by Guy Smiley

I'm a bit lost this season, to be rather intimate and honest with you. A tad aimless and missing some direction. I had, for the first 14 years or so of my burgeoning career as a spittle flecked footy supporter, something to direct my passion against. Something to vent my stupendous spleen on. Something to drag me away from these types of warmly intimate confessions best shared in some dark back alley, accompanied by the vague scent of cheap vodka and the lingering nightmare of 2 dollar shop perfume. Hence, the spleen.

I've proudly shouldered the underdog burden and argued my way into and out of more frighteningly satisfying turgid footy arguments than the dog's had... hey, the back lawn's got a lot of brown spots. I got used to it. I got good at it. No-one did underdog better than me. The bloke who wrote the original Kama Sutra rang me last year for some inside tips on the Underdog, the Double Underdog and the Double Dog no under... but a man has to keep a couple of trademarks protected, after all. I reckon I took a gentle sort of pride in being a better class of underdog than yer avridge Ooftit supporter, f'rinstance, but that's hardly something to crow about. What would that lot of slinking yellow striped badger botherers know about underdogging? I actually have to work withing phone range of a couple of Bulldog supporters, too... and you'd think that mob of mongrel punts would have an idea of the scope involved in successfully underdogging in the modern world but it looks, unsurprisingly, as if they're a serious risk to badger wellbeing as well.

Among my close friends are a number of other team type people who are, due to their close friend status, obviously above all that crap. Fine, upstanding members of the community they are, too. Both of 'em. They've watched the change come over me through the years. As some may know, perhaps, I grew up following the All Blacks and you don't do that and get to understand what being an underdog is all about. Oh no. You tend to adopt the overdog, if anything. With gusto. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that if there's such a thing as Delivery Dog, then we All Black types do it. Anyway, enough of that...

Like I said, I'm a bit lost this year. There's a fair bit of delivery dog showing in the way our beloved Freo have gone about the bizzo this year. I find myself feeling remarkably comfortable with the idea... at first. Suddenly, there's a larger class of peanut running around spouting all this 'us' and 'we' stuff that doesn't sit well with someone who was seriously there when it really was 'us' and 'we' because we could count each other while it happened. I love the embiggening magnificence of Freo 2010 but I've had to develop an outlet or two for something I got used to associating with football. Dirty spleen stuff... spitting chips, venting, having a crack back at the b*stards. You know...

The Helicopter of Violence.

You've been there... surrounded by peanuts with no idea and nothing to stop them sharing that lack with the world and you particularly. Nowadays, with the gentle glow of magnificence wrapped around you in a personal purple hue, you're almost impervious to the peanuts but back in the old days, you could unleash with some fairly serious white coat attracting behaviour and duck out the back door just before the sh*t really hit the fan, arms waving in staccato and knees jerking and splaying like a puppet with the palsy, yelling some sort of guided by the voices gibberish and generally doing the helicopter with a mad, possessed passion that would make David Byrne in a baggy suit look like a bloke giving a talk on neo colonial architecture and it's effect on the strictures of modern religion.

I may, at times, have been fairly accused of going off a bit.

Well, I dunno whether all this winning is doing me too much good because I'm not getting my helicopter airborne enough to find some sort of internal balance, y'know? You reckon I'm unbalanced? C'mon over here and try some of this cheap perfume then, while I sort out the last of the vodka.... I mean, it's all very well racking up a weekly dose of 4 points with half your best players out and generally serving up a savage dose of humble pie to those intelligent enough to know the taste but half the peanuts out there just keep heaping their plates up with a solid serve of stupid and missing out on their just deserts. There's been some mutterings after Voldemort Judd split Pav's cheek open with an insufficient elbow and most of that muttering has been rightly directed at the feet of the AwFL, but it's only got as far as the feet because none of those muttering scum sucking bottom feeders has the guts to stand up and look 'em in the eye. It's not just about Judd, either... and, Mike, it's Judd, not juddy, alright? A juddy sounds like something your mother would tuck you up with at night, mate, especially when you give it the vinegar stroke whisper instead of standing up and speaking like a man. No, it's about the hamfisted buttwipery that seems to go with an AwFL press pass these days.... as we keep seeing whenever someone tries to write something good about Freo and ends up having a half arsed backhanded crack in the name of praise.

You realise there's no point to this, don't you? I don't actually have an answer or a proposition. I just needed to get some of this cheap perfume of my chest.

Might be the vodka. He said it was vodka... hey, anyone know the 3rd line in Hotel California?

Hah... no-one ever does.