The act is in the push…(Going into bat for big bad bustling Barrence)

Sandy Roberts may not have coined the moronic phrase ‘big bad bustling barry’ but he did use it every time Barry Hall went near the ball. Thankfully Sandy is gone.

Being a great marking forward isn’t just about speed or strength. It’s not how high you can jump or how much you can bench. It’s about judgement. Judging the trajectory and distance of a kick. It’s about timing. Timing a lead. If it’s too early your teammate may not be ready to kick it to you. If it’s too late he will go to someone else. Most of all it’s about balance. A great marking forward seizes the moment where his opponent is off balance and nudges him out of the way. Great forwards can work their opponent under the ball before it is kicked toward them. Then as the defender struggles to move backward and loses his balance, the forward can easily bump his opponent out of position and take an easy mark.

In the past, a forward would use his hands to balance himself. He would sometimes place his hands on his opponents back and use his own backside to nudge the opponent out of position. For some reason, the AFL rulemakers decided that this mere placement of the hands in the back was against the rules. It has since been outlawed. The rule name, to the common punter, is push in the back. To us, the people that watch endless games and line the pockets of administrators, if there is no push, the rule is not broken. To us, simply putting your hand on someone’s back is not a free kick. Pushing someone’s back is. As the AFL indulges in endless ‘back-patting’ sessions (pun) and parries statistics of its success, do they think about the common punter sitting in a bar trying to explain this pathetic rule interpretation to a curious foreigner (Sydneysider?). We the common punter will defend our game to the death but I cannot, and will not, defend this rule. I can’t. I won’t.

So it is strange that Lord Demetriou, in one of his all too regular comments on a current football topic, bemoans the nearly complete demise of Barry Hall. Says He:

I'd love to see him playing again because we need tough players playing our game,"

I assume he means we need tough players so we can suspend them and fine them and gradually weed them out and make ourselves look useful. Image being everything. Hall is (was) the ultimate body player. While his large, pasty biceps may attract much of the focus (of me at least), it is indeed the use of his bottom and hips that makes him such a great marking forward. He really has a great ability to work his opponent under the ball. But Demetriou’s stupid and obsessive rule-changing has had a visible affect on Hall’s game, and the more free kicks he gives away the more likely he is to have another ‘brain snap’ (another silly new word for the AFL lexicon. How can a brain snap??? It could explode, or implode, or fail, or even fade, but I don’t see how it could snap). Alas, Hall has left Sydney and his football career hangs by a thread. He may not be calling Andy and thanking him for the new rules, and the support. But he can always move over to boxing, so maybe he will. Which to me seems quite incredible. Hall, by all reports, was a fabulous and formidable junior boxer, and he definitely has vast reserves of easily accessible rage needed to be good at the sport. But is it true to state that he has not really practiced this sport seriously for the past 12 years? How then can he, at 32 (the age that makes him too old for AFL), begin his professional boxing career? Is this not the same as a promising young footballer who becomes a champion boxer and then, at 30, decides to join the AFL? Sure he has done a few pre-seasons over the years and had a kick in between boxing workouts, but would an AFL club take him? Call me a cynic, but are there dollar signs in promoters’ eyes.

Jeff Kennett could be a boxing promoter. He works on the idea that if you keep talking constantly between all the rubbish you say there will be some nuggets of wisdom (he is a real mentor of mine). It’s up to poor journalists to weed them out. In another not too subtle dig at league headquarters, he opined quite profoundly that

success is not always about how much money you make or how many viewers you have.

I think Andy and the boys would disagree. Success is only about how much money you make and how many viewers you have. We are selling a product, after all, Jeffrey. In the marketplace… The AFL’s concession that it made scheduling mistakes was conveniently shadowed with insinuations that other parties were at fault. Like all good politcians, no mention was made of having to play the StKilda Geelong game at Colonial Stadium, but we all know the claim that people going to the footy are more important than fatties on the couch is pure rubbish. Fat bums on couches baby.

Kennett is a great sage in these confusing, intellectually barren times. He is refreshingly frank and sometimes quite original. But he, like most of us, sometimes confuses originalty with straight-up stupidity. Like John Harms. John…. Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. Be a Geelong supporter, by all means. But don’t write an article that claims Geelong supporters are smart when said article provides overwhelming evidence that Geelong supporters are, in FACT, idiots. Newspaper articles, as opposed to internet fluff composed by dumb and bored netizens, are printed and kept by old ladies in living room drawers. For eternity. Thus the printed word will follow you to your grave (mine can be deleted in a moment). John, an experienced journalist no doubt aware of this, included this line in his article:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/rfnews/we-are-geelong-the-greatest-team-and-example-to-all/2009/07/21/1247941916391.html

‘Were Shakespeare living now, he'd be writing plays about Geelong,’

and this:

‘The world has never seen, in any place, at any time in history, a finer people than Geelong people.’

They are just bogans…Leave the silly human interest articles to our favourite eccentric Bob Murphy (he’s a football player and he has a mind. Wow!!!). He has an excuse.

Dean Bailey does not. Previously praised in these pages, the dees coach is about to make a big mistake. Says he, in reference to talk of tanking and its affects on match day activities for the remainder of the season

“it's not going to change what we do, it's not going to change our focus,"

I’m sure it won’t. But as explained in these pages before, tanking can be done in many ways. Read Melbourne’s omissions:

Out: McLean (Knee), Jamar (Quad), Green (Scaphoid), Grimes (Back),
Robertson

Convenient injuries to : only half decent ruckman in career best form, last years b and f and best player. tough onballer and top five player... best young backman... and our experienced and decent key forward dropped....

This be some shameless sheet…