Olympic Fever

I don’t really know where to begin. It must be the weather. Over the last few weeks things have gone from bad to worse for Essendon and my tennis team. It’s not that our tennis team has played badly; it’s just that we have had so many washouts and the team who is coming second has played and won everything. Now we are coming into the last round next week down by a point with rain forecast. Similar things have been happening to Essendon. We lost by four points to Adelaide last week following thumping losses to Geelong and St Kilda. But the main thing happening is the Olympic Games. Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and the USA swimmers starred, but what I found startling was the poms. We beat the poms eight years ago in Athens and matched them in Bejing, but they have dominated the track cycling, rowing and did pretty well in the athletics. Australia on the other hand dominated the sailing and only got one gold medal in the pool (but we got a lot of medals so we know it wasn’t from lack of trying). Everyone seems to think that we need more funding and better facilities. We probably do, but I think the problem is the pressure we are putting on our athletes. Magnuessen was expected to win gold and the Commonwealth Bank even said on an ad. he would win, but the T was right and Magnuessen didn’t win. AFL players have been trained in high pressure situations especially Tom Hawkins. He always seems to kick winning goals.

This match I thought was like Usain Bolt’s hundred metres final. At the start versing fancied rival Yohan Blake there was a series of lead changes with Bolt, Blake, Gatlin and Gay fighting it out for the gold medal. Essendon and North fought out the high scoring first quarter with North ahead by six points. Bolt was just ahead maybe even behind. The second 25 metres in the race, Gatlin and Blake mounted a charge with Bolt suddenly just behind. Essendon kicked away to be just ahead. The third 25 metres Bolt stretched ahead and was suddenly ahead by a long way. North being inspired by three Brett Harvey goals, North were suddenly ahead at three quarter time. Bolt pulled away at the end to win comfortably from Blake and Gatlin. Essendon weren’t good enough and came second and North like Bolt pulled away to win those valuable four points.

Essendon need to find some form quickly. I thought we were easily in the finals and now we are nearly out.

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