printer friendly version

ONCE WERE WARRIORS
And welcome to this Monday post mortem after a helluva weekend of football.

As Maureen McGovern used to sing there’s got to be a morning after and that’s certainly the case right now.

What a football game! The result in doubt until the final minutes. The infidels from a foreign land daring to come to the home of the sport and try to take on the local heroes.

The score so close with only less than five minutes to go. Voss sidelined with four minutes to go. And the interlopers, the infidels snatch victory.

The Warriors are victorious.

Warriors? Voss taken off? Hang on a flash. Sorry. That was the rugby league prelim final in Sydney yesterday with the New Zealand Warriors defeating the Cronulla Sharks 16-10 to go into NEXT week’s Grand Final. The first ever-international grand final for that sport.

And a lot of people wish that what happened in that code happened at the MCG on Saturday. Unfortunately for Collingwood fans in our code, Aussie Rules, the underdogs did not get up. The favourites won. But only just.

You all have your memories of the closest and most thrilling Grand Final in more than a decade – especially the 92,000 people who braved the ghastly weather to fill the MCG.

The rest of us watched it at pubs and clubs and at barbecues and at home.

I watched the day unfold in front of the TV at home and these are the thoughts and criticisms of a Grand Final couch potato.

First up. The pre-match entertainment. I thought that Kate Ceberano’s version of Waltzing Matilda was about as exciting as watching grass grow.

I never question the quality of her voice but this sounded like the guest singer at a Scientology convention.

And if I thought that was insipid how about her version of the National anthem? It was a shocker. I was about to criticise the teams for not singing Advance Australia with her but it was such an appallingly limp rendition with some backup singers and no orchestra that I doubt many people in the stands sang along either.

I mean an anthem needs to be anthemic. Needs to be stirring. We actually needed Julie Anthony and a big band backing her. Didn’t anybody at the AFL attend the rehearsals and say this is wimpy rubbish?

At least Mike Brady and Up There Cazaly got the spine tingling and a lump in the throat.

It was the closest Grand Final in more than ten years. Personally, as the day unfolded, I still thought Brisbane would win, although Collingwood achieved the nigh impossible. They nobbled the star-studded Brisbane mid- field and in defence applied more tackles in one game than I suspect Carlton or St Kilda laid all year!

Nathan Buckley won the Norm Smith medal after a captains’ head to head with Michael Voss. I thought Voss would have beaten him or it would have at least been close.

Personally I cannot believe that the Norm Smith judges – all journalists or commentators could give Buckley 12 votes and Voss only 4. In between were Rocca on 8 and Lappin on 5.

And still on the Norm Smith medal. Buckley was a tough, brilliant, gritty captain who played a captain’s game and kicked on helliuva crucial goal.

But in my opinion he let himself and his team and his club down when he besmirched the Norm Smith name by taking the medal off even as he left the dais.

I noticed Rod Nicholson wrote yesterday that Buckley was so despondent that he took the Norm Smith medal off while he was a still on the ground. Not true Rod. He took it off before he left the podium.

It was a classless act, understandable, emotional, but classless, and it reminded me of the insulting and petulant and self-indulgent actions of another Collingwood player -- Peter Moore – a Brownlow medallist who threw his runner-up medal into the crowd.

At least Collingwood, with their tearful coach stayed on the ground. And it wouldn’t be a Grand Final week without some crass behaviour from the Carlton President John “pig’s arse” Elliott.

At the Essendon Grand Final lunch at Crown Casino Elliott did one of his party tricks which he thinks women love and it has got him into trouble before.

He either slapped, pinched or poked, Libbi Gore, alias Elle McFeast, on the bum.

She didn’t see the joke and quite rightly gave him a slap on the face that she said still had her hand stinging an hour later.

Ah, Carlton, there’s your president spreading your image far and wide yet again. At least he didn’t paddle her with a wooden spoon. I mean he’s got one.

And incidentally to the Ten Network voice-over man a word of advice to whoever writes your scripts. When you go so over the top as you did at the Brownlow and again on Saturday. Get a dictionary. “Zenith” means top not bottom.

And while I am still being critical I was offended in the middle of a good Sunday Herald Sun by Derek Valentine.

He made a great analogy about Collingwood, I think he said, being like a diver with an empty air-tank making one last grab for sunken treasure. But then he stretched too far when he called Malthouse a losing general and said that his “young warriors will live to fight another day and will be more experienced and as battle-hardened as the soldiers at Kokoda next time.”

Sorry Derek. Bad taste. Some footy fans will argue with me and I know Channel Nine thinks it’s “more than a game”.

It’s not. Don’t ever compare the deaths and injuries and bravery in the stinking mud of New Guinea with an afternoon of sport at the MCG.

Monday, September 30, 2002