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

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

Can you believe that it is time for Theme Thursday already? Today we are not talking chocolate , toddlers , mess or ignominy . No, today we're dealing with ANIMAL . Now I could have posted a picture of a possum, numbat, wombat, wallaby or any other furry killing machine that roams our fair isle, but I figure that I'd use a far more deadly creature as an example of an animal . Some people - I know them as fools - have chosen to embrace that highfalutin idea that human beans are for some ungodly reason superior to animals. Of course, what these imbeciles seem to forget is that were are simple animals ourselves ! Anyone with a baby, toddler, teenage boy or Queenslander in their household could tell you this. Look at Henry [above]. One chocolate frog in the back of the car on a sunny day and all of a sudden it's Elagabalus meets Bacchus for a quick shandy in the Serengeti and we're down on all fours carrying on like a cat in heat. Fair dinkum, anyone who chooses to ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

This will hurt me...

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