De gustibus

Why watch? The Footy Bogan analyses why he watches footy.


So, to be clear, this is a response to M's comment to my previous post.

It's my personal response. It's about how I view things. I'm not encouraging others to do as I do; or to change how they view footy. I think the world is big enough to accept a diversity of views.

Moving on

As you are signing off for the year, I expect that you may never get to read this short note.

M, one of the many pleasures life affords me is to learn that one of my posts has a comment. Without comments, it's a bit like one hand clapping. And your comments in particular, M, provide me with so much more. I still smile every time I recall your crack about your 95-year-old mother-in-law (with which I agreed even though I have never met the lady).

So rest assured, no comment ever goes unread (even spam).

It is a pity you didn't have the courage to watch the whole game.

Spurred on by this challenge, I watched the entire game. That's two hours I'll never get back.

I'm not sure why you thought I needed courage. I didn't feel particularly brave. Sure I had to endure a lot of boredom, but I doubt they'd present medals to soldiers for that.

Bread and circuses

The first thing to spoil my viewing was the fatuous commentary. The idea that this game had anything riding on it was risible in the extreme. In my view, this game had the insignificance of a dead rubber. The constant assertion that Collingwood could "make the eight" or "keep its season alive" was as irritating as it was incorrect. Sure, at the end of the game, technically, Collingwood had stumbled into the eight.

It's for this reason I think that all forms of live ladder or intermediate ladder should be banned. Since that's not going to happen, I make a personal point of banning them from my consideration.

But no one in his right mind would have expected Richmond to lose to St Kilda. They didn't; and by Monday morning (when the ladder is significant), order had been restored and Collingwood was once again ninth - considerably higher than its performance this year merits.

Even had the unthinkable occurred, our tenure in the top 8 would never have survived the following week. Hawthorn could have played its seconds and still would have beaten us, perhaps not by 65 points, but the margin was never going to be an issue; that's merely salt in the wound.

But the announcers kept harping on this faux motivation. The repetition underlined how boring they thought the game was: an exciting game speaks for itself. It's easy enough to understand their motivation: the bored viewer turns off; the broadcaster's ratings go down; perhaps the commentators' salaries decrease.

My one regret is that I did not mute until well into the last quarter. I kept making the commentary softer, but the simple expedient of muting did not occur earlier to my addled brain - presumably numbed by the non-event.

Conditions

The weather guaranteed that the ground conditions were never going to be conducive to good footy. They weren't and it wasn't.

Players of both sides kept falling over all the time.

It would actually have made more sense for Collingwood to field its VFL team. Two noble warriors might have avoided injury. I'm particularly saddened by the injury to Macaffer, a premiership laureate.

Perhaps they have hopes of the VFL team doing well in the finals; maybe they chose to protect them.

Expectations

STATS THAT MATTER: The giants and Magpies rank 15th and 16th on the form ladder in that order since Round 13.

- The Age Friday 22 August

Presumably 17th and 18th are Melbourne and St Kilda. Fine company indeed.

This game was never going to be about quality football. More power to you, M, that you were able to see something in it. It gave me no joy whatsoever.

A good game

I think I've said all this before, but I'll just go over it again.

There are many different sorts of good games; it's not really something you can write down like a recipe. But the basic elements would go something like this.

For me, a good game basically requires us to score at least 100 points; for us to make good decisions; execute skillfully; to be involved in several passages of good play. It would be a bonus if there were a nice grab or two. The icing on the cake is when we win.

Note that winning, for me, is not an essential ingredient of a good game. Winning only becomes crucial against mortal enemies (Carlton and Essendon). Those games must be won at all costs, even it means winning ugly.

But in most cases, I would rather lose pretty than win ugly. It's just one man's opinion; my taste. (See title.)

In one aspect, I am particularly unusual: I'd much rather watch a game knowing the result.

In the context of the GWS game, the only thing we got was a win. And we only got that because our opponents contrived to play even worse footy than we did. We didn't score 100 points; it's hard to read players' minds at a distance, but I'm inclined to say that we didn't make any decisions - things just, sort of, happened; most of our execution was execrable (for example, near the end Pendles missed a 15m handpass!). As for passages of good play, this viewer formed the opinion that - with a few notable exceptions - the goals scored by both sides were more the result of good luck or random chance than any sense of coordination.

The wrap

A very bad, injury-riddled team lost another 3 players to injury - one, by the look of things, for the whole of next year (if not for ever) - while just scraping home against the third-worst team in the competition. Had the AFL instituted a rational two-tier competition, GWS would be relegated to the lower tier.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_gustibus_non_est_disputandum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses