Wednesday, March 2, 2014: An attitude that won't stand up in court...

Mick and Dustin. Dustin and Mick. Two men who might just need each other.

The precocious Dustin Martin, famed for single-handed fend-offs that reduce grown men to mere piles of meat and bone, the man is all strength and all talent. More than that, he serves as a living embodiment of the hashtag YOLO generation. Martin lives in the now, the absolute uncompromising present where regrets are archaic and neck tattoos are the epitome of 'sickness', and sickness is not even a bad thing anymore. You get it? He is a bona-fide shave off half your hair, take too many sleeping pills and see what happens YOLO cat, you can't get any more into the moment than that.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014: Purchasing as many petards as they could carry....

With the league's pre-season cheese convention well and truly underway, the suited ones have headed west to Adelaide to argue about money. Chunks of cheese have dominated The Smother this week, and the unfettered cheddar discussion has continued with the revelation that outgoing AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou took home $3.8m for his efforts in 2013.

Although the figure is inflated by a $2m performance payment which was earned over previous years - presumably for achieving goals like not taking a six week mid-season jaunt around Europe - there are many within AFL land who think the fee to be somewhat excessive. On this we agree, but that may be a case of sour grapes given that negotiations with our own Big Cheese, the CEO at Smother Enterprises, fell well short of expectations. We are pleased with the decision not to fire us, but we continue to oppose the Eddie McGuire style public lashings that the boss has instituted. Our opposition, however, only seems to increase the intensity of the whippings. Truth be told, we're not real good at helping ourselves.

Speaking of which, with Sydney set to lose their controversial cost-of-living-allowance (COLA), we wonder if they too have been hoisted by their own petard. While, perhaps not so much as hoisted by their own petard, rather purchasing as many petards as they could carry, delivering them personally to Eddie McGuire and telling him to do with them as he wished. With the COLA argument heating up, common wisdom might have suggested keeping their heads down and avoiding anything that might serve as a flash-point in the argument. Something like, you know, signing the league's biggest player to a multi-millon dollar ten-year deal.

Instead, the Swans made a substantial donation to the armaments of the very men who were campaigning to have the COLA abolished, and in the end it has proved too much for the league to ignore. Although Demetriou denies that Buddy influenced the decision to remove the allowance, he also denied having any regrets about the way he handled the ASADA saga....

In the news...
The 18 AFL Captains gathered at the redeveloped Adelaide Oval today, and they wasted no time in coming out swinging against the Herald Sun. "As leaders of the playing group, we think it's appropriate to stand up, and lend our voice and influence, in condemning the mistreatment of vulnerable players. That's our responsibility" said the captain of the captains, Matthew Pavlich.

The AFL also took the opportunity to do some market research on the skippers, revealing that Hawthorn, Sydney and Fremantle are Premiership favourites among the admittedly niche market of AFL Captains. They also chose Scott Pendlebury for the Brownlow, Travis Cloke and Josh Kennedy to share the Coleman and Jack Martin as Rising Star.  

While it's small change for Demetriou, Carlton's Marc Murphy is close to re-signing with the Blues on a 4 year, $700,000-a-season deal.

And finally, Geelong's George Burberry has celebrated returning to training - after having his jaw broken in the pre-season - by donning a rather fitting bright pink cap.

Thursday, February 13, 2014: Winning form is (maybe) good form...

Form is an elusive beast. While most coaches agree that good form is good, there is some conjecture on whether bad form is necessarily bad, especially in this pre-season 'challenge', where players can be 'better for the run'. Regardless of the debate on its value, form was the first of our few justifications for saying goodbye to our loved ones and setting in for 18 days of ultimately meaningless football.

The second were the umpires, and whether recent rule changes would finally allow an enraged Travis Cloke to perform some jiu jitso wrestling maneuver on his opponent, forcing the poor defender to eat the grass with one hand while taking juggling marks with the other. That there were only 27 free kicks for the game was a positive sign in that regard, although that was offset by an average 45 degree trajectory on the centre bounce. The rustiness of the affair was not confined to the players. 

The third is of course injuries, the prevention of which is the ultimate goal of these pre-season dalliances. Geelong looks to have lost George Brrrrrrberry to a broken jaw, after the 21 year old made a promising start. Collingwood's Nathan Freeman tore a hamstring, and Tim Broomhead damaged a hand, although he's hopeful of brushing it off before round one (sorry...). Brodie Grundy returned to the field after a head-clash, although he may require surgery to remove a malignant hair bun that threatens to bring the game, and indeed the country, into disrepute.

--------

Meanwhile, with all the enthusiasm of a hungover teenager on a family beach trip, we turn our attention to tonight's all-holds-barred jog around at the Docklands Dome. Hawthorn coach Alistair Clarkson, fresh from Premiership glory, has done his best to inject some fun into the occasion, adopting the role of game show host to fend off questions about how his club will fill the now infamous Bud-hole. 
"How is our forward line going to structure up without Bud? Who is going to replace him? Is it a taller player or a smaller type of a combination of both?" he questioned, lacking only a spinning wheel and Adriana Xenides. "The same goes for Guerra going out of our back end. Is that Taylor Duryea or Matt Suckling?"

Unfortunately, with the game show gag thoroughly exhausted*, not even Clarkson could muster much in the way of excitement for tonight's contest.  "we will get some kind of gauge of where our guys are at compared to the other 17 clubs" he opined, before completely retracting everything he'd just said, "I think we lost three out of four games in the NAB last year, three of them by a point, but it's not an accurate gauge in terms of what happens in the main season."

"But winning is good form" he added, his strongest hint yet that he will actually attend the match.

*by his standards, not ours. If we even vaguely approach funny we're milking that cow until it flops.

Other news...

St. Kilda's Rhys Stanley has promised to "play his natural game" in 2014, which supporters hope is football, given the salary he is paid. Payback Records boss (and former Essendon footballer) Nathan Lovett-Murray raps to The Age about The Hird. 
Jack Riewoldt has been dumped from Richmond's leadership group, Caroline Wilson thinks it's a sign of deeper problems.