AFL Blog - Best Clubman

“WHERE STOKESY SOLD THE COKE” LIFTOUT...

2010-02-05T04:51:00.003+11:00

Friday, February 5, 2010

The irony of the media, including Best Clubman (although it’s highly debatable that a blog with 21 daily hits qualifies us as a member of the media), this week excessively debating whether AFL players face excessive media scrutiny has not been lost on the industry... except on Mark Robinson whose Year 8 English class discussed the concept of irony a week after he dropped out of school.

What about Geelong’s Matthew Stokes? We all know what happened. Stokes was charged by police for possessing a gram of cocaine or, as it was known to Ben Cousins prior to 2009, breakfast. How do we know it? Because not an hour goes by without a new “development” in the story.

It’s almost enough to make you agree with Nick Maxwell and feel sorry for AFL players for being so overexposed. Well at least until the next time Best Clubman tries to get into Boutique by lining up like a normal person for nine hours while Leigh Brown walks straight in wearing a pair of loafers and a “Vote For Pedro” t-shirt.

Take this little nugget of information – Stokes has now left Geelong (the town, not the club) to escape the limelight. How do we know this? Because Geelong Advertiser journalists, amongst others, were lying in wait outside the home of a fringe AFL player on continuous 12-hour shifts and saw it happen.

In fairness to Stokes, the best way for young people to ensure a good night out in Geelong is to woof down a gram of coke before going back to a hotel to intravenously inject some hammer with Gary Ablett Senior. Coincidently, this is also the same way to make it through an entire episode of My Kitchen Rules without killing yourself.

What is more difficult to comprehend is Stokes’ excuse that he bought the coke for his mates and not himself, rather than let a mate with no money, reputation or profile to protect make the transaction. Closer inspection makes this excuse harder to buy than hen’s teeth, elephant tusks or a second album from Kate DeAraugo.

Luckily, by arresting Stokes, police foiled a plot between Stokes and his anonymous mates to pull a bank job where Stokes entered with nothing covering his face while his balaclava-clad mates sticky taped pictures of Stokes to their heads with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth.

Through his actions, Stokes has done irreparable damage to the Stokes name, undoing all the good work of this man in much the same way as a sex-crazy upper-class businessman from Melbourne’s leafy eastern suburbs has tainted the respected Rockefeller name forever through his desire to climb on top of a toothless northern suburbs battler while her hubby watched. Ouch. Too soon.

For those playing at home, it should be noted that the Melbourne beacon of informative, insightful and important information for the masses, the Herald-Sun, has produced a special graphic presentation on the Herman Rockefeller story, yet a rudimentary inspection of their website by Best Clubman during our lunch break couldn’t find anything similar on trivial matters such as the Copenhagen conference on climate change or a road map for peace in the Middle East. Stay tuned for your “Where Stokesy Sold The Coke” liftout this weekend. Indeed.

Moving on, in Stokes’ favour in avoiding prosecution and a possible lifetime ban from the AFL is the fact he apparently hasn’t committed a criminal offence in the past, with the possible exception of his performance in the 2008 grand final.

Not working in Stokes’ favour is his decision to turn up to this week’s committal hearing brandishing a moustache of sufficient thickness to make Tom Selleck reach for the Remington.

Not being a legal expert we can’t be sure, but Best Clubman is reasonably certain that it’s not in a defendant’s best interests to turn up to court to defend drug trafficking charges while sporting a push broom on the old top lip that makes you look like Pablo Escobar.

The only thing worse would be turning up to court to deny charges of domestic violence dressed as Matthew Newton while wearing an Andrew Lovett jumper and humming the chorus from I Can Transform Ya.

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THE “MIDAK” ULTIMATUM...

2010-02-05T03:38:00.001+11:00

Thursday, February 4, 2010

AFL players staging for free kicks has joined hooliganism, the growing divide between rich and poor clubs and WAGs as things from soccer that the game in this country really could’ve done without... except of course for Rebecca Twigley and that 2004 Brownlow dress.

In fact, the problem has become so bad that AFL head office have been forced to amend the rules for 2010 so that “stagers” can now be cited by umpires to face the tribunal.

As a training tool, all umpires on the AFL’s books will be trained in detecting bad acting by being forced to watch the complete first season of Hannah Montana, every KFC commercial aired in Australia since 1992, and re-runs of AFL press conferences where Andrew Demetriou insists that tanking does not exist.

While directly undermining the spirit of the game and ruining it as a spectacle, umpires also claim that players feigning for free kicks makes a job that is seemingly hard all that more difficult for a group of men whose lives are already at a disadvantage due to them being born smaller than all the other boys at school, sucking at sports at school, and having no mates as children.

The “staging” addendum to the rules of the game, to be known as the “Milne-Didak” clause or “The Midak Ultimatum”, will take effect in Round One.

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TEACHER’S MONEY...

2010-02-05T03:09:00.003+11:00

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

The one question that has occupied the minds of most people in management positions at AFL clubs is “What’s the best way to try and cover up a rape by a member of the playing group?” The second is “Are AFL players under too much scrutiny?”

While the first question has an easy answer – John Elliott organising to pay the girl off to shut her up – the second is a little more difficult to answer and is one of those annoying topics that raises its ugly head once every footy season to be debated by losers, alcoholics, the unemployed and other supporters who don’t barrack for Collingwood, the Bulldogs or Port Adelaide.

The 2010 season has already had an early dose of input into the debate, with Collingwood captain Nick “Third Man Up” Maxwell warning us that players could “walk away” if exposed to the current level of media attention they receive.

Maxwell believes the constant media glare on the movements and behaviour of AFL players away from the field places “unrealistic pressures” on the players which, presumably, is matched only by the “unrealistic salaries” they receive for working what is essentially a 20-hour week or, as it’s known by people who actually work hard for their income – teacher’s money.

''You see one bad movie and you tell 20 people about it but you see one good one and you might tell three. It is always going to make the news when negative things happen,'' Maxwell said without identifying the exact number of people disgruntled Collingwood supporters complain to when their club flops out of yet another finals series or whether the bad movie in question was a copy of the club’s insipid performance against Geelong in last year’s preliminary final.

Maxwell continued his whining by warning that it’s only a matter of time before a player quits because of all the media attention, at which point they’ll have to get by on the measly hundreds of thousands of dollars they’ve earned during their playing careers.

''You can't go out and enjoy yourself and it is frustrating and it is going to cause players to end their careers … earlier than they could have played for”, Maxwell said in what may actually have been a misinterpreted comment on coach Mick Malthouse’s boundary-hugging game plan sucking the fun and enjoyment of the game from the Magpie players.

Apparently Maxwell hasn’t taken his concerns about excessive media attention on players to the people who pay his staggering wages at the Lexus Centre, well not if the News section of the club’s website is any indication with this week’s “breaking stories” including features entitled “Magpies fly to Mansfield”, “Monday’s training session snaps” and “Snake bite stirs up Fraser’s summer”.

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SHOCKING STATISTICS...

2010-02-02T02:24:00.002+11:00

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

As we enter the month of February, the good people at FebFast are encouraging us all to give up the booze for a month to remind us that drinking and alcoholism are not to be laughed at or admired, just like Ryan Shelton.

Like we did, you probably received an inter-office email seeking your participation in FebFast, which contained the following shocking statistics to encourage you to go dry.

• Alcohol is one of the three largest contributors to premature death in Australia, with harmful drinking killing 3,000 people every year. Ironically, it’s also the largest contributor to 50,000 Collingwood supporters having sex annually on Anzac Day and achieving conception, so every year more people are actually born than die as a result of alcohol.

• Alcohol is second only to tobacco as a preventable cause of drug-related death and hospitalisation. The top three is rounded out by watching St. Kilda since Ross Lyon became coach.

• The misuse of alcohol costs the Australian economy over $15 billion dollars each year when factors such as crime and violence, treatment costs, loss of productivity and premature death are taken into account. However, federal tax collections on pre-mixed bourbon cans in any season when Collingwood win eight or more games amount to $22 billion, providing a net positive economic result.

• 51% of alcohol consumed is drunk at levels that pose a risk of short-term harm. The other 49% didn’t occur on Carlton’s pre-Christmas booze cruise on the Yarra.

• Over 450,000 children (13%) live in households where they are at risk of exposure to binge drinking by at least one adult. Of the 87% of children not exposed, 82% have seen Brendan Fevola’s Street Talk segment from last year’s Brownlow on YouTube, meaning 95% of all children have been exposed to the harmful effects of drinking by an adult.

Shocking statistics. Perhaps the greatest shock to stun the public into action to avoid the evils of alcohol is this picture which clearly shows how booze can have a detrimental effect on one’s life. The only thing more harmful in society than alcohol are the Jews, who, as everyone knows, are “responsible for all the wars in the world”.

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YOUR AVERAGE PORN STAR V@GINA…

2010-01-30T13:24:00.000+11:00

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Geelong superstar Gary Ablett and partner Lauren Phillips have confirmed that their relationship will join Paris Hilton’s acting career and John Terry’s marriage as things that will not continue into 2010.

Last year’s Brownlow Medal winner and his girlfriend of seven years confirmed their separation with a joint statement on Friday. "We remain close friends and will continue to support each other, and we ask that people respect our privacy at this time," the statement said.

The end of the relationship between the game’s premier player and Melbourne’s premier D-list celebrity hungry for media attention despite possessing no discernible talent, which sounds eerily similar to Best Clubman when put down in writing except for the bit about being a celebrity, is a shame as the pair had quite a bit in common, not least of which is an ability to take themselves, their relationship and their place in society ridiculously seriously to the point they felt they had to confirm their break up via a media statement.

While it is believed there are no third parties involved in the split, Ablett apparently became curious at Phillips’ insistence that the stray blonde male hairs he continually found on his girlfriend’s pillow belonged to Ablett given his dome has sported about as much hair as your average porn star vagina since going bald two years ago.

Given that Best Clubman’s longest relationship ended when the anonymous girl we’d been following got off the No. 48 tram at the corner of Collins and Williams when she noticed that the only thing more off putting than the wierdo smile we were sending in her direction was the fact our tracksuit pants were around our ankles while our todger was covered in a mixture of Vaseline and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, we’re unsure how Phillips is feeling about the break up.

However, it is hoped she isn’t experiencing some of the telltale signs of depression, such as loss of appetite, and is still gorging on food the same way she gorged on Ablett’s celebrity for the past seven years.

The end of a long-term relationship now gives Ablett one more reason to leave Geelong and accept a contract with the Gold Coast in addition to the nightlife and having to look at Cameron Ling naked in the Cats’ changerooms.

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GOLD COAST SYPHILIS…

2010-01-28T22:38:00.001+11:00

Friday, January 29, 2010

With the possible exception of Carlton introducing compulsory drug testing for all players after Mad Monday or Andrew Lovett meeting a woman in a nightclub whose idea of a good night out doesn’t include non-consensual physical contact, there’s nothing scarier for an AFL player than the thought they may have done a serious injury.

North Melbourne’s David Hale and Jack Ziebell this week experienced that same heart-in-your-mouth feeling Best Clubman feels whenever the Herald-Sun front page contains the headline “Police close to catching kindergarten flasher” when they both suffered what were thought to be long-term injuries at training.

Hale has been cleared of serious injury after crashing into a fence at training earlier this week that resulted in his leg bone piercing the skin. Fortunately for Hale, the Kangaroos and the people at the National Hair Institute who view Hale as a walking billboard for what can be achieved with hair transplants, a tetanus shot and a course of antibiotics should see the big ruckman return to full strength by collecting less than 10 possessions and looking generally disinterested on the field by Round One.

Hale crashed into a boundary fence at the Kangaroos Arden St training ground. The laconic big man described the incident as “one of those freak things that happen in footy” just like the time he kicked eight goals on Matthew Scarlett in 2008.

After suffering a broken leg in his rookie season, young midfielder Jack Ziebell put the fear of Mathew Egan through the club’s coaching staff when he was thought to have re-broken his leg during a training drill at the club’s recent camp on the Gold Coast.

Fortunately Ziebell escaped injury and has returned to full-scale training, leaving those of us who took Brendan Fevola contracting a bad case of syphilis in the office sweep on the next major impairment suffered by an AFL player on the Gold Coast very, very thankful.

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O’BREE IN THE MIDDLE…

2010-01-26T06:50:00.001+11:00

Tuesday, January 26, 2009

The same people who remember Nathan Buckley as a great leader during his playing days are the same people whose short memories lead them to tell anyone in earshot that AFL coverage was much better when it was on Channel 7, forgetting that towards the end of their reign, Channel 7’s commentary team regularly included Tony Shaw and Kevin Bartlett calling footage being recorded with just two black and white handheld cameras while Doug Hawkins and Dipper ran the boundary telling the audience about interchanges that occurred two quarters ago.

Similarly, the people remembering Buckley as some sort of Lee Iacocca-like management guru obviously forget that he spent most of his career berating less talented teammates for their on-field mistakes, which is perfectly understandable given Buckley spent many years of his career playing next to teammates as talented as Ben Kinnear, Andrew Pugsley and Michael Gardiner (no, the other one).

So besotted are the Pies with Buckley’s ability to become a great coach they not only offered him the head coaching job in two years time, they’ve now decided to let him take the helm during the NAB Cup while Micky Malthouse takes a spell, despite Buckley being only part way through his first pre-season in his assistant coaching role.

Fortunately for Buckley he gets the main gig in the second round of the NAB Cup should Collingwood win their first round match against St. Kilda, whose recent dominance of the Magpies promises to be a visual car crash for Pies supporters they just can’t look away from, kind of like that scene where Michael Madsen cuts off the cop’s ear in Reservoir Dogs or any scene in any film featuring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Collingwood’s chief of football Geoff Walsh told the media the club’s philosophy was to throw its assistant coaches in at the deep end to speed up their development. “`We saw last year that the assistants appreciate the opportunity and get a lot out of the experience, "Walsh said before adding that “Mick is still on hand to help or add something if he needs to” which would suggest that Malthouse will be on hand to offer Buckley the benefit of his 27 years of senior coaching experience with adroit moves such as “I’d throw O’Bree in the middle… seriously”.

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MOCK ENGLISH ACCENTS…

2010-01-25T03:49:00.000+11:00

Monday, January 25, 2010

Excessive club and fan adoration and inflation of Nic Naitanui’s ability for season 2010 is a little bit like Best Clubman’s orgasm – we all knew it was coming but we didn’t expect it to arrive this early.

In fact, the only thing more predictable than West Coast fans getting firm in the pants and waxing lyrical over Naitanui is Best Clubman waxing unfunnily about intercourse through the use of tedious and tenuous analogy.

The big guy is fast becoming the most overrated commodity coming out of Perth since Jebediah bothered us with their faux rock posturing set to the sound of mock English accents in the 90s.

News just in that Naitanui will lead the Eagles’ ruck division during the NAB Cup due to an injury to first ruck Dean Cox will do nothing to stop the inertia surrounding Naitanui’s hype.

Based on last year’s performances, all Big Nic will have to do to enhance his reputation in the NAB Cup is turn up, look athletic, lose the ball attempting to bounce it before re-collecting it, rack up five touches and then head to a local disco with Karl Langdon before anyone with a postcode beginning with a 6 hails the emperor’s new clothes.

“You'd think Nic would get a fair bit of rucking (while Cox is injured). You've got to give him a bit of grace”, assistant coach Peter Sumich said.

Presumably this means West Coast supporters not having conniptions like those seen after the Hawthorn game last year when Naitanui’s three goals in the last quarter represented his total disposals for the game, one of which involved stealing the ball from Simon Murphy which is one of the few things in life easier than making gags about Tiger Woods or Scientology.

In fairness, Sumich did all he could to reduce the hype and remind West Coast supporters than Naitanui is still a work in progress. "He's going to have some pitfalls and some jump-ups, so we've just got to bear with that," Sumich said in leaving all in attendance with one last question – “What the f—k is a ‘jump up’?”

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DO THE MATH…

2010-01-20T00:55:00.002+11:00

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Geelong has announced that Cameron Ling will join Winston Churchill and Alf Stewart as important red-headed leaders throughout history.

Unlike the British Empire in 1940 or the Summer Bay bait shop since Alf started spending too much time pulling beers at the surf club, Ling assumes the top job at a time when his organisation is at the height of its powers.

Appointing Ling as the face of the organisation could prove burdensome for the Cats as Ling’s looks may restrict the club using him in membership ads on TV during hours when people may be eating.

The new position will mean Ling conducts more interviews than in previous seasons which, given his somewhat annoying personality, means he now becomes the third most over-exposed and irritating blood nut on Australian TV at present after Jim Courier and the girl from Bardot now showing in those late night re-runs of the woeful Thorpey’s Undercover Angels airing on 7Two.

Ling got the nod ahead of the two other contenders for the position, Gary Ablett and Joel Selwood, on the basis that the other two play the ball instead of bending the rules on tagging to within an inch of their life by constantly nudging, pushing, prodding, holding and poking their opponents while the umpire is too busy bouncing the ball to do anything about it.

In reality, Ablett may have been overlooked because Geelong management were the first people to actually do the math in this article and realise that he was 18 in 2002 when he started going out with a 14-year old Lauren Phillips. Probably not the kind of guy you want in charge of your club, unless of course you're of the school of thought that thinks Dennis Ferguson would make a good skipper of an AFL club.

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ANYONE WITH EVEN A WHIFF OF RETARDATION…

2010-01-17T03:10:00.002+11:00

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Channel 7 have pulled off a major coup in the football entertainment industry by poaching Peter Helliar from Channel Ten to host a new weekly footy program to air before its major rival The Footy Show on Channel Nine.

The last time Channel 7 lured a footballing personality over to host a new program, the viewing public shielded its eyes from the ensuring car crash that was Live and Kicking in 1998.

For Helliar’s sake it’s hoped his Channel 7 career lasts slightly longer than those of Doug Hawkins and Paul Couch who went from being highly coveted and highly paid stars with nothing of interest and/or humour to say in 1998, to filming advertisements for sewerage tanks and Geelong car dealerships by 1999, which were actually more entertaining than Live and Kicking.

Hellair became available when Rove McManus decided to discontinue his show for 2010, meaning there is actually a negative from Rove disappearing from our screens. For the sake of original, creative and, erm, funny comedy everywhere, hopefully Ryan Shelton and “Investigationing” or “Philosophisationing” aren’t part of Helliar’s deal.

In what media commentators are hilariously referring to as a “shock”, Helliar will not be doing Strauchanie, his comical alter-ego who occupies a fictional place on Collingwood’s list while spouting the one joke that stopped being funny in 2006 again and again and again.

"It is time for a fresh start to create some new characters. I would like it to be a very family-friendly show," Helliar said before revealing that he is working on 3-4 new characters, rumoured to be Strauchanie’s brother, Poochie The Dog, Steve Urkel and Strauchanie’s aunty (which is just Strauchanie wearing dress and a hi-larious pair of ladies glasses) to help him wring the last few droplets of comedy from what wasn’t a very funny joke to begin with. Well not unless you like your comedy wrapped in a blatant impersonation of David Brent from The Office.

For their part, Channel Nine are considering moving The Footy Show forward an hour but will refrain from altering the content unless Hellair’s show features men dressing as women, men dressing as 80s pop stars while miming classic 80s hits, men plugging the products and programs of anyone even closely associated with the show, or the host trawling the streets of Melbourne to interview anyone with even a whiff of retardation.

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DREW MORPHETT AND NEIL KERLEY…

2010-01-15T02:10:00.001+11:00

Friday, January 15, 2010

After yet another season of serving up the footballing equivalent of a particularly nutty turd on a plate for its members, Richmond are down 5,400 members on the same time last year.

This is despite the fact the Tigers are actually more enjoyable to watch than St. Kilda, who won 20 games and achieved record membership levels last season on the back of a Ross Lyon-inspired game plan the visual equivalent of a particularly nutty turd on a plate.

Richmond will now start the season with two major impediments, with a major shortfall in membership joining Troy Simmonds’ career defying all logic to anyone outside of Punt Road and extending into another year as reasons the club is knackered.

The membership shortfall equates to a downturn in revenue of $1 million for the club, which in turn equates to around 2.5 years of the massively inflated contract the Tigers gave Simmonds when he came over from Fremantle at the end of 2004.

At the end of 2001, with the Tigers having just made a preliminary final and the TV rights leaving Channel 7, Best Clubman made a bet that Richmond would make a third finals series since 1982 before Drew Morphett and Neil Kerley called another AFL game on national television, which now doesn’t look all that safe with 7 set to make a bid for the TV rights in 2012 and Simmonds and Jake King likely to still be on Richmond’s list at that time.

For the sake of Best Clubman’s wallet and the viewing pleasure of the footballing public, it can only be hoped that Morphett and Kerley take too much of whatever it was that killed Brittany Murphy before 2012.

Chief executive Brendan Gale defended the club’s membership and urged fans to get on board. “We exist for our members,” Gale said in dispelling rumours that the club exists for the benefit of the joke writers on Before The Game.

Remarkably, the club had over 37,000 members last year despite its lowly status meaning that it’s the only club in the league whose mathematical chance of making the finals expires as soon as Round 1 begins or Simmonds plays his first match of the year, whichever occurs first.

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R. NAHAS…

2010-01-14T01:29:00.001+11:00

Thursday, January 14, 2010

New Brisbane forward Brendan Fevola has been given the all-clear by Crown Casino management to attend this year’s Brownlow Medal after his shenanigans at last year’s event resulted in him losing his drink, his pants, his mates, his dignity, and, finally, his place on Carlton’s playing list. In that order.

The Lions have also sought permission for Fevola to attend bars in Ireland, use public toilets in the Chapel Street district and wear an exposed dildo in Federation Square. The outcome of these applications is unknown, although Fevola hasn’t given up hope of fulfilling his lifelong dream of pissing on a barman in Ireland while wearing a dildo.

Crown’s decision to allow Fevola to attend the Brownlow means his antics can join excessive video montages of this year’s Brownlow favourites, C-list celebrities asking E-list partners of footballers “Who are you wearing?” on the red carpet, and Andrew Demetriou’s pronunciation of “R. Nahas” as annoying events to endure on AFL’s night of nights.

Amazingly, Fevola’s former Carlton teammates Ryan Houlihan and Andrew Walker have not been so lucky and have been blacklisted from this year’s Brownlow after their run-in with Crown security after the club’s now infamous Christmas booze cruise on the Yarra in December.

In the event that Crown’s ban does not stand up in court, Houlihan and Walker will be precluded from attending this year’s Brownlow on the same basis as every other year since they’ve been in the league – ability.

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RUSLING, SEAN, STATEMENTS TO MEDIA 2005-2009…

2010-01-13T21:23:00.001+11:00

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The only things less reliable than Scott Gumbelton’s body are Melbourne’s trains, condoms manufactured in Cambodia, and Chris Judd’s continued empty promises that player misbehaviour at Carlton is “disappointing, not on, and it’s my mission to improve it”.

Since being drafted in 2006, the promising Essendon big man has played only 5 senior matches, having succumbed to a number of major setbacks including a significant back injury, hamstring problems and being coached by Kevin Sheedy in his rookie season in 2007.

For three years Bombers management have continually told the media that Gumbelton is back in training and working his way back to fitness and a possible return to the senior side by the end of the season.

Many people in the industry have begun to think that Essendon have been taking the media and their supporters for a ride by offering a false ray of light at the end of a very long Gumbleton tunnel again and again and again. Thorough investigative journalism by Best Clubman has discovered this to be true, with the Bombers’ football department borrowing tips from Collingwood’s, if an email we intercepted from the Lexus Centre to Windy Hill with the subject “Rusling, Sean, statements to media 2005-2009” is anything to go by.

Yet again, Dons football manager Paul Hamilton has come out and told all within earshot that Gumbleton will be ready for NAB Cup selection. However, unsurprisingly, Hamilton also revealed that the club had not yet finalised a scheduled return for the lanky key position player, although May 2015 has been penciled in as a tentative return date depending on how Gumbelton’s body responds to preliminary treatment for osteoporosis and leprosy.

"He is travelling well. He is doing everything in training and he tested well, so we are happy with his progress," Hamilton said in reference to the No. 2 overall pick from the 2006 draft as journalists in attendance debated whether to place Gumbleton one spot above or below Sam Bowie in a list of the worst second picks in professional sports history. What Andrew Walker has to say about this in unknown.

Hamilton went even further, making one of those AFL management weasel word promises that all clubs make before claiming they were misconstrued weeks later.

"He'll be available for sure, but we've just got to work out how we go," Hamilton said which, in AFL speak, means the Bombers will wait and see if Gumbleton is needed urgently or whether all that pre-season training invested by the club into Jay Neagle to try and teach him to move laterally has paid off.

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DRUGS, ALCOHOL AND GAMBLING…

2010-01-10T21:21:00.000+11:00

Sunday, January 10, 2010

When news came through that this year’s batch of AFL rookies were attending a seminar on drugs and alcohol, most people’s immediate reaction was that it was great of Ben Cousins and Brendan Fevola to agree to take the lads out one night for an evening of debauched fun that begins at Eve nightclub and ends pissing on the front window of a different nightclub in plain view of startled patrons.

Further inspection revealed that the seminar was about avoiding drugs, alcohol, gambling and the other trappings that come with being an AFL footballer that can be dangerous to one’s health, such as agreeing to appear on the panel on The Footy Show or befriending Alan Didak or Colin Sylvia.

The colloquium will be run as part of the AFL Players Association induction program with North Melbourne’s Jack Ziebell and Richmond’s Ty Vickery lecturing the 120 drafted rookies.

In addition to avoiding drugs and alcohol, Vickery will presumably provide this year’s rookies with strategies on how to avoid getting the football given that he only touched it a paltry 78 times in nine games during his rookie season.

The rookies will also attend a tutorial on cultural diversity in football to be hosted by Essendon’s Bachar Houli, Carlton’s Setanta O’hAilpin and Collingwood’s Harry O’Brien, with Houli answering questions from the crowd such as “Who are you?” and “Do you play footy?”

The final lesson will be hosted by retired Demon David Schwarz and will focus on gambling, with former Bomber Steve Alessio rounding out the two-day event with a discussion entitled “Alcohol and football – your choice”.

Those rookies choosing “football” will be sent back to their clubs to resume pre-season training, with those who elect to go with “alcohol” sent to Visy Park to train with Carlton.

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OPERATION…

2010-01-08T13:52:00.001+11:00

Friday, January 8, 2010

People like Best Clubman, and by that we mean uncoordinated softies who’ve never played football competitively at any level yet feel it’s our right to stand at the football and question the bravery of AFL players for pulling out of a contest despite the fact we sleep with the light on and a plastic mattress protector on the bed, the former because mum kicks all night if the light is turned off and the latter because we still get night terrors about monsters, leprechauns and Dennis Ferguson hiding in our closet, often forget how difficult it must be to be a professional footballer.

You can get injured in so many ways. Last week, Hawthorn’s Brent Renouf suffered burns to his arms, legs and back that required skin grafts after being pushed into a fire on a Queensland beach. This week, West Coast’s Tim Houlihan cut his foot on broken glass at the family home in Ballarat and may have sustained ligament damage.

And don’t forget Collingwood’s Josh Fraser, whose pride suffered near-fatal damage during the trade period after the Pies thought so much of his efforts in the ruck over the last decade that they traded for Sydney’s Darren Jolly. This is in addition to Fraser having a name which is virtually impossible to pronounce when spoken quickly ten times in a row.

Making Fraser feel better is the knowledge that in the space of one week he went from being the worst first ruck in the league to being quite possibly the best back-up ruckman in the history of the game.

New North Melbourne boom recruit, Ben Cunnington, selected with the fifth pick in last year’s draft, hasn’t even played a game or completed a pre-season and he’s already been injured, with the club’s medical staff discovering a “hot spot” (or potential stress fracture) in his right foot.

Fortunately for Cunnington and the Roos, the “hot spot” was detected early, giving him a greater chance of avoiding serious long-term injury, which the club has put down to its brand spanking new medical facilities and the fact that, for the first time in its history, the cash-strapped club’s medical department consists of actual people rather than a VHS copy of the first season of All Saints and a very old version of the board game Operation left at the club by Jose Romero in the early 1990s.

Prior to the new facility opening at the end of the 2009 season, the identification of Cunnington’s stress fracture would have been left in the hands of the tarot card reader who runs a stall reading fortunes for five bucks on Wednesday mornings on Errol Street.

"We're fortunate that as a result of our new medical and conditioning structure that we've been able to pick this injury up in its early stages,'' the club’s chief of football Donald McDonald said.

The Kangaroos could use a little luck with their latest first round draft pick given Robbie Tarrant (selected with pick 15 in 2007) apparently can’t seem to change gears in his car without popping a shoulder and still hasn’t played a senior game, while Jack Ziebell (pick nine in 2008) had his rookie season ended after breaking his leg against Adelaide in Round 12.

Hopefully Cunnington makes a full recovery and prevents Roos fans from avoiding that sinking feeling in the stomach that Best Clubman always has the morning after a big night out when we wake up to find the cab driver putting his clothes back on before realising we actually had a $50 note in the back pocket of our jeans that we forgot to look for.

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ANONYMOUS COMB…

2010-01-04T11:56:00.000+11:00

Monday, January 4, 2010

For the first time in recent memory, the eyes of the AFL world were on Carlton yesterday for a reason other than salary cap breaches, the latest Brendan Fevola drama or news that Rebecca Twigley suffered a wardrobe malfunction at the club’s best and fairest resulting in everything that should’ve been inside her bra ending up on the outside of the bra.

Okay, that last one has never happened but in the increasingly lonely world of Best Clubman, where pulling up beside a pretty girl in the car next to us at a set of traffic lights is cause for us to call our parents to say that we may have met someone, we can only hope for such good times.

The real reason for the focus on the Blues was due to the club being all set to announce the penalties it had handed down to booze-cruise louts Ryan Houlihan, Andrew Walker and Eddie Betts.

The verdict? Each player has been suspended for a month, which sounds kind of harsh at first but quite gutless in reality when you remember that the matches that matter don’t start for another 10 weeks, rendering this penalty more ineffectual than the comb Chris Judd received from an anonymous player in the club’s Kris Kringle this year.

After being allowed to train with the rest of the squad today, the three naughty boys were forced to clear their lockers and begin training with the club’s feeder team, the Northern Bullants, for the next four weeks, which sounds a lot like how Houlihan and Walker have spent most of their underperforming careers so far anyway.

Carlton president Stephen Kernahan, whose credentials for the top job don’t seem to extend beyond Dick Pratt dying and the club having not yet found a qualified replacement whose sole business experience isn’t running a sports store with Mark Arceri, announced the bans today as the Blues players returned from holidays.

For a man with such a domineering leadership presence as a player, Kernahan’s pathetic attempts at providing discipline and leadership as president are the only thing funnier than his Ray Romano-like voice.

"We know this will impact on their preparation for the home-and-way season,'' Kernahan said without mentioning that Houlihan, Walker and Betts are barely affected at all with a piecemeal punishment that sees them train with a semi-professional outfit for a month while on full pay before jumping straight back into the senior side for Round 1 given the club’s playing stocks are about as deep as an episode of Two And A Half Men.

When compared to the punishment Geelong levied to perennial bad boy Steve Johnson in 2007 for an indiscretion committed over the Christmas break, six weeks suspension during the home-and-away season, Carlton have proved yet again that they’re determined to take as many shortcuts as possible to achieve success.

It would seem that soft suspensions have replaced brown paper bags filled with sequential bills of large denominations as Carlton’s preferred means of building a premiership side.

Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect of the whole fiasco is that once the suspensions were announced today, the players then attended a team meeting where the club’s leadership addressed the issue of player behaviour.

Presumably this involved the league’s most hapless captain standing in front of the group and explaining how he’s somehow managed to actually do a worse job of providing off-field leadership than he did during his time at the Eagles.

The players were then forced to watch the film Leaving Las Vegas and an episode of Californication featuring Kathleen Turner to further their education on the tragic consequences of excessive alcohol consumption.

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JOY DIVISION RECORDS ON HIGH ROTATION…

2009-12-30T21:52:00.003+11:00

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Some things just aren’t funny. Genocide. Road fatalities. Ryan Shelton. You can add to that list rape. Sorry, alleged rape. So Best Clubman will do well to wring anything of comedic value from the latest Andrew Lovett story but we’ll give it our best shot just like Rove Live did by devoting three years of airtime to unsuccessfully try and squeeze something funny out of Ryan Shelton.

Lovett was yesterday questioned by police over rape allegations made by a woman, providing police with a statement at the South Melbourne station.

As per usual, the policy implemented by professional sporting organisations when one of their players is alleged to have committed sexual assault is to indefinitely suspend the player while presuming the accused is innocent until proven guilty and/or until the club has hired private detectives and fancy lawyers to find enough dirt on the accuser until it can be proved that she’s a slapper who brought the player’s action upon herself.

To wit, St. Kilda have indefinitely suspended Lovett, who attended yesterday’s police meet-n-greet armed with prominent barrister David Grace, who’s stored in speed dial on Lovett’s iPhone given his previous dalliances of the non-consensual kind with female suitors.

Whether Grace was the genius that orchestrated Lovett’s last defence of “it was the depression and that wot made me do it to her” is unknown but viewers of the latest farce should brace themselves for Lovett displaying the stereotypical side-effects of depression in the coming weeks, such as filling a script for Zoloft at his local pharmacy, physical evidence of possible self-harm and listening to Joy Division records on high rotation.

Police investigators questioned Lovett for two hours about the woman’s claims that she was raped in the early hours of last Thursday at a home in Port Melbourne she attended with Lovett and a teammate.

It’s been reported the woman claims to have been sexually assaulted while she was asleep, which comes as news to Best Clubman where, in our experience, the woman usually goes to sleep during the sex and not before.

Whatever happened, the public and those trying to milk the incident for column inches, such as Best Clubman, should take a back seat and let the right and proper authorities – the police, the courts and posters on Big Footy – speculate and discover the truth.

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CRAIG PARRY…

2009-12-28T20:19:00.000+11:00

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Since agreeing to come out of retirement to coach the new Western Sydney franchise, coaching legend Kevin Sheedy has fielded queries about his sanity and fitness for the role.

Questions about Sheedy’s sanity stem from the fact the only people who voluntarily agree to move to Western Sydney are usually doing so to be close to a methadone clinic. While Sheedy’s fitness has become a hot topic given he’s about six more months of solid eating away from having Craig Parry’s body.

Sheedy has taken the criticism about his fitness to heart, embarking on a grueling fitness campaign to shed the extra kilos for what he has called “the toughest” challenge of his coaching career. This comes as news to most observers who had assumed drafting Kepler Bradley at number six was Sheedy’s most significant coaching obstacle.

A jibe from AFL legend Ron Barassi about his girth has prompted Sheedy to lose 5kg in recent months by training for two hours a day and hitting the gym five times a week. Such a rigorous training regime has resulted in Sheedy logging up more hours on the track than Stuart Dew and Nick Stevens managed to accrue between 2001 and 2009.

Having turned 62 last week, Sheedy is barely even taking a break from his fitness campaign over Christmas, only stopping briefly to celebrate with his family, who must be thrilled daddy has decided to up and move the family to one of the few areas of Australia with a crime rate within two-and-a-half standard deviations of Footscray’s mean.

“I wanted to take a break because I've been training hard for the past 12 months. I dropped (lifted) 165 (pounds) the other day,” Sheedy said in describing a meeting at AFL headquarters where he was required to lift up Andrew Demetriou’s jowls off the floor and back onto their usual resting place on the table.

"I'm hanging in there. It's about wellbeing and my personal health. Not just losing weight, I'm trying to put it back on where it used to be."

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AS THE FRENCH LIKE TO CALL IT…

2009-12-22T23:14:00.000+11:00

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Next season is a big year for Carlton. The Blues are kind of like that weedy kid in high school with the athletic ability of Marlon Brando, the Apocalypse Now version not the Streetcar Named Desire version, who despite their parents spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on expensive sporting equipment and specialist coaching, still sucks at sports.

In spite of the ridiculous number of high draft picks and free-agents obtained by virtue of them having the first pick in several pre-season drafts, Carlton still remain half-finished in the way most Melbournians hoped Federation Square was in 2001 when it opened only to have it dawn on us as the years progressed that, nope, that seems to be it.

In addition to glaring holes in the forward line and the lack of any sort of defensive accountability since Anthony Franchina pinched his last opponent, Carlton’s premiership prospects now face an off-field discipline issue, with several of its players involved in incidents in recent years.

The latest scrap involving Ryan Houlihan and Andrew Walker engaging in a brawl at Crown Casino has prompted Carlton CEO Greg Swann to dish out $5,000 fines to each player. Swann described the players’ actions as “unacceptable” before not stating that drunk and socially appalling behavior by Carlton players isn’t funny unless there’s a dildo involved or if it’s being recorded for Street Talk.

Houlihan and Walker were disciplined after being evicted from Crown’s Promenade Hotel after a fight with hotel staff, who were just as surprised as the rest of us non-Carlton supporters that Houlihan and Walker were still even playing AFL football.

It’s reported the two players returned to the hotel foyer with a female companion in what may have been the precursor to the timeless AFL tradition of “spitroasting” or, as the French like to call it, “le spitroasting”.

According to sources present, which is tabloid journalism code for someone who walked into the foyer 15 minutes after the incident occurred and heard the story from a vision impaired Chinese cleaning lady at the end of her shift, one of the players was arguing with the women before a fight broke out between the teammates with hotel security getting involved and police arriving as the fight was brought under control.

What is not known at this point is whether the argument between the players was due to each providing a different hypothetically workable emissions trading scheme, with Houlihan taking umbrage at Walker’s suggestion of a 15 percent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels.

However, given this was an argument between two AFL footballers, it is distinctly possible that the bone of contention may simply have whose boner got first contention in the impending ménage a trios. Zing. Christ, that was terrible.

The latest brouhaha at Crown involving AFL footballers has led to the usual wowsers demanding that AFL players be banned from the casino complex. Calls for a blanket ban seem premature given the number of AFL player-related incidents at Crown in 2010 is likely to fall from this year for no other reason than Brendan Fevola is now living in Queensland.

In unrelated news, Jupiters Casino have decided to hire 1,200 additional security guards and cover all glass in the complex with a special urine-proof protective film.

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TEGAN AND SARA, ROSIE O’DONNELL AND ELLEN DEGENERES…

2009-12-18T22:51:00.000+11:00

Saturday, December 19, 2009

A curse has to go out to the sub-editors at the Herald-Sun for avoiding the usage of any number of double-entendres in the wake of Collingwood’s crafty forward Brad Dick requiring a shoulder reconstruction. Shame on you sirs.

If it were up to Best Clubman, in that infinite time we spend at our desk not doing work while thinking about Megan Fox dressed up as Princess Leia from Return Of The Jedi while baking gingerbread men and dancing to the Macarana, we would’ve come up with smutty banners such as “Injured Dick”, “Pies Take Dick Out For Six Months”, “Dick Needs Surgery”, “Sick Dick”, “Ouch, Dick Hurts” or “Malthouse Loses Dick” (tee hee…). But hey, that’s why we’re not gainfully employed as a sub-editor.

Dick injured his shoulder during Collingwood’s now annual training camp in Arizona, which for once should stop the Magpies banging on about how beneficial the trip is every year. However, it’s certainly not the first time an end-of-season AFL trip has ended with an injured dick (tee hee…).

Dick had reconstructive surgery on Wednesday which “went well” according to club doctor Ruben Branson. But he would say that wouldn’t he. Ever heard a club official say the surgery went badly? If you believe Geelong management, every Matthew Egan surgery “seems to have corrected the problem”. Meanwhile poor old Egan is being operated on with a stanley knife by Dr. Nick Riviera and hasn’t played a game in over two seasons.

It’s a shame for little Dick (tee hee…) that he has suffered another setback after undergoing a knee reconstruction and missing the entire 2008 season. He seems like a great kid and was one of the few Magpie forwards who came out of his skin (tee hee…) and turned it on in the finals. His vital third quarter goals against Adelaide helped start one of the greatest finals comebacks of recent times and thrust (tee hee…) Collingwood into the preliminary final.

For Collingwood, the injury comes at a bad time and puts added pressure on renowned finals flops (tee hee…) Alan Didak and Leon Davis to contribute goals in the big games. Hopefully for the Pies’ sake, they’ll avoid the lesson learned by Tegan and Sara, Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres – life’s not the same without Dick (tee hee…).

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CHESTAL GRAIN SILOS…

2009-12-18T14:49:00.002+11:00

Friday, December 18, 2009

The world isn’t perfect. In a perfect world, Trinny’s pretty face would sit perched above Susannah’s bountiful bosom. Instead, Trinny gets around with a pair of A cups while the pug-faced Susannah carries around the equivalent of two grain silos on her chest.

In a perfect world, Best Clubman would’ve returned home from our two week holiday from Thailand armed with a non-English speaking wife whose sole purpose is to please us with what she calls “suki-suki” in very broken English. Instead, all we came home with was a nasty bout of mouth warts contracted from putting the table tennis balls used during the floor show at the Spearmint Rhino in downtown Bangkok in our mouth in the mistaken belief they were some sort of Asian brand of really large Mentos lollies.

And in a perfect world, people would stop feeling sorry for Hawthorn’s Trent Croad and recognise him for what he is – the greatest defensive fraud in the modern history of AFL. Instead, non-Hawthorn fans have been forced to endure constant whining from our Hawthorn friends about poor ol’ Croady and a myth has been doing the rounds that Croad is one of the best defenders of his generation due to his courage in playing on with a broken foot in the 2008 grand final.

While missing all of 2009 with a broken foot and this week suffering even more complications in the healing process is bad news for Croad, fans need to put the Hawk defender’s career in perspective and realise that this is a guy who’s had more than his fair share of luck.

After being drafted at the end of 1997, Croad created quite the life for himself. By 2001 he was on the cover of the Herald-Sun sports section sitting atop his expensive European sports car while telling us all of his interest in purchasing investment properties. This is despite Croad having the IQ of a member of the Kardashian family but with less knowledge of how to actually play the position of centre-half forward.

And, if popular rumours are to be believed, which they most certainly are, Croad was so popular with the dames in the nightclubs that he was forced at one point to implement a ticketing system not too dissimilar to that used at your local supermarket deli in order to service his lady admirers.

Hell, Croad even managed to overcome the significant impediment of being traded to Fremantle in exchange for the draft rights to Luke Hodge and found himself back at Hawthorn by 2005 and in a premiership by 2008.

As if all that isn’t enough, Croad managed to squeeze in All-Australian honours in 2005 after being reborn as a key defender despite the rather obvious facts that his team won a paltry five games during a season when he really didn’t do that well on opposition key forwards if performances on Barry Hall (who kicked 3.5 in Round 1), Matthew Richardson (3.2 in Round 2; 4.2 in Round 21), Saverio Rocca (5.2 in Round 6), Chris Tarrant (3.0 in Round 10), Fraser Gehrig (6.0 in Round 12), Warren Tredrea (7.0 in Round 13), Kent Kingsley (4.1 in Round 14) and Daniel Bradshaw (5.0 in Round 19) are anything to go by anyway.

Yet somehow Croad claimed All-Australian when, staggeringly, Essendon’s Dustin Fletcher only has two All-Australian caps despite being the premier defender in the game over the past 15 seasons. Even more unfathomable is that Max Hudghton and Simon Prestigiacomo have exactly zero All-Australian belts between them in spite of both men regularly conceding fewer than 25 goals in entire seasons.

So if your garden variety Hawthorn supporter tells you to feel sorry for Croad and his latest setback and bang on yet again about his 2008 grand final heroics, remember to tell them Croad is well in the black over the course of his career in terms of luck.

Then point out that his “playing on” with a broken foot actually constituted laying a tackle one second after breaking the joint before leaving the field which, while no doubt gutsy and well beyond the pain threshold of someone like Best Clubman who becomes squeamish at the prospect of a mild dose of constipation, is hardly Rick McCosker returning to the crease in the Centenary Test to bat with a broken jaw.

The harsh reality is that the best thing Croad did in the 2008 grand final was leave the field when his club was actually behind and the only thing preventing the game from being a blowout by Geelong at that point was the repeated inaccuracy of the Cats key forwards in front of goal who, it should be noted, were dealing with Croad’s “defensive” pressure much like Michael Jordan used to handle Craig Ehlo in the playoffs.

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THE HOT BREAKFAST…

2009-12-18T14:45:00.000+11:00

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Defending the indefensible can be a tough job. Anyone who’s seen Andrew Demetriou front the media and claim that tanking does not exist knows that. So kudos to Collingwood president Eddie McGuire for attempting to defend his integrity in the face of several hecklers at the club’s annual general meeting last night.

Confronting his detractors face-to-face is a new experience for McGuire, whose usual method of responding to even minor questions about his leadership is to resort to petty cheap shots delivered through one of his various media outlets.

Given the latest ratings for The Hot Breakfast are only just above Yasmin’s Getting Married levels, McGuire may have one less forum for launching tirades against his critics in 2010.

The brouhaha started when several Magpies members from the 500 present had the temerity to actually ask questions from the floor at the annual general meeting, which is in direct breach of McGuire’s Pay Your Money And Shut Up membership policy installed when he took over in 1998.

Surprisingly, the greatest concern of Collingwood members wasn’t the fact the club has won precisely zero premierships since McGuire assumed the reins. Rather, the Magpie diehards are worried about senior management making decisions without the consultation of the rank-and-file membership base.

Decisions such as the appointment of Winter Olympian Alisa Camplin to the board and the creation of the Richard Pratt Cup for games against Carlton were made without members’ approval. Whether this is grounds for impeachment of McGuire is unlikely.

The Camplin appointment should be applauded for what it is – a gross act of tokenism in redressing perceptions of gender imbalance in the game. But the creation of the Pratt Cup seems a mystery given Australia’s favourite corporate criminal had absolutely nothing to do with Collingwood besides selling the club recycled cardboard boxes at an inflated price pre-determined in high level meetings between Visy and Amcor. Presumably, the Pratt Cup will see Collingwood and Carlton agree to collude and fix the scores in their two matches each season.

"I think there was a certain lack of respect tonight, which I was personally disappointed about," McGuire said. “The respect that was not shown to the position as president of the Collingwood Football Club was disappointing. I am big enough and ugly enough to look after myself”, he continued before doing that thing where he says criticism of himself is water off a duck’s back before he responds with name calling and taunts not usually seen beyond a primary school playground.

"But I won't ever let people denigrate our club, our guernsey, the servants of our club and certainly not the position of the board or the presidents of the football club”, McGuire whined with a statement that didn’t rule out anyone denigrating Alan Didak.

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“AN EYE FOR AN EYE… OR A SPILLED POT”…

2009-12-13T21:18:00.000+11:00

Sunday, December 13, 2009

There’s not much to hate about Collingwood midfielder Scott Pendlebury. He’s smooth, silky, and wins his own ball. In addition to these positive traits, Pendlebury also shares one characteristic with Best Clubman – he’s rubbish at fighting. Well, at least according to reports coming out of Eastern Victoria in the early hours of today anyway.

In fairness to Pendlebury’s fighting ability, his assault last night outside of a hotel in Lakes Entrance in East Gippsland was the result of being king hit from behind. Given that he was not already lying defenceless on the ground when the attack occurred, police have ruled out Carlton’s Setanta O’hAlpin as a suspect.

Although, as the assault occurred in a gutless fashion from behind, an all points bulletin has been issued by the fuzz for Bomber legend Matthew Lloyd who specialised in “accidentally” making forceful contact on oncoming defenders intent on spoiling.

In reality, which is increasingly becoming an increasingly hazy concept for Best Clubman given our penchant for taking Percodan and playing dress-ups while wearing a plastic nappy during our encounters with ladies of the night, police have arrested a 20-year old Lakes Entrance man over the assault.

The alleged offender is set to face the Bairnsdale Magistrates Court in 2010, which is newsworthy for no other reason than most people were previously unaware that Gippsland has a judicial system of any kind beyond “an eye for an eye… or a spilled pot”.

The assault occurred as Pendlebury left the Central Hotel in Lakes Entrance, with the young midfielder’s head hitting the pavement after being knocked out cold. Fortunately Pendlebury’s pedophile-like moustache braced his fall and didn’t result in a terrible brain injury that would have made him the second person to play at AFL-level despite significant cerebral impairment after Brendan Fevola.

Actually, that last gag has been used by Best Clubman at least three times this year so maybe it’s us who has the cereal repairedment.

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DIET GERVAIS…

2009-12-05T10:43:00.000+11:00

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Life provides certain indicators that tell us when milestones have been achieved and lines have been crossed. For example, the first sign that you’ve entered middle-age is your purchase of the latest Powderfinger album. Or the last three before that, mind.

Another example? The red flag that tells you that you’ve just lost your sense of humour is finding yourself laughing at a skit from Ryan “Diet Gervais” Shelton who, with the impromptu retirement of Rove McManus, now assumes the mantle of the least talented performer on Australian television who isn’t a part of the Newton family.

Similarly, the signal that you haven’t made the most of your post-AFL career and hit upon harder times surely has to be driving a milk truck in Sydney while awaiting trial on charges of fraud and forgery. If the sad and worsening story of Daryn Cresswell is any guide anyway.

Amazingly, it’s only six years since the former Swans onballer retired from the game after 244 reasonably solid matches. Or was that stolid? Even more amazingly, it’s only three years since Cresswell was an assistant coach at Brisbane and thought to be a future senior coach. And perhaps even more amazingly, by 2009 it’s Cresswell who finds himself a declared bankrupt and $700,000 in the hole due to a gambling problem and not David Schwarz.

During his career, Cresswell made the most of limited ability to become one of Sydney’s greatest ever midfielders due to what was widely perceived as having a pretty wise head on his shoulders. Now, as he sits at his lowest ebb and contemplates time in the big house, the only solace Cresswell can find is that this is Australia and if a man with limited ability can’t return and make something of himself and find success and wealth here then he can’t do it anywhere. Just look at Ryan Shelton.

Whether Cresswell can foresee brighter days ahead is doubtful. Serious criminal charges and a possible stint in jail are no laughing matter. Just like a segment of “Investigationing” or “Philosophisationing”.

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JULES LUND…

2009-12-04T15:31:00.000+11:00

Friday, December 4, 2009

Much like Best Clubman walking past a primary school, kindergarten, child care centre or community park is a prompt for mothers everywhere to dial 000, the prospect of watching a game featuring St. Kilda since Ross Lyon took over as coach is a subliminal cue to go out and purchase a packet of No-Doz, two slabs of Red Bull and some prison-strength amphetamines.

While the Saints somehow managed to win 20 games during the 2009 home and away season, they were as entertaining to watch as a conversation featuring Philip Ruddock. Nevertheless, St. Kilda management has decided to re-sign Lyon for an additional three years until the end of 2012 or until such time as the Saints score over 100 points in a game, whichever comes first.

The new contract will ensure Lyon becomes the second longest serving St. Kilda coach of all time after Alan Jeans, which is almost as staggering as Ruddock becoming Australia’s third-longest serving federal parliamentarian in February next year.

Much like Micky Malthouse, Lyon seems adept at getting the most out of a subpar list. Much like Micky Malthouse, Lyon came within two kicks of coaching his team of battlers to a premiership over the dominant club of that epoch. Much like Micky Malthouse, Lyon seems to retain an amazing degree of support from his club and its supporters which, when added to the example of Jules Lund, provides further proof that some things are inexplicably popular.

"I feel extremely privileged to be coaching at St Kilda and consider it an honour to be presented with the opportunity to lead the club as senior coach for at least another three seasons," Lyon banged on as Saints members quietly ducked out to grab copies of the Bible, the latest Specky Magee opus, and the A-K of the White Pages to read while enduring another turgid Saints home game in the next three years.

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3-PARK SUPERPASS...

2009-12-02T19:27:00.000+11:00

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

With Waverley Park discontinued as an AFL venue in 1999, the number of cavernous, difficult to get to stadiums with distances between spectators and the playing field akin to a small fun run has remained at one – Adelaide’s Football Park.

Those unfortunate enough to have attended a match at the home of the Crows and the Power will know that the only trip more indirect in the game at present is St. Kilda’s movement of the ball towards goal under Ross Lyon. Somewhat remarkably, a weekender to Adelaide to watch your team on a road trip is actually the only thing more boring than watching the Saints and their chippity chip game plan.

So good news is afoot for football fans in Adelaide with the announcement that the much more central and conveniently located Adelaide Oval is to be upgraded to host AFL matches within five years. The renovations will take the number of tourist attractions in the city up to three, with Football Park combining with the Museè Du McLeod’s Daughters and the water fountain in Rundle Mall to offer a 3-Park Superpass.

The cost of the upgrade is set at $450 million, which is roughly equivalent to $10 in Melbourne money, and will see seating capacity increase to 50,000 to enable the Power to increase the average number of empty seats at non-Showdown home games to 44,000.

All Crows and Power home games in the regular season will be moved to Adelaide Oval while Football Park will be maintained for NAB Cup matches, SANFL fixtures and as the Crows training facility. Port Adelaide will keep their spiritual home at Alberton Oval, while the Crows will still use a discarded bank vault in Snowtown as theirs.

Raising the funds for such a massive expansion to what is one of the best Test cricket venues in the world will be no easy task, with the South Australian government chipping in $300 and the Federal Government topping up the remaining $150 by agreeing to pull back the planned introduction of the internet in South Australia by 15 years.

In the event of cost blowouts during production, any funding shortfall will be covered with money raised from the unclaimed pensions of disabled people who have “mysteriously” vanished in the Hills area of Adelaide.

Current Crows chief executive officer Steven Trigg took time out from being a tosser who uses a string of management buzz words in order to illustrate a relatively simple point about his perception of a Melbourne-centric bias in all AFL decision-making to offer his support for the planned upgrade.

"This investment provides significant potential for the Adelaide Football Club and football generally," Trigg said. His Port Adelaide counterpart Brett Duncanson was equally as excited and that moving from Football Park is a step in the right direction for the embattled club, maybe even more so than finally delisting Toby Thurstans.

"Our fans will be very excited by the opportunity for the Port Adelaide Football Club to play in a city stadium," Duncanson said before unveiling a comprehensive campaign aimed at educating the notoriously uneducated and uncouth Power supporters in the nuances of how to use some of the newer features of the renovated Adelaide Oval that your average Power supporter may be unfamiliar with, such as seats and toilets.

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“THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID”…

2009-11-27T16:25:00.000+11:00

Saturday, November 28, 2009

New Collingwood midfielder Luke Ball has described his drafting by Collingwood as a “huge relief” after an uncertain six week period where he faced the prospect of being forced to join Melbourne, a punishment prohibited by the Geneva Convention against prisoners of war.

Ball’s is very glad his search for an organisation even less successful than his former club St. Kilda has been over the past 50 years ended at the Magpies rather than at Melbourne, the Western Bulldogs or working in the public relations department at the Church of Scientology.

Despite having been a former captain and All-Australian at St. Kilda, as well one of the Saints better players in this year’s narrow grand final loss to Geelong, Ball requested a trade to Collingwood after falling out with coach Ross Lyon.

Unfortunately for Ball, his path to the Magpies was complicated by the fact the two clubs could not agree on a trade. Whereas the Saints wanted something of value in exchange for their key midfielder, Collingwood offered a mid-range draft pick and Tyson Goldsack which is a bit like turning up to a property auction in South Yarra armed only with three magic beans and an old copy of the Sale Of The Century board game to play at home as your only forms of remuneration.

With clubs such as Melbourne and Essendon having several draft selection before Collingwood’s first pick at 30, few people other than the Magpies and Ball thought he would still be available at such a late stage of the draft.

With Ball’s salary demands putting him out of the financial reach of most clubs and Melbourne deciding to pursue a youth policy, Ball ended up going later than a recently married Irish Catholic woman’s period. Zing.

An earlier version of this joke had it that Ball joining Shane O’Bree and Tarkyn Lockyer in Collingwood’s midfield made the Magpies’ on-ball brigade slower than the menstrual cycle of a recently married Irish Catholic woman’s period, until we realised that this made no sense. Or does it? Not really within our field of expertise.

"It's a huge relief to have it over and done with," Ball said at a media conference at the Lexus Centre as Best Clubman yelled out “that’s what she said” in reply to prove that we can actually sink lower than jokes about periods.

Ball watched the draft at home on his couch with former St. Kilda Matt McGuire, who also found a new home with Brisbane. Neither player would confirm they flicked between the draft coverage and the concurrent episode of Big Bang Theory airing on Channel 9 to see which was the more boring audio-visual experience.

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OBLIGATORY HILARIOUS FEV DILDO…

2009-11-22T23:35:00.000+11:00

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Brisbane have hired security guards to spy on new recruit Brendan Fevola at his farewell party in Melbourne. The Lions obviously don’t trust the normal method people use for tracking the behavior of D-list celebrities – seeing if anyone sold graining footage of improper behaviour taken on a mobile phone to the Confidential section of the Herald-Sun.

To insure itself against yet another scandal featuring its new property, Brisbane hired two security guards to sit clandestinely nearby and observe Fevola’s behaviour while socialising with former Carlton teammates. At the time of print it could not be ascertained if the obligatory hilarious Fev dildo was invited to the farewell drinks.

The Lions’ sneaky efforts represent the first time in history that security guards have been employed to keep Fevola inside a venue, as opposed to their usual role in being remunerated for turfing Fevola out onto the footpath after another “bathroom malfunction”.

Amazingly, sources claim that Fevola was not aware of the presence of two burly security men tailing his every move until one of his former teammates enquired who the men were. Presumably Fevola assumed they were just the regular Hells Angels that follow him to chase a debt.

It is believed that Fevola made a phone call once he became aware of the security guards to check on why they were there. Unfortunately Fevola was in Brownlow Medal night form and attempted to make the call with Ryan Houlihan’s shoe, although Chris Judd was kind enough to hand Fev his iPhone, at which point the burly full-forward was informed that new coach Michael Voss had hired the security guards to prevent people from hassling him.

At the risk of repeating an earlier quip, this represents the first time in history that security guards have been employed to keep Fevola from being hassled by innocent bystanders, as opposed to preventing Fevola from applying pressure point tactics to whoever happens to be walking past when the mood should strike the great man.

The evening passed without incident with Fevola’s wife Alex picking him up at 6.30pm to take him back to the family trailer. It’s not known how the obligatory hilarious Fev dildo got home.

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“SMOKESCREEN”…

2009-11-19T00:38:00.000+11:00

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Since Matthew Knights took over as Essendon coach at the end of 2007, news of a Bombers player aged 25 or over leaving the club comes as less of a surprise than using Google Earth to find your home only to zoom in to street level and find Shane Warne on top of your wife while you were at work.

So it is that utility Adam McPhee, aged 27, has decided to head back to his original club Fremantle after seven seasons at Essendon, leaving Bomber midfielder Mark McVeigh none too pleased.

McVeigh’s beef with McPhee stems not from his decision to leave, but more to do with the timing and the reasons offered, with McVeigh labeling McVeigh’s decision to leave due to his friendship with Fremantle coach Mark Harvey a “smokescreen”.

In McPhee’s defence, moving to the hapless Dockers, who have very little chance of making only their third finals series in their disastrous 15 seasons, makes sense to anyone with a regular job. While the Bombers continue to climb the ladder and play in finals, Fremantle start their holidays one month earlier every year. Think about it, you get paid the same amount for working less. Makes sense.

In reality, McPhee walking out on Essendon just as they ascend the ladder after four dismal seasons, only to suit up for Fremantle as they embark on yet another four year period of rebuilding pain, does seem a bit strange and is a bit like Pete Best doing one from The Beatles to start Pete Best & The All Stars. As we know, Ringo went on to get the money, adulation and women his talent didn’t really deserve, while Best went on to work at Woolworths and attempt suicide. Ouch.

"It was a real surprise and we would have liked to have known earlier and maybe we could have got something for him", McVeigh said before not adding “as long as it wasn’t Kepler Bradley”.

"I've read in the papers that he's great mates with Mark Harvey which I find a bit hard to believe," he added in a glowing endorsement of Harvey’s attributes as a person.

Knights is now growing quite a back catalogue of club stalwarts who don’t seem to rate his attributes as a person, with McPhee joining Matthew Lloyd, Scott Lucas, Damian Peverill, Mark Johnson, Jason Johnson and Mark Bolton as senior players not in the coach’s grand plans since taking over two years ago. Although with Bolton it’s easy to see Knights’ point.

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WORST FOOT SKILLS…

2009-11-13T23:58:00.000+11:00

Friday, November 13, 2009

The news of Richmond superstar Matthew Richardson’s retirement has hit most Tiger people hard given that, for most of Richo’s playing career during the 90s and early millennium, the club enjoyed about as much success as Mel and Kim over the same timeframe.

Watching the great man take spectacular pack marks and kick 800 goals was the only enjoyment supporters had with the exception of Justin Plapp’s very strong finish to the 1998 season.

The loss of the club stalwart has been somewhat easier for former coach and playing legend Kevin Bartlett who at the age of 21 had to deal with the loss of his ability to tackle, handball and grow hair. Nevertheless, Bartlett came out this week to express his remorse that Richo was never made skipper of the once proud club.

“It's a great shame he was never made skipper,” Bartlett said. “I'm certain he thought it would have been a great honour, and it would have been, but that honour is now dead”. Much like Bartlett’s chances of getting another job as an AFL coach.

Richardson’s best chance of gaining the job as captain appeared to be at the end of 2004, when former captain Wayne Campbell retired to be replaced by Kane Johnson in what appeared to outside observers as a secret club policy to hand the captaincy to the player on the list who had the worst foot skills. Although this rumour doesn’t stand up to scrutiny when it’s remembered that Steven Sziller, Chris Bond and Paul Broderick never skippered the club.

While most impartial observers rightly assumed Richo was never given the captain’s job due to his inconsistent on-field emotions, Bartlett believes the key forward should have been given the mantle based on his services to the club.

“I thought a couple of years years back the club should have recognised his tremendous contribution to the club,” Bartlett said without going on record as saying that the biggest favour the club could have done Richo was trading him to a team that actually had a chance of making the finals more than twice between the years 1992 and 2009 rather than awarding him the title of captain.

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TRADE BAIT…

2009-10-17T19:56:00.001+11:00

Sunday, October 18, 2009

For most people, the cost of courting Brendan Fevola is waking up with a bad case of gonorrhea a few days later. For the Brisbane Lions, the cost of luring the wayward one into their lair has been veteran full-forward Daniel Bradshaw.

After being offered as bait for Fevola during trade week after 14 seasons of loyal service, Bradshaw has decided that, unlike his Jack Nicholson-like exceedingly high hairline, which has gone nowhere since he debuted in 1996, he may be on the move.

The Fevola trade has been controversial for a number of reasons including Bradshaw’s hurt at being offered to Carlton in the first place, Lions midfielder Michael Rischitelli not wanting to leave the sunshine state, and the AFL announcing that an investigation has been launched into an alleged sexual assault made by Fevola on a Herald-Sun journalist at the now infamous Brownlow Medal evening, which has the potential to result in a lengthy off-field spell if proven.

But perhaps the only bigger surprise than all this is the fact Carlton would offer a soon to be 31-year old full-forward with a reconstructed knee a three-year deal. Then again, we shouldn’t be too surprised given that this is the club that allowed a comatose Micky Martyn to run around in 2003 with all the mobility of a Hummer to fulfill his dream of reaching 300 games while playing fullback for the worst team in the competition.

Bradshaw’s agent Colin Young confirmed to the media that Bradshaw’s nose, much like his creaky knee, has been put out of joint by the events of the last fortnight.

"He's rejected a contract from the Brisbane Lions to have a look at what's around," Young said. "He didn't know until the Wednesday (of trade week), so if you were 30 years of age and had four children how would you feel?”

The arrival of Bradshaw onto the free agent market now doubles the list of elderly forwards with decrepit bodies seeking a new home. In Bradshaw’s favour for landing another job is that, as opposed to ex-Tiger Nathan Brown, he’s at least played in one final since the year 2000.

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MAD MONDAY DILDO…

2009-10-14T21:15:00.000+11:00

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Revelatory claims made by Brendan Fevola on Melbourne radio have shown that the former Carlton full-forward sought a last-minute trade to arch-rival Collingwood after a potential swap to the Brisbane Lions in exchange for Daniel Bradshaw and Michael Rischitelli fell over late on the Thursday night of trade week.

Fevola made it known that, in an effort to stay in Melbourne and extend his list of off-field misdemeanours at popular nightspots around town, he rang Collingwood president and good friend Eddie McGuire in an effort to create the most annoying and hated pairing in Australian culture with the exception of the unlikely possibility of Stephen Milne joining the cast of Rove.

"It (the initial trade deal to the Lions) did fall over on the Thursday night, I got a call late that night," Fevola told Triple M, mentioning that it was lucky his phone was on vibrate at the time as he would have never heard it inside Spearmint Rhino.

Revealing the anguish that players shopped around in trade week go through, Fevola said "It's a terrible week to be a part of, I never thought I would be a part of it. I think Friday, about 10am, the deal was off and I rang you (McGuire) and said: 'See what the Pies can do because I think it's over'."

Why Fevola ever thought Collingwood would take him is a mystery given the Pies’ raft of young key position forward talent, although Travis Cloke’s 2009 season may shed some light on the matter. Perhaps Fevola was assuming that trades for Jarrod Molloy, Carl Steinfort, Chad Rintoul and Chad Morrison in the past decade was an indication that Collingwood are prepared to offer anyone in their late 20s a deal.

McGuire took time out from plotting to take over the world to confirm that the Magpies were indeed interested in Fevola’s proposal. "We were into it, but they (Carlton) wouldn't deal,'' he said in adopting the same attitude that ex-Mrs. Best Clubman had when we dared bring up the idea of employing sodomy in the bedroom in order to re-stoke what was by then a smouldering relationship.

After a busy and emotionally draining week, Fevola appeared happy to have landed in Brisbane to join what seems to be a team on the rise after its first finals appearance in five years this season.

“It would have been nice to stay in Melbourne, but that's the beauty of our game, it's a national game and you can go anywhere,” Fevola said without audibly expressing his relief at moving to a state much closer than Victoria is to countries without extradition treaties with Australia should this investigation into an alleged sexual assault on a female Herald-Sun journalist on Brownlow night go sour.

With the trade having been completed and everyone attempting to begin new phases of their lives, Fevola has started looking for a home in Brisbane and met some of his new teammates at a barbecue at new captain Jonathan Brown’s house. Brown’s response when Fevola turned up to the barbecue armed with the dildo from Mad Monday as a house warming gift is unknown.

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YANKEE DOODLE DANDY…

2009-10-12T20:39:00.001+11:00

Tuesday, October 12, 2009

You have to feel for Luke Ball given his run of outs in the last three weeks. Fresh from missing out on a premiership by two goals, Ball was faced with the knowledge that he remains on the outer with St. Kilda for reasons unknown by anyone who isn’t Ross Lyon, having been offered what by all reports is a relatively paltry contract for a former All-Australian in his prime who managed to accrue over 20 possessions in a grand final despite playing less than 50 percent of game time.

At the beginning of the season Ball was widely considered an A-grade player, only to see his career options dissipate quicker than Macaulay Culkin’s after Home Alone 2.

Then, to make matters even worse, his dream move to Collingwood was scuppered, a team with loyal fans that plays to packed houses every week and has a decent chance of winning a premiership in the next three seasons.

The final nadir for Ball came last weekend, with confirmation Richmond and Melbourne, the worst two teams in the competition, are keen to select him in the upcoming drafts with one of their raft of high draft picks obtained from years of fielding teams with Jake King and Paul Johnson in them.

This final piece of news has Ball reading up furiously on the rules of free agency and contacting Slater & Gordon to pursue the merits of a restraint of trade claim against the AFL and its antiquated trading rules, which make player movement slightly more difficult than a bowel movement the day after eating a sack of potatoes.

And all because Ball, known to be one of the league’s good guys with genuine leadership skills, has a relationship with Lyon that seems to be going about as well as an Ike Turner marriage.

One piece of good news for Ball is the announcement from the Demons that they won’t be using any of their high picks in the national draft to select a mature player, preferring instead to obtain Ball via the pre-season draft if other clubs choose not to select him in the national draft.

This development is believed to have prompted Ball to contact his agent and reverse his decision to commit suicide and/or book that trip of a lifetime to Baghdad wearing a confederate flag around his shoulders and a carrying a portable stereo pumping out Yankee Doodle Dandy to all within earshot.

Melbourne coach Dean “Winning Percentage” Bailey announced that, just like Best Clubman, the Demons would be scouring the nation for the best teenage talent they can find, rather than using one of their high selections in the national draft on Ball.

Acknowledging his decision may affect the club’s ability to land Ball if he nominates for the national draft, Bailey said "(Selections) one, two, 11 and 18 we're going to pick some young players and it's whether (selection) 34 comes into the equation or maybe 50" as Demons supporters hope this number one pick turns out better than Jack Watts and Travis Johnstone.

"I don't think he's going to be there at 50, so it's whether we use 34, but as a list management group we haven't really sat down and decided that number yet," Bailey said while fronting the media wearing a t-shirt with “Can you believe I’m an AFL coach?” printed on the front and a smile appropriate for the only man in history to have won seven games in two seasons and face absolute no pressure to keep his job.

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“THINK HEALTHY”…

2009-10-11T14:36:00.000+11:00

Monday, October 12, 2009

With Jesse Smith walking out on North Melbourne during trade week, the finger pointing has begun as to who’s at fault for the injury prone, yet highly talented, son of former club great Ross Smith deciding his future lies elsewhere.

Smith, after managing only 27 games in five seasons due to persistent leg injuries, has suggested through manager Liam Pickering that his decision to leave was based on North’s medical facilities not being good enough, rather than because, as most people forced to watch North suck big time this year had assumed, the club’s playing stocks weren’t good enough.

In Pickering’s words, the Kangaroos didn’t have the right “tools” to assist Smith’s rehabilitation, which is surprising given that Aaron Edwards was a teammate and you’d have to go far and wide to find a bigger “tool” than a man who likes to enjoy the sounds of Lionel Ritchie with his pants around his ankles at a music festival.

Pickering’s excuse is a little hard to swallow for North’s chief of football, Donald McDonald, who rightfully pointed out in response that the Kangaroos are set to open their new $15 million elite training facility within the next month.

This replaces the previous medical facilities at the impoverished club, which consisted of an old packet of Tylenol found in a gym bag left in the rooms by Alex Ischenko in 1994, an ultrasound machine made from Paddle Pop sticks, and three tents stolen from the set of M.A.S.H in the 70s.

"This is a very delicate situation because we could not have possibly worked any harder to get Jesse right," McDonald said before mentioning that the club was charging Smith personally for his medical treatment during the 2009 season, presenting the media with an invoice for $1.37 to be mailed to Smith’s manager to recoup the cost of both packets of Band-Aids, the lollipop the doctor gave him for being a good boy, and the online psychology session that encouraged Smith to “think healthy” in order to get better.

During trade week, North offered Smith a two-year deal laden with incentives that rewarded him for getting on the park. This was rejected with Pickering suggesting his client may be linked to a move to Geelong.

This will undoubtedly come as wonderful news for Smith to know he’ll be off to a club whose medical facilities have so far managed to get former All-Australian Matthew Egan on the park a grand total of zero times since he succumbed to a foot injury in 2007.

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“WEAK C—T”…

2009-10-11T14:12:00.001+11:00

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Alistair Clarkson holds a grudge like Lorena Bobbit. The Hawthorn coach, still peeved at the supposed injustice of former Essendon skipper Matthew Lloyd laying what most observers thought was a legitimate bump on Brad Sewell in Round 22, combined with the anger stemming from CEO Ian Robson defecting to Windy Hill, has launched another tirade aimed at the Bombers.

The Hawks are a little touchy about the Campbell Brown affair of trade week, where Port Adelaide alleges that Hawthorn offered Brown’s name on a list of potential trade targets in exchange for Shaun Burgoyne, only to be embarrassed when Brown and Hawthorn subsequently stated the angry little defender was not tradable at all.

"At no stage were we ever going to march a player out of our football club," Clarkson said. “I know the Essendon Football Club did that back in 2002 with Damien Hardwick, Blake Caracella, Justin Blumfield and also Chris Heffernan, and I don't think it did the Essendon Football Club any good”.

While the relevance of this comment escaped most journalists in attendance and came across as another petty swipe at a hated rival, Clarkson’s rant overlooked two important facts in that Hardwick left at the end of 2001, not 2002, in exchange for the draft pick used on Andrew Welsh, and removing someone who was as overrated as Justin Blumfield while getting a second-round draft pick in return is a good thing in the same way that in the last decade three clubs somehow received an answer of “Yes” to the question “Seriously, you want to take Justin Murphy off our hands?”

"Sending out players of that quality affects the culture of your club too much. We weren't going to do that with high-quality players in our footy club that are so important to our culture. Campbell Brown is one of those."

This suggests the Hawks wish to maintain a playing culture that endorses over-the-top tough guy histrionics and slapping the shoulder of Angus Monfries when he isn’t looking but not one that improves your list by trading a limited player like Brown for a superstar like Burgoyne.

In the aftermath of the Round 22 incident, Clarkson was given a $5,000 suspended fine for labelling Lloyd a “weak c—t”. However, unlike Mrs. Bobbit, Clarkson did stop short of threatening to cut off Lloyd’s manhood but only after he’d been pacified by three assistant coaches, a muzzle and a packet of Stillnox.

Meanwhile, the irony in all this is the fact Hawthorn have just allowed one of their own premiership players, and former club leading goalkicker, Mark Williams to leave the club which, presumably in Clarkson’s eyes, doesn’t undermine the culture at Hawthorn the way it did at Essendon seven years ago.

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“STAND BY YOUR MAN”…

2009-10-09T23:08:00.001+11:00

Friday, October 9, 2009

Considering Brendan Fevola apologises for his behavior about as often as John Howard apologises to the stolen generation, today’s plea for forgiveness for his drunken Brownlow antics could be interpreted as the great man turning over a new leaf… or it could just be his attempt at defusing new claims of an alleged sexual assault on the night.

Having been traded to the Brisbane Lions earlier in the day, Fevola sought to apologise to anyone who was offended by his Brownlow rampage, which presumably includes Crown’s waiting staff, Rebecca Twigley, club captain Mr Rebecca Twigley, the nightclub crowd forced to listen to his impromptu nightclub rendition of Hey Baby, Ryan O’Keefe’s lips, The Footy Show’s viewing audience, and the unfortunate member of Crown’s cleaning staff who drew the short straw and had to force down the floater Fev left in the toilets of the Palladium Room.

The most interesting development from today was news of an alleged sexual assault on a female journalist in the female toilets on the night in question. Intrigue now surrounds who the woman in question may be, but smart money suggests it was not Caroline Wilson who Fevola allegedly mistook for Jon English in the Crown foyer, forcing Wilson into a headlock until she agreed to belt out the theme tune from All Together Now.

"I think, on Brownlow night ... I pretty much made a dick of myself that night and had too much to drink and I don't think I missed too many people that night,” Fevola said in responding to the seemingly endless torrent of criticism coming his way from the politically correct morass who are slowly taking over and ruining the fun for the rest of us.

Seeking forgiveness for his crimes against humanity, Fevola said “to watch those tapes on the Footy Show and stuff, you just look at it and think you don't want to be that person or ever go back there again because it was embarrassing and you don't wish that behaviour upon anyone” before left-wing liberals accused him of donning black face paint and performing a medley of Jackson Five hits.

“I've apologised to everyone and that was in my statement. I apologised to all the people that needed to be apologised to on the night,” Fevola said as he authorised his manager to send three case loads of White King toilet cleaning bleach to Crown as a peace offering for his misdemeanours.

Not surprisingly, Carlton have sought to immediately distance themselves from their former spearhead. Blues president Stephen Kernahan explained the club’s rationale for separating themselves from their leading goalkicker.

“Brownlow night didn't look good for our footy club but I think the club's acted in an appropriate way,” he said without explaining whether drunkenly reprising Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” in the middle of the day on Lygon Street in full view of the media before pouring a beer over your head whilst celebrating Carlton’s 1987 premiership constitutes acceptable behaviour.

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QUESTION TIME…

2009-09-13T13:53:00.002+10:00

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Until John Anthony kicked the match winning goal for Collingwood in last night’s semi-final against Adelaide, the last time Best Clubman saw someone dog it so badly for 120 minutes was Robert De Niro’s performance in Meet The Fockers.

Fortunately for Anthony, unlike Meet The Fockers, his story had a great finish with him kicking the match winning goal just seconds before the final siren after receiving a contentious holding free kick against Ben Rutten without the ugly spectacle of watching Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand pretending to be a quirky old married couple.

With Anthony lining up for goal with less than a minute left after amassing a measly three possessions from almost four quarters of football, you could forgive Magpies coach Mick Malthouse for being a little worried about Anthony’s ability to kick truly after experiencing the kicking yips from the midway point of the season.

According to Malthouse, the result was never in doubt with the veteran coach having complete faith in Anthony’s ability to do what was, until recently, a task he was exceedingly good at despite the fact most Collingwood fans were hoping Anthony would cramp up and be forced to hand the kick to Simon Prestigiacomo.

But Anthony’s straight boot with only seconds remaining on the clock capped off a remarkable comeback after the Pies trailed by 26 points at half-time in a first half effort that was less entertaining than question time in federal parliament or an episode of CSI Miami, whichever is being shown later on free-to-air TV these days.

"That's their job - I thought Jack could knock it over," said Malthouse. "I was quite comfortable that Jack had it, barring a total kick into the man."

Even more remarkable than the Magpies comeback was Malthouse’s ability to mask his anger knowing that Anthony’s exploits at the end of the game mean he has to pick him for this week’s preliminary final with Geelong or face the wrath of the Pies faithful.

As opposed to Anthony, many of Collingwood’s younger brigade managed to enhance their reputations in the heat of finals football, with Steele Sidebottom, Brad Dick, Tyson Goldsack and Cameron Wood all having their moments, causing Malthouse to be downright giddy about the future of the club,

"Finals football is on a big stage and there's no room in sides going forward for players who can't perform on a big stage," he said in a statement that doesn’t completely rule out dropping Anthony this week rather than watch the inevitable toweling he will receive should he cop Matthew Scarlett as a direct opponent this week.

Considering Anthony couldn’t stop Bulldogs full back Brian Lake from running off him in Round 22 despite Lake possessing a posterior of sufficient size to demand its own icon on the weather map, perhaps the only man happier than Collingwood supporters as Anthony’s kick went through the big sticks was Cats coach Mark Thompson.

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A PUFFY SHIRT UNDONE ALL THE WAY TO THE WAIST …

2009-09-08T21:45:00.001+10:00

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Anyone who remembers the movies Swordfish or Monster’s Ball for anything other than it representing the first time Halle Berry got her kit out on camera is either a liar or Fred Nile. Yet, while we’d all waited for this day for so long, when it finally arrived we didn’t feel as joyous as we’d hoped.

Sure, having Halle’s baps as a mental image assisted Best Clubman on those lonely nights when the only thing we had to pacify our immoral urges where a tube of moisturiser, a conveniently sized circular hole we discovered in our neighbour’s fence, and a splinter removal kit.

But think about what we lost. We haven’t looked at Halle the same since and the world’s a poorer place for it. She’s just like all those other celebrities who’ve been unable to resist the urge of showing their wares in public and Berry is now no different to Paris Hilton, Sharon Stone and Therese Rein.

Although we may have just imagined that last one given our fantasy for banging a chick on a pirate ship was evoked after Mrs. Rudd wore that puffy shirt with the ridiculous sleeves.

Relating this long-winded analogy to Chris Judd’s current predicament, how disappointing it is for the hundreds and thousands of people who have looked at Judd as a shining example of a footballer with a brain, only to now know he and his eye-gouging, pressure-point loving ways make him no better than the rest of us.

Will we ever look at him the same? Will we be able to love him like we always have? Will we still be able to wear a low cut red dress and prance around in front of the mirror with our todger between our legs pretending to be Rebecca Twigley at the 2004 Brownlow Medal?

Last night the AFL tribunal did what we all knew they would in suspending Judd for three games for making unreasonable and unnecessary contact to the face of Brisbane's Michael Rischitelli during Saturday night’s elimination final.

The act itself seems so incongruous to a born leader who won a Brownlow, a premiership and, most importantly, Twigley all by the age of 23.

Carlton brought out the big guns in its defence of Judd, bringing in QC David Grace to uphold the great man’s reputation against what was plain for all to see were the actions of a dirty player.

"There was no intent to cause any harm whatsoever," Grace said of Judd's actions in lifting a statement directly from Dick Cheney’s autobiography entitled “The Joys of Water Boarding: It Only Sounds Like Torture”.

But AFL legal representative Jeff Gleeson, who spends his weekends informing small children that the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus aren’t real, did what he had to do and shattered the myth of Judd as some sort of super human with a better moral code than the rest of us.

"This wasn't in the play, Rischitelli would not have expected contact and could not have defended himself (as Judd was standing over him) and this was not an event that should have occurred on the football field," Gleeson said in a statement which does not rule out applying pressure point tactics in an Ultimate Fighter bout or an end of season trip involving NRL players and a drunk groupie pinned down on a bed in a cheap hotel room.

"I am obviously disappointed with the outcome but now we will go and assess our options and make further comment at a later date and that is all I can really say right now," Judd said after the tribunal’s ruling before leaving Best Clubman with one less hero and one more lonely night with the moisturiser, the hole in the fence and a mental picture of Therese Rein in a puffy shirt undone all the way to the waist.

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THE BIG BANG THEORY…

2009-09-06T15:01:00.000+10:00

Sunday, September 6, 2009

When news came through that Western Bulldogs livewire Jason Akermanis had decided to re-sign for another year, most people who witnessed Alan Toovey burn him off at Etihad Stadium six weeks ago assumed Aker had put pen to paper for another year at Nova, rather than for the Bulldogs.

Akermanis was recruited to the Bulldogs at the end of 2006 as the missing piece in the club’s premiership puzzle, which so far has returned a grand total of one terrible finals campaign in 2008.

At the time, some doubted the merits of the trade for the Bulldogs, with Akermanis over 30 and coming with a minor history of soft tissue injuries. However, the most entertaining personality in the league has proved surprisingly resilient, missing only four games since crossing to the club.

Over the same period of time, approximately zero people involved with the Brisbane Lions organisation have missed their former Brownlow medalist who, from the outside at least, seems about as annoying as an episode of The Big Bang Theory but, remarkably, even less funny.

The dynamic forward believes his body can handle another season. “A couple of weeks ago I got a strong impression that my time at the club was to be welcomed for another twelve months and that's always a nice feeling. I think that up until that point I'd just figured that I would retire at the end of the year as I was getting that feeling that they didn't want me.”

Providing more evidence that he is actually one of the better blokes of the AFL, Akermanis even suggested he would be willing to take a pay cut in order for the Bulldogs to re-sign defenders Brian Lake and Ryan Hargarve to further help the team’s premiership ambitions.

"I think they will re-sign Brian and the same with Ryan Hargrave ... it's not so much about money rather the will, the want and the enjoyment and that's there, we can work out all the facts and figures later," Akermanis said.

Hopefully for the fans and media alike, all this means the continually entertaining Aker can remain one of the few players worth listening to and one less example of the usual football-speak offal espoused by people like Ross Lyon, Dean Bailey and Brett Ratten, whose dull, dreary, cliché-laden method of speaking has forced the state coroner to add an extra box entitled “Suicide after interviewing AFL coach or player” under the “cause” section of death certificates.

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EYELASH REMOVAL…

2009-09-01T00:11:00.000+10:00

Tuesday, September 1, 2009-10-09

Ah September. That time of year when the sun comes out, the grounds harden up, the finals begin, and Richmond officials go on holidays and start working on walking into a room at Etihad Stadium during trade week and asking “Anyone want Richard Tambling or Jay Schulz?” while maintaining a straight face.

For the first time in a while, Essendon will be a part of the finals, offering players like Brent Stanton the opportunity to kick sideways spinning drop punts on a much grander stage.

Unfortunately for the Bombers, they will do so without the services of skipper Matthew Lloyd, upcoming ruckman Paddy Ryder and tortoise-like midfielder Sam Lonergan, all of whom have been suspended after Saturday’s spiteful clash with Hawthorn.

Essendon have decided to not challenge the penalties handed down to their three troops on the basis that Brad Sewell now communicates via an Etch-A-Sketch after being hit high by Lloyd, Ryder was seen clearly jumper punching Luke Hodge in the most incriminating footage not featuring Brendan Fevola urinating on a nightclub window, and Lonergan’s ability is such that the club couldn’t justify the cab fare from Windy Hill to AFL headquarters at Docklands to challenge the penalty.

Coach Matthew Knights indicated that Lloyd himself agreed not to challenge his four-game suspension for his head-high bump on Sewell, which was unexpected given the furore surrounding the incident suggested most people thought the penalty was against the spirit of the game in the same way as St. Kilda’s style of football.

"We support Matthew's decision and obviously there has been a huge focus on head-high and I think Matthew felt himself that it was done and dusted in many ways because head-high contact is a nasty part of our game at the moment and there's a real big focus on it," Knights said.

While most people thought the Bombers would challenge Lloyd’s penalty as a show of support for their long-serving spearhead, the decision to accept the ban makes sense given Lloyd stood about as much chance of getting off as Barry Hall did after claiming he was just removing an eyelash that wouldn’t budge from Brent Staker’s cheek that had been bothering him all game.

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COLOMBIAN MARCHING POWDER…

2009-08-25T23:39:00.000+10:00

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

The AFL tribunal has reinforced St. Kilda being undefeated through 20 rounds and Andy Maher occupying four prominent roles in the football media already told us – the game of AFL as we know it is dead.

In upholding the match review panel’s decision to suspend Hawthorn spearhead Buddy Franklin for his perfectly executed bump on Tiger Ben Cousins, the tribunal has laid the foundation for next year’s AFL marketing campaign to contain the slogan “Now with NO physical contact”.

Franklin’s penalty was extended to two matches after initially only getting one week from the match review panel, making Franklin the third highest profile victim of gambling in the football industry behind David Schwarz and Simon Goodwin, who incidentally had five large bet on Franklin getting off and is now so in debt he’s decided to feature in those chip ads with Dale Thomas in order to a raise a couple of extra bucks.

While Franklin clearly made high contact with Cousins, most observers with a passing interest in the game had assumed the bump was legal as it occurred in play and Franklin had his elbow tucked into his body, meaning Cousins injury only occurred because of the disparity in heights between the parties being the equivalent to Aaron Sandilands trying to get a leg over Pink in the sack.

Hawthorn football manager Mark Evans tried to rationale the club’s decision to pursue the matter further. "We decided last night that we will contest the findings of the Match Review Panel and go to the Tribunal."

As for Cousins, when pressed for his recollection of the clash, his account was a little sketchy. "I was playing and my next memory was sitting on the bench," Cousins said. "I have no memory of it."

When asked to better describe the light-headedness and short-term memory loss associated with the bump, Cousins estimated that it was somewhere close to the former after a night out with 12 vodka and Red Bulls, two lines of Colombian marching powder, and a quart of ice.

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KING HIT…

2009-08-22T23:38:00.000+10:00

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Unlucky Richmond tall Graham Polak hasn’t played at AFL standard for 420 days, which is exactly three more days than teammate Jake King, who has managed to squeeze in nine games in that period for the Tigers.

That will all end this weekend when possibly the best and most heart-warming story of this AFL season reaches it end when Polak takes to the field tonight after suffering significant head injuries after being hit by a tram last year.

Polak has showed terrific courage and strength to return to the field. Amazingly, the former first round draft pick can even laugh about the incident now. "I laugh about it now. I know it was a serious (accident), but I can't sit there and let it get me down my whole life," Polak said yesterday.

The incident occurred when Polak tried to run in front of a tram near Armadale road late on a Saturday night. Unfortunately, Polak’s was unable to avoid the oncoming tram travelling – a vehicle that travels at low speed and is unable to make any lateral movements, making it eerily similar to performing tackling drills with Troy Simmonds at Tigers training.

Polak was placed in an induced coma with doctors worried he would not survive, let alone play football at any level again. Upon awakening from his coma, Polak is alleged to have believed the year was 2029 and asked medicos whether Richmond had made the finals again since he’d been asleep.

"I have to get over it some time. I laugh and say, 'How can I get hit by a tram that's stuck on two tracks?'. It was a silly thing of mine, but I've got a good story to tell my kids and grandkids."

The journey culminates tonight when Polak dons his new protective helmet and takes to the field against Hawthorn, making him the second player to take to the field after suffering a significant brain injury after Brendan Fevola.

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“THANK YOU FOR COACHING”…

2009-08-19T23:37:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

New North Melbourne coach Brad Scott has reportedly secured the job within 30 minutes of being interviewed at Arden Street. Initial reports suggest this rapid timeframe may have been because he was the best man for the job, while others suggest it was because he was parked in a 30 minute zone due to the club not being able to afford its own car park and being unable to reimburse Scott any parking fine should he not rotate his car before the arrival of parking inspectors.

Scott was the last of four shortlisted candidates to be interviewed, which included stand-in coach Darren Crocker, Hawthorn assistant Damian Hardwick, and Scott’s jutted chin, which makes him look like the lovechild of Brendan Fevola and Popeye.

Kangaroos chief executive Don Eugene Arocca informed the media that Crocker would continue to coach the side for the remainder of the season. He also denied any knowledge of any Mafia-related unsolved crimes during Melbourne between the years of 1994 and 2005.

This situation must be difficult for Crocker, who is now forced to coach out the season in full knowledge that Scott will be taking over and is looking on in the stands, which is kind of like your lady friend announcing her next boyfriend to you three weeks before she decides to break up and having him watch your performance in the bedroom so he can gain an insight into how things are done around here.

"We had a 2 1/2-hour meeting with Brad, we continued our own talks after that and it was unanimous and very prompt," Arocca said. “This bloke came to us and talked about the science of football, the physiology of football, his desire to learn more.”

In addition to these attributes, Scott is thought to have secured the position due to him having his own stationary and agreeing to buy his own Footy Record every week without claiming it as a work-related expense.

The clincher for Scott was a 30-minute overhead presentation outlining what he’d learned in his time as a player under Leigh Matthews and as an assistant coach at Collingwood with Mick Malthouse, two of the modern coaching greats.

The North selection panel then held follow-up talks with Scott over sandwiches and coffee, during which the new coach suitably impressed to be offered the position so quickly. Also in his favour was the fact Scott brought the sandwiches, which was handy given North Melbourne has no cafeteria or vending machines in the tent that houses its administration, and the sole contents of the petty cash tin at reception was` $6.15 in coins and Wayne Schimmelbusch’s “Thank you for coaching” certificate with a post-it note on the front reading “Coming in to collect from reception 11/4/93”.

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GIRL GUSHING LIQUID ALL OVER HER MAN…

2009-08-17T23:36:00.000+10:00

Monday, August 17, 2009

The female Brisbane Lions fan who doused Bulldogs skipper Brad Johnson in beer at the end of Saturday night’s match has made an apology for her unusual behaviour, stating that she is remorseful that she drenched Johnson in liquid and ruined his night by getting him wet, all before he’d had the chance to go to the rooms after the game and get drenched in Powerade after singing the team song.

Commenting on male-female interactions isn’t really Best Clubman’s bag. Shucks, getting served by a reasonably attractive waitress at a restaurant is cause enough for us to change our Facebook status to “It’s complicated”.

But even we could tell that Johnson, possibly the happiest and most smiling man on the planet not named Larry Emdur, didn’t deserve the treatment who deserved from the clearly inebriated lady. Such behaviour, much like the content of twin Channel 7 fizzers Double Take and TV Burp, is no laughing matter.

The only good to come from the incident is the girl’s sincere apology, as well as Best Clubman, in researching this story, having a legitimate reason to type “girl gushing liquid all over her man” into a search engine on a work computer and watching the resulting videos on YouPorn.

In reality, the Johnson incident was bizarre, with the Bulldogs man being dunked in the Lord’s liquid while handing out caps to the four Bulldogs fans who bothered to make the trip up north, before he admirably looked at the girl and walked away without retaliating.

The video footage then shows the girl mouthing the words “I got him” into her mobile phone and laughing with her boyfriend standing next to her, which seems like unusual behaviour to most of us but may indeed be just another Queensland custom the rest of us are unaware of just like not bothering to have a senate in state parliament, dropping the letter “g” off the end of doing words, and engaging in overt racism.

The Lions released a statement informing the media that the fan, a Sydneysider holding a Victorian-based Lions membership, had apologised and had also agreed to a series of behavioural conditions in order to maintain her membership and attend future games.

Amongst these conditions was an undertaking to never repeat the behaviour again at future AFL matches, sending the offendee a full apology letter, and making a donation to a charity of the offendee’s choice.

To those in the footballing industry, such an agreement is known as a “Fevola” and comes in a class case labelled “not to be used unless in case of an emergency and/or the day after a heavy night on the sauce”.

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KINSHASA FC…

2009-08-12T23:35:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The Sydney Swans have elected to copy the coaching succession plan of Collingwood by having current coach Paul Roos hand the reins over to assistant John Longmire in 2011 or the next time the Swans score over 100 points in two consecutive matches, whichever comes first.

Until today’s announcement, Longmire had been on a shortlist for the senior coaching position at North Melbourne and was to be interviewed early this week. So, with the prospect of taking over at Arden Street with its dilapidated facilities and wafer-thin playing stocks, Longmire made the logical decision and bolted for the Swans position, thereby consigning himself to coaching a club with wafer-thin playing stocks but with facilities that don’t resemble those of Kinshasa FC.

Longmire has been offered an initial two-year contract. “I'm naturally thrilled about it,” he said in that monotone, expressionless manner of his which suggests he is either under the influence of a heavy sedative or has just had the misfortune of watching the Swans play their ultra negative brand of football every week for the last eight years.

"I've been working closely with Roosy for eight years and (football department head) Andrew (Ireland) as well so I think the football department is really set up," Longmire continued while handing the microphone back, sideways, back again and then back even further to other people at the press conference, in order to mirror the woeful game plan the Swans have employed in the last decade.

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HEY HEY, IT’S SATURDAY…

2009-08-09T23:34:00.000+10:00

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Years after losing his humility, his confidence, his ability and, finally, the confidence of the Essendon Football Club, the tragic story of former Bomber Damian Cupido now shows that he has been losing $1,000 per week on gambling.

Unlike Cupido’s ability to handball or perform under pressure when faced with even the slightest bodily contact from an opponent, Cupido’s descent into financial oblivion due to gambling addiction is no laughing matter.

Since being delisted by the Bombers at the end of 2005, concluding a 53-game career that didn’t go anywhere close to fulfilling his massive potential and even greater ego, Cupido has been plying his trade in the SANFL.

As if being forced to move to Adelaide wasn’t punishment enough for Cupido’s inability to apply himself to training and fitness at AFL level, the poor guy now finds himself wasting $1,000 per week on punting on the horses.

The irony of Cupido losing such significant amounts is that he accrued this money while wasting $3,000-$4,000 of Essendon’s money each week during the 2004 and 2005 seasons following a decent year in 2003 after crossing over from Brisbane.

Cupido has returned home to Melbourne and begun counseling to help him fight his illness, with the goal of applying himself to these sessions to an extent far greater than his application at training while in the AFL.

He said leaving Adelaide was the only way he could “be healthy again”, which is a sentiment shared by anyone who’s had the misfortune of spending more than 48 consecutive hours in the City of Churches will attest to.

Not surprisingly, Cupido only began gambling after moving to Adelaide, given the city’s nightlife and cultural events are about as entertaining as the upcoming Hey Hey, It’s Saturday reunion shows promise to be.

"Two-and-a-half years ago, I didn't know how to put a bet on," Cupido said. "I didn't know what to back, didn't have a clue, didn't want to go into a TAB,” he said before Best Clubman was unable to think of a witty analogy or one-liner to end what is really a very sad story.

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THE CATCH UP…

2009-08-04T23:33:00.000+10:00

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Best Clubman never really understood why Collingwood coach Michael Malthouse is so revered as one of the elite coaches of modern times. With a measly two premierships from 26 years of senior coaching Malthouse doesn’t have that much to boast about. And his legacy is even sketchier when you remember that his sides are about as fun to watch as those Ricky Ponting ads for Suisse vitamins.

After signing that controversial hand-over agreement with Nathan Buckley, whereby Buckley will assume the senior coaching role at the Magpies in 2012, at which point Malthouse will become the director of coaching, many people are speculating whether these best laid plans will come undone.

Malthouse isn’t exactly dousing the flames of the fire, telling radio station SEN yesterday that he can’t guarantee he will see out his three-year term as coaching director once Buckley assumes the top job if another club offers him a senior position.

While the chances of this are slim considering the hiring of coaches over the age of 40 by AFL clubs remains as popular as Channel 9’s The Catch Up, Malthouse’s words mustn’t inspire a high degree of confidence amongst the Collingwood faithful.

The details of Malthouse’s agreement with Collingwood are believed to be rather ambiguous, with neither party sure of exactly what will happen.

Staring Malthouse in the face is the fact that he voluntarily just put a two-year limit on his coaching career, which may be hard for him to digest, but probably less so for long-suffering Pies supporters seeking another premiership, not to mention football journalists with the temerity to ask “annoying” questions of Malthouse in post-game press conferences such as “Happy with the result?”, “Good win today, Mick?” and “Why the hell has Leigh Brown not been dropped at least once during the season?”

One man who was forced to suffer through a similar experience is former Hawthorn coach Peter Schwab, who had coaching legend David Parkin appointed to oversee his last years as Hawks coach. Although he never had the misfortune of being forced to pencil Leigh Brown’s name into the team sheet 30 minutes before the game.

Schwab said he was “dubious” such an agreement could work and it would be difficult for Malthouse to vacate his position if the Magpies achieve a degree of success in the next two years.

Malthouse himself speculated on his ability to leave Collingwood after winning a flag in 2011. "I am contracted to Collingwood for the next three years after that,” Malthouse deadpanned in his usual manner.

If he is somehow able to land the Pies a flag by 2011, considering their average list and turgid game plan that hugs the boundary at all costs, Malthouse may like to focus his attention on achieving other impossible feats such as discovering a cure for AIDS and fitting Eddie McGuire’s head through the neckhole of a non-button-up shirt.

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DRUNKEN DUMP IN A HOTEL CORRIDOR…

2009-08-01T23:29:00.000+10:00

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Best Clubman’s attempts at breaking the big news stories before all of the major media outlets have been less successful than Elton John’s attempts at living as a heterosexual. So we won’t even pretend that we broke the story about Karmichael Hunt defecting from the NRL to accept a contract with the new AFL Gold Coast franchise.

But what we can lay claim to is that, if you look at this picture and then compare it to this picture, Karmichael Hunt may actually be Guy Sebastian sans the trademark afro.

However, this celebrity spot-up falls under the weight of close scrutiny when you remember that Sebastian is a devout Christian who waited until he was married to share his first sexual experience, whereas Hunt shared one of his many sexual experiences with a groupie in the first disabled toilet cubicle he and two of his Brisbane Broncos teammates could find in 2008.

What this all means for Hunt, the Gold Coast franchise and the AFL is anyone’s guess, but for NRL chief David Gallop, a man whose unbridled optimism and enthusiasm in the face of overwhelming scandal is to be admired, believes Hunt’s flight to the AFL “doesn’t mean the sky is falling in”.

A more prosaic view would suggest that Hunt’s skill set will be hard to replace for the NRL, with its pool of players with a rapid fire quickstep significantly reduced. Although its pool of people with a record of allegedly participating in unwanted group sex scandals remains at Cancun levels.

Unlike Nate Myles’ decision to take a drunken dump in the middle of a corridor at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Terrigal in full view of other guests, Gallop believes Hunt’s decision to switch codes is not a sign of underlying problems within the game of rugby league and doesn’t stain the brand in a manner similar to that of the carpet at the Crowne Plaza.

"This is an individual decision, the sky is not falling - only a week ago we had Timana Tahu coming back to rugby league," Gallop said without explaining what a Timana Tahu is.

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FINALS CAPITULATIONS FOR DUMMIES…

2009-07-28T23:03:00.000+10:00

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

In the least logical decision since they decided to add Scott Cummings to an already top-heavy forward including Anthony Rocca, Jarrod Molloy and Chris Tarrant in 2002, Nathan Buckley has accepted an assistant coaching position at Collingwood with a guarantee to succeed current coach Mick Malthouse in 2012.

Having two men working together with notoriously large egos who like things done their way or not at all is a massive gamble and, for Collingwood’s sake, better produce greater output than Cummings managed with his total of 13 possessions in five games for the Pies, with his only long-lasting legacy being that current Magpie players now have an extra 200 cubic litres of space in the club spa that was added to accommodate Cummings’ ample girth.

As part of the deal, Malthouse has extended his senior coaching contract by two years, which will take him out to 12 seasons as coach of the Magpies without once tasting ultimate success. This unfruitful stint should leave him in prime position to assume leadership of the Victorian Liberal Party in 2012.

In actuality, upon Buckley assuming the head job in 2012, Malthouse will become the club’s director of coaching from 2012-14, which gives Best Clubman three more seasons to work out a pun that includes the words “Nathan Buckley”, “Eddie McGuire” and “head job” without sounding smutty or forced.

This succession plan is the first of its kind in AFL, although, just like shin guards, racism in the form of supporters throwing banana peels at black players on the other team, and feigning injury after seemingly innocuous incidents, it is quite common in soccer… sorry, the World Game™.

The Collingwood board signed off on the unique agreement last night despite the fact Buckley’s coaching experience does not extend beyond taking three training sessions with the under 18’s at the AIS and unsuccessfully teaching Simon Prestigiacomo how to kick a drop punt between 1996 and 2007.

According to Malthouse, the succession plan will serve the interests of all parties concerned. “One of the great things about this appointment is that it gives me another two years with these young players with what we’ve tried to achieve,” he said at a hastily arranged press conference while handing Buckley a well worn copy of “Finals Capitulations For Dummies”.

As for Buckley, he can’t wait to return to his former home, for no other reason than it means he will now spend less time in confined spaces with David Schwarz in the Channel 7 commentary box.

“I’ve come back to a club that I have enormous emotional ties to," Buckley said, echoing the same sentiment Alan Didak experiences whenever he drives down King Street.

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JUMPIN JAI TAURIMA…

2009-07-27T23:01:00.000+10:00

Monday, July 27, 2009

In news that should have Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson running out to purchase more of whatever material it is that he uses to compose that massive chip on his shoulder, Essendon has lured Hawks CEO Ian Robson to the Bombers.

Unfortunately for Hawthorn, when it comes to off-field personnel movements, the AFL does not permit trades between clubs, meaning the only thing the ol’ Mayblooms will be getting in return is the Bombers’ title as the club with the two least worthiest All-Australians in recent history, with Campbell Brown (2007) and Trent Croad (2005) far exceeding Adam McPhee (2004) and Jason Johnson (2002) in terms of ineptitude.

The movement of Robson to Essendon continues a long and proud tradition of major exchanges between the two clubs, which includes Paul Salmon, Jonathon Robran, and Richie Vandenburg’s fists with McPhee’s head in the infamous “line in the sand” game of 2004.

Robson begins as CEO at the end of the season, replacing long-serving Essendon CEO Peter Jackson who is vacating his position due to a misunderstanding between the Bombers and Quit Victoria, which required all workplaces to remove their Peter Jacksons in order to comply with anti-smoking health and safety legislation. Zing.

Essendon president Ray Horsburgh, owner of a neck so large that Andrew Demetriou’s father had to jog his memory to see if he may have accidentally impregnated another woman and inadvertently given Demetriou an extra sibling 50 years ago, was positively brimming about the new appointment at the club.

“At Essendon we are following a similar football and business strategy to that of Hawthorn – including focusing on bringing through a young playing group together,” Horsburgh said via the club’s website only minutes before having his gastric band replaced.

While privately seething, Hawthorn had to perform their contractually obligated clichéd duties to wish their former employee well in his new position no matter how much they wish his career suffers the same rapid decline as that of Jumpin Jai Taurima’s after claiming Silver in the Long Jump at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

“Ian has served the club well over the last five years , we thank him for his contribution to the team that delivered our 10th premiership last year, and we wish him well at Essendon,” Hawks president Jeff Kennett wailed in a statement more predictable than Andy Maher asking every non-AFL guest on his SEN radio program “So, have you seen the local game? What do you think of it?”

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HARRY & THE HENDERSONS…

2009-07-27T22:57:00.000+10:00

Monday, July 27, 2009

During the course of the 2009 season, the Richmond Football Club have managed to kill the club’s spirit, their finals chances, the coaching career of Terry Wallace, and the will to live of their long-suffering supporters.

Now, if you believe AFL head cheese Andrew Demetriou, the Tigers have once and for all killed the tanking debate having defeated Essendon yesterday at the MCG.

The victory over the Bombers means Richmond have now recorded more than the 4.5 wins required for a club to forfeit its right to a priority pick at the end of the season, a selection which the Tigers recruiting department had set aside for either the re-drafting of Aaron Fiora, Richard Tambling’s younger brother, or a cardboard cutout of Danny Del Ray.

In addition to representing one of the worst displays of AFL football seen in two decades, Demetriou believes yesterday’s Richmond-Essendon match represents the final proof we need to boldly declare that tanking does not exist.

On evidence this flimsy, presumably Demetriou also believes that anecdotal reports on the existence of Bigfoot can be confirmed as true after he watched Harry & The Hendersons on DVD over the course of the weekend.

The win by the Tigers has Demetriou believing that all clubs, players and coaches genuinely set out to win every match of the season. This conveniently overlooks the fact that Richmond have played Jake King in three consecutive matches since their finals chances mathematically expired in Round 14 which, to the impartial eye, would seem to be conclusive proof that tanking is alive and well.

"There's no concern over it at our place, I think Richmond tanked terribly yesterday, they won," Demetriou said today in showcasing that he does sarcasm and comedy about as well as he does dieting.

Having dispensed with the comedy, Demetriou continued with some more taciturn statements. "I would be interested in the response with Richmond winning yesterday, what does that actually mean, does that dispel any myths? I suspect people who are more sensible will say yes,” he said in a statement that leaves Best Clubman unsure was to whether he was or wasn’t including Mike Sheahan as one of the people who’d agree with him.

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PHIL COLLINS’ BACKING BAND…

2009-07-21T22:50:00.000+10:00

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

When we heard that Fremantle players Des Headland and Michael Walters had been caught up in a police investigation following an incident at a Perth hotel on Sunday morning, the first thing Best Clubman could think of was why would police be investigating Brisbane’s theft of the third pick in the 2002 draft from the Dockers in exchange for the hapless Headland? The second thing we thought of was who the hell is Michael Walters?

Perth police are investigating the role of Headland and Walters in a brawl during the wee hours of Sunday morning, sending a message to the general Perth public that common assault is not acceptable unless it’s committed by Dale Kickett on Phil Reid in a Derby game in 2000.

Following a brawl alleged to have involved 10-20 people at a taxi rank, a police spokesperson suggested that neither of the players have yet been charged as a result of the incident, which suggests no crime may have actually been committed beyond the fact that Headland has one AFL premiership to his name while players the ilk of Gary Lyon, Robert Harvey, Nathan Buckley, Matthew Richardson and David Neitz have none.

Attention now turns to what, if any, punishment Dockers management will levy on their wayward players given their hardline stance from earlier in the year when Brett Peake and Dean Solomon were both internally rubbed out for one match following relatively minor incidents.

Currently, Headland is recovering from a hamstring injury, while first-year player Walters has been plying his trade in the WAFL like most Docker recruits do before flopping on the big stage. Hence, any suspension dished out by the club could be as meaningless as Headland’s career since leaving Brisbane.

Long-suffering Fremantle skipper Matthew Pavlich, a man forced to endure teammates of such pitiful talent that only someone hired to work in Phil Collins’ backing band would understand, managed to turn his attention away from the real estate section of the Adelaide Advertiser long enough to comment on the penalty the club may impose on Headland and Walters.

"We handle all these situations by a case-by-case scenario," Pavlich said in a comment that gave us as about as much information as a Herald-Sun article on geo-politics, the Iraq war or climate change.

Not perturbed by Pavlich’s initial blandness, the media hung around for another comment. "The players have to make the correct decisions and not sort of be robots, but ensure they make the correct decisions of times and places and things like that," he said in what may have been a description of Headland’s on-field problems as well as what he gets up to of a weekend.

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COOL RUNNINGS…

2009-07-18T22:44:00.000+10:00

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Wednesday night’s all-in brawl at the end of the third NRL State of Origin match reminded us of the good old days – a time when professional footballers expressed their visceral, physical emotion as a group on the field rather than in a hotel room on an end of season trip while giving a drunk groupie more than she bargained for when she agreed to go home with Andrew Johns after six Breezers and a puff on a communal joint.

Like Best Clubman, AFL management loves nothing more than taking a poke at the NRL’s expense and an incident like this gives Andrew Demetriou, the league’s chief executive and the fattest man to occupy a position of responsibility since John Candy took the Jamaican bobsled team to the Winter Olympics in Cool Runnings, a chance to get all “that wouldn’t happen in our game” on us.

What most people, including Demetriou, are staggered by is the fact that not one was suspended over the brawl, unlike in AFL where league management has deemed it necessary to rub players out for brutish acts like incidental contact with an umpire, shirtfronting an opponent and listening to the music of Flo Rida.

Adopting his typical pompous stance when criticising the NRL in front of the collected media, Demetriou said a brawl like the one that erupted in State of Origin III would no longer happen in the AFL, probably because the limp hang-onto-the-ball-without-forfeiting-possession-at-all-costs game plan being exhibited by every club not named Geelong or Essendon means opposition players no longer come within 15 metres of each other during the game.

“Yes … of course it (surprised me), but I can’t speak for that code. I’m not sure why someone sees some benefit in that ... the thought of seeing someone laying prostrate on the ground, unconscious, it really terrifying,” Demetriou said.

Part of the juxtaposition between the two codes stems from cultural differences. For instance, in Sydney, Tim Bailey from Channel 10 still retains a social profile in nightclubs all along the north shore, whereas the more sophisticated Melbourne only bestows such high social status on Eric Bana, Rachel Griffiths and the talentless offspring of Bert and Pattie Newton.

Similarly, in Sydney, violence between men with excessive testosterone levels occurs on the field, instead of in its rightful place on the streets of Melbourne’s CBD at 4am or on a junior sporting oval in Sunshine when a drunken father attacks a pubescent umpire officiating at his kid’s under-8’s match because of his dubious interpretation of the kicking in danger rule.

Whatever your preference of footballing code, anyone who says they dislike seeing a bit of biff between players plying their skills at the highest level is a liar. But just like the company of a wife, girlfriend or significant other, the presence of a rumble on the field is tolerable when consumed in small doses.

Unfortunately for AFL, the over policing of all forms of on-field physical conduct has seen the occasional scrap go the way of the contested mark, quick movement of the ball into the forward line and Troy Simmonds’ career and become extinct.

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WORKING HARD FROM BEHIND…

2009-07-16T22:42:00.000+10:00

Thursday, July 16, 2009

In news that should have current North Melbourne captain Brent Harvey seeking quotes from local blacksmiths for the production of a chastity belt for his wife, former premiership captain Wayne Carey is inching his way back to returning to the club, unlike in 2002 when he was forced to depart the club after being caught inching his way into Anthony Stevens’ wife.

No one at North is exactly certain what role Carey would undertake should he return, but the Duck’s track record suggests some kind of pastoral role may not be appropriate.

Carey’s initial comments suggest that he may like to become an assistant coach at the club next year, particularly if current caretaker, and former premiership teammate, Darren Crocker gets the job on a permanent basis.

"I am good mates with Darren Crocker and Rocky (assistant coach Anthony Rock) and get along well with (football manager) Donald McDonald and all the guys that are involved there," Carey told Adelaide radio station 5AA.

Having a full-time job as an assistant to take up next year would be a terrific step in Carey rehabilitating his life, giving him six months to get even further back on track to a position of credibility, while giving Best Clubman six months to find another line of comedy after squeezing the life out of Carey’s 2002 run in with Kelli Stevens to within an inch of its life.

In the meantime, Carey has offered to “share his secrets” with North’s current crop of youngsters. "I'm more than willing to have a chat to some of the key forwards down at the club and that may happen later on in the year."

The Duck will no doubt be imparting wisdom such as play the corridor, work hard from behind and hunt in numbers. Word has it that Carey may also be dishing out advice for use beyond the bedroom.

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THE NEXT PETER RHODE…

2009-07-16T01:40:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

In his time as a Richmond playing legend, Wayne Campbell managed the remarkable feat of captaining a side featuring Steven Sziller to a preliminary final.

Sadly, this achievement wasn’t able to give Campbell the confidence to believe he could be the next coach of his beloved Tigers, with news coming to hand that he has withdrawn his application from the race for the top job in 2010.

The collective relief felt by long-suffering Richmond fans at news of Campbell pulling out of the selection process must be something similar to that experienced by viewers of Dancing With The Stars upon hearing that judge Todd McKenney had agreed to remove that ridiculous goatee that looks like it was painted on with a moist dog turd by some prankster while he was passed out in a public park after a big night out on the “G”.

"I just think I'm not quite ready," Campbell said in revealing that, in his opinion, 297 games, four best and fairest medals and two All-Australian awards didn’t outweigh the fact that during the mid-90s he wore an on-field ponytail even worse than the one sported by Robert De Niro in Cape Fear.

"I reckon I'm about 80 per cent, and that's nowhere near enough”, Campbell whined about what we think was his desire to coach but may in fact have been his all-time losing percentage as a player in some of the worst AFL teams seen since University decided not to field a team from 1915 onwards.

While the prospect of putting magnets containing the names “McMahon”, “Pettifer”, “Oakley-Nicholls”, “King”, “Schulz” and “Hughes” in the one lineup would stiffen the front of the trousers of most aspiring coaches, it seems Campbell believes he needs to extend his apprenticeship as an assistant coach until either he’s fully ready or Nathan Brown retires to ensure he isn’t forced to coach the league’s biggest underachiever, whichever comes first.

And with all that, Fremantle’s Mark Harvey now loses his one chance of becoming the second-worst coach in the league and must continue his role as coach most likely to become the next Peter Rhode.

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DOUBLE TAKE…

2009-07-14T01:19:00.000+10:00

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

When the run of play is going against them, Port Adelaide players seem to work about as hard for their money as Chris Judd does at Visy.

Never was this more evident than during the club’s terrible loss on the weekend to bottom-placed Melbourne in what was the worst performance by a favourite since John Hewson led the federal Liberal Party to a momentous defeat at the “un-losable” 1993 election.

Power coach Mark Williams has labeled the team’s performance as “embarrassing” but has reiterated his desire to remain as coach of the club next season and his hope of signing a two-year contract extension this week.

A senior coach going in to ask management for a contract renewal after Sunday’s performance is the worst case of bad timing Best Clubman can recall, with the possible exception of Nathan Brown leaving the Bulldogs at the end of 2003 in order to go to Richmond for some finals action.

With Brown not having played in a final since 2000, it can only be hoped Williams’ future is a little rosier. The man himself believes the weekend’s loss will not affect his negotiations and said there were only a "few things that need to be sorted through" before he re-signed with the club.

Without directly naming these “few things”, it is believed Williams was referring to Peter Burgoyne and Danyle Pearce and their ability to look about as excited to be there when the chips are down as Best Clubman is at the impending arrival on Channel 7 of yet another fine sketch comedy series in Double Take, which will no doubt join a long list of abysmal Australian skit comedy shows that includes Skithouse, Big Bite, Comedy Inc., Comedy Inc. – The Late Shift, and anything featuring Shane Crawford on The Footy Show.

The delay in Williams signing his new deal has “got nothing to do with finances,” which is just as well as the Power don’t appear to have any and are asking Williams to take a massive pay cut.

According to Williams, the contract hold up is because “there's just a couple of little things to work through and the problem is that you only get limited time in a week to get a little space to reflect on that”, which is true as the spare time one has during the week is precious and just decreased by one hour with the imminent screening of the take-the-phone-off-the-hook comedy of Burp TV on Channel 7, which actually manages to look like it will be worse than Double Shift if early adverts are anything to go by.

"It's a pretty major decision both for the club and me moving forward so you want to spend some time on it. And my manager Ricky (Nixon) is over here (in Melbourne), which makes it more difficult," Williams said which suggests the mediums of phone, internet, email, instant messaging, courier and carrier pigeon may not have reached Adelaide yet.

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THE LOVECHILD OF GEORGE COSTANZA AND SOLOMON LEW…

2009-07-14T00:32:00.000+10:00

Monday, July 13, 2009

How charmed is the life of Tom Harley? Not only has he been able to achieve the rare distinction of captaining a premiership side despite being about as talented as Austin McCrab, he’s also been able to achieve the even rarer distinction of actually becoming better looking after going bald. A curse on him we say.

When this article alerted us to the fact that, pending any unforeseen setbacks between now and the end of the year, Harley is all set to achieve another great milestone, Best Clubman initially assumed this meant Harley was going to play on someone other than the opposition’s fifth-best forward and avoid the embarrassing spectacle from the weekend of watching Harry Taylor and Tom Lonergan being forced to play on studs like Jonathan Brown and Daniel Bradshaw.

But no, the achievement in question is that, should the Cats make it all the way to this year’s grand final, Harley is all set to play game number 200 on the last Saturday in September.

A month ago this seemed like a gimme. Unfortunately for Harley, the Cats making it through to the grand final is now not a certainty after they made like Germany in world wars and just lost two in a row.

This achievement is also predicated on the event that Harley goes through the remaining 10 games of the season (seven home-and-away matches and three finals) uninjured, which is a distinct possibility considering the last time he maintained physical pressure on a direct opponent of any quality was when he last had a full head of hair.

The mad rush for Harley to reach his 200th match has come to a head with speculation suggesting the Cats skipper is set to retire at season’s end and move to Sydney to be with his fiancé rather than face the weekly winter grind of playing on opponents the caliber of Mitch Thorp and Chris Dawes.

Harley’s former teammate Peter Riccardi reckons the chance for a fairytale ending might be enough for Harley to give it away at the end of the season, although this might run a close third in terms of reasons for him to quit after ability and form.

"Reading between the lines, it sounds as if this will be his last year. He is getting married at the end of the year and he will probably make a decision on it then," Riccardi said. “It all depends on how his body feels. I got talked into playing another year to try to play 300 (games), but I knew myself my body wasn't right and I only played six games (in 2006).”

While the former Geelong wingman with the raking left foot makes a good point about Harley not wanting to playing on when physically incapable, this overlooks the fact that RIccardi played the last 12 years of his career with a degenerative neck condition arising from years of lugging around that incredibly heavy mullet which weighed around two Brad Dick’s when it got wet.

This is obviously something Harley has not had to contend with given his bald pate makes him look like the lovechild of George Costanza and Solomon Lew.

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THE AFL’S FAVOURITE WEIRDO…

2009-07-13T13:55:00.001+10:00

Friday, July 10, 2009

Best Clubman hates prejudice and discrimination. The only thing we hate more is the blacks, the gays and the Jews.

Being serious for a second, the inherent ageism that has come with news that Kevin Sheedy, a man in his 60s, wants to coach Richmond next season has made us sick.

The only people at present who must know how Sheedy feels are those poor Indian students being assaulted on the streets of Melbourne, being bashed and discriminated against all because of the colour of their skin and the ridiculous notion that their passive nature makes them easy targets.

Oh how these Indian students must see Australia as a country full of prejudice and discrimination. All they ask for is a chance to come here and further their education so they can return home as better people to India, a country where people are only discriminated against based on their cast.

For whatever reason, the Tigers were not keen on Sheedy as their future coach from the get-go, a stance Sheedy evidently failed to recognise despite the rather obvious signal the club gave him by putting him on the sub-committee to choose the next coach.

What happened next is just plain sad, with Sheedy coming out in the media to proclaim his desire for the top job at Richmond and, in the process, sounding more desperate to stay in the spotlight than Hot Dogs from Big Brother.

The only person apparently oblivious to the fact that Richmond want a young coach is Sheedy, although he did cite support from three influential Richmond powerbrokers in former champion player Kevin Bartlett, former champion coach Tom Hafey, and former dud coach Kevin Bartlett, who just happens to be the former champion player, meaning Sheedy really only has two people stupid enough to visualise him waving a Tigers jacket over his head to whoop the crowd into a frenzy after a stirring come from behind win over Melbourne in Round 22, 2010 to wrap up another 15th-placed finish.

Sheedy’s enthusiasm has placed Richmond president Gary March in a difficult position. He knows he doesn’t want Sheedy. We know he doesn’t want Sheedy. Christ, even Sheedy knows he doesn’t want Sheedy.

So March has been forced to pretend that he’s “delighted” to have received Sheedy’s application, even denying claims that the current Tigers’ board would never appoint the AFL’s favourite weirdo in any situation other than a nuclear holocaust that resulted in the deaths of all candidates below the age of 77.

“The board doesn’t have any negativity towards anyone because we don’t get involved other than give (the sub-committee) the criteria that they’ve got to follow and the type of person we want to get,” March said in patronising both Sheedy and the general public before revealing the club’s coaching shortlist included the corpses of Ron Barassi Senior, Phonse Kyne, Jock McHale, John Coleman, Norm Smith, Napoleon and Ned Kelly, the last of whom is actually better by foot than Jake King.

March also denied allegations of ageism against older coaches by refuting claims that the job description sent to all prospective candidates included the ability to reverse park a car and maintain an erection without medical assistance... at the same time.

The Tiger president also said he had not “put a line” through any potential contenders and, even if he wanted to exclude Sheedy based on the simple fact he kept Mark Bolton on Essendon’s list for 10 seasons, he does not have the power to do this.

“Richmond Football Club is not Zimbabwe ... we don’t have a dictatorship. I don’t always get my way all the time … I don’t have that level of influence over other board members,” he said.

Comparing Richmond to Zimbabwe is a bit rich. After all, Zimbabwe have made the last seven one-day World Cups since 1983, which is much greater than anything the Tigers have achieved over the same period.

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SEMAPHORE AND AN ETCH-A-SKETCH…

2009-07-13T13:04:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The news that Barry Hall has retired isn’t amazing. What is amazing is that a man with the mental stability of Cornelia Rau somehow managed to control his temper long enough to play 250 very good games, become an All-Australian and captain a premiership side without being required to wear a muzzle and a straightjacket.

While Hall’s pummeling of a supine Ben Rutten against the Crows last weekend and subsequent three-game suspension was obviously the catalyst for his parting of ways with Sydney, Hall did not announce his retirement from football, meaning the chance he’ll play on for someone else next year will become one of football’s enduring mysteries along with how the hell Adelaide’s Scott Stevens is still in the league after eight seasons.

However, Hall did suggest that playing for anyone other than Sydney may be difficult. "I have been part of this club for eight years, it would be tough to run out against them," Hall said.

Presumably this reluctance would dissipate when it’s pointed out to Hall that Sydney would most likely play the stupendously soft Lewis Roberts-Thomson on him, no doubt resulting in a day out for the big thug.

At 32 years of age, Hall had to admit that he could no longer control his on-field aggression and engage in the kind of antics that would get him suspended and leave the Swans in the lurch, a situation not becoming of the club’s 2005 premiership captain – a game Hall shouldn’t have even played in given the pounding he gave to the rubs of St. Kilda’s Matt McGuire in the preliminary final the week before would have caused the AFL to suspend any player from a club that wasn’t in a “core growth” market.

"If I play on I can't promise there won't be another indiscretion ... there's a real risk for me and the football club if I do go on that things could turn ugly," he said.

With most people assuming Hall would immediately pursue a career in professional boxing, Hall suggested his next step was “unclear” and he needed a break before deciding. "Football for now is not a priority, (nor) is talking about boxing".

This means that, in the short-term at least, boxing can be put on the backburner as a possible career for Hall along with modeling when one considers Hall’s mug is about as easy on the eye as a Port Adelaide away jumper.

Sydney coach Paul Roos paid tribute to Hall’s contribution to the Swans. “It is definitely a sad day for the Sydney Swans Football Club - one of our greatest ever players has decided to retire - but I also think it must be a time of celebration, to reflect on what has been an outstanding career,” Roos said.

Meanwhile, Eagle utility Brent Staker did not comment on the retirement of the man who so viciously assaulted him in Round 4 last year.

It should be added that this was not because Staker had nothing to say about Hall, it’s just that since the incident Staker’s sole means of communication is via semaphore and an Etch-A-Sketch, which doesn’t translate well down the phone.

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BROWN SNAKE…

2009-07-13T13:01:00.001+10:00

Monday, July 6, 2009

The NRL is fast becoming like that Chris Rock joke about all comedians being obligated to forward 10 percent of their income to Michael Jackson as a thank you for all the jokes made at his expense. Jokes, which in the overblown hype surrounding the great one’s death, we probably won’t get to hear again for awhile… or at least until news breaks that sister Latoya Jackson is indeed a man.

Any aspiring wit worth their salt who can’t crack a funny gag about the misbehavior of NRL players in the current climate is either clinically dead or Ryan Shelton.

So what to make of the latest indiscretion by Sydney Rooster and Queensland Origin player Nate Myles and his $50,000 fine and six-match suspension for defecating on the floor of a Central Coast hotel while in a state of drunkenness not seen since Boris Yeltsin hosted a cocktail evening for Lindsay Lohan, Andrew Symonds and mid-90s NBA sensation Vin Baker.

This disgusting behaviour is a clear breach of NRL policy which requires all players staying in hotels to defecate on drunken teenage groupies while a pack of teammates cheer them on.

Myles was found naked and disoriented in a hotel corridor at 8am on Sunday morning after unsuccessfully attempting to gain entry into the room of a family who was staying in the hotel.

After the family refused his entry into their room, Myles was found to have snapped off a brown snake in the hotel corridor while the mother bemoaned the fact her horrified children had just had four hard years of potty training gone to waste after witnessing Myles’ carefree example of when it is and isn’t acceptable to use one’s bowels.

NRL chief David Gallop furiously denounced Myles behavior, imposing an immediate suspension before racing off to the head office of Sorbent to try and work this into some sort of sponsorship deal between the parties so that at least some good could come from this distasteful matter.

"There can be no ambiguity about the behaviour and there can be no excuse," Gallop said in adopting the same approach to unwanted defecation that ex-Mrs. Best Clubman adopted when four shots of absinthe sent Best Clubman to the canvas on our 30th birthday and caused us to accidentally leave a nugget in the relational bed during the night.

“The facts around the incident are clear and players have to accept personal responsibility. I respect the fact that Nate tried to make amends to the guests involved and that he rang me to apologise but saying sorry simply isn't enough”.

And, if this post from Best Clubman didn’t make you laugh, which is entirely likely, then surely the mental image of a repentant Nate Myles knocking on the door of the family later in the day to apologise for accidentally backing one out in the corridor in front of their room will.

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ALL TOGETHER NOW…

2009-07-04T15:01:00.000+10:00

Friday, July 3, 2009

Despite being as relevant in today’s world as Bush, both the turgid mid-90s British band and the two former US presidents, Kevin Sheedy says he wants to coach Richmond next year.

Sheedy has the support of former club greats Tom Hafey, Kevin Bartlett and Francis Bourke whose experience of modern AFL tactics and strategies consists, respectively, of replacing the “kick it bloody long to Rene Kink” game plan with “kick it long to Jake King”, hosting a morning radio show on SEN, and appearing in a Toyota AFL legendary moments advertisement.

Nostalgia is a powerful phenomenon. For instance, Best Clubman still pines for the year 1994 when our erection didn’t require a three-hour notice period and performed at least mildly respectably when called into action.

But that doesn’t mean 1994 was a good year. Closer scrutiny reminds us that we were just as unhappy and disillusioned with life, the AFL, the weather, women, our erection, Israeli-Palestinian politics, global warming, the ALP and Daryl Somers’ debatable position as Australia’s greatest ever entertainer.

No, it should be no great surprise that Sheedy was going to nominate for the job given his glittering playing career at the Tigers and almost unequaled success as coach at Essendon for 27 years – a period in which Richmond made the finals four times – nor that former club legends would relish the chance to have Sheedy return to the least successful enterprise since New Coke.

In fact, the only thing less surprising was our discovery that the bloke at the end of the panel next to Gary Lyon, Craig Hutchison and Grant Thomas was actually Caroline Wilson and not former All Together Now star Jon English. (Seriously, go to the 1:11 mark of this video and hit pause and you tell us if you can spot the difference)

"I don't like seeing Richmond down on the bottom for 25 years," Sheedy said in describing Richmond’s modern history of two finals appearances in 27 seasons which, depending on how you look at it, is either tragic or the longest period a club has tanked to obtain future draft picks.

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TWO IMPOVERISHED CHARITIES…

2009-07-02T16:11:00.000+10:00

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Two questions to ponder. 1) Does anyone, anywhere have a bad word to say about former Melbourne great and current president Jim Stynes? 2) Can cancer be funny?

The answer to the first questions seems to be an emphatic “NO” given that, other than for a 15-minute window after the 1987 preliminary final when Stynes ran through the mark after the siren and gifted Hawthorn a goal which cost the Demons a place in that year’s grand final, everyone loves the big Irishman.

And why wouldn’t they? In addition to be a ripping bloke with a dry wit and friendly demeanor, Stynes uses his spare time to help two of Australia’s most impoverished charities – the Reach Foundation helping teenagers at risk and the Melbourne Football Club helping footballers without the requisite skill to make it at the top level.

On the second issue, if the public reaction to The Chaser’s skits about the Make-A-Wish foundation is anything to go by, the answer is again an emphatic “NO”… but that hasn’t stopped Best Clubman from scraping the bottom of the barrel for some off-beat gags of the cheap and nasty variety which demean both the reader, the nation and ourselves.

Tragically, Stynes is facing a battle for his life after discovering a lump on his back which turned out to be cancerous and has spread to other parts of his body. Not even Best Clubman thinks this is funny.

Today’s press conference was amazing stuff, with Stynes courageously fronting the media and outlining the details of his affliction with terrific dignity, not to mention his wife who improved her already high standing amongst the general public after her flogging of Sam Newman in the media a few weeks back.

The respect for the president within the club was evident with the entire playing group in attendance at the press conference including Colin Sylvia, who managed to wrangle himself out of the Centrefold Lounge in time to make it to the Junction Oval by 11 o’clock after showering via the medium of a can of Lynx and chewing on some Eclipse mints to hide the evidence of his moral crimes.

The Melbourne playing list has vowed to use Stynes as an inspiration for the rest of their insipid season despite the club’s performances suggesting the team has a potentially life-threatening illness itself, which may or may not be funny depending on whether you are a decent human being, which Best Clubman most definitely is not.

“Every one of us has to step up now and take a bit of Jimmy with us,” captain James McDonald said with what we assume was a metaphorical tribute and not a literal statement whereby each player will carry a lock of Stynes’ hair or discarded fingernail in their shorts for the remainder of the season.

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THE OLD SOGGY POLLY WAFFLE…

2009-07-01T15:48:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Life is full of stories of two parties with a severe disliking of each other. Modern examples include North Korea and South Korea, the English-speaking world and the French, Sam Newman and women, the viewing public and the smarmy/massively overrated Shaun Micallef, Brendan Fevola and toilets, Brendan Fevola and women, Brendan Fevola and the Irish, Brendan Fevola and the French, and Jared Rivers and manning up on a direct opponent.

Add to this list Geelong and St. Kilda, who meet this weekend in what will be the first time in AFL history that two teams are undefeated after 13 rounds.

The hype surrounding this match was going to be inevitable, despite the fact most impartial football observers are cognisant that St. Kilda have no chance of winning this year’s flag when players like Andrew McQualter, Jason Blake, James Gwilt and Clint Jones command a regular birth in the senior side.

Geelong coach Mark Thompson and captain Tom Harley both admitted yesterday that the two teams don’t like each other, which has lead to many pundits looking for possible reasons for the distaste between the clubs.

While most people hate the Cats because Cameron Ling has red hair and is the perpetrator of the most hideous kind of anti-football with his constant scragging and clawing away at the opponent’s best midfielder, this doesn’t explain why the Saints have taken particular exception to our country cousins.

Likewise, any reasonable person can’t stand St. Kilda given their football is about as entertaining to watch as an unflushed turd that refuses to make its way down the s-bend despite you pouring in four tubs of Draino and giving the old soggy Polly Waffle a shove with a firmly gloved fist, but why is it that Geelong hates them so?

Apparently the source of the feud between the teams stems back to 2003 when both clubs were up-and-coming units comprised of young talent. Each team took exception to the other’s claims of having the best “kids” in the league, which is the pettiest dispute between two groups since Nickelback and Matchbox 20 debated who had the shittier back catalogue of material.

Eventually this argument settled itself by virtue of the Cats winning the 2007 premiership in amongst their current stretch of 53 wins from their last 56 games, which seems to suggest that Geelong’s “kids” were superior, combined with the fact that two of St. Kilda’s “kids” have the surname Clarke.

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NEXT TIME WE WON’T GO BAREBACK…

2009-06-29T22:22:00.001+10:00

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Dogs are fit, lightning fast off the mark, illiterate and enjoy urinating in public - all traits shared with Brendan Fevola. However, unlike a dog, Brendan Fevola just won’t do what he is told.

The Blues were embarrassed by Essendon on Friday night on a scale incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t take the field for Port Adelaide in the 2007 grand final.

Out run, out fought and, most surprisingly, out muscled by a Bombers team supposed to be several years away from a return to mediocrity.

With every talk-back caller with a biting wit putting their own spin on the “They Know We’re Coming” proclamation in the days since Friday’s mauling, every man and his dog (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) seems intent on laying the slippers into the Blues and, particularly, Fevola.

Just for the record, Best Clubman’s variation of Carlton’s marketing theme is “We Already Came Luv, Next Time We Won‘t Go Bareback.” Unbelievably, that was the best moniker the Best Clubman office could come up with despite five hours of workshopping the thing.

With his direct opponent Tate Pears repeatedly running off Fevola to set up several goals during the match, the media spotlight has again been firmly pointed in the burly full-forward’s direction.

This understandable given that, on at least three occasions, Fevola failed to even chase Pears before responding to requests from his colleagues to do so with a shrug of the shoulders.

Overall, Fevola looked about as interested in chasing his opponent and doing the little things as he would be if he tuned into Sunday Arts with Michael Veitch on the ABC.

This is in marked contrast to Round 22 last season when Fevola chased, tackled and harassed everything in sight in order to try and get to the 100-goal mark, which displays his basic me-first psychology and determination to anything that benefits himself.

Best Clubman’s immediate recollections of Fevola’s career can’t recall one unselfish deed, unless you count marrying wife Alex and taking her away from a life of caravans, Bacardi Breezers, KFC and working at a Supre somewhere in Melbourne’s outer south-east.

Another insipidly selfish display has many people calling for Fev’s head and for coach Brett Ratten to demote him to the reserves until Fevola learns to display a defensive presence that wouldn‘t get beaten up by a Jonas Brother.

Fev is what he is, so that is unlikely to happen. But Ratten may cop a temporary reprieve with the big man undergoing finger surgery last night, placing him in doubt for this week’s crunch match against Fremantle, which represents the first instance where the terms “Fremantle” and “crunch match” have been used in the same sentence.

The club failed to offer any explanation as to how Fevola injured his appendage, but replays from Friday night suggest it may have been while he was pointing at a distant Tate Pears and telling someone else to pick him up.

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DRUGS POLICY, PART DEUX…

2009-06-28T17:54:00.000+10:00

Sunday, June 28, 2009

It’s inevitable that young AFL players, with their firm bodies, buckets full of disposable income, and doting fans will inevitably come face-to-face with offers of illicit drugs.

In stark contrast, Best Clubman’s life is a little more prosaic. By virtue of us physically resembling John Goodman and engaging in intercourse approximately every time Iran holds democratic elections without government interference, the closest we come to the good life is buying two packets of Panadol Rapid and chowing them all down at once with a 350ml Red Bull.

This makes us feel suitably giddy for the next 15 minutes while we tell anyone within earshot how we could have been anything before injury and ability caught up with us at the ripe old age of 11.

The AFL’s stance on illicit drug use has been well debated in recent times. The league favours a three-strike policy and education for repeat offenders while protecting their anonymity.

This differs to the policies of most other professional leagues in the country who name offenders after a first or second offence.

With the federal government doling out $20m for drug education to professional sporting organisations this year, the league has opted to forgo their share of the loot by sticking with their three-strikes policy.

The government will only dispense funds to organisations adopting a two-strikes policy, which seems somewhat hypocritical given Kevin Rudd’s stance towards former Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon, who appeared to be on a nine-strike-or-denial-of-the-holocaust-whichever-comes-first policy.

Sporting bodies who adopt the government’s two-strikes policy are eligible for funding towards drug testing, counselling and rehabilitation. In lieu of the government money for drug education of its players, the league has instead elected to force all players to watch Charlie Sheen’s performance in Hot Shots! Part Deux to fully demonstrate the consequences of illicit drug use on young stars with potential.

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A THICK LAYER OF MAKE-UP AND THE ASSISTANCE OF AN AUTOCUE…

2009-06-25T23:17:00.001+10:00

Friday, June 26, 2009

For a very short man whose natural body shape resembles that of Danny De Vito, former Collingwood muck merchant Brodie Holland sure has made a good fist of what passes for his life.

Thanks to the support of countless trainers and dieticians, Holland was able to turn his once podgy chassis into a ripped rig the likes of which we haven’t seen since Right Said Fred told us he was a little too good looking for his love, shirt, car, hat and cat, the cities of Milan, New York and Japan, as well as your party and, lastly, this song.

From this foundation, Holland was able to overcome his gnome-like height, rough head, infantile intelligence and a nasty incident where he plead guilty to pulling a woman from entering a cab before punching her in the head, to become a part-time model, casual footballer and poorer half of the sublime Sarita Stella, who’s also a little challenged when it comes to class and intelligence despite what a thick layer of make-up and the assistance of an autocue has done for her career.

Not a bad innings that for someone with so little ability and redeeming characteristics as a human being.

Since retiring at the end of 2007, Holland has turned out for suburban side Maribyrnong Park. Unfortunately, given his profile and pretty-boy-with-a-rough-head image, Holland believes he has become the target for opposition mugs wanting to make a name for themselves by giving him the sort of treatment best dished out to a woman who tries to grab a taxi ahead of you.

Playing-coach Holland has now decided to have himself filmed for the entirety of his matches at Maribyrnong in the event he is assaulted on the field and retaliates like he’s just discovered a lady nicked his cab and there’s a 15-minute wait for the next one.

Holland has decided to take this action after having his playing registration suspended by the Essendon District Football League. This was overturned on appeal last night.

The reason behind Holland’s initial de-registration was him having breached a little-known rule that any player with more than 16 weeks of suspension incurred throughout their careers in any competition automatically forfeits their right to a playing license.

With most of the football public being unaware of this strange rule until now, the Adelaide Crows are seeking legal counsel on the possibility of having Barry Hall de-registered for this weekend’s clash with the Swans.

Maribyrnong president Glenn Allison said Holland would be filmed for the entirety of the time he is on the field, which should result in a film that shows very little of the play based on Holland’s ability to find the ball during his career.

Allison said the reason behind the drastic action was for Holland’s “protection”, which should come as a fanciful notion to the Bulldogs’ Brett Montgomery, who was almost decapitated by a Holland cheap-shot shirt front while his head was over the footy, a bump that saw Holland rubbed out for six weeks.

A condition of Holland’s re-registration was that his right to play football in Victoria would be revoked should he be suspended again, which Allison feels gives Holland’s opponents carte blanch to antagonise him without fear of retribution.

“If he goes out there and does something to someone else, he’s got to face the consequences,” Allison said. “But what happens if someone comes up and spits at him, or calls his mother unsavoury things? Or if someone’s whacking him all the time, what do we do?”

Considering Holland played for Collingwood, he should be used to personal abuse and, if he isn’t, he can always adopt the approach most people who don’t feel the urge to bash a woman use in retaliation - get on with the game and get the pill.

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PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY…

2009-06-23T22:37:00.000+10:00

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

In terms of the all-time list of credible and trustworthy people, former Carlton president, businessman and federal Liberal Party president John Elliott ranks fourth last, only managing to beat the Boy Who Cried Wolf, people who claim they were abducted by UFOs and Craig Hutchison.

So who knows what to make of Elliott’s claims that the Blues under his tenure paid “hush money” to four or five women who made claims of sexual assault against Carlton players.

What we do know is that Elliott’s extemporaneous exhortations have cast a shadow over anyone who played at Carlton between the mid-70s and 2002, damaging reputations that, Wayne Johnstone aside, suggested citizens of fine moral standing.

Catharine Lumby, a prominent activist against sexual violence, says she is “appalled” at Elliott’s claims and believes Australian football clubs have a history of paying victims of sexual assault “hush money” to keep quiet in a he-said/she-said situation where a jury may elect to go with what she-said.

This differs to rugby league where the he-said/he-said/he-said/he-said/he-said/he-said/he-said/he-said/he-said/she-said dynamics of sexual assaults means the defence can proffer nine counter arguments to the woman’s claims of bedroom malfeasance to ensure sufficient plausible deniability for an acquittal.

The scandal erupted on Sunday when Elliott was quoted in the Herald-Sun as stating that Carlton paid off four or five woman around $5,000 each to keep quiet about allegations of sexual assault made against players at the club.

Scurrilous rumours doing the rounds suggest mid-80s tagging sensation Tommy Alvin is also considering pressing charges against a group of players who mistook him and his flowing black ponytail from behind for a woman in a dimly lit sauna in 1988 and copped what can only be described as a cheap feel against Alvin’s wishes.

Elliott comes from the traditional, conservative, male-dominated, Liberal-voting, old boys club that permeates high society so his additional claims that he believes most of the women who approached the club with sexual assault claims engaged in consensual sex with players and then made the sexual assault allegations up needs to be tempered with the traditional notion that sometimes “NO” means “YES” and that woman in short skirts are gagging for it and the odd rape here and there comes with the territory.

"These women need our full support and I find John Elliott's comments worrying and offensive," Ms Lumby said. "Rape is the only crime where people question or doubt the victim and I am very concerned that he is casting any doubt on these allegations."

Ms Lumby has significant experience in this issue, having been a consultant for several years to the NRL on issues of the game’s relationship with women. In fact, Lumby was integral in installing the “X days since our last pack rape allegation” sign out the front of NRL head office.

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THE BODY SHAPE OF JUDY MORAN…

2009-06-22T21:44:00.001+10:00

Monday, June 22, 2009

If you were going to make a protest about MCG parking to get the most attention and cause the most disruption by staging a picnic to block out traffic, there’s several key dates in the calendar that seem appropriate in order to draw attention to your cause.

Round 1, Anzac Day, Queens Birthday and Grand Final Day spring to mind. The Western Bulldogs versus North Melbourne on a cold, wintry afternoon in Round 13 does not.

The Yarra Park Association, a group comprised of residents living in the immediate surrounds of the MCG who obviously don’t follow “the football” and understand which teams are popular, have decided to make this week’s blockbuster between the Dogs and the Roos the focus of their protest about MCG match-day parking making life difficult for nearby residents to spend their weekends walking for reconciliation, listening to Radio National while consuming brie and crackers at an impromptu picnic to celebrate Earth Hour, and ducking out mid-afternoon on a weekend for a soy latté while reading the latest published edition of Leunig cartoons.

Association spokesman Nik Dow, who presumably managed to get the afternoon off from his middle management position in the local library to front the media and complain about “the football”, is expecting “hundreds” of protesters to vent their anger at the MCG’s parking policy this Sunday.

What the “dozens” of people who turn up to watch this twilight match between the league’s two least popular clubs think of having their parking obstructed by “hundreds” of demonstrators remains unclear but, for Kangaroos supporters at least, it will be a pleasant reprieve from watching Daniel Wells fail to fulfil his potential in another second half where the Roos have a chance to win the game but fall short.

Dow gave no indication whether every representative of the Yarra Park Association had their heads as far up their own arses as he does and failed to notice that the giant coliseum next to the house they were moving into was actually used to host major events every weekend of winter.

Moving next to the MCG and complaining about the crowds on game day is a bit like moving into an apartment above Grey Street in St. Kilda and writing to your local member for parliament to complain about all the street hookers, or, to use an even more tenuous analogy, like Mick Malthouse drafting Leigh Brown only to complain midway during the season that he’s slow and has the body shape of Judy Moran but with less mobility.

"The local community is very passionate about this issue," Mr Dow said in indicating that the Association had begun letter dropping the local area and starting an online petition. "Those 4000 cars that park there clog up the neighbourhood and cause tremendous congestion."

While some sympathy must be extended towards Mr. Dow, after all no one wants 60,000 Collingwood supporters turning up on your back doorstep every second weekend, his claims seem less plausible when one considers that football has been played at the MCG for over 100 years, 97 of which featured Robert Harvey in some capacity, and people have been parking their horse-drawn carts, bicycles, vehicles and, in the case of Collingwood supporters, stolen horse-drawn carts, bicycles and vehicles, since well before PC thugs like Mr. Dow moved into the area.

Someone who is pushing their barrow for a worthy cause is former Collingwood defender Shane Wakelin, who is running for the World Wildlife Fund at the Run Melbourne Charity event on this Sunday, June 28. People can donate by sponsoring Wakelin at the following site: http://runmelbourne.everydayhero.com.au/shane_wakelin_WWF.

The WWF is offering fantastic giveaways for the seven most generous donators with two prime Sherrins signed by Wakelin up for grabs and five WWF gift packs containing a t-shirt, plush toy, mug and a carry bag which Pies fans can use to carry six-packs of Woodstock Bourbon home from their local liquor merchant every second Tuesday.

Prizes are also on offer for the first Collingwood supporter to pick the difference between Shane and Darryl Wakelin in a line-up, with the winner allowed to fare evade on the way home with renowned public transport user Shane, with Wakes assisting in the assaulting of any ticket inspectors encountered on the way home on the Broadmeadows line.

C’mon people, sign up and donate. If Best Clubman earned a wage, we’d do it.

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POLYESTER EMBASSY TOUR…

2009-06-21T01:28:00.000+10:00

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Watch a game featuring the LA Clippers in full. Laugh at anything the supposedly witty Shaun Micallef has to say. Wear in public the “Polyester Embassy Tour” t-shirt we bought at a Madison Avenue gig at Salt nightclub in 2000.

This is a bunch of things Best Clubman has never done for the first time. Until today, we could include feeling sorry for Wayne Carey to that list.

Now, coming as this is from a writer with few credentials, even fewer readers, and whose one trick is making tenuous analogies and quips about in the misfortune of others, the news that Carey has pulled a calf muscle only minutes into a game raising money for charity made us feel sorry for Carey in a place which Denis Leary described as “the sub-cockle area”, may sound a tad trite.

But it’s true. Think about it. In the space of 18 months Carey has had what passed for his life fall apart. Trying to start afresh on the Gold Coast, the Australian equivalent of moving to Vegas to try and clean up your act and get your life together, most people who haven’t had their A-cups squeezed in a Melbourne nightclub in the 1990s and been told to “get a bigger set of tits” would have some sort of empathy for The Duck.

Carey was lining up in a division two Queensland Amateur Football League match as a favour to a friend and for the sole purpose of raising money for a charity helping youth at risk.

Having spent less than five minutes on the park, which 10 years ago was long enough for The Duck to have a match sown up, the big man left the ground with what the newspapers described as a lower leg injury.

As this was reported in the Herald-Sun, Carey may or may not have suffered the injury while selling or taking illicit drugs, assaulting his girlfriend or assisting a migrant, all acts considered un-Australian by Australia’s major daily tabloid newspaper.

“I just went bang. For anyone thinking about making a comeback at 38, think again”, Carey said in what served as a warning for John Farnham making another comeback at age of 59.

After a period of revelatory honesty and self-assessment about his life, Carey seems intent on improving himself and his contribution to society, with his management organising for the $5 all spectators at the match paid for entry going to charity and Carey agreeing to forgo the regular $200 match payment fee for players.

"I've never done anything like this in my life," Carey said post match in what Best Clubman took to mean either pulling a calf muscle or giving to charity.

The most amazing aspect of this story is that a side in Queensland’s second amateur division pays its players $200 per match, approximately $192.74 more than Carey’s old side the Kangaroos can scratch together as a reward for another six touch effort from the likes of David Hale.

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IN SPADES…

2009-06-21T01:27:00.001+10:00

Friday, June 19, 2009

If the Herald-Sun is to be believed, which it’s not, the Kangaroos are prepared to offer Nathan Buckley $800,000 to coach the club next season.

Collingwood president, and renowned Buckley fan, Eddie McGuire believes Bucks is worth all $800,000 bucks despite the cash-strapped Kangaroos’ balance sheet revealing the club’s entire asset base comprises its dilapidated Arden Street training base, the second hand Econovan Glen Archer donated a few years ago, and a pirated copy of Microsoft Office 2000 the club intends to install when it is able to afford a computer.

While McGuire admitted that $800,000 is obscene amount for a fiscally challenged club to pay for a coach with zero experience, he believes the Kangaroos would benefit from appointing Buckley for no other reason than Bucks has four old Sherrins he nicked from Collingwood at the end of 2007 lying in his car boot, which would take the Roos’ stock of balls to a total of five for 2010.

"At North Melbourne, if you got somebody like a Nathan Buckley, you’d have to pay him that amount of money because that’s what he’s worth, and he’d bring that to you in spades," McGuire said.

If a rumour doing the rounds is to be believed, which it isn’t, if Buckley is appointed as head coach, the Kangaroos would also be bringing his remuneration to him in “spades“… literally, with Archer having a mate who’s a landscape gardener with 800,000 second hand spades just sitting around doing nothing like they’re David Hale having a spell at full-forward.

Where this leaves Collingwood, a club who’s morally bankrupt instead of just plain old bankrupt, remains to be seen. With Buckley wanting to enter coaching next year, the Pies’ sudden resurgence under coaching incumbent Micky Malthouse leave them in a difficult situation at the end of the year with Malthouse intent on continuing.

Given Eddie’s infatuation with Bucks and well known connections with Melbourne‘s inner western suburbs, poor old Micky may be called to a meeting in an Ascot Vale deli in the near future so the Pies can appoint their former captain as head coach.

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KANGAROO JACK…

2009-06-21T01:25:00.001+10:00

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

With Kangaroos coach Dean Laidley resigning yesterday, club president James Brayshaw has revealed that he had been forced to talk Laidley out of resigning at least twice in the past year.

It remains unclear which specific two of Scott McMahon’s insipid performances were the catalyst for the earlier resignations, but the final straw this time appears to be Laidley’s underlying feeling that he had not achieved what he promised when accepting the job at the end of 2002.

"We have had a couple of gos at talking Dean out of it and I just thought from the tone of his voice and the dialogue that we'd had over a six-month period then I knew that this time it was what he wanted to do," Brayshaw said.

"On this occasion I just got a very strong sense." Brayshaw said in describing his observation that in sending out last weekend’s side to face Adelaide with Corey Jones, Nathan Grima, Daniel Harris and Sam Power in it, Laidley wanted to get fired.

Laidley leaves the Kangaroos having coached 149 games over six-and-a-half seasons, a reign that will go down as being about as memorable as the film Kangaroo Jack and, amazingly, even worse to watch.

"I sat down last Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and went through it all," Laidley said. "And what I did I went back to my initial presentation at the footy club and by the time I had finished yesterday afternoon it became patently obvious to me that it was time to move on for Dean Laidley to continue to further his career and for things he wants do with his life."

Laidley’s future interests include improving an already impressive golf handicap, raising money for leprosy, and embarking on a campaign to refer to himself in the third person, which apparently kicked off in that last sentence.

In summing up his time at the helm of the Roos, Laidley reflected on his 2002 vision of winning a premiership by 2007, a year in which the Kangaroos made the preliminary final.

"We fell short by seven days of making a grand final," he rued without mentioning that his side, in addition to being seven days short of a grand final, were also 87 points of a Port Adelaide side who a week later were a measly 119 points short of eventual premier Geelong meaning, ultimately, Laidley’s Kangaroos came about as close to achieving his initial ambitions as Kangaroo Jack came to winning the Best Picture Oscar of 2003.

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LAST-MINUTE DECISION…

2009-06-21T01:23:00.000+10:00

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Adelaide coach Neil Craig has decided to question whether North Melbourne are guilty of perpetrating the biggest fraud in AFL footballer.

No, not the existence of “Shinboner Spirit”, a quantity used by all associated with the Kangaroos to describe hard fought wins against better opposition yet surprisingly absent from massive losses like the one the Crows dished out yesterday.

Craig was talking about North’s last-minute decision to leave backup ruckman David Hale out of yesterday’s side due to what the club initially described as injury.

However, in a slip of the tongue, North assistant coach Darren Bewick said the decision to withdraw Hale was made for tactical reasons given the wet conditions, which is not allowed under current AFL rules.

It remains unclear whether Craig was concerned about Hale’s withdrawal because of the dangerous precedent it sets or because having to play North Melbourne without Hale in the side actually makes them harder to beat, given that he collects more than 10 possessions about as often as Matthew Lloyd marks without falling to the ground.

Craig said the Crows would be investigating the incident. "I'm on the understanding that (withdrawing a named player at the last minute) can only happen because of injury or sickness not because of weather conditions," he said.

In fairness to Kangaroos, most teammates and supporters were of the opinion that Hale hadn’t played the last month given his previous five appearances have seen him amass 9, 11, 11, 6 and 4 possessions.

With a record of performances like this, Kangaroos players could be convinced into wearing black armbands next week in commemoration of Hale’s death before noticing at three-quarter time that the big man with the newly repaired hairline was actually playing in the ruck all game.

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DENIM JACKETS WITH DENIM JEANS…

2009-06-15T03:36:00.002+10:00

Sunday, June 14, 2009

There’s nothing worse than someone who worries about their health and fitness to the point of annoyance. Take ex-Mrs. Best Clubman for example.

Years ago, before the current epoch where Best Clubman’s primary means of picking up begins with a trip to an ATM and ends with a law school dropout with a large amenities bill to urgently pay telling us what we can and can’t do to her for $150 in the next half hour, Best Clubman once had a healthy relationship until ex-Mrs. Best Clubman became a fitness nut and became increasingly worried about what she put in her body.

Eventually, Best Clubman’s phallus was added to a list that included Mars Bars, soft drink and pizza and it’s been loneliness, tracksuit pants and watching Andy Maher on The Fifth Quarter on Saturday nights ever since.

With the current swine flu pandemic gripping our shores, the sight of people on trains, trams, buses and footpaths wearing face masks as a ridiculously pessimistic precaution has reminded Best Clubman of the folly of some people in overreacting to even minor health concerns.

Take the Adelaide Crows for example. Young midfielder Richard Douglas has been withdrawn from this weekend’s side to face North Melbourne after reporting flu-like symptoms on Friday.

Douglas is now faced with the ridiculous situation of being quarantined at home until the results of tests are known despite empirical data indicating a resident of Adelaide is three times as likely to die from being dunked in a vat of acid in a discarded bank vault than they are of keeling over from the flu, either swine induced or the good old fashioned influenza variety.

The Crows are reflecting a massive overreaction occurring Australia wide which overlooks the facts that, each year, regular old influenza kills dozens of people and will continue to do so. It’s June people, folks die of the flu every year. It’s not going away and something the human race needs to evolve around in order to survive, just like David Koch.

If the Crows need further solace that their man is going to be just fine, they should reassure themselves with the fact that the form of swine flu that has reached our shores is relatively weak compared to the overseas version.

Not to mention that N1H1 has only just reached Melbourne and, as we know from the sight of spades of kids wearing denim jackets with denim jeans in Rundle Mall each weekend, trends that hit Melbourne take a good seven years to come to Adelaide anyway, so whatever Douglas has can’t be swine flu.

To compound the massive overreaction, the Crows have also withdrawn Douglas’ housemate Tony Armstrong, who was listed as an emergency for this week’s match, on the logic that the flu, like a drunk teenage groupie in a hotel room with a group of Cronulla Sharks on an end of season trip, does get passed around from man to man.

"Dougy has the symptoms of the flu and, as part of the process that everyone is going through at the moment, anyone that is living in the same quarters - which in this case is Tony - has to be kept out of harm's way," Crows football operations manager John Reid said while confronting the media while wearing trying to get a glimpse of his new denim jacket to see if it matched his new denim jeans in the reflection of a windscreen on a nearby parked car.

For the sake of our sanity, it is to be hoped the Kangaroos don’t live in a similar nanny state to the Crows and decide to pull their team from making the trip to Adelaide for the game today.

Although, given the state of the club’s finances, it may be in the best interests for the players to not play as the only form of medical assistance the club can afford to provide the players is a rudimentary pre-game check-up where the doctor puts his hands around each player’s spuds and asks them to cough, before a club official provides each of the 22 players taking the field with an empty Coles plastic bag to put over their head with holes poked out for the eyes, mouth and, in the case of Brady Rawlings, the nose.

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ROCK AND/OR ROLL…

2009-06-11T22:28:00.001+10:00

Friday, June 12, 2009

Apparently the question “Who wants to pay excessive ticket prices to watch five men well past their prime go through the motions at Etihad Stadium in February?” now has two answers - AC/DC fans and Richmond supporters keen to see if this year is the year that Joel Bowden, Troy Simmonds, Nathan Brown, Kayne Pettifer and Jordan McMahon finally put it all together in the NAB Cup pre-season competition.

You see, Etihad management have made a slight oversight by booking AC/DC to perform at the ground in February, a time most AFL fans reserve for having their club instil them with false hope on the back of performances from likely types the calibre of Josh Thurgood and Kasey Green.

This has now brought about a double booking, with AFL boss Andrew “The Hut” Demetriou angry that Etihad are determined to allow AC/DC the usage of the ground despite a pre-existing contract with the AFL to host the pre-season series.

Etihad can’t be blamed - the opportunity of an AC/DC concert no doubt provides a greater return than hosting a Melbourne-Fremantle blockbuster where one team puts 18 men behind the ball and the other doesn‘t realise which end it is kicking to until midway through the third term.

The federal government would also lean on the side of the purveyors of Rock and/or Roll given the associated benefits of having 40,000 bogans from low socio-economic areas all procreate on the one night and produce 20,000 new Australians nine months later at a time when the nation’s birth rate is at record low levels.

With AC/DC pencilled in for concerts on February 11, 13 and 15, the AFL is sure to make a stand, leading to a protracted series of negotiations where the only certain outcome is that Robert Murphy from the Bulldogs will make another series of razor-sharp “rock is like footy” analogies in his weekly column in The Age.

Not helping matters is the fact Demetriou learnt about the clash through the media and has still not been notified by Etihad management, leaving him in a state of shock and confusion not experienced since the last time he stood on a set of bathroom scales or tried to squeeze through a doorframe narrower than Bass Straight.

"I suspect that Etihad Stadium today will be trying to work out a way to come to us, to ask us - after the event, as usual - to see if we can move our football fixture," Demetriou said.

Demetriou summed the whole situation up by saying “it’s a very, very ordinary business”, although we’re not sure if he was referring to the dispute with Etihad or the merits of a continuing to hold a pre-season competition won twice by Carlton in three years with Adrian De Luca and Cain Acland playing prominent roles.

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A RECOMMENDED CURE FOR LIVING…

2009-06-11T21:48:00.003+10:00

Friday, June 12, 2009

In Greek mythology, Icarus brought about his own downfall by flying too close to the sun, ultimately plummeting into the sea after his wings of wax melted and left him gravity bound to an extent not seen since Pat Reidy tried to dunk late in a North Melbourne Giants NBL game in the mid-90s.

Get ready for the AFL version as an increasingly over-confident Ross Lyon flies too close to the sun based on wings of delusion if this interview is anything to go by.

Despite Lyon’s coaching showing the attacking instincts of a tax agent who collects postcards and considers switching from brown to white bread a high risk manoeuvre, the man with the Seven Dwarves-like demeanour has come out and criticised the “dour” tactics other coaches are employing against his undefeated Saints.

See, most people who know a thing or two about AFL, of which Best Clubman is definitely not one, recognise that the Saints are the most unconvincing chart-topping phenomena since Savage Garden conquered the charts armed only with a couple of catchy hooks and two men with fringes tizzed up to a level outlawed in most US states.

After racking up large scores against quality outfits like West Coast, Fremantle and Collingwood earlier in the season, three sides whose combined seasonal highlight thus far is running through a banner that successfully rhymed the words “Remember“ and “September“, Lyon has become annoyed that St. Kilda have been held to under 100 points in their last four games.

"We have come up against teams whose focus has been more negative, just to stop us," Lyon said when asked about the scoring decline and whether his personality has been approved by the food and drug administration board as a recommended cure for living.

"There has been a lot of holding and grappling and all of a sudden we have become involved in high stoppage games, like the one on the weekend when there were 118 stoppages (against North) when we have averaged about 80 (per game)," he complained without apparently recognising the contradiction that is coaching a team with Steven Baker and Clinton Jones and complaining about holding and grappling off the ball.

After revealing his one key attacking strategy for the year is “I hope Kosi doesn’t get injured again”, Lyon tried to explain how other clubs approach a clash with the Saints. "(Opposition) teams think we can't go with them (St Kilda) so we just negate them and it becomes a dour, intense struggle so it’s probably limited our scoring a little bit."

Lyon wouldn’t reveal the exact teams who feel they don’t have the pace to go with the sloth-like midfield of Lenny Hayes, Luke Ball, Steven Baker and Andrew McQualter but an educated guess from Best Clubman supposes it may be any team thinking of giving Mark McGough a prominent on-ball role in the immediate future.

Lyon revealed that he has begun to admire how Geelong is able to manage playing an opponent intent on defence each week, putting up with the very negative, unwatchable tactics Lyon usually employs, as anyone who had the misfortune of watching the St. Kilda-Geelong clash from last year’s finals or the game of water polo the following week against Collingwood, will testify.

"Geelong get different things thrown at them every week - you come up against teams with a zone defence, teams that play man-on-man and you have got to have the ability to adapt and work your way through the challenges put in front of you."

Kudos are in order for Lyon for taking a side providing a regular game to Jason Blake, Zac Dawson and Adam Schneider to the top of the ladder, but everyone recognises that come the crunch in September, Lyon will revert to form and have his side play the usual brand of hold-onto-it dross they usually serve up.

So having Lyon come out and claim the negativity of other teams is bringing the Saints down is the greatest act of hypocrisy since Ian Thorpe caught a snippet of Idol‘s Andrew G on the telly and thought to himself, “That lad‘s a bit dainty isn‘t he?”.

An inspection of the Saints’ first 11 games shows a club whose stars have miraculously aligned to ensure they have encountered exactly zero quality sides. Although they did beat the Western Bulldogs in Round 6 and there are people foolish enough to think the Dogs are contenders, but any side where Andrejs Everitt is a key position prospect may need to question whether winning football games in September is their core business.

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DISASTROUS…

2009-06-10T09:22:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

As Best Clubman unwillingly approached the onset of middle age, all we hoped for was that our career, life and ability to pull women resembled Jack Nicholson’s at the same age.

Having now officially hit the ageing point of no return, which can be identified as beginning at the exact moment your favourite appendage shrinks to the point you need the assistance of a strategically placed mirror to locate it, it’s fair to say that all Best Clubman has in common with Jack Nicholson is the smile of a weirdo and the early onset of male-patterned baldness.

As for our career, well just like Jack’s hairline since 1975’s classic One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, it’s gone absolutely nowhere.

This feeling is likely shared by Richmond’s former captain Kane Johnson as he wakes up this morning on the first day of his retirement. Actually, that should read the first day after announcing his retirement, considering that, based on his performances since crossing to Richmond, Johnson seems to have put the cue back in the rack quite some time ago.

Showing the ability to impart sage wisdom that besets a man of retirement age, Johnson, who failed to manage an appearance this season, has labelled Richmond’s opening 11 rounds of the season as “disastrous”.

Given the Oxford English Dictionary now defines “disastrous” with the entry “an AFL team sheet with the name Jordan McMahon pencilled in”, Johnson’s description of Richmond’s year as “disastrous” didn’t really need to be said.

When asked to describe season 2009 to this point at his retirement press conference yesterday, Johnson sought to explain the tremendous let down the Tigers have experienced in what was thought to be a breakout year.

“Given the hype over the pre-season, we all thought, 'This is it, this is the time to launch'.” This is the exact same feeling Best Clubman has in that uncomfortable half hour in between taking that little blue pill and waiting for its effects to reach the front of our trousers to enable us to fulfil the duties we’ve just paid $300 per hour for.

Alas, just like our attempts at sexual adequacy despite the assistance of medicinal supplements, Richmond’s attempts at launching their first finals campaign in a long time have turned out to be an abject failure.

Johnson had hoped to return during the season as the Tigers made a push into September. With Richmond’s season now at 2-9, Friday night’s dismal second-half fadeout against the Western Bulldogs in coach Terry Wallace’s final game convinced Johnson to hang up the boots.

"After the way we got beaten (Friday), I thought the season's definitely lost in terms of playing finals," Johnson said. "I thought, 'We're going to have to rebuild here; good time to announce I'm going'."

Although it is believed a chronic knee injury was the underlying reason for Johnson’s retirement, the previous statement suggesting that he believed the Tigers were still a chance to make the finals up until Friday night’s hammering by the Bulldogs may suggest the onset of dementia was the ultimate cause of Johnson’s demise.

The Round 4 loss to bottom-placed Melbourne convinced Johnson that 2009 was going to be a long season. “If you beat Melbourne, you're back in it. We had to be 1-3 at least and the confidence would have come back”, he said in showing the depths the club had fallen if a win over the hapless Demons is considered as getting the club’s season back on track.

"When that didn't happen, I think people started thinking, 'Hang on a minute . . . where are we going?',” which is the same feeling Richmond supporters had in late 2006 when Greg Miller read out the immortal words: “With pick six in the 2007 AFL pre-season draft, Richmond selects Kent Kingsley”.

Johnson will continue on at the club in the role of development coach, content in the knowledge that he cemented his reputation in two Adelaide premierships in the late 90s and has been living off the deeds performed in this era for over a decade, just like Ben Affleck.

But, just like Affleck, the majority of the viewing public will remember Johnson for his series of dud performances in the time since DVDs replaced VHS, which is unfortunate given the kid could play and was tougher than Tom Berenger’s character in Platoon despite, remarkably, being less attractive given his tight-knitted, borderline-ginger perm and freckly complexion.

Not helping matters for Johnson’s legacy is the fact he is in the forefront of most people’s minds as they make their way home after a heavy night on the sauce and decide to sprinkle their name in urine on the wall of the local constabulary.

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FLOODING, RUSHED BEHINDS AND DES HEADLAND’S CAREER…

2009-06-08T07:13:00.001+10:00

Monday, June 8, 2009

After Port Adelaide yesterday used stalling, go-slow possession tactics to defeat Fremantle, Dockers coach Mark Harvey has listed the defensive tactic as third in a list of things bothering Fremantle supporters after his coaching and being forced to watch Shaun McManus play for 14 seasons.

In yesterday’s clash at AAMI Stadium, the Power chipped the ball around towards the end of the game to hang onto a game-winning lead.

While most people who have seen an AFL game in the last 20 years are familiar with the tactic of a team leading hanging onto possession to wind the clock down at the end of the game, Fremantle supporters and coaching staff were apparently gob smacked by the tactic for no other reason than the Dockers are not usually close enough to justify the use of this tactic at the end of a match.

Harvey believes the league should look into policing so-called “tempo football” by implementing rules to prevent it. If Harvey had his way, “tempo football” would join “flooding”, “rushed behinds” and “Des Headland’s career” as things the game could do without.

"It certainly frustrates the crowd doesn't it? I mean I think everyone is aware of it, I think in time the AFL might clamp down on it," Harvey said in describing “tempo football” with a quote which simultaneously describes “Des Headland’s career”.

"We just introduced the rushed behind (rule) which is surrendering isn't it, so if they put the ball above their head are they surrendering ball movement? Maybe. That's up to the AFL but basically everyone knows what's going on."

Unfortunately for Fremantle supporters, opposition clubs holding onto the ball at end of games to protect leads are a part of the game and could be avoided if the Dockers actually led towards the end of a match, a feeling not even semi-regularly experienced since the Gerard Neesham era or, as Docker supporters have had to accept it as, the Dockers’ Woodstock.

While Harvey isn’t a fan of the delaying strategy, he isn’t too concerned about its impact on the overall standard of the game during the first half of the season. "I think it's been a terrific year so far ... I think the game is in good shape."

This is unlike the Dockers who, after three straight wins from Rounds 5-7, enter the middle of the season at 3-8 and again bracing themselves to adopt the same position as a scared teenage girl on all-fours on a motel room bed in a room full of Cronulla Sharks for the remainder of the season - a position Dockers supporters have come to accept as rightfully theirs over an insipid 15-year history.

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AGE DOESN‘T COME INTO IT…

2009-06-08T06:43:00.000+10:00

Sunday, June 7, 2009

In appointing Jade Rawlings as interim coach for the remainder of the year, Richmond, a club with a losing culture that has seen only two finals campaigns in the past 27 seasons, have given the keys to the car to a man who wasn’t exactly the AFL’s version of Robert Horry.

Over an 11-year career Rawlings played in only two finals series himself, the last of which was 2001 when Richmond too last experienced a glimpse of the big time on the back of stars such as Clinton King, Rory Hilton, Aaron Fiora, Ezra Poyas and Steven Sziller.

At a club where a change of culture is required to remove the stains of selfishness and failure that have developed over the last three decades, Rawlings is a poor, yet obvious, choice when the next best candidate is former Tiger skipper Wayne Campbell, a man who played in as many games of consequence as the Harlem Globetrotters in a career that mostly involved complaining to umpires and pointing at teammates to apportion blame when something went wrong.

The even worse news for Tiger fans is that president Gary March has indicated that Nathan Buckley is among a list of people to be considered for the job next year, a man with the exact same number of premierships as Rawlings and Campbell.

Appointing the best candidate from this collective pool of career losers in order to change a long-term losing culture is a but like bringing Amy Winehouse in as a consultant to try and get on top of a perceived drinking and drug-taking club culture or Grant Denyer to weed out short, annoying gnomes with no talent like Jake King.

At least in Buckley’s defence he did play in many finals and big games over his career, including winning a Norm Smith Medal for a best on ground performance in the 2002 Grand Final, which is more than can be said of Rawlings and Campbell, who both flopped in the paltry two finals campaigns they participated in to show they perform as well in major conflicts of importance as the French.

"I'm very humbled and extremely excited," Rawlings said about his upcoming 11-game stint which will see him usurp Melbourne‘s Dean Bailey as the worst league player to take control of the reins of a club.

Rawlings currently coaches Richmond’s VFL-affiliate side Coburg and has experience in dealing with players unable to land a game with the senior team.

"It's all happened pretty quickly and I'll coach Coburg tomorrow ... and finish that off well and then there'll be a series of planning meetings about how things are going to look moving forward", Rawlings said before revealing his surprise at finding out that Coburg players he regularly coaches at VFL level like Kayne Pettifer, Jake King, Jordan McMahon, Jay Schulz, Cleve Hughes and Jarrad Oakley-Nicholls were at Punt Road when he turned up for his first training session and were apparently listed AFL players.

With many media commentators focusing on Rawlings’ relatively youthful age as a possible stumbling block for his success in the role, Rawlings sought to shoot them down in their tracks.

"I don't think age really comes into it", he said in a statement that mirrors the words Best Clubman used when the filth arrested us for sitting out the front of all-girl primary schools wearing a loose-fitting pair of Kappa tracksuit pants with a hole in the crotch while being armed with a bag of candy and a Spice Girls CD as potential bait.

Looking forward to next year, March said the club will cast the net far and wide in a bid to get the best possible person for the job at the end of the year. "We won't discount anyone in the process. We'll through an exhaustive process as we did when we replaced Greg Miller ... and we'll get the right person for the Richmond Football Club."

If the Orlando Magic offer up three more performances like they did in Game 1 against the Lakers yesterday then Tiger fans shouldn’t be surprised to find Stan Van Gundy getting through to the second interview stage of the selection process.

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WELCOMED INTO THE DEMON BOSOM…

2009-06-07T01:37:00.000+10:00

Friday, June 5, 2009

Not a lot has gone right for Melbourne since the club became the first ever AFL club in 1858. Since 1964 the club has had few victories, fewer members and precisely zero premierships.

Not to mention the club’s finances, which have left it about as attractive to potential sponsors as female Australian athletes who don’t look like Tamsyn Lewis or Stephanie Rice.

Hopefully now something has happened to reverse the Demons’ fortunes with the announcement that the league’s nomads, who have no permanent training base and are forced to train on a myriad of school ovals and parking lots during summer in squalid conditions, now have a permanent base with the club signing a 30-year deal to establish training facilities in Melbourne’s outer east.

The City of Casey and its capital Cranbourne, the region with the highest heroin usage per person of any non-Afghan city not named Seattle, have for some time actively sought for the Demons to move their training base out to Melbourne’s outer fringe, linking with the club to have its reserves play in the VFL with the Casey Scorpions two years ago.

Today the club and the City of Casey have announced a deal for Demons to train at Casey Fields at least once a week for the next 30 years.

The 30-year deal should, based on current procreation rates for the region obtained from the last census, allow for three separate generations of people to be turned into Melbourne supporters and welcomed into the Demon bosom.

The Casey council will build a $2.1m state of the art training facility for the Demons which, at current market prices, is worth around 90kgs of prime uncut opium.

For the Demons, this will ensure that for the first time since the club left the MCG in 1984, the team will have access to the same facility all year round.

“The great thing is that it we’ll be going for the worst facilities in the AFL to potentially the best,” Melbourne president Stynes said.

Hopefully these new cutting edge facilities contain extra massage tables and chiropractic facilities to treat the players’ back complaints arising from now having to make a 2-hour round trip in the car or, in the event of the recently de-licensed Andrew Lovett being traded to Melbourne, the 4-day train and bus trip from the city to get to training.

With the club having now found a training home, the Demons will soon move their administrative operations into the new Olmpic Park precinct being completed next to the Lexus Centre. Club insiders suggest the difficulty in having the training and admin bases so far apart should be overcome once email hits Cranbourne in mid-2015.

So after 151 years, or 149 years since they became the least supported club in the land, a club called Melbourne finally has a home… an hour away from the city.

And this would be the greatest sporting irony for the week had Andrew Symonds not just spent another night out on tour on the turps and lost his contract with Cricket Australia, an organisation whose primary sponsor is Victoria Bitter.

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A PICTURE OF A WOMAN AND A FIST WITH THE WORDS "NO-NO" UNDERNEATH…

2009-06-07T01:12:00.003+10:00

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Notorious Essendon bad boy Andrew Lovett is in trouble again, this time facing court later this month for driving without a license, an act which is illegal unless a person is bleeding to death and on the way to the hospital, driving someone who’s bleeding to hospital, or John McClane from Die Hard.

Lovett lost his license last year after accruing too many demerit points, an offence which would be attributed as Lovett’s fault if he weren’t a talented AFL player suffering depression after the last time he did something bad (repeatedly assaulting his girlfriend while she was locked in the car during a tortuous car trip) rather than the more simple explanation of just being a shit bloke which would no doubt be levelled at anyone from the regular community who engaged in these activities then turned up for work at the office come Monday.

"Andrew's actions are unacceptable and he will now face the consequences of the law," Bombers chief executive Peter Jackson said via the AFL’s preferred medium of public contrition - a pre-written club statement which ensures the player doesn’t have to speak for himself.

Without specifying the exact “consequences of the law” Lovett will face, empirical research of the past indiscretions of AFL players suggests Lovett will receive a small court-imposed fine before returning to the club without a suspension and with a fully paid-for cab charge card to use for getting to and from training.

Jackson continued insulting everyone’s intelligence by making it seem like the club cared about an offence which won’t jeopardise a club sponsorship or land a player in prison. "He (Lovett) needs to understand the community has standards and he like all of us has a responsibility to meet them."

Presumably, amongst these so-called community standards that Jackson refers to is the notion that violence against women is wrong unless you’re John McClane and the woman in question is that pouty blonde Euro number with a penchant for tasting other people’s blood from Die Hard 3 who tries to scythe McClane down before getting her what for alrighty in a fist fight.

“We will continue to work with Andrew to help him make better decisions in his life“, Jackson said before outlining the Bombers’ evolutionary educational campaign for Lovett which features two A4 posters - one with a picture of a woman and a fist with the words “NO-NO” underneath, and another with a picture of a car and a valid Victorian license and the words “YES-YES”.

Identifying that Lovett has issues that require the club’s support, Jackson said the Bombers have “the support networks in place that will give him the best chance of meeting community expectations on an on-going basis." Or at least until a suitable trade can be organised at the end of the season.

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METAPHORICAL BLANKET…

2009-06-06T23:45:00.002+10:00

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

With the big story breaking earlier in the week that Richmond and Terry Wallace have gone the way of Madonna and Guy Ritchie, Pacific Brands and Australian labour, and Marcus Einfeld and an ability to tell the truth, there was always a strong chance that we’d hear the excessive usage of management buzzwords like “consultant”, “psychometric testing”, “exhaustive process”, “key performance indicator” and “Mick Malthouse” sooner rather than later.

What we didn’t see coming was Richmond’s favourite son Matthew Richardson making a complete arse of himself by proclaiming that, in his opinion, the Tigers were only a few years from threatening the rest of the league.

In fairness to Richo, he may have meant the Tigers are on the verge of threatening for another wooden spoon and toppling Joel Fitzgibbon as the country’s most insipid performer in the public spotlight, but the general consensus was the big man meant the Tigers were not far away from giving the title a shake.

With the Tigers sitting in second last place on the ladder in front of Melbourne, which is a bit like Ringo Star claiming to be the second greatest living Beatle, Richardson believes the Tigers’ two wins are not an accurate reflection of their progress.

Richo may have a point as, based on current form and the fact Kayne Pettifer is once again getting a game every week, most pundits have the Tigers sitting at 0-10 at this point of the season.

According to Richo, "(we can be a threat) in a two or three year window. I don't think it's as far away as people believe. We just missed finals last year. This year has been very disappointing (for Richmond) but you can throw a blanket over the competition other than two teams.”

The metaphorical blanket that Richardson refers to must be big enough to cover Oprah if he believes the Tigers can be grouped with sides like Hawthorn, Carlton, Collingwood and the Western Bulldogs as teams that can challenge the duopoly of the competition’s runaway leaders - St. Kilda and Geelong.

In the cold light of day, Richo’s claim that the Tigers are coming is the emptiest threat since Indian students earlier this week threatened to return home and remove the $1.2 billion they spend on education in Australia in response to a series of assaults, when the facts show the country would be saving the $3.2 billion it costs to imprison, clothe and feed the disgraceful racist thugs who commit the crimes against them.

"It only takes a few things to go your way, and you’re playing finals footy," Richardson said without having to mention that the only thing he needs to go his way to play finals footy is to seek a trade away from Richmond. And fast. Get ready to feel old... Richo will be 35 when Richmond come a cropper in next year’s season opener and a pair of well-ironed chinos and some dance moves away from joining the middle-aged New Kids On The Block on their next “We Need The Money” tour in 2012.

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1996 MR. SUNSHINE…

2009-05-29T22:50:00.001+10:00

Friday, May 29, 2008

With former Essendon and Fremantle defender Mark Johnson’s employment prospects in the footballing industry slightly less than the chance of Martin Bryant being granted a gun license upon his unlikely release from incarceration, it’s no wonder Johnson is trying to scrap every last dollar he can from his final football contract.

Despite Johnson’s career at the end of 2007 sailing about as well as the Lusitania, Fremantle had the kindness to extend his career by an extra year by defying popular opinion and giving Johnson a second chance at AFL level..

Now, after sustaining a shoulder injury during one of his phoned-in performances during 2008, Johnson has turned around and filed a compensation claim against the Dockers, which is a bit like Robert De Niro suing the makers of Meet The Fockers for allowing him the chance to tarnish his legacy even further.

Johnson’s claim will serve as a test case for Fremantle’s recruiting manager, who is seeking damages for the apparent acquired brain injury that led him to draft Johnson in the first place despite most football observers being cognisant of the fact that, in a race between the 2008 version Johnson and a three-legged tortoise named Kenny with an arthritic hip and an ill-fitting pair of runners, not only would the tortoise comfortably win, but he’d do so after being cheaply hit behind play by Johnson before the start of the race.

Johnson’s claim relates to a shoulder injury he sustained in his one year at Fremantle, which he claims finished his career at all levels of the game and, therefore, will prevent him from earning future income from football.

The Dockers are thought to be launching a counter-claim Johnson’s career was effectively over in 2003 and will be presenting a copy of his stats from 2004 onwards as well as sworn testimony from a range of opposition small forwards such as Stephen Milne, Jeff Farmer and Alan Didak as proof that second-rate players were getting the better of Johnson well before 2008.

According to Fremantle chief executive Steve Rosich, a successful businessman who applied for the job as boss of the Dockers in the mistaken assumption he would be helping Levi’s continue their successful range of trousers of the same name, Fremantle "are continuing to work with Mark and his management on establishing an agreed framework for the rehabilitation of Mark's shoulders following his retirement from football last season."

A core part of this framework for rehabilitating Johnson’s shoulder, and thereby avoiding the compensation claim, is Fremantle’s attempt to prevent Johnson from continually bench-pressing his 1996 Mr. Sunshine bodybuilding trophy for 13 hours a day.

Johnson’s claim is allowable under a loophole in the AFL collective bargaining agreement which allows a player suffering a career-ending injury in the final year of a contract to claim a further 50 per cent of the base amount of their contract to offset the sudden end of their career.

Depending on how this plays out, Richmond supporters may have to brace themselves for the sight of Kane Johnson, Nathan Brown and Troy Simmonds attempting to impale their scrotums on the MCG fence as they walk off following another insipid performance during the remainder of the 2009 season.

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LISTENING TO A GRATEFUL DEAD RECORD AND PLAYING 13,192 CONSECUTIVE GAMES OF NBA JAM…

2009-05-29T22:16:00.000+10:00

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Saying the AFL is a little touchy about the subject of illicit drug use amongst players is a bit like saying Phil Spector has a little bit of a thing for firearms.

So it comes as no surprise that the league’s court jester, football operations manager Adrian Anderson, fronted the media with that stupid fat head of his and grinned from ear to ear as he again managed to use 45 management terms in 44 words to announce that “only” 12 players had tested positive for illicit drugs in the past year.

Anderson was absolutely brimming in announcing that positive illicit drug tests had fallen from 14 to 12 over the past year but would not respond to questions on whether this reduction should be attributed to Ben Cousins being out of the game over the same period of time or the West Coast Eagles cancelling their Mad Monday in 2008.

Showing an unsurpassed ability to put a positive corporate spin on bad news that has the board of General Motors seeking to employ his services, Anderson did concede that two more AFL players had recorded a second strike under the illicit drugs policy, joining Collingwood’s Leigh Brown as players who have had two more chances than they deserve, albeit for different reasons, unless of course Brown is one of them in the unlikely event that hamburgers have been added to the list of banned recreational substances.

These two-time felons join a list of seven players who are on their last strike. An analysis of the way Kayne Pettifer and Mitch Morton celebrate after kicking a goal despite being 10 goals down suggests that they may be the guilty parties, unless Justin Sherman high-fiving himself after a snap from the boundary sails through the big sticks counts as two people high on something more than their own ability.

In revealing that he himself had twice tested positive for being a wanker, Anderson informed the media that the 12 positive tests comprised eight positive tests for stimulants, three for cannabinoids and one for both.

This raises a number of questions, not least of which is what the fuck is a cannabinoid and can you smoke it with a three-inch length of hose pipe sticking out of a discarded 600ml Gatorade bottle while listening to a Grateful Dead record and playing 13,192 consecutive games of NBA Jam?

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“WHAT A SENSATIONAL EFFORT THAT IS“…

2009-05-29T21:42:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

With Terry Wallace’s coaching stint at Richmond having about as much momentum as Kick Gurry’s career post Garage Days, everyone in the industry knows the perma-tanned one is passing time like a student aged 18-22 enrolled in a philosophy degree.

Having endured the aborted player mutiny debacle of last week, Wallace’s coaching mates within the industry have started to rally around him to ensure he is able to fulfil his contractual obligation to consume a sip of Coke Zero every time the TV camera switches to the coaches box during a game for the remainder of the season.

After Wallace revealed that last week’s dramas resulted in him losing 4kgs through stress, Fremantle coach Mark Harvey, a man who knows a thing or two about weight loss having suffered bulimia during his playing career, has called on the media to cut Wallace some slack as he battles stress-related health issues.

While the rest of us ponder whether Kayne Pettifer and Mitch Morton can be classified as “stress-related health issues”, Harvey is bracing himself for this weekend’s clash with the Tigers in what will be Wallace’s 500th match at AFL level as a player or coach.

Considering the chances of Wallace coaching out the season are slightly less than the odds of Nirvana reforming with Rob Mills on vox, the Tigers’ insistence that they will not review the coaching position until the mid-season break seems about as necessary as Big Brother voice-over man Mike Goldman retaining the services of an agent in the unlikely chance he can land another position of paid employment.

In seemingly accepting Wallace’s fate, Harvey implored the media to this week focus on his past feats as a premiership player and as a coach who introduced innovative concepts such as flooding, pre-game warm-ups and taking Richard Tambling at pick 4 in the draft, rather than the events of this year.

The odds of a footballing media baying for blood in order to sell newspapers focusing on the good things from Wallace’s career seem about as likely as A Current Affair leading a bulletin with a story on Australia’s foreign policy with China at the expense of a welfare-cheating Muslim immigrant with 13 wives who cut off an elderly white woman in traffic without offering a hand wave of apology.

"What a sensational effort that is," Harvey said in simultaneously describing Wallace's upcoming 500 game milestone and Des Headland stringing two consecutive matches together this weekend.

Harvey continued: "He's brought an enormous amount to the game and we shouldn't forget that. However long he coaches, just remember all the good things he's done."

Mark Graham, Jordan McMahon, Trent Knobel and Kent Kingsley sure haven’t forgotten Wallace’s contribution to the Tigers.

Harvey told the media that he had conveyed his support to Wallace in this most trying of weeks through a series of text messages that began with “Keep ur chin up m8” and ended with “Can u pls play Troy Simmonds in tha ruck all game this week :-)”

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FINALS BOUND…

2009-05-29T20:52:00.000+10:00

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

When news filtered through that former Tiger forward Andrew Krakouer was playing in a team of criminals, Best Clubman’s first inclination was that Krakouer had joined the Cronulla Sharks and was running through try after try in anticipation for the obligatory end-of-season trip group sex session.

To our chagrin, the factual explanation is that Krakouer, serving a stint in a West Australian jail for aggravated assault, is being let out each weekend to play in the prison football team.

This differs to Krakouer’s Richmond career when he participated in a football team that played as if it had just committed a crime and needed to board a plane at Tullamarine for the first flight to a country without an extradition treaty with Australia.

Having gone through the motions in all but a few of his 102 games as a Tiger, word is that Krakouer is dominating in the suburban Mercantile Football League where his Wooroloo Bombers, comprised entirely of prison inmates, are undefeated so far this season having scored at least 151 points in every match.

A record such as this suggests that Krakouer is headed for the finals, a feat he never achieved during his time at Richmond.

It’s testament to the modern history of the Tigers that one of their players needs to be committed for a stretch in the big house before he can get a taste of September action.

The only thing that could ruin Krakouer’s newfound team success is the unlikely scenario that Troy Simmonds gets sentenced to four years of hard time for having a head like a buffalo, but without the mobility at ground level, and takes over the first ruck for the remainder of what would no doubt be a winless end to the season for the Wooroloo Bombers.

Apparently, Joel Bowden and Matthew Richardson so enamoured are with the idea of a guaranteed shot at finals action for the first time in a long while that all three are contemplating committing separate counts of GBH during the Tigers’ upcoming trip to Perth this weekend to ensure they too can join Wooroloo for the tail end of the season.

While many neo-conservative, Liberal-voting, cardigan-wearing, Neil Mitchell-listening pains in the arse will no doubt complain about convicted felons being allowed weekend recreation on the outside, prison recreation officer Dave Brown believes this outlet helps in a prisoner’s rehabilitation.

Indeed, so into their football are the inmates, Brown believes there are several players who would “walk into” a professional football team.

Coincidentally, there are many professional footballers whose intelligence levels and social skills are such that they would “walk into” any prison in the event their football careers came to an end.

Brown pointed out that playing in the weekend football team is not an opportunity extended to all prisoners. Inmates must satisfy stringent security checks and display exemplary behaviour inside in order to qualify for the prison football, basketball or soccer team.

These restrictions are implemented as the sheer size of an AFL ground make it difficult to keep track of all players at once and could provide inmates with an opportunity for escape.

This seems fair enough when you remember that Richmond’s Nathan Brown has been demonstrating that it’s quite easy to go missing on an AFL ground at crucial moments in big games for years.

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KEVIN “BLOODY“ WILSON…

2009-05-25T23:28:00.001+10:00

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Victorian amateur football side Prahran Amateur Football Club have been fined $5,000 after the pre-game stripper controversy that has dominated the Melbourne newspaper headlines this week.

In addition to the fine, the club has been ordered to attend a “respect and responsibility” towards program which may or may not be run by Jeff`Farmer, Nathan Bock and Andrew Lovett.

Committee members from Prahran have admitted the club organised for an exotic dancer to perform for its First XVIII before a match for competition points, resulting in the first time in recorded history that a girl getting her kit off at a club in Prahran has caused a commotion.

Prahran were called to a disciplinary hearing held by the governing body, the Victorian Amateur Football Association (VAFA), where the club plead guilty to the charge of conduct “unbecoming” a member of the association.

In its defence, Prahran did argue that the stripper was so hot that players in attendance wanted to “becoming” all over her person, in what is a well-worn pun last used sometime in the early 90s by Kevin “Bloody” Wilson. It is presumed that, like you the reader, the VAFA committee did not find that gag remotely funny and jumped straight to the Herald-Sun website to read the latest tosh from Mark “Robbo“ Robinson. .

Prahran’s coach Craig Berger said the stripper had been booked in an ill-advised attempt to “gee up” the senior team before a crucial match against St. Bernards. Unconfirmed reports suggest this was the club’s second choice of team bonding technique for the lads once the tried and tested NRL method of pack rape had been wisely discarded.

During the stripper’s performance it is alleged the players sang the club’s theme song which makes Prahran the only sporting club in Australia whose team song is “Girls, Girls, Girls” by Motley Crue.

Prahran committee member Peter Cotter apologised for the club’s transgression. "We are truly sorry for the embarrassment and discomfort that this inappropriate conduct has caused the VAFA, the VAFA community and our club, our supporters and our juniors," Mr Cotter said before explaining the club was now missing seven table tennis balls from the players’ lounge since the event.

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PLAYING WITH KIDS...

2009-05-21T13:02:00.002+10:00

Thursday, May 21, 2009

With the media running rampant with the Terry Wallace did-he or didn’t-he get sacked story from Tuesday, the only certainty is that a bunch of hack journalists have taken a series of overheard conversations, an intercepted text message, an ill-chosen word here and there, and some tasty gossip gleaned straight from the vandalism on the wall of the Punt Rd Oval toilet and created a media commotion with the express purpose of kicking a man while he’s down.

How a media storm erupted over what was simply some poorly chosen words from a coach to a young player who played on at the end of a game when he should’ve wound down the clock is a mystery to Best Clubman and we love nothing more than making a mountain out of Terry Wallace’s mole hill.

The first sign that something was amiss was the fact the first two reporters to break the story were Craig “Hutchie” Hutchison and Mark “Robbo” Robinson – two men whose sole means of conducting legitimate investigative and well-researched journalism is by going through the bins of AFL players and, when that fails to provide anything meaningful, following that up with a quick perusal of the contents of the nearest women’s sanitary disposal unit, which may or may not be conducted for work purposes.

The best thing for Hutchison, Robertson and co is that they essentially control the media and can twist and turn the series of events on Tuesday to make them come within an inch of what they initially reported, which is that Wallace had been made more redundant than the agent of the kid who played The Sherminator in American Pie who, as Wallace is about to experience, hasn't landed a job in the intervening ten years since the film premiered and the word "MILF" entered the popular lexicon.

The only positive for Wallace out of all this is that he now has other coaches and football people in his corner, if this article from man-in-waiting Kevin Sheedy is anything to go by.

Sheeds is a man who chops and changes his opinion to an extent not seen since a 1970s, Ziggy Stardust-era, sexually confused David Bowie looked at himself in the mirror and said “So Ziggy, boys or girls for lunch, what’s it going to be today?”

But on this matter he seems to be making just a little bit of sense after years of non-sequesters to inane questions from journalists like Hutchie and Robbo like “You must be happy with the boys’ performance” after a game where the Bombers have won by 10 goals.

In Sheeds’ opinion, the “worst thing Richmond could do right now is sack Terry Wallace” which is not entirely correct if rumours the Tigers are set to install Sheeds for 2010 are correct.

Despite four and a bit seasons of ineptitude, Sheeds seems in favour of keeping Wallace on beyond next year, which seems about as likely as the reconciliation we’ve all been waiting for between Steph and Toadie on Neighbours.

“Building for a premiership requires patience and time”, says Sheeds without specifying an exact timeframe but presumably he meant longer than the five years Wallace has had to turn water into wine or, in literal terms, mature recruits like Mark Graham and Kent Kingsley into winners.

As usual, Sheeds offered an opinion in deference of something he did at Essendon in 1993, continuing the feast he has enjoyed in dining out on the worst premiership team, on paper at least, since the 1993-94 Houston Rockets, with Dean Wallis playing the role of Carl Herrera.

“If they keep playing the kids, then they've got a future. In my premiership year at Essendon in 1993, I had 3 1/2 wins by Round 7”, which is two and a half games more than the Tigers have managed.

Sheeds added, “and by then I hadn't introduced Rick Olarenshaw and David Calthorpe” which could be perceived as a good thing or a bad thing depending on whether you focus on prior to 1994 when Olarenshaw was a soft but silky winger and Calthorpe was doing the grunt work in the midifeld, or whether you look at the terrible careers these two would go on to have and their current roles as woeful boundary rider and morbidly obese runner respectively.

In finishing up, Sheeds attempted to gorge once again on the 1993 and 1984-85 premiership teams by insisting his mantra was to always “play the kids”.

“I'm not going to tell Wallace what to do. If I were in his situation, I would play the kids and give the board an opportunity to see the list and show what a professional I was”.

Now, maybe Best Clubman is way off here or has Sheeds just suddenly developed an infatuation with playing with kids like he was Robert “Dolly” Dunne when even a cursory glance at his last years at Essendon shows that the likes of Jason Winderlich, Ricky Dyson and Jobe Watson couldn’t crack a regular game because mature-age, dud recruits like Mark Bolton, the Johnsons, Scott Camporeale, Matthew Allan and Justin Murphy were hogging all the game time to ensure another bottom-four finish.

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TASTY MORSEL OF COMEDY THAT…

2009-05-18T23:53:00.000+10:00

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

With Collingwood crumbling at the hands of a superior opponent again on the weekend, it should come as no surprise that coach Mick Malthouse is lost for answers.

After all, this is the man who was lost for answers when teams decided the best way to counter the dangerous Jason Cloke and his third-man up role was to adopt the novel approach of manning him up. Crazy we know.

Malthouse’s tactical naivety in the modern game is such that the same dilemma seems to be costing the once dominant Heath Shaw his career. A year ago Shaw was representing Victoria but, if current form trends continue, he will be lucky to be representing Koo Wee Rup if Malthouse can’t figure out a solution awful quick.

As well as losing his tactical marbles, Malthouse now seems to be losing his marbles in general if his insights into Collingwood’s performance in Sunday’s mauling against Carlton are anything to go by.

''I didn't think we were out of the game at all at any stage until the last five minutes,'' he said with regard to a game the Magpies lost by 9 goals after kicking a solitary goal in the first half. Perhaps Malthouse was referring to the last five minutes of the pre-game warm-up as the point where the Pies lost control of the game.

Attempting to pinpoint the exact cause of the loss, which comes a week after the team managed only 5 goals for the game against a ruthless St. Kilda, Malthouse added that: “we were getting enough of the football, we were just weren't getting enough clean football...'' which is football speak for “O’Bree and Swan got plenty of it but butchered it by foot as usual”.

To rip off a joke we overheard at a urinal featuring the type of quaint humour espoused by Bert Newton and Darryl Somers, Collingwood are like Jetstar - they have no class. ZING. Tasty morsel of comedy that. Plenty of triers, but light on for talent and players who break lines.

After kicking only 7 goals for the game, Malthouse would be entitled to play the injury card given that five of the team’s six best goal kickers are injured in Paul Medhurst, Travis Cloke, Anthony Rocca, Alan Didak and Dale Thomas.

''You're dealt the hand, you play the hand,'' was Malthouse’s response which he offered without explaining his role in the cards the Pies have been dealt in terms of his list management which places a priority on toil and honesty at the expense of class, skill and a rucking department.

In addition to his statement that he thought the Pies were a chance until well into the last quarter, the most amazing aspect of Malthouse’s post-match performance was his insistence that mature recruit Leigh Brown has been a success rather than being exposed as an overweight, lead-footed oaf who tarnishes the memory of Jarrod Molloy as the Collingwood recruit in the worst physical condition in the club’s 120-year history.

''Leigh Brown is fantastic for us. he's a competitor, He helps out in the ruck, he can go forward and release our forwards and he can go back and release our backs. He's a great competitor,'' Malthouse claimed.

The only logical explanation to Malthouse’s claims of Brown being a “competitor” is that in his senior years he has developed a slight mumble and what he was trying to say is that Leigh Brown is “a complete eater” rather than “a competitor”.

Because, based on current form, and by current we mean since the year 2000, Brown is, was and always has been terrible and the decision to recruit him in anticipation of
winning a flag that will never happen was a major mistake and typifies everything that is wrong with the so-called greatest club in Australia.

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BABY GOT BACK…

2009-05-18T23:23:00.000+10:00

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Best Clubman is in no position to offer advice on the intricacies of the relationship between men and women. This comes after Missus Best Clubman decided we’d be better off as friends and that she’d be better of with a man who was, in words she blatantly plagiarised from Sir Mix-A-Lot, “long, strong and down to get the friction on”. So lonely are we that we go into the supermarket late at night to give the chicken breasts in the deli a firm squeeze just to make sure we haven’t forgotten what they feel like.

In the context of professional sports the whole male-female dynamic is a minefield given the recent NRL sex scandal and its implications for male-female relationship between players and female fans or, to put it more accurately, the male-male-male-male-male-male-male-male-male-male-male-male-male-male-male-male-male-male-female relationship between a rugby team and a drunk groupie.

AFL chief Andrew Demetriou who, in terms of sheer body weight, counts as a five-some every time he tugs the todger at home on his own, has fronted the media to demonstrate the differences between our game’s culture and attitudes towards females with those from north of the border.

However, in a stunning admission, Demetriou has admitted that AFL did once possess a culture of group sex similar to that exposed in the NRL but is adamant that it has changed.

Demetriou did not specify exactly when this changed occurred but if Centrebet were framing a market the year 2004 would have to be near the favourites for no other reason that it was the year Wayne Carey retired. And we’ll let you the reader interpret any correlation between these events for yourself.

According to Demetriou, group sex between players and fans has dissipated since the league introduced its Respect and Responsibility campaign to educate players in 2005. Prior to this revolutionary campaign, the first and last line of defence for league footballers was an A4 page handed out at pre-season training with the words “DON’T RAPE ANYONE” written in bold type.

The whole issue has arrived back in the headlines following the Matthew Johns scandal which saw the Channel Nine celebrity indefinitely banned from the NRL Footy Show. Unfortunately Nine management didn’t deem it necessary to ban the entire show and its offensive actions towards women and comedy in featuring the hosts in women’s clothing for each and every sketch - a joke which has no place outside of The Benny Hill Show or a Ken Bruce commercial.

"I'm sure we've had a similar culture in the past, there's no doubt about that," Demetriou said. Turning group sex into a broader issue that afflicts all workplaces, including the AFL, Demetriou said “I'll go broader than that, it's not just a culture that prevails in AFL football or NRL, it prevails in lots of work places, particularly amongst men”, he added while conjuring crazy mental images for attending journalists of what goes on at the AFL workplace during the annual Christmas party and AFL Grounds Manager Jill Lindsay’s role in it.

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AT THE BAR…

2009-05-17T01:24:00.000+10:00

Friday, May 15, 2009

What were SEN thinking? How hard could it be to come up with a believable reason for firing the pugnacious Grant Thomas that everyone would believe?

This is a man who backstabbed one of the all-time great coaches in order to usurp him as St. Kilda coach. This is a man who preached clean and healthy living while coach yet is so overweight he can’t see his reproductive organs without the assistance of a long mirror, a camera with a wide lens and some very favourable lighting. This is a man who introduced management speak to the AFL and the weasel words that drive the public mad like “process”, “structure” and “Stephen Milne”.

Yet the best SEN could come up with was sacking Thomas for “financial reasons” which makes about as much sense as the plot from a KFC ad. This excuse belies the fact that Thomas’ salary would be relatively small compared to SEN’s overall commentary budget as well as the fact he was paid out the rest of his contract.

So claiming “financial reasons” makes about as much sense as the Liberal Party explaining the reason for voting Brendan Nelson out of the leadership was due to him having an over-interesting personality that detracted from policy content.

The scuttlebutt surrounding Thomas’ dismissal has centred on the possibility of SEN firing Thomas, a noted and vehement critic of the AFL administration, in order to appease league headquarters when the next round of media negotiations come up.

Or at least this was the story broken by Herald-Sun journalist Mark ‘Robbo’ Robinson whose research for a story usually involves typing “shit journalism” into Google, reading what other people have written, re-hashing the latest trends in the game under his own name, before having a pint “At The Bar” with Jon ‘Ando’ Anderson.

AFL boss Andrew Demetriou has lashed out at speculation of the AFL’s involvement in Thomas’ sacking. At an impromptu press conference arising after journalists followed the trail of crumbs from Demetriou’s home to his office, the big man said that people subscribing to this conspiracy theory were totally out of order.

"They should take a good look at themselves because it’s completely untrue,’’ Demetriou said on 3AW without mentioning that in order for him to take a good look at himself he requires the assistance of a long mirror, a camera with a wide lens and some very favourable lighting.

"Unless people are going to start calling me a liar or call the AFL a liar – and I encourage them to because I need a new pool – but I mean it’s just nonsense”, Demetrious threatened before specifying “10 feet x 10 feet” as the exact dimensions of a pool required to fit his ample frame.

Going further with his “it wasn‘t me, it really wasn‘t“ routine, Demetriou added that "we don’t do it. Grant Thomas has been sacked from many organisations and we’ve had nothing to do with that”, which discounts the AFL’s decision to schedule finals series at the end of the 2004, 2005 and 2006 seasons which indirectly led to Thomas being fired for choking and not being able to take the most talented list in the league beyond a preliminary final.

“We never ever pick up the phone and ring a boss, an editor, anyone to complain about a journalist or try to get something not written or pulled. It’s one of my big no-nos."

So we can now add “having commentators fired” to “getting in touch with the grassroots of the game” and “not eating carbs after 4pm” as things on Demetriou’s “no-no” list.

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POTENTIAL AND THE BALL… IN THAT ORDER…

2009-05-17T00:47:00.001+10:00

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The most precarious job in Australia was Best Clubman’s tenure as a groundskeeper at the local educational institution for primary school students after the principal ran a background check on us to discover previous convictions for tom peepery, tom foolery, sexual delinquency, and owning a copy of Season 1 of How I Met Your Mother.

Needless to say, that position was terminated quicker than an unplanned pregnancy arising after a night out involving a seemingly innocent and carefree young lady with a thing for footballers and a pack of rugby league players on an end-of-season trip.

Someone who is facing their own precarious situation at present is Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse, who enters his 15th season since a premiership having achieved so little in his 10 years at Collingwood that Pies members still recall the Rupert Betheras era with a degree of fondness.

With the Magpies teetering on the brink of mediocrity, last night’s smashing at the hands of the rampant Saints has the potential to send Collingwood into a downward spiral.

Adding extra salt into Malthouse’s wounds is the news of injuries to frontliners Josh Fraser, Dane Swan and the world’s second favourite bashing victim after Tina Turner, the once promising Travis Cloke.

The difference in class between the sides last night couldn’t have been more evident had Britney Spears tried to hit on Fitzwilliam Darcy at this year‘s MTV Awards after-party, with the St. Kilda holding the Pies to their lowest score since 1997 when Tony Shaw unleashed a team featuring Matthew Francis, Chad Liddell, Brad Cassidy and Paul Sharkey that scored 5.9.39 and amazingly only lost by nine points to that year’s premier Adelaide.

Speculation surrounds the injured trio, which add to Collingwood’s already long injury list that has grown to an extent that only one of its first-choice forwards is available and the one who is fit is Anthony Rocca - a man who just happened to peak in that 1997 loss to the Crows.

After the game Malthouse would not go into detail about the extent of the injuries. "I'm not about to start to be a doctor," he said without specifying when he was about to start being a coach who doesn’t make stupid trades and who possesses a modern game plan that doesn’t hug the boundary like a pair of jeans attached to the posterior of Jarrod Molloy who, incidentally, Malthouse acquired by trading away the best full-back of the last decade in Mal Michael.

Fraser has a suspected posterior cruciate ligament injury which will prevent him from “dogging” contests for at least a fortnight, while Swan also appeared to injury his knee after landing awkwardly from a head-high Steven Baker tackle. The injury is slight and would fail to keep any other elite midfielder in the competition out for week, but the part of the knee damaged by Swan is the exact spot he uses to hit the ball while kicking those sideways spinning drop punts that rarely hit the target.

Teen heartthrob Dale Thomas also appeared to be injured towards the end of the game with what was described as “soreness” which Malthouse may have proffered as an excuse for Thomas only getting 13 possessions until he realised that, a spectacular mark and run down from behind tackle each week aside, Thomas still hasn’t fulfilled his early promise and rarely gets more than 13 touches when fully fit.

Keeping mum again, Malthouse would not go into what was bothering Thomas. According to Malthouse, Thomas was "a bit sore, (but) I'm not going to speculate on what he's got or what he hasn't got” which evidently is potential and the ball… in that order.

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SINCE THE TIME WHEN SOMEONE WAS CONSIDERED A WANKER FOR CARRYING A MOBILE PHONE…

2009-05-10T15:13:00.001+10:00

Monday, May 11, 2009

In dropping another game on Friday night, reigning premiers Hawthorn’s season has started to resemble the worst defence of a title since James “Buster” Douglas put down his triple cheeseburger, took off his “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Tyson” t-shirt and got into the ring only to be belted into seven distinct shades of black and blue by Evander Holyfield in 1990.

With inspirational leader and Norm Smith Medallist Luke Hodge appearing to suffer an abductor strain during the weekend’s loss to Essendon that will rule him out for at least two weeks, the depleted Hawks have sunk to new lows.

The club estimates that during this two week absence Hodge would have amassed a grand total of 11 minutes playing on a direct opponent, a role that will now fall to the next best player on the list at roaming the backline on their own to jump third-man up to spoil and take uncontested marks and possessions.

The Hawks’ vice-captain was thrashed by Essendon’s improving young forward Angus Monfries, who adopted the revolutionary technique of manning Hodge up and making him accountable - a role that appeared beyond the grasp of Matthew Stokes in last year’s Grand Final.

Monfries seem to revel in the role of lead-up forward designed to nullify the opposition’s best loose defender if his performance on Hodge and Collingwood’s Heath Shaw last year are anything to go by.

No doubt Monfries’ proficiency in this role has come from his first hand knowledge of watching the hideously overrated Dustin Fletcher play as a loose man/on the other team’s worst forward for the best part of a decade while resting on laurels made 15 seasons ago.

For Hodge’s sake, let’s hope his career his as over-eulogised as Fletcher’s and people forget that he hasn’t played on anyone of note since the time when someone was considered a wanker for carrying a mobile phone.

With Monfries towelling Hodge up in the first half, Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson was forced to move Hodge to the forward line under the instruction from the runner to not look towards the middle of the ground as he made his way, lest Hodge be reminded that he is simply a failed midfielder who can now only play the role of unaccountable defender.

And as for those media pundits who seek to over-analyse everything and write reactionary articles on the current flavour of the month, anyone who rates Hodge above Chris Judd needs to take a good, long, hard look at themselves and realise the only thing Hodge has more of than Judd is hair and distance between himself and his direct opponent.

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FREMANTLE. FINALS. TWICE.…

2009-05-10T14:42:00.001+10:00

Thursday, May 7, 2009

The Richmond Football Club are so hapless that when Johnnie Cass, the token gay from the first season of Big Brother, was offered the chance to extend his fleeting fame for an extra 15 minutes by choosing a product to endorse, he went with Pocket Socks over the Tigers and recorded what now stands as the worst advertisement from a D-list celebrity in Australian advertising history - with apologies to Ugly Dave Gray and his cure for erectile dysfunction with a nasal spray.

So why resist another chance to kick Richmond when they’re down. After all, so inept have their on-field performances been over the last 25 years, even Fremantle have appeared in the finals twice since the Tigers last graced us with their presence in September. Fremantle. Finals. Twice.

The latest shocker out of Punt Rd. is the decision made by the club’s medical staff to allow the Tigers’ one shining light, Matthew Richardson, to play out last weekend’s match against Sydney despite suffering a buttock strain the previous week and pulling up lame during the second quarter against the Swans before being allowed to play out the match.

The Richmond hierarchy have stood firm by the club’s decision to allow Richardson to play and, once injured during the match, run the game out. The club claims the more recent injury occurred during the second quarter and was not particularly serious when Richardson was allowed to re-enter the game.

However, previously unseen footage viewed by Best Clubman shows the hamstring injury occurred earlier than this when Richardson bent down during the warm-up to collect another torn up Richmond membership card that had been lobbed at the players. Whether the pain on Richo’s face was due to the hamstring injury or the fact he viewed the words “non-refundable” on the membership card is not clear.

Richmond president Gary March, who has comfortably nestled himself between Eddie McGuire and Rob “Smooth As” Butterss as the all-time senior club official with the worst haircut for a man of his age in the league, said it was unfair to blame the club’s medicos for their decision-making on the weekend.

This continues the trend of Richmond not blaming Joel Bowden for his decision-making during important moments in the last decade. March would also not speculate on the impact of the buttock injury Richardson suffered the week before to North Melbourne on his subsequent injury.

The Tigers claim the buttock strain occurred as Richo attempted a left-footed kick against the Kangaroos. However, previously unseen footage viewed by Best Clubman shows the buttock injury occurred earlier than this when Richardson was asked by the media to demonstrate the position his club had adopted over the past 25 years while being pummelled worse that an innocent teenage girl in the wrong place at the wrong time on a rugby league end-of-season trip.

Tigers doctor Greg Hickey tried to defend his decision to allow Richardson to play on by saying the big man made the call himself. "When someone like that says: 'I'm right to go. I'm not great, but I'm happy to put my hand up and get out there', we've got to give that a lot of respect," Hickey said without specifying how many years of informal training Richo had amassed on bio-mechanics, physiotherapy and medicine and why, as an employed medical professional, he didn’t have the cahonas to tell Richardson to sit his arse on the bench next to Robin Nahas, Joel Bowden’s career and the ghost of Jordan McMahon‘s last contested possession.

After Hickey responded with “Hi everybody” to the media’s taunts of “Hi Dr. Nick”, he pointed out that Richardson has played with worse encumbrances in the past - although he may have been referring to Steven Sziller rather than any particular injuries.

"There's been times over the last 12 months where he's been as bad . . . and he's managed to go out and get three Brownlow votes." Hickey was surprisingly well behaved when one media hack asked him whether he had obtained his medical degree from the back of a Nutri-Grain cereal box by retorting that his degree required six coupons to be collected and mailed in before the good people at Kellogg’s sent back a Bachelor of Medicine in the post from Fort Bragg University.

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LOOKING LIKE SHE‘D JUST EATEN LEIGH BROWN…

2009-05-10T11:16:00.002+10:00

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Considering Brendan Fevolaola’s past misdemeanours have included public urination and fronting up to a Mad Monday celebration wearing an enlarged dildo, the AFL should be sceptical when taking advice on its balls from the AFL’s answer to Cleetus The Slack-Jawed Yokel from The Simpsons.

But Fevola seems to have come up with a ripper of an idea for the league to “break in” their game balls rather than using untouched balls that are too firm and hard. And if Best Clubman wasn’t so busy trying to find more euphemisms and innuendo for testicles to pack into this paragraph, we would have been able to come up with a better joke than just stating the obvious in that the last time Fevola broke something in, ex-wife Alex got preggers on a swing set at Langwarrin Caravan Park.

With Fevola missing a gimme to win the match against Hawthorn, he’s been trying to deflect attention from his error by blaming the balls, much like Best Clubman attempts to divert the focus from our performance in the bedroom by blaming the balls being used. Awesome.

Although, in fairness, Fevola has been banging on about this issue for a week now and why wouldn’t he? The AFL is so eager to respond to any minor issue with a major overreaction as evidenced by the triumph that was instigating a revolutionary post-it note system for recording interchanges in light of the first interchange breach in nearly two decades last year instead of just saying “shit happens, the current system is fine” and moving on. Not the AFL’s modus operandi that.

Unbelievably, the makers of the balls, Sherrin, think Fevola may be onto something, which is risky as the last time Fevola was onto something Lara Bingle woke up walking bow-legged and requiring the usage of a crutch. Double awesome.

"Believe it or not I think Fevola might be right for once," Sherrin's product manager Brad Rendell said. Saying Fevola is right for once is not entirely fair as he did manage to successfully answer the question “Are you Brendan Fevola?” put to him by a Galway constable called to investigate reports of a bogan attacking an Irish barman on the 2006 International Rules tour with the answer “Yes, yes I am“.

Explaining the fascinating science behind footballs, Sherrin’s Rendell went on. "Its like any new leather product, such as a new pair of football boots. A football is very similar. Once its kicked in a bit it softens up, it stretches and then comes to its perfect shape."

This last sentence seems an apt description of Kate Ricthie’s body shape since she entered the mid-90s looking like she’d just eaten Leigh Brown, blew out even more after eating the leftovers after a hard day’s work at The Diner, before coming back in perfect shape if the evidence Best Clubman saw in her leaked homemade sex tape was anything to go by.

Fevola’s light bulb moment came after several weeks of the kicking “yips” when he missed several early shots at goal. In extending his remarkable streak of lateral thinking, Fevola is now set to write to Stonnington Council requesting that curbside urinals be installed outside all nightclubs and bars in the Chapel Street district.

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A ROUGH MIXTURE OF ENGLISH, HINDI, KLINGON AND THE GALLAGHER BROTHERS…

2009-05-08T08:17:00.002+10:00

Monday, May 4, 2009

Terry Wallace’s grip on reality is slightly less than that of former Geelong, Fremantle and Western Bulldogs enigma Andrew Wills, who was absolutely positive no one noticed he was going bald until well into the 2000 season.

The Richmond coach is adamant that his side can still make this season‘s finals despite starting the season at 1-5 in the worst opening since that rather plump Aboriginal woman walked out to sing the national anthem at the start of the 1993 Grand Final in what appeared to be a rough mixture of English, Hindi, Klingon and whatever language it is the Gallagher brothers from Oasis speak.

"The target is to win every game and take on every opportunity that we can and we're still looking to play finals footy," Wallace said in displaying the sort of optimism that should have him taking the Douta Stars to the upper reaches of the ladder in the Essendon and District league in 2010.

Wallace’s claim must be an example of extreme motivational techniques to get his boys up. Either that or he’s replaced new recruit Ben Cousins as Perth drug lord John Kizon’s best mate and has been partaking in samples of the merchandise because, from where most rational people stand, the Tigers have about as much chance of making this year’s finals as there are of 5,000 Richmond supporters turning up at Punt Rd. oval to watch Cousins train in July just like they did in February when they assured us that this was again going to be their year.

After Richmond’s loss to Sydney on Sunday, Wallace looked towards the remainder of the season with some hope given the solid effort of his charges against the Swans and, as he saw it, the improved from of players like Brett Deledio, Jack Riewoldt and Richard Tambling even though that triumvirate of wasted talent represent, in order, the worst first selection in the draft since the Tigers answered “Yes” to the question “No, really, you want to take Anthony Banik with pick 1 in the 1989 draft?”, a man who is somehow not the worst shot for goal in the league for anyone with the surname Riewoldt, and the embodiment of Leon Davis… the 2002 version, not the 2009 jet.

"The competition's really very, very even we've just got to get to the stage where we can get all our blokes available for a start ... we've got a few blokes that really can add some genuine quality," Wallace pointed out before reeling off the names Knights, Campbell, Gasper, Gale, Daffy, Lambert, Weightman and Lee as the possible “genuine quality” inclusions this week.

The news that this bunch of illustrious talent have all retired must have left Wallace as empty as reports of lobby groups petitioning the government to ban solarium usage to a maximum of two in the first hour and one every hour thereafter. Or was that drink-driving?

Either way, our man Terry could use a drink.

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A TRIFECTA OF TASKS THAT HAVE ELUDED RHYCE SHAW…

2009-05-08T00:47:00.000+10:00

Saturday, May 2, 2009

In terms of remarkable journeys, former Canadian rugby union representative Mike Pyke’s trip from the Rugby World Cup to turning out for the Swans this week in the space of six months is right up there with Eric Bana’s transformation from bit player on an ordinary Australian sketch comedy show to legitimate Hollywood superstar heartthrob.

When Sydney recruited Pyke at the end of 2008, it was assumed he would not make his debut until sometime in 2010, or at all, such is the steep learning curve of trying to understand the rules and intricacies of Australian rules football.

Yet here Pyke is about to suit up for his first game of AFL a little more than six months after learning the game, a feat all the more significant when he probably had to learn the rules of the code by watching replays of Sydney matches until he assumed it was normal for every game to include 4,759 ball-ups, 7,100 tackles and 19,746,384,211 backward passes.

Pyke’s rapid improvement means he has forced his way into the Sydney line-up as soon as he’d mastered the skills of running, bouncing the ball and kicking a drop punt, a trifecta of tasks that seem to have eluded Rhyce Shaw in a 10-year career.

While professional athletes switching codes is nothing new, this is the first time anyone has gone from rugby union to AFL given the staggering differences between the codes. This is some feat considering AFL is a game requiring skill and balance compared to rugby union which consists entirely of rucking, tackling, mauling and boring the opponent for 80 minutes while a referee, who the players refer to as “sir”, makes judgments on finicky rules no one seems to understand all so spectators can marvel at a no-look pass from a man with no neck as the sporting equivalent of splitting the atom.

You can file rugby union with polo, rowing, yachting and membership of the Young Liberals as pursuits preferred by the private school elite that make no sense to the common man. No doubt Gillon and Hamish McLachlan are keeping a keen eye on Pyke’s progress this week as well as sizing his broad shoulders up for a potential gig as 1/8th of the Old Scotch coxless eights for next year’s regatta.

Pyke’s progress has amazed Sydney coach Paul Roos. "It's extraordinary really," he said. “Not long ago he probably didn't know the game existed,” Roos added by placing Pyke in the same group as people in Western Sydney and the Gold Coast.

“He's at the stage now where he's a competent ruckman and we expect a competent performance,” Roos added without explaining why more is demanded from Pyke in his first game than is required from Shaw each weekend.

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THE END OF AN ERA (AND OF FIXED PRICING)…

2009-05-04T02:16:00.001+10:00

Friday, May 1, 2009

With news that Richard Pratt, Carlton president in exile and Australia’s favourite convicted corporate criminal, has succumbed to a long battle with cancer, tributes for this otherwise decent and philanthropic man have been flowing in.

Carlton coach Brett Ratten told the media the club would dedicate the rest of the 2009 season to Pratt’s memory, rather than just focusing on this weekend’s match when emotions around the club are likely to be less stable than Visy’s adherence to anti-collusion legislation.

Ratten confirmed that rather than just devote one game to Pratt’s legacy, his support for the club warranted him being in the team’s thoughts for the remainder of the year, which is a smart way of saying “if we were playing Melbourne this week then we’d dedicate this weekend’s match but we’re going to get pummeled by the Hawks and don’t want to look stupid and all”.

Pratt lost his fight against cancer earlier this week, just days after serious criminal charges leveled against him by the ACCC for alleged price-fixing with competitor Amcor were dropped, setting a dangerous precedent for anyone with terminal cancer to go and commit all sorts of criminal acts safe in the knowledge that government regulators will drop all charges upon your deathbed.

"Everyone said we did use it as a motivating factor (last week), knowing he was at home. Is it a motivating force this week? I think it's going to be a motivating force for 2009. Every week we play our thoughts will be with Dick and what he's done for our club," Ratten said in describing the massive role Pratt played in saving the club from financial oblivion, not least of which included the donation of all 1,293 Visy cardboard boxes used to store documentation from legal proceedings leveled by the state against Brendan Fevola.

"This year, maybe we can achieve something with his support and that will go on for every year we play footy", Ratten continued. No doubt the club’s short-term plan is to honour Pratt in the way that would have made him happiest by recording two victories over hated enemy Collingwood and leaving each club’s supporters with conflicting emotions – with Blues fans mourning the death of their president and Pies supporters wishing for the death of theirs.

Ratten then adopted the predictable “let’s move on just like Dick would’ve wanted and live by his principles” routine by saying that “we know Dick would want us, as he did every morning, to get up bright and early and focus on his work, and he would be pushing us to do the same, to make sure we have a great performance this week”, which suggests some sort of collusion with the Hawks about pre-fixing the result of this weekend’s match is in order sometime between now and 2pm on Saturday.

According to those in the know, the ACCC action launched by former close friend Graeme Samuel and the inclusion of Simon Wiggins as a regular fixture in Carlton’s best lineup hastened Pratt’s decline towards the end. With the ACCC charges now having been dropped, for the sake of Pratt’s memory and the hopes of long-suffering Carlton fans, it can only be hoped that Wiggins gets the same treatment this week.

And so we call move forward in this wonderful country of ours which celebrates rather than admonishes its convicted criminals like Pratt, Ned Kelly and Chopper Read no matter the crime so long as they have charisma and charm.

Meanwhile, consumers, competitors and businesses throughout Australia who were directly and indirectly affected by Pratt’s involvement in a $700 million price-fixing scandal in what the ruling Federal Court judge labeled as Australia’s biggest ever corporate cartel and the worst to come before the courts in over 30 years wonder what all the fuss is about.

In related news, having started what seems to be a Carlton 2002-like long decline towards the depths of the bottom of the ladder, North Melbourne are rumoured to be weighing up the notion of bringing in a club great with shady business dealings to rejuvenate the franchise by making feelers towards Kangaroos Team Of The Century full-back David Dench once the memory of his $30 scam in ripping off Victoria University and his subsequent stint in the big house is forgotten by the general public.

If Best Clubman were Dench’s public relations advisor, we’d be getting Dench to develop a charitable foundation in his own name and a cheeky grin to help the public gloss over his sins.

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DOGGING IT…

2009-05-04T01:26:00.002+10:00

Thursday, April 30, 2009

The first time Best Clubman heard a professional footballer accused of “dogging it”, former English Premier League star striker Stan Collymore opened our eyes up to a new world of sexual delight we had previously been unaware of.

Suffice to say that since having read about Collymore’s “dogging” incident we’ve never driven past a secluded truck stop without popping in and fumbling around in the dark for some cheap thrills from a lady of loose morals to be shared with a bunch of hillbilly truckers stinking of bourbon, dim sims and rank body odour.

So when we had heard reports of former St. Kilda coach turned media commentator Grant Thomas accusing Collingwood’s Josh Fraser of “dogging it” on the weekend, our ears did get a little prick which is ironic in the sense that Thomas, with his backstabbing to get the Saints coaching job all those years ago combined with his over-inflated opinion of himself, is more than likely to have a little pri… [Deleted as per legal advice].

Of course, Thomas was talking about Fraser avoiding a bump from Essendon’s David Hille in the opening moments of the exhilarating Anzac Day clash between the traditional rivals, which he believed showed a lack of commitment from Fraser and set the trend for the Pies’ lackluster display against a less talented and experienced Bombers unit.

Now Collingwood have hit back, with football manager Geoff Walsh telling the media that Fraser did not try and avoid physical contact in the clash despite the overwhelming evidence provided from Thomas, which consisted of a video replay that showed that Hille overran the ball to make contact with Fraser in an act that could be construed as weaker than anything Fraser did, as well as the notion that Collingwood has been trying to keep Fraser away from physical contact for years during training by recruiting the worst bunch of men over 6’8” outside of an LA Clippers roster to try and keep up with him.

This last accusation has weight when the names Guy Richards, David Fanning, Steve McKee, Cameron Wood and Chris Bryan are mentioned. How Collingwood fans must wish for the good old days when Leigh Matthews would unleash the twin rucking beasts of Damian Monkhorst and James Manson at the centre bounce so the opposition ruckman was left unsure as to whether he was going to die that day due to Monkhorst’s breath or the slightly loco Manson decapitating him with a shiv concealed in his footy shorts before feasting on the juicy contents inside.

“Talking about players dogging it, Grant might be eminently qualified… To stoop to the realm of personal attacks - I don't think it is befitting the game and certainly not befitting any commentator", Walsh said in what seemed to be an unwise way of attacking Thomas for making a below average personal attack on a player with what seems to be a personal attack on Thomas’ below average record as a player.

Walsh continued discharging his duty as a senior manager at Collinwood by acting as petulantly as possible to any criticism of the club or its players. “Personally I think Grant is in as world where there is plenty of competition. He probably feels 'If I don't make a go of this - there's already a couple of strikes against me - three strikes and I'm out'.”

Maybe Thomas should just stick to the facts in future criticisms of the Pies. One premiership in 50 years provides ample ammunition and if it’s three strikes he’s after, three consecutive failed finals campaigns in the last three years from the self-proclaimed greatest club in Australia should make his job a lot easier next time.

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OVER-RELIANCE ON THE COLOUR MUSTARD…

2009-04-30T00:51:00.000+10:00

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

As long as the man committing the infraction can play the game well, the AFL viewing public has tolerated many acts of criminality perpetrated by its players in the past with nothing more than casual disdain.

Apparently this courtesy hasn’t been extended to the Crows’ Nathan Bock, who was booed all day during Adelaide’s victory of Melbourne at the MCG on Sunday after allegedly assaulting his girlfriend at an Adelaide hotel recently.

Crows coach Neil Craig has criticised the Melbourne crowd for their actions and vowed to find the individuals responsible even if it takes him all day to locate the phone numbers of all 17 people who attended the game.

Bock was loudly booed when he gathered the ball for the first time against the Demons and this continued every time he amassed another possession, which wouldn’t have been an issue had he had the ball gathering skills of Simon Prestigiacomo, but which turned out to be a problem as Bock played his defender-who-doesn’t-defend-anyone-loose-man-in-defence role to perfection in accumulating another 26 uncontested possessions against the hapless Demons.

In taunting Bock, Craig’s belief is the Demons fans showed a lack of class and “poor taste” by holding the ridiculous assumption that a man should not allegedly assault his girlfriend unless it is for a very good reason, such as her giving away two shots in a game of pool or, in the case of the average Melbourne supporter, spilling a $400 cognac all over the upholstery of the Land Rover.

Craig’s annoyance at opposition supporters not holding back on their opinions of his club and its players is a bit rich considering we’ve all held back on having a go at Craig for his then role as assistant coach at Adelaide in 1997-1998 for having the worst back-to-back premiership side in AFL history.

Shit Neil, the Crows winning consecutive flags with Shane Ellen as a makeshift full-forward and Aaron Keating providing relief in the ruck is greatest act of criminality committed in AFL history and St. Kilda and North Melbourne supporters have had to hold back with their criticisms for over a decade.

"Poor taste, that's all I'll say about that. If it's the crowd, I'll say it's poor taste," Craig said in what simultaneously served as an apt description of the Melbourne crowd’s treatment of Bock as well as the sight of that ghastly Adelaide away jersey with its over-reliance on the colour mustard.

No doubt the angst towards Bock in Sunday’s crowd has more than a little to do with the fact the Crows suspended Bock for only one match despite announcing an “indefinite” club suspension until Bock had learned the error of his ways, which seems remarkable in the sense the concept of not bashing your missus had eluded him for the first 26 years of life yet made so much more sense to him once he’d had the chance to think about it really hard for that one week off.

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TO BE SURE, TO BE SURE…

2009-04-26T20:30:00.000+10:00

Saturday, April 25, 2009

In 2006 Carlton full-forward Brendan Fevola was sent home from the International Rules tour of Ireland after being caught on camera putting a headlock on an Irish barman at the Imperial Hotel in Galway.

Most people had assumed the incident, which arose after the barman answered Fevola’s question of “Do you think my wife is trailer-park trash who’d be hanging out at an outer suburban Westfield if she hadn’t met me” with the answer “To be sure, to be sure”, was settled then and there. They were wrong.

The Irish legal system has finally caught up with Fevola this week with the Carlton full-forward, and symbol of everything that is wrong with the world when a fool such as he can be rich and successful, being subpoenaed to answer some questions about the incident.

No reason was given for the massive delay between the time the headlock occurred and the time it took for it to come to court, although our limited understanding of the Irish legal system tells us the courts are opened once for every time Mark Coughlan plays a senior game.

The most amazing thing about the incident is that some poor legal clerk had to serve Fevola and explain the meaning of the word “subpoena” seven times before he finally understood what it meant and retorted that “I’ll be damned if I’m going back to Ireland three times in one year, we already have to go to South Australia twice per year to play the Crows and the Power”.

Fevola explained that as he was minding his own business on Thursday, a “man in a suit” approached him, which is surprising only in the sense that this particular man in the suit wasn’t nightclub security asking him to please refrain from pissing on the doorstep of the premises.

Fevola said the man repeatedly asked: "Are you Brendan Fevola?'' to which he replied, "No'', which is either a rather clever ploy to avoid being served or an embarrassing admission that he wasn’t sure of the answer to the question.

In the end, Fevola explained the man left the summons under the windscreen wiper of his car, which wasn’t noticed until he was almost done towing wife Alex’s trailer back to Langwarrin Caravan Park.

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