AFL Round 7: The 2014 ‘Mopsy’ Fraser Cup

Greetings Tipsters

 

What did we take from Round Seven? Frinite I saw Daisy miss a set shot, then I wandered out to the backyard. Came back in a few minutes later and Buck’s Boys were 200 points ahead. Later that night, TVS, Sydney’s community teev station, ran ‘Spider Baby’ a brilliantly weird piece of low budget early 1960s cinema. You can watch it here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jHV9eo2Sc

 

The temptation to confuse this black and white movie with the 4&20s is well-nigh irrestible, but if you watch the movie you can make the confusions all on your scary lonesome.

 

Satarvo, I watched my boys, the Monaros, get done, but not too badly done, by Port. How good can Port be if they concede fifteen goals? They never quite got away, tho never looked like losing. Sans Phil Davis and Josh Hunt, that plucky young backline can muster about one-third as many games as Heath Shaw. They aint too bad at scoring, but defend like the French in 1940.

 

Not quite, France didn’t try so hard. Can you blame them? They had wine and food and art and literature, they’d been destroyed, lost 4% of the population, the young and healthy part, in World War Part One, and thought “Sacre bleu! Here come le Bosche, again! Third time in 70 years, hide the champagne, moi cherie, better Paris be occupied than destroyed.”

 

The Monaros even played JC down back. Not a bad idea, I’d been thinking for a few weeks that it worth trying. He didn’t do too bad, but he’s a natural born goalkicker.

 

Sateve, we watched the Sydney Sinners walk all over the Brisbane Losers. There is nothing to be learnt from this match, other than that the Sinners had a chance to play themselves into a semblance of form and that Brisbane could hardly bottom out any further. The team I once desribed as Lethal Lions have sunk to a point where they’ll be thinking “Woohoo, we get first pick in the draft!”

 

Note, Justin, neither Hawthorn nor Geelong nor Sydney has lately had a high draft pick they didn’t trade for. Nor have they had a bunch of talented young players running for their lives, just to get the hell out.

 

Sunarvo, and Richmond took 49 minutes to kick a goal, then decided that they might start playing football. Exhibiting thus, the form that made them a pre-season tip for Top Four and exactly why we shouldn’t trust such tips.

 

I just took a break to watch the Moto GP, MM93 is 2+ seconds ahead after six or seven laps. Ad break nearly done…

 

Marquez is an insanely talented rider. He doesn’t wear elbow sliders for show. He leans as much as 67*. Halfway through the race, he’s four seconds ahead…

 

Another ad break in the Moto GP, where was I? Football had something to do with it… “I wrecked my knee!” Simoncelli lost his life.

 

That was a weekend never to be forgotten. Perky Girl and I had done our first road trip, 500km in three days – we’ve since worked our way up to 3200km in four days – got home and hit the couch to watch the race and saw our favourite rider die, live on television. A few days later, my best friend died. It wasn’t on television, but I was among the last to see him alive. His wife, me, Perky Girl, around the hospital bed, he awoke from the morphine slumber, deep in pain, far beyond coherence – Greg being the sharpest, funniest deliverer of the devastating one-liner that I’ve ever known, the irony would not have been lost on him – in agony, in the last conscious minutes of his life, I said “Hang on to me brother, I can take it” and he grabbed my arm and squeezed it hard.

 

We left the hospital around 10pm, got the call around 0400. Walking home, Perky Girl told me that Greg had said “Thank you, Earl.”

 

Nothing I have ever done in my life was more important, more valuable, than those minutes between Greg awaking and being morphined out of pain, when I was there, for my best friend and for his wife.

 

Now, where was I? Football? It’s not a matter of life and death, it just seems that way sometimes.

 

Cheers, Tipsters

 

P&C, a Stop Privatisation Of Footy Production, a division of Trans-Dementia Inc.

Brought to you with the assistance of every great song that has made a differnce to my life, especially this, the hub of the wheel – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxq3kSFKkgU

About Earl O'Neill

Freelance gardener, I've thousands of books, thousands of records, one fast motorcycle and one gorgeous smart funny sexy woman. Life's pretty darn neat.

Comments

  1. Peter_B says

    One of your best Earl. Spot on with the footy observations, and lots of other more important life stories.
    Thought you let the Frogs off lightly, but then again I would have been heading for Vichy rather than manning the barricades.
    Love the Stones clip at the end.

  2. Earl O'Neill says

    Thanx, Peter.
    Some find it strange that I would put hours of thought into such things as ‘The Essential 100 by 100 – 1954 to 1977’, but, gee, it beats collecting stamps. Says me, with a collection of model cars… ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ is #1 and, yes, it’s a great vid, First live gig they’d done since 1966.
    You got me thinking now, how can I work an analysis of world politics, 1914-1945, into a football column?

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