After lunch, TFB went into the backyard to spray his stone fruit trees. TFB is an assiduous and compulsive recorder. His spraying records note, "Bleak, overcast, almost no wind."
Soon TFB was looking for excuses not to go to the match. They weren't hard to find: the weather; the fact that his regular fellow attendees had already withdrawn; he didn't feel like it; last week's results; the fact that the Pies have not played a good game all year.
By quarter time, TFB was feeling very pleased with himself. The commentators had informed him that Elliott had been scratched in the morning and that Pendlebury was a very late scratching 5 minutes before game time. Reid had gone down with a hammy in the first quarter and had been subbed out. It's hard enough to drag yourself to the game when it's cold and your team is winning; how much worse would it have been to sit through this rout? We were trounced by the footy gods and then by Brisbane.
After half time, the Bogan switched to the Richmond Adelaide game. The bottom right corner of the screen mercilessly displayed the gradual demise of the Pies. This is the first game in Melbourne I've missed this year. Really good call, Bogan!
It seems that the more he misses his reasons for living, the more replays TFB watches. Here are my good calls from the past week. Talk about self indulgence!
2011 Round 2 Team Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Final North Melbourne 1.4 2.9 4.12 7.14 56 Collingwood Magpies 5.5 9.8 15.12 21.17 143
2011 Round 3 Team Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Final Collingwood Magpies 4.2 9.7 12.8 15.12 102 Carlton Blues 4.3 5.4 8.5 11.8 74
2011 Round 4 Team Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Final Richmond Tigers 2.2 5.7 11.10 13.12 90 Collingwood Magpies 8.6 13.9 15.12 24.17 161
2011 Round 5 Team Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Final Essendon Bombers 0.3 3.8 7.10 11.11 77 Collingwood Magpies 4.2 7.3 10.6 16.11 107
Note in particular that so far this year (2011), the Magpies have beaten both Carlton and Essendon. The year of living gloriously!
Why did we ever let Dawes go? What were they thinking?
The wrap
Some may take comfort from the fact that we have at last been put out of our misery. The coup de grace has been delivered and finals are now out of the question. September will be peaceful.
I suspect that if Sydney or Hawthorn, maybe even Geelong, were unable to field any of their 18 best players, they might not be competitive in a grand final, but they would probably be able to outplay any of the bottom 4 or 5 sides. Not Collingwood in 2014. We are rapidly sliding down the ladder to our rightful place.
Any further discussion or speculation seems pointless.
Dear Mr TFB
ReplyDeleteShattered dreams.
I only saw half of the game on telly – I was in Tassie at the birthday of my 95 year old mother in law. She would have played as well as some of our players.
It doesn’t matter much that our team (and our year) was destroyed by injury –have you ever previously seen it collapse in such a spectacular heap of torn tendon and muscle – but the utter lack of anything resembling tactical offensive and defensive football was soul destroying. We have been taught nothing. Did you see how the Lions ALWAYS had one person leading towards the man with the ball at a stoppage? Did you see how they didn’t stop running until the ball had crossed the goal line? Did you see how they moved the ball through the central corridor often without looking who they were handballing it to, just moving it relentlessly forward?
At least now we are guaranteed two early draft picks. We can move on from some of the dross in our list. We can work out why we had so many injuries. We can get some modern strategists in the coaching box. We can do some coaching. We can build some muscle on to our players. You will recall my words of last week – if a player isn’t going to be improved by September 2015, there has to be a good reason to keep him on the list.
The next few weeks we can only hope for a mercy card.
Floreat Pica
M
As usual, M, hilarious, prescient and insightful.
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