To try or not to try, that is the question

The Swans insist that it is all much ado about nothing; the AFL is keen to protect the integrity of the competition; Roos thinks that he is being unfairly persecuted and that the AFL have a vendetta against him; Andy Demetriou says that it's "nothing personal", he's even in the Telegraph counselling restraint. Aker (being Aker) just can't keep out of any argument and reckons the pre-season comp should be scrapped. The people of Sydney are in uproar! In The Age, Carro reckons that it is a farce and is holding the fort for her good mate Snooze; in the Hun noted hack Mark Robinson thinks that it's all the fault of the league; yet also in the Hun chief footy scribe Mike Sheehan disagrees and thinks that Roos has come out looking soiled, and that the AFL's point is valid.

It should shock no-one that I agree with Sheehan. The competitive spirit within me cannot accept that football can tolerate actively trying to lose a game. As I said in an earlier post and feel strongly enough to reiterate, it's all very well to pick a reserves outfit, have your best players on the bench or dawdle over interchanges, but it is surely a far graver action to send out instructions to cease trying.

Nonetheless, it could all be far worse; all I've heard from the weird and whacky world of thugby league is bullets, brothels, booze and brawls through Sydney's red light district. So maybe Roosy's indiscretions are minor in comparison.

Comments

Fredrick Stevens said…

Man that would not go over well here in the States. Not only do we not like quitters in our sports, but we like to get our money's worth as well. I hope no one brings down Aussie Rules with a scandal, or Rugby for that matter. They're two of may favorite sports; I have Setanta sports channel just so I can watch them.

If I was a sports commissioner, and found that someone had thrown a game, they would be out on their ass the next day.

4 March 2008 at 22:53

Kris McCracken said…

There is a real chance of that happening here. It doesn't look good. Roos may have weathered the storm if he explained why he approaches the pre-season 'competition' the way he does, but first he treats it as a joke, then he lies, and now the lawyers are involved.

5 March 2008 at 06:00

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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