By John Ramsdale What a strange week leading up the preliminary final. Collingwood having four players in an all-Australian team; Collingwood going into a game like this as favourite and most Collingwood supporters I spoke to, including me, being extremely nervous.  St Kilda and Footscray supporters must have been a bit bemused and annoyed this [Read more]

GEELONG: Handball, handball, handball, panic, handball, fumble, shake head. Handball, panic, handball, interception, head in hands. Handball, handball, tackle, spill, yell. Handball, handball, handball, panic, long bomb, spoil, wale. Handball, handball, slip over, clanger, mutter obscenities. Handball, handball, panic, shank, on the full, cry. Collingwood too bloody good. Next year. Sydney Malakellisstuffbyalexwadelton.com

Collingwood/Geelong Preliminary Final Friday 17th September If  you were a Collingwood supporter, and apparently there are over 70,000 of you at the Game or at home, it was a great, truly superb win.  They came out and skinned the Cats, each and every Cat was turned into a violin string and played to the tune [Read more]

2010 Preliminary Final: Collingwood v Geelong High level professional sport is an unforgiving environment. As soon as you claw your way to the top, it becomes a battle to stay there. Enjoy the glory while it lasts, because the only way is down. Team sports multiply the variables many times over, making sustained success an [Read more]

Maybe this will be the year; maybe, just maybe my boys might pull it off. The only problem is that first we have to get through Geelong. Thompson was right to say that we are jealous; I personally can admit I am. Geelong have everything going for them, they kick our derrieres every time in [Read more]

Sniffling and coughing, I woke to a bed that was completely burning me alive. I quickly got up, wrote a note on the table for Dad, saying I was staying home from school, and turned my electric blanket down, way down. Things finally started to cool off, and I drifted back off to sleep, enjoying [Read more]

Collingwood- 18.12.120 Geelong- 11.13.79 After all the hype, it seems inevitable there was an anti-climax. The Magpies exorcise some demons with this win. But the biggest historical demon of all now faces them- another Grand Final. For the Cats, they await Gazza’s decision. After that, they probably have some other tough decisions to make. Tell [Read more]

As I have travelled the long and winding road that is life I have become hardened and have learned that life will always throw something unexpected that will jolt you out of your comfort zone. I am also now fully cognisant of the fact that ‘footy is life’ and considering  through that transposition it is [Read more]

There’s something about Mark Thompson’s last few press conferences that has me a little worried. As a bloke who has been the football version of Bill Lawry (the corpse with pads), he’s suddenly stopped playing the straight bat and started flirting with cheeky dabs behind square and now full-blooded heaves to Cow Corner. “Collingwood are [Read more]

There is nothing surer than the fall of empires, but what is never clear within the historical moment is how near the end is.  What is certain though is that once an impervious border is repeatedly breached, the day of reckoning cannot be far away.  The demise of empire shifts from a question of ‘how’ [Read more]