Kicking With The Wind: Round 2
You can do a lot in 16 minutes.
It’s enough time to boil a fresh crayfish to perfection, pound out a 3km time-trial in a genuinely unimpressive time and to practically unstitch the delicate space-time continuum that envelops the AFL.
That’s what Tania Hird did, after all (the space-time continuum part, though they may well eat crayfish in the leafy Melbourne suburbs, too).
Her infamous interview on the ABC’s 7.30 wound the clock back several months and may even have dislodged an object previously considered immovable in Andrew Demetriou.
If there’s truth in any of her claims about Mr D, it’s not entirely unreasonable to think maybe he had a whiff of what was coming from ‘Hirdy’s Mrs’ and announced his retirement ahead of the 2014 season.
Remember, when it comes to sensitive information, the AFL is leakier than moth-eaten cheesecloth… or so we’re told.
How many is too many?
Has anyone noticed the list of commentators that appears on the side of screen early in every Channel 7 AFL telecast?
It appears to be getting longer with every round played, and if not, certainly with every season that passes.
While your correspondent doesn’t claim to be any highfalutin media consultant, it would appear that having seven men doing the job three men managed for much of the past 30 years is wasteful.
It’s also bloody annoying – particularly when you take into acount the ‘Darcy factor’.
There are few men on the planet that make former Tiger and current Channel 7 special comments guy Matthew Richardson appear sharp.
One is Luke Darcy and Luke Darcy needs reminding there is nothing genuinely ‘tragic’ about a knee reconstruction, unless the recipient of said reco dies during surgery.
I’ll leave it at that for now.
Just bristling
Sadly for Channel 7, the ‘Darcy factor’ mightn’t be all they have to worry about when it comes to alienating the viewing public.
During the course of the Thursday Night Football broadcast, the Twittersphere was alive with microblogs describing Brian ‘Bristle’ Taylor as an ‘oxygen thief’, suggesting he should ‘shut the fuck up’ and praying for him to be ‘banished to the far reaches of the universe’.
All of these tweets are impossible to disagree with.
Dead certs
Travelling to Melbourne this weekend will hold no fears for the Eagles, particularly given the result last time they crossed the Nullabor to face the Demons.
That time it was 94 points and this time around the margin could well be similar.
The Eagles showed in Round 1 they have the ability to kick goals galore while Melbourne couldn’t counter lowly St Kilda… hardly the perfect form line.
The master coach Paul Roos has his hands full rallying the troops while Adam Simpson and Brady Rawlings – the former Shinboners turned first-year coaching team at West Coast – are the types of guys any self-respecting player would happily bleed for.
Watch the W’eagles this year. They’ve got match-winners on every line and the best home advantage in the league.
Hoffwatch
Nobody’s doing it much easier than The Hoff going into Round 2.
A lazy ‘five straight’ last week saw The Hoff reward those switched on enough to have taken him in any AFL Fantasy-related activities and Port fans might rightly feel up and about given the club’s start in rolling the Blues in Melbourne.
Readers of this column will soon learn your humble correspondent has a lot of time for the Power – and it’s not just because The Hoff is in the house.
It’s because The Hoff is building the house bigger and bigger every week. Just like his beard.
Shit tweet of the week
It was only a matter of time before @Robbo_heraldsun came up with a shit tweet in time to make a Kicking With The Wind column.
And without further ado, here ‘tis: ‘So, a bunch of crusty old men might summon T Hird to the boardroom to explain herself… you’re kidding. Heavy handed from Little if true’
Hold the phone, @Robbo_heraldsun… and forgive me if I’m wrong, but you’re making it sound like you wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to get ‘T Hird’ in a room for an explanation.
And I’m all-but-sure you would have. Fair play, too, because her explanation would surely have looked good splashed across the pages of your little tabloid rag.
So, why hold it against Paul Little and the Essendon board to call on ‘Hirdy’s Mrs’ if they so desire? They’ve got more invested in the whole shitstorm than you, my opinionated, bald-headed brother in arms.
Talk of the Hardwoods
Yet again, time has come for the annual debate around the merits of an AFL licence being granted to the Apple Isle.
You’ll find few more parochial Tasmanians than Yours Truly, but this talk of a Tasmanian team entering the competition is little more than mildly entertaining fantasy – akin to a secondary plotline in a sports-themed Game of Thrones spin-off, if you will.
The 12,430 ‘strong’ crowd at the Hawthorn v Brisbane Lions game in Launceston last week must have been enough to have the powers that be chortling behind their Record.
Such is the discontent locally around the perennially disappointing scheduling that sees ‘expansion’ teams regularly sent south to face the Hawks (and Roos) in Tassie, crowds have started to drop off noticeably.
Perhaps scheduling more Victorian clubs would see a spike in attendance, but it would also see a dip in revenue for the clubs involved, and the league itself.
You don’t have to be Rainman to do the numbers on either Tassie side facing Collingwood at Blundstone Arena as opposed to facing Collingwood at Etihad – or the MCG.
Similar outcomes could be expected whether it was the Pies, Blues, Dons or Tiges scheduled to travel south.
Sure, Tasmanians would turn out to see the clubs they’d supported since childhood, but whether the same folks would turn out week on week to see the Tassie Hardwoods is eminently debatable – and highly unlikely.