Round Eleven: To Cranbourne! And don't forget the pie-warmer!

Australian Rules Football at its best ie. when teams aren't flooding or winding down the clock with fifteen minutes still to play, is a highly entertaining game to watch. Many an effusive paragraph has been dedicated to the joy produced by a Hird sleight of hand, a Judd acceleration, a Brown feat of strength or a Davis piece of magic. But at least as many paragraphs have been devoted to the often hilarious off-field wheelings and dealings in the backrooms of the clubs, particularly when the club is struggling on the field. Victorian clubs have a bit of a lead on the interstaters in this regard, in part because of their longer history and in part because of their recent on-field mediocrity. All of the Vic clubs, big and small, have their occasional moments of off-field tension- Essendon, for example, frets every decade or so on whether to replace Kevin Sheedy as coach; Collingwood stresses over whether to wear a black jumper with white stripes or a white jumper with black stripes. The Club Once Known as North Melbourne bickers over whether t'is better to sail forth as the Canberroos or the Carrarraroos or simply to follow Fitzroy's path into Melbourne-based oblivion. So all clubs have their occasional moments of off-field instability. But some have turned boardroom bickering into a genuine art-form, providing endless entertainment for the football community and much schadenfraudic glee for supporters of opposing sides (all very conscious that it will be their side's turn in a fortnight or so). Richmond of course have been a basket case both on and off the field since 1983. Melbourne have periodically threatened to implode for decades. In recent years the off-field shenanigans at Carlton have contributed to the Blues' dismal showings. But the king of the calamitous headlines, without a shadow of a doubt, is everyone's second favourite team- St Kilda.
The AFL would be a far lesser competition without the Saints. They have produced some of the best players the league has seen- Baldock, Harvey, Barker, Stewart, Lockett for example. Generously, for some reason they have always been happy to pass on their talent to other clubs- Stewart and Lockett both found greater riches and success elsewhere, as have Hall and Everitt more recently. Team success though has been noticably lacking for the Sainters, with only the 1966 one point epic over Collingwood to show for over a hundred seasons in the VFL/AFL ( I don't count victories in the Let's Throw the Victorian Clubs a Bone Pre-Season Cup Proudly Brought to You by This Year's Sponsor With a Loud and Annoying Ad). Supporters of opposing teams have appreciated the Saints for their seeming unfailing and cheerful willingness to save other clubs embarrassment by taking home the wooden spoon on such a regular basis. The Saints can cope with failure. Any small sniff of success though has the effect of sending them into a panic, causing them to make absolutely bizarre and nonsensical decisions. Consider, if you will, the recent evidence.
In the early 1990s Ken Sheldon got the Saints into the finals for the first time in decades. When they briefly dipped out again he was promptly sacked and replaced by Stan Alves. Alves delivered a victory in the aforementioned preseason competition in '96 and followed it up the following year with a once in a blue moon actual Grand Final appearance. The Saints went down on the day, due in no small part to the absence of their best ruckman Everitt through injury, but made the finals again the following year. Inconceivably, Alves was sacked. In his wisdom then-President Andrew Plympton plumped (plymped?) for ex-Dons legend Tim Watson, untried as a coach but proven as a Seven Network media performer. Many argued that this was an unwise course of action. Many were proven absolutely correct as Timmy guided the Saints to a wooden spoon within two years and wisely headed straight back to the Seven Network. Plympton too departed, new President Rod Butterss taking the far more conservative coaching option of a proven performer- dual premiership coach Malcolm Blight for a cool $1 million. Fifteen games later, Blight was sacked. Does anyone have a calculator handy? Nice work if you can get it. Little known coaching assistant (and good mate of Butterss) Grant Thomas took over for the rest of the season. An exhaustive coaching review at the end of the 2001 scanned the credentials of all possible candidates and settled on...Grant Thomas. Thomas followed a cunning plan of settling for low finishes in the next two seasons (and trading established players such as Everitt and Hall) in return for high draft picks and by 2004 had a team which couldn't possibly fail to win a flag in either that year or the next. Except they could, failing to make it past the preliminary finals in either season due in part to a cripplingly long injury list. When in 2006 the Saints dipped out in the first week of the finals Butterss, who had long fallen out with Thomas, showed him the door and appointed Ross Lyon instead.
During his time at the Saints Thomas had not only taken on the traditional coaching duties but had also usurped a plethora of other responsibilities eg. negotiating individual player contracts, fixing the pie-warmer in the social club etc. His departure then left a gaping hole which, according to Butterss at least, Thomas felt an obligation to fill by calling his ex-players and inviting them down to his local for a quiet beer and a chat over issues like player contracts, the working state of the social club pie-warmer etc. Thomas denied these allegations, but Butterss ordered him away from St Kilda, while simultaneously threatening to move the club away from its longstanding home at Moorabbin to of all places Cranbourne (perhaps on the basis that Cranbourne is a long way from Thomas' local). This farce has played out in the Melbourne press for the last few weeks, enraging Saints supporter and "comedian" Steve Bedwell (he cracks funnies on the godawful Fox FM station so the inverted commas on the word comedian are no mistake) who threatened a putsch against Butterss which at this stage has yet to occur. What chance do the players have on concentrating on footy with all this going on (and their injury list now heading out the soon-to-be-vacated-maybe Moorabbin door)? None whatsoever, and they duly went down on the weekend to the Carrarraroos.
The match of the round was undoubtedly the Friday night clash between the Bombers and the Eagles. Ten minutes into the match the Eagles were several goals up and the Bombers had about three touches between them (all clangers). It looked like being an absolute slaughter, and prompted me to switch over to the rugby league fixture where a mighty crowd of less than 5000 were sitting in the rain at Stadium Australia. Ten minutes of watching people sliding through the mud was enough and I switched back over to discover that the Dons had finally gotten it together to score at least a couple of goals, perhaps a respectable loss was on the cards. Three quarters later and I, like the full Red and Black army present at the Telstra Dome, was on the edge of my seat as the clock ticked down with the Bombers up by the narrowest of margins. The place erupted as the siren sounded with Essendon up by just one point for the second week in a row, again defeating one of last year's Grand Finalists. The old guard of Fletcher, Lucas and Hird were superb, it was a hell of a good win. And my apologies to my neighbours, who for the second weekend in a row copped a repeated late night slurred and bellowed version of "See the Bombers Go Up".
After such a stirring and high quality game high hopes were held for the clash between the highflying Hawks and the determined Swans, but this was a bit of a scrappy affair. The main interest in the game was in the seemingly ubiquitous Peter Everitt- the one-time Saint was making his first appearance as a Swan against his old team the Hawks. Everitt copped the mother of all bakes from bitter columnist Robert Walls in the Age newspaper on the morning of the match but had the last laugh as the Swans took the four points. Another prodigal son, Jason Akermanis, was also smiling at the end of his first trip back to the Gabba as the Western Bulldogs were able to overcome a couple of serious injuries to key players to defeat struggling Brisbane. And one-time ladder leader Port's season is on the skids at the moment, Carlton easily accounting for them to leap frog the Saints into 13th spot.
Over in the west Richmond's misery continued as on-again off-again Freo kept their season alive with a comfortable victory. Geelong leapt into top spot and outright premiership favouritism with a gutsy interstate win over the Crows. And Collingwood missed a golden opportunity to shore up a spot in the four by going down to lowly Melbourne once again in the Queen's Birthday weekend encounter at the 'G.
So with half the season gone it has become very evident that this is the most even season for some time. Only Richmond and Melbourne are out of the running, only Geelong and West Coast are secure of a finals spot. Twelve teams are still fighting it out for six places, and spots in the top four would seem to be a very precious commodity. Unbelievably at this point in the season one of those spots is occupied by Essendon! Kevin Sheedy is safe for another three years. Of course if he'd produced this result at St Kilda he'd no doubt be sacked immediately and replaced by Steve Bedwell.
The second half of the season will no doubt be every bit as eventful as the first, see you back here next week for Round 12.