After Grog Blog

BLAST FROM THE POST

Or: Two Miners Were Kicked.

Missed this article about life in the Pilbara in The Australian Literary Review: Memory is all we have. (Via Adrian.)

Now, I could try my hand at a long, evocative post full of spinfex, red dust and vast distances, but I don't do that, I do football.

I twice played footy at Goldsworthy, once in 1980 and again in 1981. In the second match I played at full forward and early on took a mark about 45 metres out on about a 45 degree angle; on the wrong side for a right footer, as they say. Lining up, the full-back gave me the usual "chewy on yer boot" stuff but I was pretty confident of slotting the sausage. I connected well enough, allowing for the slight breeze, and the ball looked set to sail through but it faded late and lobbed smack bang on the knob on top of the right goal-post. The full back turned to me and said "I bet you never do that again." Soon after the ball came our way and I pantsed him on the lead, this time marking 45 metres out on a 45 degree angle on the other side; what Channels Nine & Ten call the reverse angle. "Remember what I said," he offered by way of advice. This time, to counter the wind, I decided to drill the ball harder and lower. Connecting neatly, I watched the ball tracer into the same post about a foot below the knob. "Told you," said the fullback.

All's well that ends well, though, I kicked five and we won comfortably.

NO DROUGHT ABOUT IT

WAVES OF NAUSTALGIA

Music quizzes are becoming increasingly popular. Why? They are shit. Trivia-night music is shit. Spicks & Specks is shit. Rock Quiz is shit. This quiz in last Saturday's Australian is shit. That thing on Channel Seven was worse than shit; it's hard to think about that corpse and not reflexively hold your nose. Rock quizzes? Schlock quizzes, more like.

Not exactly sure what I don't like about them. Perhaps it's the notion you are labelled some kind of cretin if you don't know Neneh Cherry's stepfather or the Perth band that spawned The Blackeyed Susans or who fronts The Doors of the 21st Century. Perhaps it's something to do with the sickening nostalgia that expects us to get on board rubbish like The Countdown Revival. Perhaps it's merely something as simple as me not liking fads and trendoids. Certainly it's something to do with them featuring bands or artists I care little to fuck all about, whether the artists be cool, kitch or outright horrendous.

In The Strayan's quiz I got 20-30 which meant it was "Time to move beyond your big brother's collection." Apart from anything else I am my big brother, so my collection's my own and it runs to thousands of records and hundreds of CDs. My younger brother's collection is just as extensive, and between us we have fuck all records from artists regularly mentioned on the TV quiz shows or in the print versions. We're just not interested. The likes of the Black Eyed Susans, the Jackson Code, Billy Bragg, Yes, Pulp, UB40, INXS, Billy Idol's previous band, Prince, The Arctic Monkeys, Powderfinger, Blink 182, Lisa Miller, Youssou N'dour, the Cult or Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By, which I assume is about Jeff Buckley, are just so much mediocre noise.

Despite a flurry a couple of years ago where I tried in vain to reinvigorate my interest in rock music, me and the genre went our separate ways about 10 years ago. Now I just resent the implication I'm a goose because I'm not interested in either a) what has been released since and is patently nonsense or b) what was released before and was probably nonsense only I was too stupid or too sucked in to work it out.

POOFREADING

It says in the papers that Alan Jones is a conservative who wears pink shirts, or words to that effect. They also reveal Jones taught at a private school and that a former pupil once accused him of coaching rugby.

Scandalous, sure, just not totally scandalous.

My private school actively encouraged you to become a conservative or a left winger, depending on your preference. And even though it wasn't part of the core curriculum, our wearing of pink shirts program turned out some of the best and brightest.

But only the wankers played rugby; the rest of us had standards.

RIDING A BIKE IS JUST LIKE RIDING A BIKE

That's bollocks, of course, it's nothing of the sort. I just shelled out $400 for a bike and I don't ever remember being out of breath after pedalling halfway up a street. Nor do I ever recall being tentative approaching a thin gap on my three-speed dragster. Or being altogether unable to pop a mono. I DO remember having stiff leg muscles, but that's nothing to do with pushy riding and everything to do with football, cricket, basketball, tennis and lately, walking down to the shops. This minimal fitness campaign doesn't seem to be working out the way I planned.

It'll be a challenge to push through this "wall", I may even hit one, but if things get tough I need only remember this is cycling, there's always nandrolone or blood doping.

DEAL OR NO DEAL?

Who doesn’t like a nice hand of poker occasionally? Especially when you’re playing for not having your kneecaps smashed by a Russian mobster who listens to his Oreo cookies before shoving his chips out. By now you’ve probably guessed I’m talking about Rounders, one of the most criminally ignored taut little melodramas of recent times.

(1998. Colour. Script: David Levien and Brian Koppleman. Direction: John Dahl. Cinematography: Jean Yves Escoffier. Score: Christopher Young sounding like a jazzier Barry Adamson.)

Miramax basically dumped this small (US$12 million) flick on the market with fuck all promotion ‘cos they were getting jiggy at the time about hitting the big time with Shakespeare In Love and ‘cos none of Rounders’s cast were big draw cards back then.

But we're talking here about an utterly inimitable flick that's gonna be revived many times long after Paltrow, J. Fiennes, Affleck and co have gone to the great test screening in the sky. We're talking about a flick that features Matt Damon, Edward Norton, John Turturro, Martin Landau, Famke Jansson and John Malkovich, all delivering brillant performances as a bunch of hustlers, mobsters, fuckups and femme fatales playing poker for high stakes in low dives across New York.

Both the screenwriters used to be ‘rounders’, poker players who make the rounds of floating games and the plays, beats, jargon and dialogue just crackles with insider knowledge. In fact, apparently the US DVD includes a commentary track from four World Champion Poker players.

But you don’t have to be a pokerhead to enjoy this razorsharp, gritty and chip-chewing flick directed by John Dahl, who’s made some of the best contemporary modern film noir flicks around like The Last Seduction and Red Rock West.

He brilliantly captures a semi-covert world where Texas Hold ‘Em is played for money, love, power and ego by Russian gangsters in illegal gaming dens, yuppies in cigar bars, union officials in meeting halls, golf pros in country clubs, cops in hunting lodges, trust fund babies in Yale Association clubs, judges, DAs and law professors in City Hall and by suckers at Atlantic City.

The story is centred around Matt Damon as a failing law student and ambivalent rounder who starts off trying to build his stake for an entry fee to the World Poker Championship in Vegas, but blows it all and cashes in his chips to go straight. Then his old childhood friend and former hustling partner, Edward Norton (who gives what I think is his best performance ever - as a charming, brillant, sleazy fuckup) is released from prison and wants to start up the old team again and then everything goes right off the rails.

And even if they do manage to get back on track, waiting at the end of the line is Teddy KGB, a sinister and eccentric Russian mobster with a cookie fetish and the worst dress sense you’ve ever seen on screen, who relishes fucking people up across the poker table. No prizes for guessing which actor called John Malkovich plays Teddy.

Not only is the acting uniformly brilliantly even down to the extras with one line of dialogue, Rounders has a great look and feel as well. All the locations seem utterly believable as they range across the whole socio-economic spectrum of New York from blowjobs in manky strip club toilets to the polished brass and bullshit of yuppie hangouts. You can actually smell these places. And a note perfect soundtrack that captures the emotional highs and lows of living a life of nerve, chance, well-fingered Benjimans and pissed-off lovers.

And even though I’m not much of a poker player and a lot of the plays and jargon went right over my head, the big games in the flick themselves are incredibly suspenseful, and not always for the reasons you may think. One of the most scrotum-tightening lines during a game in Rounders is “Wow! That’s one big fucking elk’s head!” which has nothing to do with the actual fall of the cards. Yet.

Look boys and girls, GrogFlog’s never steered you wrong before (aside from that ill fated post about the South Korean edit of “The Sound of Music” with all the songs cut out, which Tony fortunately deleted before it emerged online). Trust me on this call. Honestly. You can't see any tells here can you? So take a punt and see Rounders. Dahl and co flopped a nut straight here. You don’t have to like cards to enjoy it. Just movies.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.” Four aces out of five.

Coming soon: John Huston and Truman Capote get it on, James Coburn drops acid, Harvey Keitel behaves badly and Jennifer Tilly wants your body.

THE GANG SHOW

In a recent taping of Temptation, two players ganged up on the third. The two had organised that if one of them was leading and the other couldn't win, the one who couldn't win would keep pressing the buzzer so that the third person was not able to answer any questions and catch up. The ganging worked a treat. Word is the third person was furious and the studio audience booed like mad. It may have something to do with the article below, but I'm not sure. You see, gutless Channel Nine have decided to edit the show so that the nastiness is not televised.

Nine Network - Temptation Gets Nasty

Someone is about to play dirty. Someone is about to cross the line – and Temptation is about to have one of its nastiest episodes this Friday, October 20 at 7pm on Channel Nine.

When host Ed Phillips announced "game on" to start the show this week he had no idea what was about to unfold. Three contestants, two from Victoria and one from Queensland, have turned Channel Nine’s top-rating quiz show into a scheming showdown which will see one of them leaving very angry.

PEOPLE TO THE POWER

Took an excursion to the LaTrobe Valley on Monday. Why? Why, to look at power stations, of course. Why else would you go to the LaTrobe Valley?

"It was some time before dawn on June 15, 1997. That much they were sure of, though peering back through the haze of booze and dope, none of them could recall with any real precision what time it was."

Well, yes. Below is a picture taken from on top of the steam boiler at Loy Yang B. As it happens, and I think you might be quite interested here, the boiler is 20 stories high and hangs from a set of flexible rods. Big rods. It is suspended thus because of the massive contraction and expansion. Think about how a steel urinal goes BANG! when you take a piss on a cold day. Sometimes it fairly makes the toilet lollies jump. Were the boiler merely plonked on the ground, its weight combined with this vast change of shape would cause it to explode like one of those pieces of fruit that are always used for target practice by movie assassins.

The process that turns coal into electricity is alarmingly simple. So simple you could even try it at home sometime, although you might want to be careful when you're digging up the neighbour's pool. It's a bit like cooking: a pinch of this, a pound of that, a little heat, stir, blow, pour and there you have it - a cake. In the case of cooking electricity, it goes a little bit more like this. Coal is dug out of the ground via open cut dredging and scraping. They've been digging coal out of the LaTrobe Valley since 1924 and so far they've exhausted only three percent of the product. Do the maths: eighty-two years times thirty-three means that LaTrobe Valley power stations can be run on coal until roughly 4730, give or take a year. This will please the conservationists. It's black coal that's rich in ash and sulphur and causes acid rain. We, on the other hand, have nice brown coal which has little of either, and only the odd twenty-five percent of moisture which only pumps the odd thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It gets better. Round about 4730, maybe sooner, we will have a viable nuclear program. So, it's all good.

The coal is fed into a pulveriser which smashes it into a talc-like powder, only black. This powder is blown into a burner and ignited by gas jets, but once the burnering starts, the coal itself keeps the process hot. Very hot. 1200 degrees hot. This hot is used to turn oodles* of water into a steam pressure capable of eroding stainless steel pipes. We don't use the steam for that - not intentionally - we use it to turn a turbine that turns a generator that turns out the atomic motion that we in the business like to call electricity. If you don't believe me, stick your fork in your toaster and watch the free electrons zoom up your nervous system and into your heart. Go on. It's like Bart Simpson and the electrified cupcake - it's fun. You'll need to get your partner to hold in the safety-switch while you're doing it. Those in old houses should replace the fuse with a nail.

Can I just add that not much happened in the way of irksome students. The only real hinderance came when we were kicking off earlier than normal from school. We took it for granted that a student who is ALWAYS late for the normal 8:30 classes would never make a bus at 7:00. He didn't, so we took off without him. But not long after, there he was, chasing us up Bell Street in his car and waving frantically, so we pulled over and picked him up. You might say that even when he is early, he is late.

* Not enough people say oodles these days. If you have a blog, do the right thing, will you, and slot it into your next post. Context is important: "Fat Beazley oozed oodles of prolix" works, as does "Rat Howard oodles Janette's hand."

LINE & GLENGTH

Plan Pigeon? What, so we're supposed to believe the hottest new thing in cricket tactics is line and length bowling. Pull the other one. To which cricket guru do we attribute this audacious concept?

Ponting plans to play ugly

AUSTRALIA has unveiled its "Plan Pigeon" as it plots to play ugly against the West Indies on a dodgy Indian wicket today.

Glenn McGrath's unerring accuracy will be a massive trump card as Australia opens its Champions Trophy campaign on a Mumbai pitch that has been keeping ridiculously low and slow.

Australia is also likely to pitchfork young off-spinner Dan Cullen into its side to join Brad Hogg in the spinning ranks on a pitch hopelessly under-prepared after a long monsoon season.

But enough of Straya's vaunted lateral thinking.

In their zeal to homogenise cricket, it's unlikely the game's controllers care that many, if not most, hardcore cricket fans actually LIKE the occasional dodgy pitch. Correct me if I'm wrong - and I know you will given this is the internet - but around 90% of the most memorable one-dayers were low scoring affairs, say 200 runs apiece. Tame slogathons hold bugger all interest for me. Even that game in Yarp Efrica was interesting more for its curio value than its actual worth as an example of cricketing excellence. Sadly there's no chance of flat tracks being superseded by minefields. Short matches equal short telecasts equal shortfalls in revenue. Don't expect James "Stakeholders" Sutherland to start calling for difficult conditions just yet. Not unless there's a buck in it.

I was prepared to write off The Champions Trophy as a tedious distraction, but as soon as I heard all the squealing about dodgy tracks, I tuned right in. Things are suddenly looking rosey if matches are going to be all about low scores and struggling batsmen. Perhaps indeed they could turn TCT into a 50/Twenty series where horrid pitches are served up to turn 50 over matches into 20 over matches. And if not, well, there's always the revolutionary tactics to look forward to.

PS: Shoaib Akhtar's penalty - what do you think? A fine and suspension from TCT? Or something just as puny. Not that I'm inclined to chuck -- ho ho -- around terms like "white wash" or "lashed with a lettuce leaf" or "slap on the wrist" or "hope the issue goes away soon" or anything.

LAUSTEN TRANSLATION

The person responsible for this -> headline in today's Age must have thought they were being a right old clever piece of work. What's the bet they'd had it tucked aside for ages waiting for just the right occasion to use it.

Look in the comments to see why this wasn't that right occasion.

MERCHANT PRANKER

He's got no friends, most people in England thinks he's a dick, even his mum called him an arse. No, he's not Matt Lucas. He's just one clever clog who knows if you can't beat 'em, Wycombe.

BREAKING KNEW GROUND

Television and archaeologists don't mix. Stick a bloke in front of a camera, give him a shovel, a toothbrush and a squirty bottle and before you can say "I think we've got something here" we've got something here - carbon dated tedium.

Take Battlefield Detectives. Using modern techniques the show means to give viewers new insights into old battles. A trip to Agincourt, Waterloo or Little Big Horn will have them slopping around in mud with metal detectors to maybe find a button, coin, arrow or bullet. They recreate the battle with CGI. And there are the obligatory aerial shots of lumps in terrain; these shows love lumps in terrain. Putting "all this" together they then make weighty pronouncements based on their meagre findings. But what have they really they discovered? Rock all. Rarely is orthodox wisdom punctured and there are no great new revelations, just 50 minutes of filler. We are nearly always left knowing what we already knew. The French got stuck in the mud, Napoleon dallied and Custer was a goose.

One of these days, one of these shows will tell us something worthwhile.

CAPTAIN DUMPY

Allan Border has been dumped as a national selector because he is sponsored by the wrong beer company. XXXX me!

Border left out in the cold - for selecting the wrong beer

TO MANY, a beer at the cricket is one of summer's simple pleasures. But in the case of Allan Border, a conflict between his personal beer sponsor and that of Cricket Australia appears to have been the driving force in his decision yesterday to stand down from his role as a national selector.

After the cowardly ICC had been spooked into neutering the ball-tampering and chucking rules I guess it was expecting too much for CricAussie to back a mere selector. The worst thing is, Fosters are probably within their rights to question Border's affiliation with Lion Nathan. It's just sad it's come to this. Is there a sport that's been more wickedly butchered by vested interests?

(Thanks, Wicky.)

Spanky's back! He even mentions the cricket.

India keen to show its love of the game

NINETEEN cricket stories appeared in yesterday's Times Of India. And they think Melbourne likes football?

Normally a sober recorder of the political scene, the mighty Times has let its hair down. Never mind that the Champions Trophy tournament proper has not begun, contenting itself with the ritual slaughter of a Peter Chingoka XI posing as a team representing Zimbabwe. Never mind that several teams had not yet arrived. Not even the approaching religious festivals, Diwali (Hindu) and Eid (Muslim), could take the newspaper's eye away from the cricket ball.

Much could be gleaned from the back pages of India's senior paper. Jaipur, the Pink City, has been spruced up for its forthcoming matches. The chief minister has seen to that. Fortunately he has not banned elephants or camels from the main streets, focusing his attention on facilities at the ground.

Balls!

Lara shows how to use power play

Lara unleashed openers Chris Gayle and Shivnarine Chanderpaul in an all-out assault at the top of the order not only to cash in on the enforced restriction of outfielders, but to actively target individual bowlers such as hapless Stuart Clark.

Openers going the tonk in one-dayers is hardly revolutionary. Chris Gayle NOT going the tonk - now that is revolutionary.

THREE TO AIR

Was the footy coverage on Nine, Ten and Foxtel any good? Well, it could have been worse, it could have ALL been on Foxtel. And it could have been utterly hideous, it could have ALL been on Seven, like it once was. (Shudder.) Two articles from the Weekend Oz addressed our strange broadcasting arrangements and the anti-siphoning laws.

Sam Maiden:

Tougher tests for big-game TV rights

FREE-TO-AIR television stations face a tougher "use it or lose it" test for sports broadcasts under a push by Coalition MPs to stop hoarding by networks.

Matt Price:

Fox Footy's demise still hard to take

THE familiar October melancholy looms greyer than ever. Fremantle's improbably enthralling September run, followed by an electrifying, epic AFL grand final, makes this year's brutally instant footy fast even tougher to stomach. Compounded, cruelly, by the manslaughter of Fox Footy Channel.

We have anti-siphoning regulations to make sure nationally significant sporting events are kept on free-to-air television. Looking at the list, it seems there's plenty of room for flexibility, but it's fair to say there'd be one hell of a ruckus if, say, the AFL grand final, the NRL State of Origin or the Melbourne Cup suddenly found themselves on cable telly.

Nor is it likely governments of either stripe would abolish the present situation. The Liberal government instigated the regs and are looking at "use it or lose it" amendments. While Labor are firmly behind the status quo: "There are millions of Australian families who cannot afford pay-TV who rely on an effective anti-siphoning list" ~~ Senator Conroy. Abolition is in courageous decision territory, so we're pretty much stuck with things the way they are.

Every now and again I'm tempted to want all footy and cricket on Foxtel. Cricket here in summer would certainly benefit from a change away from Nine. But to be perfectly frank, while Nine and Ten have their faults with the footy, I can't see Foxtel doing it any better if they had all the rights. You need only look at ESPN to see why full cable coverage could be poison. They and Fox in the states have had to stump up so much moolah for the rights to the NFL that they need to have advertisements during all stoppages. Same with the Baseball. That's not the case here - so far. ESPN Straya have the gall to show all the ads during their replays. It's a flippin' disgrace. What compounds the pain is that we don't even get to see the American ads, some of which are pretty damn fine, we just get Tommy Smyth with a Woy relentlessly inciting us to "put it in the old onion bag" and plugs for rubbish like the Strayan version of Pardon the Interruption. Ads on subscription television are just wrong, wrong, wrong.

To be perfectly frank, I'm pretty, generally, roughly happy to have my footy spread across free to air and subscription telly. Although that may change given my pathalogical hatred of Channel Seven.

By the way, can anyone make sense of this Matt Price paragraph? The manslaughter of Fox Footy is ALL the federal government's fault, except the bits that aren't.

It's tempting to blame the AFL for diving into the oceans of cash before locking in national coverage. Tempting, but misguided; all blame resides with the federal Government. It's illegal for the AFL politburo to deal directly with pay TV since all games must first be offered to free-to-air networks. Andrew Demetriou is a mighty powerful chief comrade, but the AFL boss held no sway here since under an old, misguided deal Seven held last bid rights to match or trump the Nine/Fox offer.

SNACKDOWN

You'd be surprised how often women totter to my rescue when I'm being beaten up.

Now. While the FX account is roughly true, he wickedly misrepresents his own contribution. FX Holden? Holden Caulfield more like. What a thug. Not that it wasn't a fine rumpus, but it was nothing like the earlier vicious snarking about absent bloggers. That! was the truly brutal business. Especially ... well, doubtless it will get back without me letting the catfight out of the bag.

Shtum.

AWAY CAESAR

Good news. After two episodes Channel Nine has sacked Rome. How come it took the barbarians so long? Nine is no place for good television.

The ABC and Foxtel are the only places for good telly. Nine is about ratings and ratings are about slop like 20 to 1, Today, Survivor, What a Year, McLeod's Daughters, RPA, Amazing Medical Stories and probably Amazing Medical Pet Stories. Every so often they have a good show on the books - The Sopranos and CSI Las Vegas, for instance - but they fuck them around. Shows are held back, bumped around the schedule, cut to fit extra adverts or cut to the shithouse for the swearing. Good shows have no business being tampered with like that. (Although the ABC butchered Baseball.)

As soon as I heard the news - "Rome will not be shown next week, etc" - I went straight out and ordered the series off the internet. It's a pity it's not on Foxtel, but I'm prepared to shell out for a current television series. Oddly enough, not an old series. I don't understand why people want to buy, say, the complete Northern Exposure when 1) they've already seen it, 2) it's no longer current and 3) it's crap. Shows that were great on telly way back when, those that attract the hideous "classic", almost always seem dodgy down the track. But I digress. Watching TV shows in my own time without ads is infinitely more enjoyable than watching them via someone else's haphazard timetable and chock full of invitations to buy a car. Yes, I record them, but the consistent fast-forwarding still interrupts the fluency of the program. Are we getting Tivo here?

I hope Rome stands up to scrutiny. It probably will, but the first two episodes weren't as good as they could have, should have been. They were obviously well made, but they lacked a little punch. Deadwood was superb from the off, but Rome seems a little slow getting me in. Still, that could be put down to the ads and more than likely the odd cut. And it's still better than XCIC percent of the rubbish served up by Channel IX.

ASHES TO GNASHES, DUST TO BULLDUST

Simon Barnes claims the mozz in today's Strayan:

Hope and fear go hand in glove for England

IN just 50 days it begins. There are numbers that numb and there are others that startle, and this is one in the latter category. In just 50 days from today, England will be taking on Australia in Australia with the Ashes at stake. If it is half as good as last time, it will be one of the greatest sporting encounters in history.

But I feel distinctly uneasy.

Why are Straya cocky? Why, because they reckon England's win last year was a fluke. Everything went right for the Poms, including Punter handing them the luck on a platter at Edgbaston, and still they only just won. Why are the bath dodgers uneasy? Why, because they have been playing shit (But not THAT shit!) and key players are missing.

I'm not having it.

Australia are not as good as their cockying would indicate, nor are England as bad as Barnes' uneasing might suggest. Simon Jones is a huge loss, yes, just look at the last test last time. And Vaughny, sorry Vaughan will be missed. But I've got my own lack of ease about whether Australia can bowl England out enough times to regain, not just retain, the Ashes.

POINTS OF ORDER

Are you sick of it? I know I am. Every time you open a paper or turn on the radio there it is, they can't help themselves: "The last five times Sydney has played West Coast ... [dramatic pause] ... the combined margin has been 12 points." I dispute that.

The last five times Sydney has played West Coast the Swans have won twice by an accrued margin of 5 points, while the Eagles have won three times by an accrued margin of 7. Quite obviously the combined margin for the last five matches is not the 12 points relentlessly cited, but TWO points in favour of The Eagles.

This is not an isolated misconception.

Historians tell us that during WWII Russia lost 10 million points, while Germany lost 5 million for a combined margin of 15 million. Wrong. Had the Taylors, Glantzes and Beavors done their due negligence, like me, they would have arrived at the rather more valid tally of 5 million.

So you see, numbers have a habit of making even the most learned gentlemen look foolish.

The International Federation of Competetive Eating throws up these anomalies all the time.

AND JUSTICE FOR HALL

BARRY CROCKER
I would have preferred Sydney to win, or rather, I would have preferred West Coast to lose. But Barry Hall playing an absolute shocker was a satisfactory portion of what goes around comes around.

SOAR POINT
The Eagles winning by a point has put paid to "the closest margin since 1966." Now we can look forward to getting sick of "the closest margin since 2006."

SITUATION NORMY: ALL FUCKED UP
It's not a new thing for the Norm Smith Medal voting to be a surprise, in fact, it's almost a tradition. Wayne Harmes won the first in 1979, but Wayne Johnston was clearly the best player that day. Now Andrew Embley has joined the list of surprise winners. Not one of my West Coast friends picked him, neither did I, yet the papers have him as the overwhelming winner. Balls! He was pretty good but he didn't make the AGB top five:

5. Kerr
4. Cox
3. Glass
2. Kirk
1. Judd

WHOLE LOTTA CHOKING GOING ON
Sydney had a shocking first quarter, bumbling, erring, umming and being spanked all over the ground. But astonishingly, if it wasn't for the yips, they would have been in front at quarter time. That really tells you something about the way The Pinks go about their business - they are extraordinarily hard to beat in tight games. If they hadn't been so strikingly off-key, they would have won the game. In fact, once they started their surge in the last quarter you would have sworn they were home. It's a testament to West Coast ability that they were probably the only side in the comp capable of holding Sydney out in that situation. Just.

UN SYNC
The pre-game entertainment was ... why bother.