I've got the most terrible headache.
I can't fathom how, at the start of the year, we salivated over the very thought that we'd have Ziebell, Cunnington, Bastinac and Wells complimented by Dal Santo. How would we fit all the megastars into one team?
Switch forward to mid July, and we are balding, cranky, grey vultures with big black bags under our tired eyes, scratching and picking over the mutilated carcass that is the VFL hoping for something, anything, to show us half a whimper. A sign. Anything. Please.
We'll even take a non-improved Harper. Just because maybe he'll do something. Just cos maybe.
My head really hurts. I don't know how this has happened.
In the Laidley years we had all these superstars languishing in the twos who he was depriving of games. Now we have our superstars in the main side and we still can't do the job, so we're again looking to the twos for something better. Only this time, they're not. But we just hope they might.
I still think that in every North supporter, there is this innate sense that by picking someone unlikely from the VFL, we will catch the opposition napping, and our unknown player will have a good game because the opposition doesn't know anything about him.
I have traced it back to the mid 1990s when we seemed to grab any scrubber and make them a superstar just by being in our team and joining in the awesomeness.