Almanac Footy: The Prospector’s Pickaxe – Message in a Bottle

 

Sadly, it seems as though the “Footy Almanac” website is closed for now. Hopefully, it will be up and running sooner rather than later. So, this week’s story is a bit like sending a message in a bottle. You do not know if, or when, it will ever get read. Then again, posting something on the Internet these days is akin to throwing a bottle in the ocean back in the day.

 

Here is some information for your Mullock heap. Experts (yes, there seems to be such a thing) say that your message in a bottle has less than 3% chance of being found, although drifts of 4 to 6 thousand miles have been documented. A Frenchman named Pierre Jacques Feret launched one in 1825 that was found in 2024. Sadly, I cannot report the contents of his message. Three percent is not great odds, especially if you are on a sinking ship, nor is it little help if it gets found 200 years later, but I guess it is worth a go if all else seems lost.

 

A 3% chance is about what Laurie Daley and his men had at the 56-minute mark of Origin 1. All seemed lost. Laurie knew it, so too his players, and so too Billy Slater and his Maroons. Every viewer in Australia knew it. Then came his first stroke of luck, the Ponga sendoff. I will leave it to other Almanac writers to argue the merits of the Klein decision. No one can argue that it was a game changer.

 

Finally, the decisive moment. The winner of the raffle is blue ticket No1. Laurie had won the meat tray. He had something to poke through the door when he got to the press conference, like generations of working-class men who had arrived home from the pub on a Friday night, a little bit too drunk and a little bit too late with a meat tray as a peace offering. Laurie was not heading home to an angry wife in her dressing gown, with screaming kids, spoiled dinner, with her hair in rollers and a rolling pin in hand, as the legend goes, but he was heading into something equally formidable; the NSW media and Blues fans. 

 

His team had won; in fact, they had pulled off the biggest comeback in the long history of SOO. A magnificent victory. He described all his players as “Outstanding.” The Blues media contingent was fully on board, there was no doubt about the sendoff, we had Joseph sent off 2 years ago, same thing, consistency blah, blah, blah. What about Cleary, Strange and Mclean. John Harms described it as the hollowest victory he had ever seen. All Queenslanders would agree. 

 

Deep down, I thought 23 minutes was too long to survive. In these situations, time seems to move slowly. Watching the clock was like watching Benny Hannant taking a hit up, God bless him. Roy and HG called him the “ambitious Walker” or “the Hiker.” HG would say, “God he’s slow isn’t he.” And of course, you look back at all those moments that could have saved the game. In no order, Fifita coughing up two bombs, The Munster leg pull on the last tackle, the Mclean kick return when we could have pinned them deep in their own half. No doubt there were others, but I will never watch the replay.

 

Nick Campton, an impressive sportswriter on the ABC, said that “QLD were suffering the sort of hurt you only hear about in sad country songs.” He summed it up perfectly. We must now move on. The series is not lost. A Queensland series victory would be one of the greatest of all time.

 

By Thursday, the dust had settled and the truth had started to sink in south of the border. We did not play very well, we were a little bit lucky, and of course, the great Blues refrain, “We need to make some changes,” Journalist Paul Crawley, Blues cheerleader and apologist, called for eleven changes to the game one team today (Monday). The Johns brothers agree for once that there must be some changes. That is why they call them the Blues. They are never happy. Here are some of their “problems.”

 

Haas is fit and must come straight in, so who gets the chop? Does Moses come back in for Ethan Strange? Do you bring Latrell in if he is fit? That is not happening, so that is one less problem. Who replaces Brailey now that he is injured? Does Casey get promoted to the starting team? And so, the questions continue. Sadly for Laurie, there is no correct answer. Another win will prove him right and a loss will prove him wrong. A loss, and there will be recriminations for some players. History says so. North of the border, there has been little or no talk about changing the team. As I said last week, a glut of star players is as much a hindrance as a help.

 

A couple of miscellaneous items to finish this week. The “Challenge Cup” final was played on Saturday night/Sunday morning (our time). I knew it was on, could not stay up, but went to check the score on Sunday morning. I could not find it on any of the usual spots, not Fox sports news and not even the “Super League” website. A sign of the times for a once iconic event. For the record, Wigan beat Hull KR by 40 to 10. 

 

Finally, only an old NSWRL follower or Bronco’s fan would begrudge the Dragons notching their first win of the season. Holmes was good, maybe he gets a start on wing for SOO2. You never know in Rugby League. Talk to you next week.

 

To read more by Mark Shannon click here.

 

 

 

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