You forgot to mention that the "man firing gunshots from a car window" who gave Didak a lift, was the same man who gunned down several people in a busy city street a few days later!

Collingwood drinking and driving shennanigans go back a long way- you would think they would have learnt their lesson after the death of Darren Millane....

The Great Man announces his retirement:
http://www.realfooty.com.au/articles/2008/08/06/1217702096926.html

Bloody hell! 21 seasons of AFL. I claim there's dodgy business afoot.
An awesome feat, that career. And he managed to do it without being a cunt (to my recollection, which is vague at best).

Robert Harvey has never been convicted of drink driving; he has never assaulted anyone; he has never pissed on any of the following: St Kilda police station, the window of an Italian restaurant, a woman in a pub (whether she was on fire or not), the 18th hole of a golf course just as someone was about to putt; he has never overturned a portaloo; he has never been in a car driving through the streets of Melbourne with someone shooting out the window; he doesn't have his own horse tranquiliser dealer; he has never put an Irish barman in a headlock; he has never been capsicum sprayed by police for rioting at a Lionel Richie concert; he has never run away from a police booze bus; he has never deliberately thrown his food onto a restaurant floor and humiliated the waitress by ordering her to clean it up; he has never gone up to a woman in a nightclub and said "I want to fuck you" and then been ejected by bouncers after abusing the disinterested woman; he is not friendly with any gangsters (well, apart from Michael Gardiner).

This is the weekend when we celebrate 150 years of Australian Rules football. To mark the occasion, the two oldest clubs, Melbourne (formed 1858) and Geelong (formed 1859), met at the "home of football" the MCG.

Unfortunately, Geelong are the best team in the competition and Melbourne the worst. The quarter time score was Melbourne 0 Geelong 53. The first scoreless quarter of the season. In fact, Melbourne were just 1 minute away from a goalless first half but ended up trailing 9-79 at half time.

The final margin was 106 points in what was a truly embarrassing match. The 18 team league doesn't seem like a very good idea.

Round 19
Collingwood 97 St Kilda 83
Crowd 52,135

Well, I can’t blame the umpires this week although this is a fixture where you normally expect a raw deal.

For the first 3 quarters, St Kilda were flat, gutless, insipid, piss-weak and disinterested. All this against a team that we knew would be fired up after a week of drink driving lying and suspensions. The top 4 is now gone and the 8 is far from certain. The thing is I’m not sure it matters much because we won’t make any impact in September if we get there.

Collingwood kicked the first goal in the opening minutes and it was 6’5” Chris Dawes, who was one of the replacements for the suspended players ,who got it on his debut with his first touch. It came about after a comedy of errors from St Kilda – first, Jason Gram handballed straight to the opposition then James Gwilt misjudged the bounce of the ball letting it run through to Dawes.

Sadly, Gwilt was on the receiving end of the sort of racist abuse we’ve come to expect from the feral Collingwood hordes. Last season, St Kilda’s aboriginal player, Xavier Clarke, was the victim. In his absence last night, Papua New Guinean Gwilt was mocked as “Jungle Boy” by the drunken scum standing up the back of the bay we were in. Sitting behind us were two sweet old dears – the sort of women who knit their own own scarves, take a flask of tea to the game and encourage the players as if they know them personally: “Come on Lenny,” “well done, Nick” etc. They eventually complained to the police who spoke to the lowlife but weren’t ejected and as soon as the police moved on it all started up again. The irony is that 2 of Collingwood’s best last night were the Indigenous Leon Davis and Harry O’Brien, a black Brazilian (his real name is Heritier).

Apart from a few moments when it was 7-7, Collingwood led for the entire night, the lead fluctuating between 3 and 5 goals. Then, in the final quarter, St Kilda woke up and reduced the gap to 9 points but we just couldn’t get within a goal and the win was sealed by a 55m goal from Travis Cloke who had been kicking abysmally up to that point. Even if we’d shown that determination for just half the match we would probably have won given how undermanned Collingwood were.

Once again much of the post-match discussion is centred on Nick Dal Santo who was dropped just a few weeks ago but seemed to have reacted positively on his return. Last night, he touched the ball just 3 times in the first half. Perhaps the time has come to seriously consider trading him.

My condolences,MA.

Got up early to see the Crows game on Sunday, well early enough to see the end of the second quarter onwards as my wife turned the alarm off when I wasn't looking!

They were already 40 odd points up, and the Tigers were looking very shoddy. In the end we won very comfortably by about 60 points. Consensus in the TV studio was that any other team who was so dominant would have won by upwards of 100 points. The Crows just don't have someone to kick a big bag of goals on a regular basis.

Bunji McLeod got his 300th game, making him the third Crow to pass that milestone. The other two, Ben Hart and Mark Riccuito did manage many more, so there is a good chance that McLeod will be the record holder by the time he retires.

In other news, I got 8/8 in my footy tips this week, following on from 7/8 last week :)

Channel 7's coverage of the one-sided borefest that was the Crows vs Richmond game was greeted with dismay by most of Australia (outside of Adelaide's leafier suburbs, that is), who were hoping to watch Olympic events in that timeslot!

There are still letters in the paper today complaining about it.

Whilst on the subject of the Crows... it is an interesting fact that two of the Crows' key midfielders, Tyson Edwards and Andrew MacLeod, have not been on speaking terms for a few years... apearently it is over a quarrel resulting from the pair of them taking sides over the break up of their mate Lleyton Hewitt's engagement with Kim Clijsters.

With that sort of atmosphere within the club, and lack of a decent goalscorer, it would seem that their finals chances are limited, and it is no surprise that Neil Craig never smiles....

trimster wrote:

QUOTE:
Channel 7's coverage of the one-sided borefest that was the Crows vs Richmond game was greeted with dismay by most of Australia (outside of Adelaide's leafier suburbs, that is), who were hoping to watch Olympic events in that timeslot!

There are still letters in the paper today complaining about it.

Did these whingeing fuckwits not notice that SBS were showing the Olympics when Adelaide-Richmond was on? Perhaps they won't watch an ethnic channel. The feedback here has been overwhelmingly in support of Seven - and rightly so.

A new source of talent for the AFL – Sydney have signed a member of Canada's rugby union world cup team, Mike Pyke, on a 2 year deal after he impressed on trial. He's 24 and has never played Aussie Rules before but he's huge and athletic and Sydney plan to groom him as a ruckman.

It looked like it was going to be a really bad weekend. Brisbane's first win in ages last night against the Western Bulldogs knocked St Kilda out of the top 8. Then, this afternoon, Richmond moved to within 2 points of St Kilda with a shock win over Hawthorn. With Richmond playing Fremantle at home next week while St Kilda play in form Adelaide, this was potentially catastrophic.

St Kilda trailed Fremantle by 4 points at half time this afternoon but produced a stunning second half (11 goals to 2) to get a rare win in Perth.

One win from the last 2 games should be enough to seal a finals place but we need 2 wins to try and clinch a final in Melbourne.

Setanta was free this weekend again for the Premiership start, so i saw the 2nd quarter of Geelong-Sydney fighting insomnia (it was on at 3AM). Geelong just look a class apart.

Actually, it was kinda surreal, thinking about it. At 3AM, with NBC's overnight olympic replay, simultaneously there were Aussie relay swimmers, the AFL match, and Adelaide United-Perth Glory live all on the air. Did your embassy bribe some people to start the cultural takeover?

jefe wrote:

QUOTE:
Geelong just look a class apart.

The only 2 teams who've come close to keeping up with Geelong at the top of the ladder have both gone off the boil. Hawthorn have lost 5 of their last 11 and the Western Bulldogs 4 of their last 5. Geelong have won 38 of their last 40.

The 2nd best team right now are North Melbourne who've won 6 in a row. They play Geelong this weekend.