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You Know Football XIX
2014 Predictions
It is an annual challenge for you to show that you know football. Preseason, it is a simple task. I ask you to place the eighteen AFL clubs into four bands - the top four, bottom of the eight, the five teams just missing out on finals, and the five teams wallowing in the mud at the bottom of the AFL ladder. And last year, you collectively predicted this…
Top four: Hawthorn, Freo, Sydney and Richmond.
Bottom of the top eight: Collingwood, Adelaide, Port Adelaide and Geelong.
Missing the finals: West Coast eGurls, North Melbourne, Carlton, Gold Coast and Essendon
Cellar dwellers: Western Bulldogs, Melbourne, Brisbane, St Kilda and Greater Western Sydney
You weren’t all that good, were you? In case you've forgotten, this is how 2014 panned out…
Top four: Hawthorn, Freo, Sydney and Geelong.
Bottom of the top eight: Port Adelaide, North Melbourne, Essendon and Richmond.
Missing the finals: West Coast eGurls, Adelaide, Carlton, Gold Coast and Collingwood
Cellar dwellers: Western Bulldogs, Melbourne, Brisbane, St Kilda and Greater Western Sydney
Whereas I can collective claim that you lot are as dumb as a brush, there are a few amongst you who deserve plaudits for demonstrating sound football knowledge. The best of these are FraDonJan who placed 16 teams correctly. Honourable nods of encouragement also go to McPheelings, Gerovich, Tropical and Stickers. These football scholars placed 14 teams correctly.
Unfortunately, the wisdom of crowds was adversely affected by these individuals, Chewyboot and Mercury. Mercury is such a doofus. Chewy and Mercury only placed 7 teams correctly. Sheesh! Just by flipping a coin you could have done better. And MattyT, don’t think that your pathetic attempt gets away without all due disparagement. You were one selection off the lowest rung.
You will have your opportunity to do better, soon. I hope you do!
You Know Football (xviii)
Six months ago I asked you, dear Dockerlanders, to put your virtual characters on the line and backup your fingertip opinions by showing that you know football really well. Thirty-odd Dockerlanders took up the challenge (see it here) and predicted where the eighteen AFL teams would be placed at the end of the 2014 HomeNaway season. In my four bands, this is how the AFL clubs finished:
- Top four: Fremantle, Geelong, Hawthorn, Sydney
- Bottom of the eight: Essendon, North Melbourne, Port Adelaide, Richmond
- Just missing finals: Adelaide, Carlton, Collingwood, Gold Coast, West Coast eGurls
- Cellar dwellers: Brisbane, Greater Western Sydney, Melbourne, St Kilda and Western Bulldogs
Collectively, you predicted this:
- Top four: Fremantle, Geelong, Hawthorn, Sydney
- Bottom of the eight: Collingwood, North Melbourne, Port Adelaide, Richmond
- Just missing finals: Adelaide, Carlton, Essendon, Gold Coast, West Coast eGurls
- Cellar dwellers: Brisbane, Greater Western Sydney, Melbourne, St Kilda and Western Bulldogs
In short, you are pretty damn smart! It was only Collingwood and Essendon that you didn't get right. However, in this crowd-sourced challenge there are stars and duffers. I will laud and shame those deserving on the Dockerland message board.
You Know Football (xvii)
So, about a year ago I asked you, dear Dockerlander, how the eighteen teams in the AFL would achieve in the 2013 HomeNaway season.
You decided that the top four would consist of Collingwood, Fremantle, Hawthorn and Sydney. Making up the eight teams in the 2013 AFL Finals would be Adelaide, Carlton, Geelong and the West Coast eGurls.
Brisbane, Essendon, North Melbourne, Port Adelaide and Richmond would just miss out on the final rounds whereas Gold Coast, Greater Western Sydney, Melbourne, St Kilda and the Western Bulldogs would be propping up the ladder.
So, you didn’t pick Port’s rise or Adelaide’s and the eGurls’ plummet but, as a consensus, you weren’t too bad at all in picking the success and failure of the AFL teams throughout the 2013 HomeNaway.
A consensus, of course, hides the truly clever and puts the dim-witted into the shadows. Let us bring those out for applause and fun-poking.
Well done Peaking1, DD, PurpleKit and Pollyanna. Your well-informed opinions of all the AFL clubs put you in good stead to identify those climbing and those falling down the AFL ladder. Indeed, you know football. I would ask that you take under your wings PurpleJ, North, Nelson, Pointless, Mike, CaptDazza, Freo66 and RookieMagic. They are in desperate need of some footy smarts. Their predictions for the 2013 HomeNaway were much less accurate than those predicted by my pet bee, Eric. Yes, Eric the half-bee.
Feel the Serenity
They should have told me I was dreamin'. One minute I’m ready to pull the trigger on some purple jousting sticks to hang my Premiership flags from the balcony, the next, it felt like some Internet scam had sold my whole house while I was away.
The setting was perfect; I was down in Safety Bay. A mate has a beach house; big tinny out front, a crumbling dunny out back, the smell of seaweed dredged up by the wind like a fart in a spacesuit. Feel the serenity. I dropped my swag in the old house in the back yard – a 3-room fibro shed with cold running brown water and internal wildlife.
GF day is in 'new' house up the lawn, which fills with a cast of characters once a year. He said it was a great day, you get a bunch of old farts who think they can drink like they're 25, despite previous and current evidence to the contrary. And someone wins a game of footy on the TV. I didn't know many of these blokes, but one turned up in Eagles garb and was clearly lost and deranged before any alcohol hit the place. We needed to move the Prado's to get to the Camry, so we could back out the HSV, to find the Ute to do the bottle-o run. The drink came in handy later in the day (ah, sweet liquor eases the pain). Being one of only two Freo supporters there, the others saw early signs I didn’t want to acknowledge. But when Pav misses from 30, you know the afternoon's going to be long, slow, and every bounce of the ball has your teeth on edge. It was the vibe of the thing.
And so it came to pass. I found the beer passing through me like beer, the trips to the dunny in the last qtr frequent, and unnecessarily prolonged. The smell of the seaweed seemed fitting, and easier to stomach than the TV.
I’d expected Freo were tougher going into that, instead I felt the ghost of 2003; I believe they lost it, rather than Hawthorn winning it. I hope the experience toughens them up – strongest timber made by the stiffest wind and all that. For some, the experience of walking into this Freo side and getting to a GF early in their career might have been taken for granted. Not now.
You can't underestimate the sales and marketing hoopla of the GF; it's massively hyped and corporately mythologised. All are fleeting, fickle and fake as a season of X Factor. It's not a bloody Holy Grail – a cup goes straight to some poolroom every year. If it were a Grail you'd never find the bastard thing, or just go on a semi-comedic odyssey for 20 years, with only a couple of coconut shells and a ragtag bunch of wanderers to get you there.
The seaweed smell was quickly drowned out by the waft of the lamb on the BBQ. The old blokes started hitting the piss as hard as a bunch of 25 year olds. One fell asleep mid sentence after slamming tequilas; another disappeared over the top of his chair and announced he was fine to drive. Another forgot a joke he was telling, midway through. Listen to that serenity. It was the sort of carnage I hadn't witnessed since the 1st qtr a few hours back.
Next year, Fremantle should tell the AwFL – with its sideshows, parades and charade - they can all go and get stuffed. They’ve got a job to do, and the sideshow will be seen for what it is. Lyon's advice was it's just another game of football; a noisier and tougher one, but a game of footy all the same. Hopefully they'll see that, and go back for it harder and hungrier, knowing they're good enough to win it. Because they are.