Universal Love tribey's POTY

[manureid]

When is the Bigfooty meetup and why didn't Eddie Dingle invite me???

 

[I Dont Care]

Listen to the podcasts.

Post to actual way of talking ratio is insane. Tribey has swallowed more than one thesaurus in his day

 

[Doctor Feel]

Chapman sounds like the worst type of person to be involved with a living, breathing football club.

We scoffed at the likes of Trigg and the complete lack of accountability for every sideways and backward decision he made during his marathon tenure - and he deserved it because he's a patronising campaigner whose career record in no way justifies his smarmy FIGJAM attitude - but Chapman is something else entirely.

Glenn Archer previously described his type as 'linament sniffers', well-heeled white collar types who work their way into the inner sanctum of football clubs to rub shoulders with players and coaches with absolutely no idea as to how the joint works or what the parameters are for success.

When the videos of the 19th Man chants night and the subsequent remaster of the club song came out - something more in keeping with an off-broadway production of the Lion King - it fuelled long-held suspicions that the Adelaide Football Club has no idea what it's raison d'être is. It's not there to produce cheesy diversity advertisements that are more in keeping with corporate America (woman having a blast? check! grandfatherly old man looking pleased? check! passionate child? check! non-threatening southeast asian of indeterminable origin? check!), it's there to win games of Australian Rules Football. But you wouldn't know.

The rest of the state has long scoffed at our heritage and associated marketing. The Creed, the prisonbar, "we are Port Adelaide", "never tear us apart", but you know what? We know who we are. And we know what we want, and we know what we represent. Our football club, which launched itself from its base on the corner of Queen Street & Brougham Place to the national stage by playing tough, uncompromising, winning football, exists to make its members and supporters proud and its rivals and haters losers. That's it.

We don't exist to serve as fluffers to the SANFL and its parasitic member clubs. We don't exist as some sort of quasi-pantomime for the entire state to get behind by default, with a phalanx of pliable ambassadors in the media dutifully pushing our barrow (careful, Penbo).

We exist to win premierships. You're either with us or against us.

And after a horrendous flirtation with the Crows' generic "all things to all people" model we decided to ignore all clayton's advice to the contrary and unashamedly emphasise who we are, tore away from the cesspool at West Lakes and the dormant Port Adelaide base came back in droves. Haysman, Duncanson, Koch, Thomas and a host of others behind the scenes made that happen with a single-minded determination not seen in South Australian football since Bruce Weber pulled the trigger in 1990.

Boat-shoed spivs like Chapman? When you allow yourself to be bewildered by and can't outmanoeuvre the likes of Stephen Rowe when pressed on football operations matters, it's obvious you need to GTFO and back to the world of banking where you belong. For too long he and Trigg have been allowed to personify the vanilla mediocrity that used to drip off the likes of North, Glenelg and WWT when one of them would emerge to challenge us in the late eighties and nineties as it became increasingly obvious we'd outgrown the SANFL.

They inhabit a realm padded with corporate jibberish further emphasising their complete detachment from reality. Supporters and members - the lifeblood of any club - are 'customers' and 'agitators'. Poxy kiddified rebrands unapologetically foisted upon them because a cartoon bird head assumedly tested well at Mitchell Park kindergarten.

And yet all the while everyone, from the CEO down to Dimity of Christies Beach, deludes themselves into believing they're this sleeping juggernaut that slays its enemies while rivalling a Jennifer Hawkins-Ariana Grande scissor session for appearing superattractive to anyone from the outside.

I guess that's why they beat us at football nearly half the time.

Rob Chapman? 4 more years!

That's not gone well.

Unfortunately many things in this post are now surfacing about our very own club.

Soul destroying.

 

[tribey]

That's not gone well.

Unfortunately many things in this post are now surfacing about our very own club.

Soul destroying.

Recently addressed here:

They've won the lottery.

Halfway through 2014 we were flag favourites, had won the last three Showdowns and were the darlings of the league. They sucked more balls than Aunt Martha at Scrotumfest'88.

Since then, despite being onto their third coach and losing the best player in the league for a packet of crisps, they're flag favourites awaiting a home Prelim and we're a mediocrity hub handing our bumper deals to the chief architects.

If the roles were reversed we'd be absolutely insufferable. But they're not.

Because somewhere along the way their suits developed a ruthlessness in keeping with Bob McLean and Bruce Weber, whereas our suits became Glenelgingly addicted to the merest whiff of good press and pats on the back.

Hopefully that's not too negative

 

[Janus]

 

[Doctor Feel]

Seriously though, this thread was worth bumping because of how sobering it is. We're all loving a bit of a collective depression at the moment but I found this quite...disturbing I guess.

In a nutshell it shows how this disconnect between supporter and club has fested over the past few years. It's all come well unstuck and we're doing nothing about it.

Essentially, we've moved on Cam O'Shea and bought in Brendan Lade while ******* with every aspect of what we got right in 2014.

Bought in high profile recruits in Dixon and Ryder and somehow managed to get less interesting as a side.

Our supporters are fatigued. Sick of fighting against the establishment at all levels of our existence, and sick of the bad calls against us at crucial moments while the club says "yeah alright" and sick of spineless and manic performances. It's all very draining and extremely unenjoyable.

Yet, we're looking to persist.

This is fine dog.jpg

 

[Jakksynn]

Ow. Just ow.

I think the showdown disaster this year woke us all up to the extremely rancid odour emitting from our once great club. The crows cantering into a flag might force a few people into realising some harsh realities. This club prides itself on performance, not members, not crowds, not playing games overseas. I think this is a real turning point for our club. For better or worse.

 

[Lou Zyffer]

Ow. Just ow.

I think the showdown disaster this year woke us all up to the extremely rancid odour emitting from our once great club. The crows cantering into a flag might force a few people into realising some harsh realities. This club prides itself on performance, not members, not crowds, not playing games overseas. I think this is a real turning point for our club. For better or worse.

Maybe.

It's a bitter pill to swallow but maybe, hopefully, the crows might have done us a favour there. There definitely was a shift in direction after that game.

If there is a lesson to be learned and some improvement in the way we're going about the whole shebang as a consequence, let's just bloody hope we do learn, don't forget the lesson and get back to being like the club we expect to be, not like those we've justifiably derided.