a song dedicated to the Adelaide Crows, but after looking up the lyrics for the ironically cheery Beatles ditty ‘Help’ I soon realised they were already spot on.  So much so I sent them to the Crows management with a note suggesting that Neil Craig should sing them as the new club song for their increasingly disillusioned fans.  

Help us if you can, we’re feeling down
And we do appreciate you being ‘round
Help us get our fans back to the ground
Won’t you please, please help me?

Yes Crows fans please, please help them.  After five winless rounds the Cows had equalled their worst ever start to a season, cruelly punctuated by fourteen of their cattle missing through injury and at the moment their best are the ones soon to be put out to pasture.   Neil Craig’s preseason prediction of being a ‘top four’ side still hauntingly echoes through the hallowed halls, where now top fourteen seems almost naively optimistic.  In fact things are so bad, when they look around the room to assess how they are travelling there’s spotty little Richmond waving back at them and asking if they know where the Demons went.  

Entering round six there was only thing standing between them and their worst ever start to a season, their cross town arch rivals the Power.  Queue the ‘da da da dum’ music.  To make matters worse the giant killing Power had only last week taken out the Saints, leaving everyone with the expectation the Crows would offer little in the way of resistance.

So it was on a fine Saturday afternoon in Adelaide that the Cellar Dweller Crows took on the Perky Power in Showdown XXLMVQIII.  Shockingly with three quarters gone the game was not only still up for grabs but the Crows were actually leading, even better it was against a team fabled for its fade outs.  Visible waves of hope emanated from fans across Adelaide that finally the nightmare that has been 2010 might at last be coming to an end.  Unbeknownst to all though the sneaky Power had a crack team of electricians fix the faulty wiring mid week.  The last quarter saw the “Power Outs” signs rightfully replaced with the new sparkling “Power Ups” signs as they burst out kicking five goals in ten minutes to end the contest - in the process causing opposition fans to pull out the ultra piss weak “I wanna beat the traffic” excuse and consign the Cellar Dwellers to their worst ever start to a season, ever. The Power looked visibly saddened by what they had done, kinda like when dad had to shoot a rabid Old Yeller - sadly sometime ya simply gotta do what ya gotta do.

Within twenty four hours it was to only get worse, with a Power player publicly admitting that he felt sorry for the Crows.  When your arch enemy publicly offers you pity, you have to know the hard, bone jarring and painful impact of hitting rock bottom surely can’t be far.  Things are in fact so dire hoards of marauding zombie-like bogans resembling large animated packets of lifesavers are walking the streets with sandwich boards stating “Beware the Crowpocalypse!!!”

As if this was all going perfectly to some perversely cruel script, next week has the Crying Crows facing off against the Training Drill Tigers to see just who will blemish their otherwise perfect record by winning.  The game on one hand offers a path towards redemption for the Cows, while the other path has the Four Horsemen on stand-by.  Should they lose, it will surely trigger the Crowpocalypse and great fury with the fire and brimstone and the burning and the pain with Neil Craig likely to be recast from Lord and Saviour to the role of the dark angel Lucifer.  Crows fans can be fickle that way.  

This however is where the good news comes for the saddened fans out there, despite all the gloom the guys down at sportsbet haven’t lost faith.  The odds for a Crows win is $1.23 while the Tigers are out at $4.50 – so while your team is doing badly, it’s not yet to the stage of ‘Tiger Terrible’ and as such the Crowpocalypse should hopefully be avoided.  Of course the odds and what actually happens can often be two completely different things.

At a press conference CEO Steven Trigg implored fans not to abandon the Crows.  “We ask fans to please have patience, it may seen like an odd strategy but Neil Craig has lulled the rest of the competition into a false sense of security.  With everyone writing us off it is now time for us to strike, oh you’ll see.  You may all be laughing now, quite hysterically it seems, but just you wait…. Ok people you can stop laughing, please.  C’mon it’s not that funny. Ahhh, go and get Bocked!”

For all that has been said and done I say give Neil Craig at least one more year, he deserves it for getting amazing results out of the list he was given without the long period of cellar dwelling for draft picks common amongst certain other teams (actually every team in the top ten besides the Swans and the Lions).  Besides if you wait until the end of next year I hear Mick Malthouse might be looking for a job.  

So until then the Crows might consider a bit of Dennis Commetti Friday night football advice , “So it’s back to the old drawing board. Obviously a luxury that the guy who invented the drawing board didn’t have.”

Round 6

The weekend opened with the Super Saints taking on the Blistering Bulldogs in a blockbuster match between two of the leagues big guns.  Well so the hype told us, however what transpired was significantly less exciting.  With the lingering question of how they would score without St Nick, the Saints re-implemented their old ‘operation snoredom’ game plan.  It was their usual shut everything down, let nothing be scored style of game play that has long put fans to sleep.  My hero Dennis Commetti put it best with his advice for anyone who brought overseas relatives to the game, “Maybe take the rellies home and show them a video of another game.”  As tedious and dull as the tactic was, it worked as the Saints won by just three points in what was the all time lowest scoring game at the Terror Dome ever in its entire history.  In the post match interview Ross Lyon stated, “Most of our fans dream of Nick Riewoldt returning, we feel our game plan will give them plenty of time to do so.”

Saturday started with the Dazzling Demons taking on the Ramshackle Roos.  Last year’s wooden spooners the Dazzlers were hoping to add to their inconceivable three wins a row, one of which was even against a real football team.  Sadly for them the Roos weren’t keen to let them have four as they won comfortably.

Saturday night saw the much hyped rematch between the Baby Bombers and the Hobbling Hacks.  The hype was based around the Lloyd hit on Brad Sewell in last round of 2009 that consigned the Hacks to an early end of their season – a hit that also earned the Bombers the opportunity to be relentlessly belted by the Crows in the elimination final (back in a long forgotten era when the Crows used to win games).  This year the Hacks decided to make a statement, unfortunately for their fans that statement was “please sir, may I have another”. The Bombers won easily in the end, where the only physical pressure involved Bomber Andrew Welsh, his right knee and Xavier Ellis’s groin.  For the record the tribunal feels a knee to the groin is worth four weeks off, three if you can lodge an early guilty plea without smirking.

Over in Sydney it was the Soaring Swans hosting the Listing Lions.  After last week’s humiliation by the Dees it was expected that Man Mountain Brown and his trusty sidekick Brendan Hill would put Brisbane back on track.  If that was the script this tale was to follow, then someone forget to tell them about the late rewrite.  The Swans have a new forward option - one prone to delivering more goals than right hooks – who goes by the name Daniel “Trade-bait” Bradshaw.  Lions fans might remember him as the guy they dumped in their efforts to snag the Fevinator.  The Swannies went two men and two goals down within minutes of the start, with the Man Mountain looking to make a statement.  After that point Trade-bait stepped up with four of the Swans next nine answered goals to put their stamp on the game.  He then later fired a Malcolm Blight special, a 60 meter torpedo, after the three quarter time siren which put the nail in Brisbane’s coffin.  I’m not quite sure but he rather looked like he really enjoyed it.  The unheralded Swans now sit top of the ladder with just their narrow first round loss to the Saints blotting their record.

On Sunday it was over to the Cattery where the Barbarians were waiting for league punching bag the Terrible Tigers.  It wouldn’t have been good in the best of weeks, but with the Barbarians coming off last week’s plundering by the Booze they were out for revenge.  Needless to say it went exactly as expected, with the Tigers not managing to add to their total of three quarters won in 2010.  There was some small consolation in the 108 point battering, it wasn’t 157 points like in 2007 and they did score more than either team in the opening game of the round.  Watch out Crows, things are on the up in Tigerland.

Over at the MCG it was old enemies the Bustling Blues taking on the Piping Hot Pies. The Booze were keen to inflict the same treatment on the Pies as they had done last week against the Cats.  Sadly for them, there would be nothing of the sort.  The Booze were jumped early before getting back to within two points midway through the third quarter, however that moment of triumphant hope gave way to harsh cruel reality as Collingwood ran over them by nine goals.  Unlike recent efforts at the Terror Dome, a screaming Joffa and all of his delirious cheer squad comrades were not asked to keep it down by security this week.  Oh and like the Tigers the Booze can also take some consolation, they scored more than both teams combined in the opening game of the round.  

The weekend finished over with the western derby where the Easybeat Eagles took on the Fantastic Fockers.  For a long time the Fockers have treated beating the Eagles as something akin to a grand final win, probably because it was the closest they could actually get.  With the tables now turned many wondered if the reverse would happen and the Eagles would upstage them.  At half time, it almost looked like it may just happen.  After half time, it was a totally different story as the Fockers kicked ten goals to two to keep that winning feeling.  

For the record I’m guessing few people would have expected after six rounds that the top four would consist of Sydney, Collingwood, St Kilda and Fremantle.  Unfocking believable.