Where to now, Adelaide?

[JohnK]

You are beginning to look good.

More changes:

Line 1/2: Pendulous/pedulous

Line 1/4: This doesn't work. The meaning is not clear and there's a stray comma. I suggest:

The jack is drawn; his team is in the black.​

Make the sentences simpler. Here are a few more suggestions:

John stands on his mat, the rink is pale green.
His pendulous arm swings, bias on track,
Forehand draw of medium length. Not unforeseen.
The jack is drawn; his team is in the black.

The shot is chalked; there is nothing better
For a bowler than to hear the captain's praise.
No drive is required from his skipper
To kill the end. Either a block could be raised

Or one more toucher – that will bring merit.
A backhand draw, less green and momentum,
Shields the winning shot, doubles the credit.
For all reserves, may this be your dictum:

Resolving to compete will never be passe,
Your fears – by winning – will always be allayed.
​

Now it's time to go back to syllable counts.

 

[bjn1960]

You are beginning to look good.

More changes:

Line 1/2: Pendulous/pedulous

Line 1/4: This doesn't work. The meaning is not clear and there's a stray comma. I suggest:

The jack is drawn; his team is in the black.
​

Make the sentences simpler. Here are a few more suggestions:

John stands on his mat, the rink is pale green.
His pendulous arm swings, bias on track,
Forehand draw of medium length. Not unforeseen.
The jack is drawn; his team is in the black.

The shot is chalked; there is nothing better
For a bowler than to hear the captain's praise.
No drive is required from his skipper
To kill the end. Either a block could be raised

Or one more toucher – that will bring merit.
A backhand draw, less green and momentum,
Shields the winning shot, doubles the credit.
For all reserves, may this be your dictum:

Resolving to compete will never be passe,
Your fears – by winning – will always be allayed.
​

Now it's time to go back to syllable counts.

'Line 1/2: Pendulous/pedulous'

'Line 1/4: This doesn't work. The meaning is not clear and there's a stray comma. I suggest:'

'team's opinions' - I was attempting to reply to your poem 'The permanent reserve' and the “blow-in” conundrum of angst of being “to good “ or “to crap”.
The phrase, 'The jack is drawn' implies, that the team-members' opinions of its reverse, will now have positve (in the black) connotations, as opposed to, negative ones (in the red).

I take your point about the meaning being unclear, if that line is read without reference to the other poem.

'The jack is drawn; his team is in the black.'

'For a bowler than to hear the captain's praise'. I do like this alteration, 'than to hear' instead of 'to have'. It reads with more resonance.

'To kill the end. Either a block could be raised' The word Either troubles me in this line. For some reason, to my ear it doesn't ring true? I may need a little more time to think of another option, for the middle of this line?

'Shields the winning shot, doubles the credit.' I really do like the way you have altered this line with 'Shields' and 'doubles the'. It give much more depth and precision.


'Now it's time to go back to syllable counts'.

John, what are the guide lines for syllable reduction that I should consider, other than the obvious, ten per line of the pentameter?

 

[bjn1960]

Draft 1b.

A villanelle for Ben Roberts-Smith VC


Do not mock our diggers for their valour.
Chide well, the Circle's tasteless muttering.
Give voice for all their bravery; then honour.


TV presenters' chatter only to seek glamour,
Slights of - dunce and limp - in criticising.
Do not mock our diggers for their valour.


Victoria Cross soldiers don't seek glamour,
But heart in battle; not the media's raving.
Give voice for all their bravery; then honour.


Such inuendo reeks of ill-humour,
Questioning sexuality and 'bloodlusting'.
Do not mock our diggers for their valour.


Our outrage, found on Facebook's clamour;
Yumi and George's public admonishing!
Give voice to all their bravery; then honour.


Feigning their angst, their ills and their horror;
It's about their self-absorbed thinking.
Do not mock our diggers for their valour.


Think of whom you mock, when you dishonour;
Simply say, 'I'm sorry' when apologising.
Do not mock our diggers for their valour,
Give voice to all their bravery; then honour.

JohnK, your adroit critique is much appreciated by me and to others, feel free to speak your peace.

 

[JohnK]

More later, bjn1960, but just for now, you really do have to get on top of your use of the apostrophe.

In this poem, your strong rallying call – Do not mock our digger's for their valour – is trumpheted five times. And five times it is wrong. It's diggers, not digger's.

In the second stanza, it shouod be presenters' chatter and it shouldn't be followed by a comma; in the following stanza, it should be soldiers, not soldier's.

Google The Rules of the Apostrophe and fix this problem once and for all.

These technical hitches get in the way. It's like unacceptable levels of foldback on stage.

 

[bjn1960]

It's like unacceptable levels of foldback on stage.

As Pauline Hanson would say, please explain?

 

[bjn1960]

In this poem, your strong rallying call – Do not mock our digger's for their valour – is trumpheted five times. And five times it is wrong. It's diggers, not digger's.

I wasn't attempting to be emphatic. One cut and five pastes.

 

[JohnK]

As Pauline Hanson would say, please explain?

Poetry is a performing art and, you could argue, it's the most difficult of all the writing forms. It's self-conscious in the sense that it attempts to obey its own self-applied rules for metre, rhyme, stress, syllable count, internal rhyme and all the other constraints poets have developed over the centuries to use the discipline of the form to create their own freedom of expression.

Poets use the language in the same way that non-poets use the language but they wear blinkers, like racehorses, in order to write in more direct lines. Or so they hope. By obeying fundamental and internal rules, they want to see the cracks in the rules and liberate truth.

That's the bigger picture, or that's what some of the poets think.

Most readers think that poets are w***ers/time-wasters/internalisers/self-referral obscurists. And many contemporary poets are. Many wannabe poets think they have to turn their language into antiquated pseudo-speak in order to give it a necessary false gravitas or a mock seriousness that they think the artform demands.

The challenge of the age for poets in 2012 is to realise that their speak now has to replace old front-bar talk. It should be as wise, and as funny, and as engaging as front-bar speak once was but it has to be simpler. More accessible. Poets now have to make us sigh, weep or laugh to have any hope of understanding their intent.

The challenge for poets in 2012 is to put meaning back into normal conversation. Or, at least, I believe that. Facebook and twitter is replacing meaning with mere presence. Facebook and twitter are the people's media but, in empty soulless communities, facebook and twitter are entrenching emptiness, soullessness. The poet has never been more needed.

But, right now, in order to be a poet on the front ranks, you still have to understand the basic elements of your equipment.

And that brings us back to the apostrophe.

For god's sake, bjn1960, here are the rules. Or at least, here are the basic rules I've stolen from a website which you should know. There are thousands of basic posts out there explaining how to use the apostrophe. This one following, isn't definitive. It's not a big issue, but please get on top of this before you submit your next poem.

To everyone else reading this thread, go and watch the ODI cricket finals for a while. But please remember to come back. bjn1960 is an emerging poet, a major talent in the making; s/he will be writing things in the next few months that will blow you out of your water.

In the meantime I cite, but haven't written:

The apostrophe may be the simplest and yet most frequently misused mark of punctuation in English. Here we'll review six guidelines for using the mark correctly.

1. Use an Apostrophe to Show the Omission of Letters in a Contraction
Use the apostrophe to form contractions:

I'm (I am)
you're (you are)
he's (he is)
she's (she is)
it's* (it is)
we're (we are)
they're (they are)
isn't (is not)
aren't (are not)
can't (cannot)
don't (do not)
who's (who is)
won't (will not)
​

Be careful to place the apostrophe where the letter or letters have been omitted, which is not always the same place where the two words have been joined.
* Don't confuse the contraction it's (meaning, "it is") with the possessive pronoun its:

It's the first day of spring.
Our bird has escaped from its cage.
​

2. Use an Apostrophe with -s for Possessives of Singular Nouns
Use an apostrophe plus -s to show the possessive form of a singular noun, even if that singular noun already ends in -s:

Harold's crayon
my daughter's First Communion
Sylvia Plath's poetry
Dylan Thomas's poetry
today's weather report
the boss's problem
Star Jones's talk show
Victoria Beckham's husband
​

3. Use an Apostrophe Without -s for Possessives of Most Plural Nouns
To form the possessive of a plural noun that already ends in -s, add an apostrophe:

the girls' swing set (the swing set belonging to the girls)
the students' projects (the projects belonging to the students)
the Johnsons' house (the house belonging to the Johnsons)
If the plural noun does not end in -s, add an apostrophe plus -s:
the women's conference (the conference belonging to the women)
the children's toys (the toys belonging to the children)
the men's training camp (the training camp belonging to the men)
​

4. Use an Apostrophe with -s When Two or More Nouns Possess the Same Thing
When two or more nouns possess the same thing, add an apostrophe plus -s to the last noun listed:

Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia Ice Cream
Emma and Nicole's school project (Emma and Nicole worked together on the same project)​

When two or more nouns separately possess something, add an apostrophe to each noun listed:

Tim's and Marty's ice cream (Each boy has his own ice cream.)
Emma's and Nicole's school projects (Each girl has her own project.)
​

5. Do Not Use an Apostrophe with Possessive Pronouns

Because possessive pronouns already show ownership, it's* not necessary to add an apostrophe:

yours
his
hers
its*
ours
theirs​

However, we do add an apostrophe plus -s to form the possessive of some indefinite pronouns:

anybody's guess
one's personal responsibility
somebody's wallet
​

* Don't confuse the contraction it's (meaning, "it is") with the possessive pronoun its:

It's the first day of spring.
Our bird has escaped from its cage.
​

6. Generally, Do Not Use an Apostrophe to Form a Plural
As a general rule, use only an -s (or an -es) without an apostrophe to form the plurals of nouns--including dates, acronyms, and family names:

Markets were booming in the 1990s.
The tax advantages offered by IRAs make them attractive investments.
The Johnsons have sold all of their CDs.​

To avoid confusion, we may occasionally need to use apostrophes to indicate the plural forms of certain letters and expressions that are not commonly found in the plural:

Mind your p's and q's.
Let's accept the proposal without any if's, and's, or but's.​

Got it, bjn1960? If not, every single time you are tempted to use an apostrophe, please refer back to this post. I didn't write these rules; I stole them from a web site. If you disagree with these rules, go to another website and then argue on.

That could be a diversion for a month or two on this thread, but I don't care. I want you to stop using the apostrophe in the wrong way. It kills your poetry stone dead. I want to read your poems as they should be read, as beginnings of investigations into things most of us don't know. But that won't happen if you present black holes, mistakes in the first pass.

I want to cease seeing the basic errors in your use of our language.
I only want to see what it is that you want to say.

In the same way, if I go to a concert, I don't want to notice the screech of feedback in the sound system. I want to listen to the music as it is meant to be. I don't want to pay a huge amount of money to watch the tech crew **** up the artists.

And, bjn1960, right now, your control of the English language is your tech crew.

 

[JohnK]

New season, new poem


Round One
WEEK ONE

1.

The season begins, oddly, with one game
for the week – the Sydney derby between
the Swans and the Giants. Matty Rendell
goes down for a Thought Crime; Jim Stynes

dies; Jason Akermanis says that Stynes was
nasty on the field. He meant that as praise
but he also queried why a footballer should be
given a state funeral. That was unnecessary.

The media feeds on itself and upsets the family.
We live in prickly times. Labor was lined
and quartered in the Queensland election.
Was that the highpoint of the anti-Labor

pendulum or is there still more to come?
Next, the nation and then South Australia…

Who can gauge the turning point of bile?


2.

Greater Western Sydney lose by ten goals
in their first serious outing and most think
they have played well. The expectation

is that they will be beaten by twenty goals
by every team this season. They are a curious
combination of the very raw and the very old.

Their old players and their old coaches
are on death’s row; they live on Last Chance
Boulevard. This is their last dive into

the men’s pool; this is their last chance
to wear the costume and parade their intent.
They don’t have to do anything – they don’t

have to win a game to prove their credentials.
The young ones are on First Chance Street.
They don’t have to win games either; all they

need to do is to secure better contracts in 2013.
Right now, it doesn’t matter to them where
they are playing. They are at the gate that leads

to the home of the gods. Their lives have just begun.

 

[Slippery Pete]

I asked where he'd been
Old John K
He summed it up in one word
Simply saying 'away'

 

[JohnK]

I asked where he'd been
Old John K
He summed it up in one word
Simply saying 'away'

Slippery Pete writes a tidy quatrain –
four lines, but only two of them rhyme.
He says I'm old; he's an umpire of time.
Now noted, will he write here again?

 

[JohnK]

ROUND TWO
The Australian Rule of Entropy

In statistical mechanics, entropy is a measure
of the number of ways in which a system may be arranged,
often taken to be a measure of ‘disorder’ (the higher
the entropy, the higher the disorder).


This year, will the shape of the season only confirm
the Second Rule of Physics, namely that everything
tends towards a higher state of Entropy?

Take a pile of sand, Brian Cox says. Pick up a handful
and rearrange it. The shape stays the same. That’s
high entropy. Now take a building. Grab some of

its elements and put them back in a different position.
After an earthquake, say. It’s a different building.
A building has low entropy. It’s only Round Two

but, already, we have a shape for the season.
There’s high entropy at the head and the foot
of the table. If you take some players out of four

or five of the better teams, their shape won’t change.
They’ll still win more than they will lose. And, if you
rearrange the deck chairs for the bottom-crawlers,

their shape won’t change either. They’ll still lose.
The ones in the middle, with player dependency,
and low entropic values, create the mystery

of the chase and the quality of the dare.

 

[JohnK]

ROUND THREE
Think Again

The best thing about footy is that it only takes
three weeks for the world to change, for nothing
else to matter, for the dry summer to dissolve.

Unexplainable gaps appear in the tipping comps;
injuries punch holes in early balloons; new coaches
are, suddenly, stranger than the ones they replaced.

Carlton crushed Collingwood; Richmond, the Swans
Freo, St Kilda, Essendon and West Coast racked up
expected wins. Hawthorn pricked Adelaide’s bubble –

that’s no shock and then North stunned the Cats
and the nation, early in the game. They didn’t
just crawl home, fall over the line, escape

while no one was looking. North constructed
a beautiful position and then held it for a very
long time. That’s the oddity. Football rules.

No win or loss can be taken for granted.
There is never a dull round. There are no
Black Caviars in this comp, no excuses,

no what-ifs, no time for tears. And each
victorious bloat is only good for a week.
Next week, we have to re-arrange our

long term punts. Collingwood are no sure
thing against Port. Swans vs North is anyone’s
guess. The Suns and the Giants won’t win

until they play themselves but these are
days when the plates are shifting. Can Freo
win on the road this year? Has Carlton become

a little cocky? Has Richmond discovered its spine?
No. Some things won’t change. Aaron Sandilands
will have another fifty taps and Liam Shiels will

have another nine tackles. And Kurt Tippett
will keep on kicking expensive set-shot points
until he changes the angle of his body.

 

[Slippery Pete]

Her bouquet cleaved
his hardened....
Shell

And fondled his muscled heart.

He imbibed her glistening spell...
just before the other shoe...
fell.

 

[JohnK]

ROUND SIX
The city slips into shape

After the Showdown, we expect each team
to fall in the next week. Craig downplayed
these games; he didn’t want his men chasing
short term goals. Sanderson built it up.

That was new. And to win the next week,
against an undefeated Sydney was splendid.
The coach clapped his hands in the box after
the siren, with a teenager’s natural glee.

The Crows now face a month of losses:
they’re good but they’re meeting better teams.
The best that Adelaide can hope for, in the next
rugged month, is maybe one win, no big injuries

and no useless reports. The club needs to take
a huge breath, hang its sails and wait for the late
wind to take it home. Port, meanwhile, lost to
Richmond with a second quarter that was

monumentally bad. Rucci’s correct to up the ante
and call for Primus to walk before their season
collapses, before the twenty-goal smashings begin.
That club can’t go to the Adelaide Oval in 2014

without a fan-base, without sponsors. The rot
is deep but Matty still thinks he has ample time
in his charter to screw the minds of his seniors
and to flirt with his youth. That’s the problem.

That coach isn’t their man for this hour.

 

[JohnK]

ROUND EIGHT
Ultimate Footy

This is a neat fantasy comp. It’s differs
from SuperCoach where most end up
drafting the same players. Here, we battle
against ourselves – each player can only

appear in one team. Twelve teams have
a preseason draft and trade players each week.
We fight one on one in nine categories:
K, HB, M, Score, Accuracy, Tackles, HO, FF, FA.

The object is not to rack up dreamteam points
but to beat the opponent of the week in at least
five of the nine categories. This week my opponent
has no ruckmen. Brogan isn’t playing and his reserve,

Brent Renouf averages 18 taps. I have Kreuzer in ruck;
he’s good for 21. Tippett, in the forward line, will gather
another seven and kick some goals. I don’t have to play
Naitanui. I’m weak on tackles and handballs; I’ve upgraded

some players only for those stats. I don’t take this
seriously; I do it for fun in the same way Jack Kerouac
played his fantasy baseball cards many years before
he drank himself to death. I like the comps; they make

you watch other players and other teams as keenly
as you want to watch your own. They widen the
experience. They teach you things. For example,
those who rack up the tackle stats also concede

too many Frees Against. And players learn! Last week,
Kurt Tippett was asked to raise his arm and stare
at the umpire each time he was infringed. He did this
and turned his stats around – five Frees For and only

one against. He’s secured his place in my team.

 

[JohnK]

ROUND EIGHT – 2
Wrong topic, wrong forum?

Last week an Adelaide mate said that he was beginning
to worry about himself because, for the first time
in his life, he was beginning to worry about Port.
I hate them like everybody, he said, but they are

dragging down the state. This is not good.
Matty Primus isn’t the problem. Their skinny squad
is the problem. This is a bad era for improvement
through the draft with GWS and GC preferences

still to come in the next two years. Matty has
more assistants this year – Shaun Rhen and
Tyson Edwards and that should help him. Except
the three of them are sticking with a strange policy

of screwing with the minds of their seniors
and flirting with the hope of their youth.
Their fans are beside themselves with anxiety.
David Rodan has been dropped again, this week,

not because of form, but because he is not working
hard enough. For god’s sake! Make him the
permanent sub… bring him on in the second half
so that the team can suddenly have the new,

strange sensation that they are still in the game.
Use an old man in a way that suits him.
Port will face huge thrashings later in the season
and Matty will have to go if the Club wants to retain

any hope of retaining its season-ticket-holders
and its sponsors for the shift to Adelaide Oval.
It’s the old adage. When you can’t change the team
overnight, you do the only thing left. You sack

the coach and get down on your knees and you pray.

 

[JohnK]

ROUND EIGHT – 3
Port is a mess, revisited


Skip from Skipton was wrong when he said
that Port versus North at AAMI was an Eight
Tarpaulin Match. On the day, ten tarpaulins
covered huge sections of the Outer, protecting

the venue from its emptiness. And, with only
14,508 people there, all of us could have sat on
the members’ side. The outer could have been
one great tarpaulin with most gates closed and

Port could have made profit from its sterling win.
And I was wrong, too, thinking that Port is a mess.
They’re been in a messy place – there’s no doubt
about that. After the final siren, when most players

sank to the ground, Jacob Surjan rose from the turf
grinning and crying in the same pass. His face
was a torture of pain and joy and relief. He sought
his teammates as a bewildered child seeks

his mother in a tube station during a bomb raid.
In the outer, grown men hugged each other as
if life was worth living again. Port were back!
Not for next week, mind. Port were back

for one glorious unbelievable moment. Here
is the team that has failed to grasp its stick
for a couple of years. Here is a team that
has dipped its head, given up, flipped the hard

ball to the next confused teammate on the line.
Here is a team that played awful footy for two
quarters and a half, turning it over, refusing
to attack. And then, suddenly, out of the rust

and the despair, and the entropy, something
clicked. Nearly six goals down in the last,
they lifted. They scraped and constructed
some winning movements. And they lifted again.

And constructed a win out of the last seconds
as if they are playing the closest thing to a final
they will see this year. Wins always disguise flaws.

Brad Scott was petulant, moody in the presser.
Pricklish. He treated the first two questioners
with rude contempt. He was worse than his brother
Chris at the Geelong/Collingwood post-match

conference the night before. Chris stood up
and nearly walked out because a radio station had
its feedback at too high a level. Sensibly, he sat down
and avoided a report and a fine. Brad settled

down, too. The two Scotts don’t like coaching
losing teams but they are not alone. Most of
the new young coaches wear their uncurled hearts
on short, skinny, thread-bare sleeves.

-o-

Port screwed me on a couple of fronts
this weekend. I dropped Naitanui and ran
Kreuzer and Tippett as my tap men and
they had a miserly 26 taps between them.

My Ultimate Footy opponent, Seaman, had
Dean Brogan as his ruckman, but that was
a dodge. Brogan wasn’t selected. Seaman’s
reserve ruckman was Port’s Brent Renouf

who had 42 sensational taps against the Roos.
This was Sandilandesque. I was outcoached,
and lost that crucial UF outcome, slipping
from second to third. I’ll regret my cockiness

last week, for the rest of the season.

 

[JohnK]

ROUND NINE – preview
My wavering nerve

In Adelaide's rugged May, I've tipped the Crows
to lose against Sydney, Geelong and Carlton.
It's been a successful ploy: I've lost my tips
but we've won the games! That's been small

fish for such joy but I''ve become reluctant
to change my bait. OK, this week I’m doing it.
I’m switching my tackle. I’m tipping Adelaide
to beat Collingwood at home. On the day,

I’ll buy a $20 ticket for Collingwood to beat
Adelaide by 21-40 at 5/1. That should save
my weekend from fracture if Adelaide slumps.
I admit that I’m a shallow footy fan; I lay bets

to buy emotional insurance. On the other hand,
the rain has set in in Adelaide tonight… a long slow
medium rain that’s set to continue until Sunday.
This will affect Adelaide’s speed of delivery,

the artistry in their forward handballs, their marking
up front. Skills dissolve in the wet; plans are washed
away. Then it’s only about hard bodies over the ball,
forcing the slippery piece of soap forward against its will.

If Dane Swan was playing this Saturday night, they’d beat
Adelaide in the wet. Maybe I should tip Collingwood
to win and back Adelaide at the stadium for $20 for 1-20
at 3/1. But, on the third hand, Adelaide has gone

stircrazy with the Crows’ recent form. In spite of the wet,
there’ll be 50,000 people there, screaming their lungs.
These Adelaide players love a rare big crowd;
Collingwood are accustomed to it but they rarely

travel. Who does this help? Oh, I don’t know.
Help me, somebody. Tell me what to do.

 

[ltdamn]

Best thread on BigFooty.

 

[JohnK]

Best thread on BigFooty.

That's a big call.
Thank you. I blush.

 

[JohnK]

ROUND NINE
Fireworks at AAMI Stadium

They’d sold out; it was raining. They thought
the big crowd needed something. As their players
entered the field, the AFC let off some fireworks.
Not many; just a couple of thousand of dollars

of pre-emptive glee. The smoke drifted over
the oval; toplit, the turf resembled a battle
ground, not a place of work. I watched
Collingwood warm up at my end of the ground,

from the northern pocket. The dramatic
backdrop made them look like warriors,
not young men turning up for work. The sky
was dramatic, staged, unreal. I didn’t like it.

Adelaide neutralized its home ground
advantage with that cheap gimmick;
they created a stage that was foreign
to all. This was the hardest game I’ve seen.

It was trench warfare. For three quarters,
it was impossible to get an easy kick.
In the stands, it was impossible to breathe.
It was World War I in distant fields – every

advance was immediately taken back, every
crack in defence was closed, every gain
was short-lived. Goals disappeared. We were
heading towards a nil-all draw. And, over

the warring fields, a thin rain turned
all dreams to mud. There was no chance
this contest would be over by Christmas;
the generals called for lap rugs, padded chairs,

more arms. And chocolate, soft cheese and port.
And, for their underlings, they trucked in
oxygen bottles, more masseurs, oranges.
In the middle of the third quarter, Dangerfield

and Pendlebury were caught alone
on the eastern flank, both exhausted,
both bending over with their hands
on their knees. The ball had long left

them. They let it go. They stayed there,
together, like two paired members of parliament
agreeing not to vote. It was an interesting
moment in the history of the game.

They could have sprinted 250 metres to
the interchange zone for a 45 second rest
or stayed exactly where they were. They stayed
exactly where they were for about 75 seconds.

This rugged game ground to a halt early
in the last quarter when Lachlan Keefe’s
left knee decided it didn’t want to be a knee
anymore. Something happened in the next six

minute as Keefe was slowly carted off. It was
Christmas Eve in the trenches. Adelaide felt sorry,
maybe, for this awful blow to a player. The Woods
felt more – this was their fifth knee this season.

It doesn’t matter what anyone felt. The visitors
settled quickly and swept the game away.

 

[JohnK]

ROUND TEN
A teasing time

Life conspires to interrupt football. Thank Christ!
We’d all go mad if it didn’t. This weekend, we had
a house-guest from Perth, sneaking over to Adelaide

during their June long weekend, their Foundation Day,
renamed earlier this year by the Barnett Liberal Government
as Western Australian Day. That’s Inclusive-Speak for anyone

who wants to know. WA Labor gave that change its blessing.
Our house-guest was a Docker fan. My partner is a Port nut –
we have a mixed marriage, as they say in our outer colonies.

She'd organized a late lunch around 4pm on Saturday
at a friend’s house, not far from AAMI Stadium.
Got the drift, yet? Adelaide and the Dockers kicked off

at 4.10pm in Perth. Port and Carlton kicked off at 7.10pm.
Those friends, our hosts, loathed footy. That meant
my partner could contain both of us in a Dockers/Crows-free

zone until her Port 7.10pm kick-off at AAMI. And enjoy
her lovely win against a hapless, Kreuzer-less, dispirited
bubble-burst Carlton on a slow, windless, slippery

drizzled AAMI turf without having been pre-empted
by a Crows or Dockers win. My partner doesn’t hate me
but she hates my club. Both of our SA teams won

over the weekend, but she won the household politics.
I didn’t see any of the sixty disposals Rory Sloane and
Patrick Dangerfield shared between them. Port nuts

loathe the absence of the light; they hate living in the shadow
or, rather, the warm glow of the fruit tingles; they hate being
less important than the shiny side of a cow. Friday’s

Advertiser had six pages of the Crows and nothing about
the Power and Port fans were savage about their
lack of coverage. Chief Footy Writer, Rucci, is a Port man;

he’s complained before that his club has often screwed him
during the week refusing to set up interviews for the Friday edition,
and then moaning when nothing appears in his yellow pages.

Oh, who cares! Only old gloomies read the papers, anyway.
This weekend, my beloved extracted her revenge
for Adelaide’s final statement about their rugged month

of May. Adelaide could have lost the lot but, instead,
won three of four. This away trip to Perth could easily
have been an exhausted loss. But, no! The Crows

held firm and now face a bye and then four games
against the softer part of the draw. They could be top
by the end of this month and then things will tighten up.

I hope they do. You never win the cup in winter.

 

[JohnK]

ROUND ELEVEN
The dilemma of hope

Three weeks of byes rips the supercoach teams
to shreds. The balance of personal bias against
common sense comes to the fore in the month
of June. There’s no sense in backing a winning team

in these comps if huge portions of them go surfing
in Week Eleven, or hit the piss in Week Twelve.
And we shouldn’t trade any of them out
for their missing week only because we want

full teams. Later, we’ll need those trades to cover
hamstrings, ruined knees, shocking loss of form.
These byes introduce a new statistic to the comps:
which ones are likely to get arrested on their

one week off? Which ones will go to jail? Which ones
will be stood down in the AFL’s kangaroo courts?
It’s a big ask. All season we weigh high Tackles
against Frees Against; or luxurious Kicks versus

skinny Handballs. It’s not easy being a coach
in this soulless statistical world. It’s very hard
to get it right at the exact moment a player
decides to perform. Is it them, we ask or us?

In the first week we make him
our captain, he retreats from his 150 count
to a pathetic 44. And, now, we have to
factor in their behaviour off the field

for one week to see if we should hold
them for the second or third week –
their history of arrests, their demerit points,
whether they bought their mothers a present

last Christmas; whether they are shaving;
whether their girlfriends like them; whether
they know how to cook. It’s no easy task
coaching these dreamteams. People think

it’s an indulgence, fun for those who have
no real centre in their lives. The opposite
is true. It’s extremely hard work. Ask
Shane Crawford. Ask Malcolm Blight.

Ask me. Super-Coaching is a sustained
sensation of disappointment when,
all around us, the season is singing.

 

[JohnK]

ROUND TWELVE
Is anyone else prepared
to admit they've fallen in love
with Jaimee Rogers?

I’m blond. I declare that up front;
I’m not embarrassed about laying
my cards on the table. Us blonds
have become subject to cruel jokes

ever since Marilyn Monroe seduced
a simpler world. Jaimee has big eyes,
a round mouth, and a voice that’s
still migrating from the teenager’s

gravel squeak. She needs a few more
years, some yoghurt and honey,
before she’ll be able to seduce
the skin off an apple, or the thorns

from a rose by merely standing
in front of its tree. But, I’ve fallen
in love with her already. She speaks
my language with enough betting plomb

to make me want to lay a bet between
quarters and then, with the winnings,
propose to her. Our children would
be blond, of course. We would not

let them bet. We’d instruct them
to open their mouths and pronounce
their consonants and vowels fully
and, always, smile as they spoke.

 

[JohnK]

One year later, and it only seems like yesterday, I've had news about PileDriver Walz. Some of it is good and some of it is … well … maybe some of it is not so good.

First, he's been released on bail. He's free again but he's not allowed to use a credit card or engage in any online discussion using his own name. He's forbidden to have any role in the Scout Movement and he's not allowed to sit within a hundred metres of a cheer squad at any SANFL or AFL game. Further, he has been banned from entering 5AA contests in any manner under any identity and he is also banned from entering any course of religious instruction for a period of five years.

Now, here is the interesting bit. PDW is about to launch a citywide campaign arguing that the tossing of Messenger newspapers into every metropolitan household constitutes a sustained assault on our environment. First, he argues, newsprint is now redundant. If that chain of newspapers really has anything worthwhile to offer, he says, they'd go online as every other newspaper in the world is doing, and they'd measure their importance by their clicks, and not by their mandatory circulation. Secondly, he argues that their plastic bag that holds each paper goes nowhere but into the dump. And we don't have a dump anymore. He says that Messenger is polluting Adelaide, not informing it. If they truly wanted to inform Adelaide, they'd go online and abandon their toxic paper and plastic product.

PDW has learnt a thing or two, doing time. At the moment, though, he's quiet on football.