AGB Footy

YOUR AB

Austrian's wouldn't give a XXXX for "automated programming systems":

ABC pulls plug on VFL game

It was lights, cameras and suddenly no action for ABC viewers of Saturday's AFL match of the round between Port Melbourne and Williamstown.

With only a couple of minutes to go, at 4pm, Williamstown was five points down and storming home when the ABC pulled the plug on the live coverage.

It turned out there were only two minutes still to go in an extraordinarily long game, when the ABC announced that, unfortunately, it was ending its coverage and that the game could be seen later on the station's iView.

The station went to its next program - Treks in the Wild World: Trekking in Austria.

(From the Herald Sun's Sports Confidential.)

LOW WRENT

Collingwood, the club that Jack built, is proud to announce the appointment of a new powerbroker.

FAILURE TO LUNCH

Chris de Kretser & Daryl Timms in today's Herald Sun:

AFL rules bent to draft Jurrah

The persuasive power of former Collingwood player Rupert Betheras was instrumental in the AFL making an exception to its rules to enable Melbourne indigenous wizard Laim Jurrah to be drafted.

The revelation appears in a book on the Demon they call the Walpiri Warrior, which was launched by AFL chief Andrew Demetriou yesterday.

The Author Bruce Hearn Mackinnon, with whom Jurrah lived when he first came to the city and played four VFL games four Collingwood told how the AFL waived a couple of requirements for the 2009 pre-season draft.

Ignoring that Jurrah was taken in the 2008 pre-season draft - Jake Niall, March 19, 2009:

Red centre bounce: Jurrah makes a big leap in any language

[Jurrah] returned to Melbourne, but the Magpies, clearly mindful of the vast cultural distance Jurrah had to travel (Industrial Magpies supporters group member and Jurrah friend Bruce Hearn Mackinnon says Jurrah had never been in the ocean until a Collingwood recovery session), chose not to pursue him, and he did not even nominate for the national draft. Other clubs took a similarly risk-averse view, although he trained briefly with North Melbourne.

Former Collingwood grand final player Rupert Betheras intervened, lobbied the AFL and saw to it that Jurrah was permitted to nominate for the pre-season draft. While national draft nomination is normally mandatory for those picked in the pre-season draft, the AFL ruled that Jurrah had "exceptional circumstances" and admitted him.

TOP SHELF LIFE

What have the following players got in common?

• Adam Thompson
• Adrian Burdon
• Alex Fasolo
• Alex McDonald
• Ben Allan
• Brett Burton
• Clayton Lamb
• Clayton Lasscock
• Daniel Menzel
• Drew Banfield
• Evan Hewitt
• Harry Taylor
• James Davies
• Jared Brennan
• Jason Gram
• Jason McCartney
• Lance Picioane
• Llane Spaanderman
• Matthew Laidlaw
• Mitchell Brown
• Peter Bubner
• Robert Stevenson
• Ryan Schoenmakers
• Shane Crawford
• Shane Sikora

All those players were selected with the first draft pick of that season's premier. For instance, Hawthorn won the flag in 1991 and selected Shane Crawford with their first pick in the 1991 (Insert sponsor:__________) National Draft.

Serious question: would a draftee be 98% happy to have been drafted by the flag holder. Would, and I am picking absolutely at random here, Adam Thompson have been chuffed to have been taken by Port with pick 11 in 2004? There is an outside chance he, like me, figured Port might have pinched the cup that year and the only way was down. True, he may have thought Port had the momentum to go further, but as Steve Coogan said in The Trip: "momentum is what you have when you go downhill." Port were good enough to make the grand final in 2007, you say. True. But that was an utter fluke, and in hindsight, Port probably wished they had dodged that bullet... howitzer shell.

Hawthorn in 1991. Like Melbourne in 1964, you could have be forgiven for thinking the Hawks had capped their dynasty with one last flag. And indeed, it took the Hawks another 17 modest years to win a flag. But Shane Crawford was good enough to last those 17 years to finally crown a pretty damn excellent career. If only it had taken the Demons a mere, microscopic 17 years to win their next flag. Sigh.

Or take Llane Spaanderman. To paraphrase Henny Youngman, take Llane Spaanderman, please. Taken by Brisbane with pick 18 in 2003, he have could certainly been forgiven for thinking a flag was a fair way off after the Lions had won the previous three premierships.

Adrian Burdon was taken by Carlton in 1995 at pick 61; presumably Carlton traded away their early picks. Burdon can hardly have expected to set the world on fire in the next couple of years, and in fact played no games for the Blues.

How many draftees, low level draftees in most cases, think they will be good enough to squeeze into a premiership side in their first season?

And yet, Ben Allan, Drew Banfield, Harry Taylor and Shane Crawford all played in premierships. Jason Gram, admittedly at another club, might have played in two. Jason McCartney was a fathead in the 1999 preliminary final, got suspended and missed North's premiership. Daniel Menzel and Alex Fasolo are both a chance to play in flags this year. As usual, I pose the questions, but have no idea what the answer might be. There may not even be an answer, conclusion or #FootyMaths extrapolation. Someone else can compare this list with the same season's wooden-spooner, I've got work to do.

KNOW SHIT!

Tell us something we don't no:

AFL players struggle with reading and maths, the AFLPA reveals

A QUARTER of all players who come into the AFL system have reading and maths skills lower than year 10 level.

In the following item on the SEN 7:30 News, Barry Hall didn't know the meaning of "prior".

CROWDY DOODY

Jon Pierik, The Age:

On a delightful winter's afternoon, in front of the second largest home-and-away crowd between the clubs, the Demons proved that could well be the case with a 27-point win in a game marred by several questionable umpiring decisions. (link)

Michael Horan, The Herald Sun:

So it was that in front of 61,000 fans - the third largest home and away crowd for a game between these two clubs - Melbourne is back in the eight and Richmond's chance is gone for now. (offline)

THE HUMAN LIGHTWEIGHT

If Derryn Hinch was the hard core Demon supporter he claimed to once be, there is no way in the known world he would have mistaken Jim Stynes running over the mark in the 1987 preliminary final at Waverley, with Jim Stynes running over the mark in the 1987 preliminary final at the MCG:

Banishing my Demons

Was back at the MCG with Ron Walker the day Jim Stynes ran across the mark and incurred the 15-yard penalty from which Buckenara scored and we missed out on the grand final.

Niggled? Didn't check?

HumanHeadline Derryn Hinch

@Jesse_Hogan Correct. Niggled me when writing. Didn't check. I remember Pat Cash abused me for no reason.

What real Melbourne fan needs to check that?

THE SLAPRUDER FILM

The post below and the heading/picture combo at left have more than a passing acquaintance with each other - viz: The Irrational, clause 1, sub-clause i. - but really, I just wanted to use the heading.

Chuck Klosterman's article at Grantland is a top read, but should be a must-read for any TV executive in Australia:

Space, Time and DVR Mechanics

When it's come to sports, it's live ... or it's totally dead

Why is watching a prerecorded sporting event less pleasurable than watching the same game live?

It doesn't matter how much I sequester myself or how thrilling the event is — if I know the game has finished, it's difficult to sustain authentic interest in what I've recorded.

It is different when you support one of the teams in the recorded match. And here in Australia - especially Western Australia where the blackout has been an item of faith since at least 1987 when Wet Toast joined the then VFL - we have become inured to the concept of delayed telecasts by cynical Official Broadcasters all-too keen to bilk their viewers to maximise their revenue streams. What is undeniable, though, is that often on Friday Night Football I check the score at half time, then go to bed.

YOU WOULDN'T HAVE WON IF WE OUT-BEAT YOU

Will Steve Johnson become the next Casey Stengel or Yogi Berra?

"We cannot rest on our morals."

~~ Steve receives the 2007 Norm Smith Medal

"Early on they out-beat us at every contest."

~~ Steve after last weekend's game against the Gold Coast Schoolies

GEELONG GOODBYE

I was genuinely saddened to hear about the death of Bob Davis, but the slow motion tributes garnished with saccharine pop-tart soundtrack slop would not do justice to the premature break-up of a boy band, let alone the melancholy demise of an old fashioned Aussie rules character like Bobby.

Elsewhere, Ashley Browne at BPL:

It was in the early 1990s on Sportsworld, the Sunday morning TV show that replaced World of Sport, that Davis paid out on a typically poor performance by the then Brisbane Bears.

When challenged by a fellow panelist to "name names", Davis promptly did, pulling out his copy of the AFL Record from the day before and verbally drawing a line through pretty much every member of the Brisbane side. Among the gems that day, were: "David Bain... too small.... Brad Hardie ... too loose... Roger Merrett... too old... Richard Champion...in name only"

AB left out the "catch a tram" part, probably because he, like me, could never work out what it meant.

Not that I am interested in nitpicking Ashley Browne. I am far more interested in nitpicking purveyors of Fractured Flashbacks. Repeatedly over the last couple of days I have heard commentators announce they saw the above performance on League Teams. Gerard Healy last night on 3AW: "I will never forget seeing that on League Teams." Or words to that effect.

There is every chance Healy did indeed see Bobby bag the Bears, but it would not have been on League Teams.

Once again we witness a virulent outbreak of OPMS (Other People's Memory Syndrome). Maybe not in Healy's case who worked for Seven and has probably seen the footage (although "I'll never forget" followed by the wrong fact is always highly suss), but certainly in the case of many other pundits and non-pundits who, keen to join the moment, blurt out something they have heard second hand, or second ear, as the case may be.