SCAPE ROTE

How many times does one have to bang ones head against a wall to get the point across that informed player rotation is a symptom, not a cause. If Australia had a strong, injury free bowling attack it would not rotate:

Test player rotation ends: James Sutherland

MICKEY Arthur isn't the only one paying the price for Australian cricket's poor reputation with chief executive officer James Sutherland promising fans there would be no more rotation in Test matches.

“Looking ahead to the Ashes series that we will see in England and next summer in Australia you won’t see any of that rotation policy in the fashion that we have in the past. It (rotation) is about providing opportunity for players in a team that’s in transition so that selectors can give players an opportunity at international level to see how they cope with that and to respond.”

On a more sinister note, it is interesting to read Stakeholders Sutherland had indeed negotiated player rotation with the broadcaster(s). Which of these three do you think holds the most sway? Which is the bigger, ahem, stakeholder?

The controversial rotation policy has upset fans, commentators and broadcasters in recent times and its death will not be widely mourned.

You can now see why Stakey was guarded in his comments vis-a-vis Nine and rotations. Yes, he has made a distinction between the one dayers and the Tests, but it is nevertheless a concession CA made concessions to Nine.

And you also already know what I think about "transition".

Comments

[m0nty]

The real question now is how wrong they will get the choices of who is first XI and who is not.

[Tony Tea]

Have we got a First XI? More like a First V or VI.

[Shep]

If they don't rotate Ryan Harris during two 5 test ashes series then his career will be done by the end of August.

[gillysgone]

Its a matter of injury. Fit, you play, unfit you dont. This model would have enabled us to beat SA in Adelaide, as Pattinson was clearly injured going into the game. Get rid of rotation, and it becomes simple Even big John I can get it right. Question is - do players lie about their fitness? I reckon these days the pay is so good they put their hand up sooner than they used to.

[lou]

Of course they lie about their fitness! Listening to some of the interviews coming from players, they lie all the time about everything. It's called being media-friendly.

CA may still have rotation going on, they'll just claim far more niggles than even our chaps get.

[M. Patard]

Wanted to put this in your Tony's Ten post but comments were closed, so, this will have to do: Monkey See, Monkey Do.

"12% are steady drinkers, 5% drink to the last drop." 50/50 drinkers to abstemious types.

"But unlike us, monkeys that are heavy drinkers make better leaders, respected by other monkeys. They seem to tolerate leaders that monkey around." Just goes to show how perverse our society has become. Bring back nature!

If the Buddhists are right, I wanna come back as a Velvet Monkey of the Caribbean.

Right, time for a beer.

[M. Patard]

Correction: Vervet Monkeys.

[Tony Tea]

Velvet monkey? Sounds like a cocktail. "Last night I started off with a brace of velvet monkeys and by the end of the night I was talking gibberish."

[M. Patard]

Velvet Monkey has a pornographic quality about it. I almost wish they were Velvelt instead of Vervet but, God damn I'm in love with those Vervets.

[M. Patard]

Geebus, Vlevet not Velvelt.

[M. Patard]

That L is a real bastard.

[M. Patard]

That Quaker on a whole gamut.

So much truth, yet not a drop to drink.

[Tony Tea]

"Pat started off with a brace of velvet monkeys and by the end of the night was linking to Black Lace."

[M. Patard]

What the fucking hell was that?!

[M. Patard]

The Irish may be vicious on the piss but, it doesn't compare to the malicious intent of the English in full blown sobriety.

[M. Patard]

Get this one up ya ya carnt.

[Dan]

"Last night I started off with a brace of velvet monkeys and by the end of the night I was talking gibbonish."

Fixed it for you, Tony.

Pat, you know you love us, really - you're just in denial, like a gaybasher who turns out to be a secret closet.

[M. Patard]

Just send me a song, Dan, and I'll judge your quality.

[M. Patard]

For exampled, here is one of my favourite English songs: Trouble free transmission

Now, give us one yours.

[M. Patard]

Example not exampled, God fucking dammit!

(and; give us one OF yours)

[M. Patard]

One for you, Dan, seeing as the British and Irish Lions are touring:

When Britain first, at Heaven's command
Arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain:

"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
"Britons never will be slaves."

[M. Patard]

A whole lot of feeble Brits in that crowd, listening to a Welshamn, sing of past glories.

How's life now these days, Dan?

Tell us, we'd love to know. You won the war, after all. The Sun keeps telling us, after all.

[M. Patard]

One for you, Dan.

[M. Patard]

Fall of Singapore, Dunkirk, "Battle" of Mons: You English really love your epic tales, moreso than reality. I see now one of yours had his head hacked off in a main street.

Send me a song, Dan.

[M. Patard]

The English, Australians.

[M. Patard]

Just listened to the entire Black Sabbath album Paranoid without response from our resident English snark, nothing blovated yet, in terms of snide comments, waiting for you to be asleep, the old English sheepdog come out of the blue to take a chunk out of your leg at the letterbox.

[Dan]

Bloody hell, Pat, give me chance. I've just been out walking the dog (that's not a euphemism, I really have been out walking the dog.)

I like that Beasts of Bourbon track, and the Led Zep stuff of course, but I'm not a big fan of Rule Britannia - it's sort of had its day.

OK, I'll do a top XI (plus 12th man) for you (tomorrow it would be completely different, naturally).

1. The best track by the best Aussie band ever, with the original (and best) singer.

2. Perhaps my favourite northern soul track.

3. Though this one runs it close.

4. A bit of Sabbath for you - I prefer the slower, trippier stuff.

5. Rod the Mod.

6. The late, great Bobby Blue Bland.

7. Mushroom music.

8. Wilko.

9. The best track by Led Zep.

10. Pumped up kicks.

11. We've all been there.

12th man: Never heard of this guy before yesterday.

[Dan]

By the way, on the 'we won the war' stuff... I'm not personally a big subscriber to it - and neither are most English (or Welsh or Scots) people I know (we're not all tabloid journalists). I'd say we'd have lost without the English Channel, and then the Yanks (and a lot of help from our colonial mates, of course).

Things with me personally are great (and thanks for asking). But I live in this valley in the Cotswolds, away from our vibrant inner cities...

If you're ever over this way, make yourself known and I'll buy you a jar or two of warm* bitter here.

*It's not actually warm, but it's not frosty, either.

[M. Patard]

Ok, just regaled my eldest with how mush I despeised my last trip to Paris especially the mrs saying I ruined it for her. Listening now.

[M. Patard]

Fuck. Me.

"much I despised my"

[M. Patard]

Excellent. You've opened with a beauty.

[M. Patard]

Two and three and four are bad, I'm building my profile. Four has promise.

[M. Patard]

5 has redeemed you.

[M. Patard]

5 is great. Gonna listen again in the morning.

[M. Patard]

6 & 7 thanks for providing the psychological info. So much stored up.

[Dan]

You must have heard that before?

[Dan]

I've got loads more psychological info, if you want it?

[M. Patard]

8 I appreciate but would have gone with California Stars. 9 my mrs' only favourite Led Zep track.

[M. Patard]

10 is one of my favourite songs of the last few years. Well done.

[Dan]

I'm looking at the timings of your comments, and wondering if you are actually giving all of these tracks a fair hearing, Pat.

Callifornia Stars is a different Wilko (Wilco) I think. Mine was Wllko Johnson of the first incarnation of Dr Feelgood.

[M. Patard]

11 is good, but she should have blue eyes and someone should have their head on the end of a pike. Too jazzy, too try hard, too new age cool. Otherwise, not bad. But then again, I'd never play it again.

[M. Patard]

Ok, so far it's all coming up cognoscenti SWPL English, with the first track a standout, but that may have been an oversight.

[M. Patard]

Keb' Mo'?

No.

[Dan]

"Two and three and four are bad"

Are you a surfer? That would explain all the gunk in the eustachian tubes/canal etc which is obviously preventing you from appreciating tunes 2 and 3. I advise you to get to the quack for an ear syringing first thing in the morning.

[Dan]

I had to look up SWPL. Apparently I'm a white educated liberal bohemian.

Well, I'm white, and I can read, but most people would probably describe me as illiberal and antisocial. That's certainly how my wife sees it.

I'm picturing you as a sort of Aussie family-man version of the Unabomber, only he likes a drink and he has access to youtube - so, alone and angry in his cabin, furious that the sprogs and the missus keep interrupting the free musical education he's getting at the hands of a faraway English dude with mundanities such as, 'Have you seen the biscuits?' and, 'Do you know where I put my socks?'

Am I close?

[M. Patard]

If I'm gonna listen to American genuflections I'd rather go with this.

All up, a score of 4 out of ten.

But no need to worry, my psychological profile is coming soon. What's your favourite song of all time?

[M. Patard]

Sorry, fucked up the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVSyRNtjnpY

[M. Patard]

Definitely SWPL.

[M. Patard]

I would like to remind you that I am judging your music.

I have seen Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those... moments... will be lost in time, ...

How you respond to this will resolve my final condemnation.

[M. Patard]

In the meantime here's some thinking music.

[Dan]

The Beach Boys are good, but that's not one of their best, obviously.

Favourite song of all time? Got to be this little beauty.

[Dan]

'In the meantime here's some thinking music.'

Are you moravaman?

[M. Patard]

Judgement: Genuine Pom.

Misgiving: Knowing enough about Sherbet's Howzat. Then again, perhaps it's a public (private school) thing.

A lot of racial genuflections in song choice. If realistic could have gone with Dillinger's "Cocaine in my Brain, but preferring the remix which is way better, even if done by a White Man<That's">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8u90LwP-Ss">That's the way you spell Jew York

Much moral posturing, much education, overall: too well bred to make any sense worth listening to.

[M. Patard]

So, Dan, what do you think about the following words, I dont want you to think about them, I just want you to react:

Nigger

Coon

Kike

Churchill

Kennedy

Faggot

Cunt

British

Cockhead

We're done.

[Dan]

Ha ha - very good. You're not very close, at all, but it's been fun.

Those words, I use a few of them myself from time to time (though it would be 'dickhead' for me).

Anway, I think we've about reached the end of this particular road, it's been good times though, catch you later?

(PS Howzat was a joke, obviously - the real answer is probably this.)

[M. Patard]

No, mate I got you pegged down to the point.

You're a typical lame brained full of shit pommy dickhead that's got nothing to say to anyone, in particular, other than the colonials your heritage thinks you have some mandate, over.

Europeans don't think of you as European. Americans despise you. Australians hate you.

You're all alone mate, with all the non-White filth you extol.

Suck it up, SWPL princess. Never know,

[M. Patard]

Don't know what's wrong with my linkage tonight but this one's going out to you Dan, princess: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvChjHcABPA

[Big Ramifications]

Shoe

Megaphone

Grunties

Wankel rotary engine.

Tits

Winkle

Vibraphone

[Dan]

Er... I think I must have misjudged this a bit. I thought you were joking (I sure was) but maybe you're serious?

Unless I'm missing some Aussie humour here (having a few mates from Oz I find our humour is basically identical, so I doubt it... but maybe)?

Anyway, I'm genuinely if sorry you do feel this way about us all (the English).

It seems odd to me (and I'm of recent Irish Catholic origin!) but you must have met some pricks from these shores along the way, I guess. We certainly have a few.

[M. Patard]

Yes, I was serious.

Didn't you listen to what that Quaker Nixon said?

"The Irish have certain – for example, the Irish can't drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean. Virtually every Irish I've known gets mean when he drinks. Particularly the real Irish."

Stereotypes are true, Dan. Don't fight 'em. Accept them. They're all true.

[Tony Tea]

Correction: stereotypes save time. You're a pisshead - the Irish are pissheads. See how it works, you pisshead.

[M. Patard]

but you must have met some pricks from these shores along the way

See, there you go again getting all SWPL and looking for excuses. I'm a drunk, man. I've got a vicious mouth when I drink. It's as simple as that.

You struck me as a typical SWPL anti-racist, you were online, so I went off. I hate nanti-racists with a vengeance. The Pommie stuff is just adjectives for the abuse. What I hate most of all are anti-racist antifas.

[Tony Tea]

Dan, somewhere around midnight Pat flicks the switch from boozy gibberish to piss & bad manners. This one's just for you, pisshead Pat, an article about booze by a woman who may or may not be a Protestant: "In the cold light of day, we all know better."

[M. Patard]

Correction: stereotypes are true.

You're weak, which is why you allow me to comment at will.

Just ban me.

[Tony Tea]

I don't want to give you the satisfaction of being banned. I'd rather let people point and laugh.

[M. Patard]

But see Tones, I've lived it, I'm livin' it!

I'm here to tell you, the next day is a hangover. It's the opposite of the night before where you were up wired, happy and crazy. The next day is still the effect, just the opposite. The feelings of the hangover need to be resisted because they are false.

Pretty much everything you did while drunk was true. All the words that came out were true. You just didn't say them that well, that's all. And your sober brain knows you gotta keep all that stuff well hidden and quiet.

Don't excuse it with the guilt feelings of a hangover. Admit them. Accept them. They're true.

I am a hater. I am full of hate. It's true.

[M. Patard]

People can point and laugh all they want, I watch them every day and I hate them. So pathetic with all the unctuous faux morality that makes them feel good, one of the crowd, down with anti-racism and all the other shibboleths of their day.

I tell you this: if I didn't get drunk I'd kill them. Seriously. I'd be ramming people off the road, driving up footpaths, stabbing the boss in a frenzy.

Thank God I have booze, otherwise I'd be in jail or a mental asylum.

The Dr tells me I need to give it up. Frankly, I'd prefer to have a lobotomy.

[M. Patard]

I'll do you a favour Tones, I'll ban myself.

Think I'll start another blog just to let it all ooze out there instead of letting it go here.

[Tony Tea]

Again?!?

[M. Patard]

Lol, yes.

Maybe not.

Do you think I should?

[M. Patard]

Been invited to the pub today for a beer with all the footy dads. It frightens me.

First 4 beers are great, funny, laughing, then, as you said, something happens, and I go off.

Better just stay home I think.

[M. Patard]

This is what would happen:

Scene: drinking, laughing, jokes, back slaps, hooray!

Then, Typical Whitebread Ozzi says: "Isn't it great the diversity that's coming into the game?!"

Pat's eyes narrow, hatred and bile well up...BAM! Torrents of abuse. A fight, backdowns, the bouncer intervenes, out on the street.

[M. Patard]

Do you want to know why people drink? It's because there comes that time, different for everyone, at some stage, several wines or beers in when the glow has built that all of a sudden you feel, like, "I'm the KING OF THE WORLD!!!! Wooooooohooot!!!"

That's why. People drink because it makes them feel good about themselves. They enjoy themselves and they enjoy others. What sort of a society would tax something that makes you feel good about yourself and others? The sort of society that turns what is enjoyable into a sin. Why is drinking such a problem these days? Because society is full of people deeply unhappy with themselves. They binge to escape from the drudgery and soulless pain of day to day life.

The people who write about alcohol and cigarettes, why they are so bad they need to be taxed, are really, quite simply, eugenicists. We know that certain people have a genetic predisposition to addiction, just look at the fact that approx 20% of the population still smoke after all the warnings and monumental price increases. They'll smoke and go on smoking regardless. And the taxes will rise and rise. Why? Because it's eugenics, that's why. Those drinkers and smokers are being targeted for extinction by the monied and powerful. All the queesy morality that goes with the condemnation is simply the judgement, and condemnation, of those in power over those out of power. Whole swathes of the Oz population are right now being consigned to destitution and death all on account of them being not of the right genetic stuff.

That's all it is.

You know how people say "Whoah, this is PC gone mad!"? "The lunatics are in charge of the asylum!"? They're wrong. These people aren't crazy nor is it PC gone mad. They are doing it *deliberately*. They actually do know full well what they are doing and they are going about their agenda methodically. The only lunatics and idiots are the ones who keeps seeing what is obvious and still keep saying "Whoah, this is PC gone mad!". Fuck. me.

In one of G K Chesterton's short stories this judge sentenced a man to imprisonment, passing sentence approx like: "I sentence you to 1 year imprisonment, when what you should be getting is 3 months by the seaside."

If more people are getting drunk and violent, and addictions need more and more taxing it is a sign that people are very deeply, profoundly, unhappy with their lot.

Those who shake the disease and turn to other addictions like work, tweeting, golf, are no more happy than the others, they just chose a different addiction to cover the other addiction that covered the fact that they are so unhappy.

It's a funny world, the way people go through all sort of contortions not to face the facts. Funny the way one religion passes and another takes it place, all the whiles these people proclaim there is no religion! Just facts. Science. The science is that religion is and must be an evolutionary adaptation, because as Darwin said, whatever isn't adaptive is ruthlessly destroyed. And so it is, religion goes on, taxes go on, morality goes on. The only difference is those who are set for extinction and those who are set for regeneration.

[M. Patard]

Thus endeth the lesson.

[Tony Tea]

That's unacceptable.

[M. Patard]

Ha, just read this:

I'm picturing you as a sort of Aussie family-man version of the Unabomber, only he likes a drink and he has access to youtube - so, alone and angry in his cabin, furious that the sprogs and the missus keep interrupting the free musical education he's getting at the hands of a faraway English dude with mundanities such as, 'Have you seen the biscuits?' and, 'Do you know where I put my socks?'

Am I close?

Fuck yes, you are very close. Well done. Sincerely.

Gotta hand it to m0nty to, he is the only one who actually took me at my word at Catallaxy and figured me out.

[M. Patard]

Lolz, "That's just unacceptable." Brilliant.

"I got no car now."

[M. Patard]

I'm with the 61 year old. You wouldn't believe how many cars have come through my, and my neighbour's, front fence.

I actually have to park my cars on the footpath as barriers whenever it's wet, which is pretty much constant these days.

[lou]

Pat, I grew up in a household with a father who drank, perhaps looking for that happy stage you speak of, but never hit it. He went from sullen to very, very nasty seemingly in a flash. And that went on for years.

The 'happy' thing works for some, not for others.

Alcohol could be taxed to the hilt for all I care.

[M. Patard]

Sorry to hear that, Lou.

He sounds like he was very unhappy. You obviously bore the brunt of it.

I'm not making a defense of alcohol qua alcohol, I'm making a defense of my right to exist.

[M. Patard]

By the by, not many Ozzies know that the greatest Ozzie, imho, was David Stove, a baptised Presbyterian turned atheist. Philosopher of international renown. Live out on the Mulgoa Rd near Mulgoa. Fucking brilliant man. Teetotaler.

He eventually got some sort of cancer and hanged himself. His son, Rob Stove, who himself is internationally known for his editing of a truly conservative magazine (not that Bolt type of fauxservative) found him, hanging there.

David Stove was moved by the Cistercian Nuns, and Bernard O'Reilly's "Green Mountain". David Stove was a great man, imho, Australia's best. I want to write a screenplay about him. Stove didn't drink. I sometimes think maybe he could have done with a few, but, then, he wouldn't have been what he was, and he wouldn't want me to be any different, either.

This is just a rough precis.

[M. Patard]

Lol, "David Stove was moved by the Cistercian Nuns". I meant David Stove was moved by the simplicity of life and genuine human love of the Cistercian Nuns, exemplified in their life.

[M. Patard]

The Cistercian Nuns, btw, don't drink either.

[Tony Tea]

The Cisterhood.

[M. Patard]

Ha, you're a funny fella, Tones. I bet you were a right bastard when you drank. You're wasting your talents on Twiter, mate. You, seriously, should write a book and publish it yourself. Fuck, if Bukowski could write his drivel all the whiles his family went to ruin all about him at his dining table, some truly witty Ozzies, like yourself, could at least do something for the rest of us and get to work publishing the thing.

I mean that, seriously.

You need to write.

[Tony Tea]

Footy Town.

(I posted this comment ages ago, but it was gobbled by the sp@m filter.)

[M. Patard]

heh, writing is such a passive aggressive way of being.

Maybe you shouldn't. Still, if writing is passive aggressive, which it is, then what does that make all social media especially the instant thrill of Twitter?

To ask the question is to answer it.

[Big Ramifications]

No love for my list up there, in response to Pat's list? No golf claps and shouts of "well played"?

I'm especially disappointed in you, m0nty. http://www.phespirit.info/montypython/are_you_embarrassed_easily.htm

[Tony Tea]

IN THE HOLE!!!

[Tony Tea]

Offal.

Schottky diode.

Sendero Luminoso.

Bespoke.

Gluten.

Cummerbund.

Ball pein.

[Big Ramifications]

Elizabeth Regina.

I still snigger at that one.

[lou]

Paper Cu*t has his wish come true. He's opening with Rogers. And we might play an all-rounder in Faulkner at 7 as we obviously don't have one. Now I like Faulkner but IPCoS has been masquerading as a batsman for a bit bloody long now and he's meant to be an all-rounder.

Fuketyfuk. If he fails dismally with the bat at Trent Bridge, it won't be a long wait for the magnanimous offer from him that's he's prepared to help out with bowling for the rest of the series. You see, he somehow feels that he contributes more when he bowls.

I hope Faulkner kicks his glass arse.

[m0nty]

Who shot who in the what now?

[Tony Tea]

Just another weekend of incisive cricket punditry at the AGB.

[Russ]

Lou, classic over-thinking of selections. Trying to shoe-horn bowlers into all-rounders - though why we need five if that is out supposed strength? There seems to be a consensus that despite Australia having no batting to speak of, we are going in with Faulkner at 7 and Watson, Khawaja, Warner and Hughes above him. TT had best start preparing The List.

[Tony Tea]

Don't worry. I have the list sealed and ready to go in one of those triangular sandwich packets you get at 7-11s.

[lou]

The ink is still drying on The List from the Indian debacle. Buy more ink TT. You are going to need it.

[Tony Tea]

Indian ink?

[lou]

Mercurochrome will do.