Stinker. Stinken. Fetente. In any language, it wasn’t appealing. We could talk about structures. We could talk about intent. We could talk about many things.
But let’s be very clear. On Monday morning, in rank hostel toilets dotted all over the globe there sat scores of young men waking from night five of Buck’s Week 2018 whose bowel movements smelled better than our performance at the MCG.
We had 47 tackles for the day. That’s less than Rex Hunt takes out on his tinny for a morning fish.
We squandered our chance to put the Pies under early scoreboard pressure, and they rubbed it into our faces like we were fresh nerdlings being given a hands-on tour of our new school’s toilet facilities by a friendly Year 11 called Boof.
In fact, if Xzibit ever thinks that Pimp My Ride is in need of a re-vamp, he could do no better than to give North Melbourne a call.
Name of the new show: Pimp My Team.
Concept: Assemble your rag tag bunch of plodders and within 15 minutes of the first quarter the creative, quirky bunch at North Melbourne Football Club will convert them into an All Australian / Space Jam hybrid, guaranteed to wow commentators and enhance membership and merchandise revenue.
Coming soon to Channel 10.
At the contest, our contesters dug-in and scrapped. But around them the Pies had numbers sagging off the edge of the contest, awaiting with baited breath for the inevitable turn-over that inevitably happened following the inevitable hornet’s nest of pressure that they put on anyone wearing royal blue and white that happened to find a footy bouncing into their hands.
We couldn’t handle their heat. We couldn’t run with their run.
All of this, whilst standing in our forward fifty stood Ben Brown and Majak Daw. Without wanting to disrespect anyone, their respective opponents of Jeremy Howe and Matthew Scharenberg should have had both Brown and Daw looking at a combined goal tally entering into double figures.
But we couldn’t kick it to them. On the rare occasion we did, Brown or Daw tended to mark the footy or bring it to ground. When they marked it, we got a goal. When they brought it to ground, the space at their feet was as bereft of crumbers as a closed bakery kitchen.
Collingwood would then rebound, transition from defence to attack, from flank to corridor, from defending a goal to celebrating one with the surrounding intensity of a Ansett Australia Cup Under 19s curtain-raiser.
The most stressful aspect of Scott Pendlebury’s afternoon came when he inadvertently bounced the ball onto the back of a grazing pigeon. It was a bit murky from the haze of rage and spittle that clouded my view from the terraces, but I was relieved to see that “Pendles” had enough time and space afforded to him by our chasing midfield to stop his run, check the pigeon’s pulse, perform an on-the-spot cranial nerve examination before executing a textbook tag and release of said bird with associated identification data submitted to Steve Hocking in a written report, before continuing on his way towards our defensive fifty.
A left-field, but ultimately misguided attempt by the NMFC brain trust to emulate the Sydney tactics of filling crucial ground space with a runner. Don’t tell PETA.
On another day, maybe things could have been different. That’s now two games this year – Essendon and Collingwood – in which our opponents casually entered “God Mode” moments prior to the opening bounce.
It’s depressing to see early shots on goal, regulation shots, missed. It’s more depressing to see the other mob display the accuracy of a William Tell / Calamity Jane love child.
The Pies’ accuracy and our scatter-gun approach to the scoreboard saw their lead balloon out early. Despite two periods late in the first and second quarter in which we managed to wrest back some of the momentum that we’d originally cast aside with the misguided confidence of a Vagas drunk, the damage was done.
Much like Scott Thompson’s squashed nose, we couldn’t stem the bleeding. And our efforts to do so also looked uncomfortable and in poor taste.
Coming soon to Darebin Arts Centre: Hamlet – a one man production starring Scott Thompson. (The role of Yoric is played by a used Sherrin football).
In the face of broken and bloodied faces and a team that played with the cohesion of the calculus exam in that episode of Mr. Bean, individual performances shone perhaps more brightly than they would on another day.
Special mention must go to Majak. When he gave away a fifty for going over the mark from a kick-in, I felt like storming the field and demanding a personal apology. But a minute later he chased down Murray like a cheetah chases down a cocky antelope buck, and I wanted to storm the field and chair lift him back inside the forward fifty.
Saturday was the only day in recent memory in which we had an embarrassingly severe advantage for balls delivered bombed willy nilly into the fifty from on high. When this happened, Majak marked everything that came his way. They couldn’t go with him, and he knew it. Unfortunately, we had the attacking flair of a pacifist gardener and so little uncontested possession that I began drafting a letter to Gil outlining the positive outcomes for new starting zones in which no other team is allowed inside the centre square until North have managed to clear the ball outside of it.
Anyway, cheers Maj. I’m loving your season.
Goldstein beat Grundy. I said it. I will delete all texts from Collingwood mates attempting to debate this, and will not look at the stats to confirm or deceive this conclusion, because:
a) the less analysis that is made of this game the better, and all attending NMFC members should be awarded a free upgrade on their 2019 membership,
and;
b) because Grundy cruised into multiple possessions when Goldstein was off the ground for what by my count was the 245th blood rule of the day.
Goldstein is now officially back. The easiest way to measure this for those of you playing at home is to ask yourself, “Have I noticed Goldy take more than one mark?” If the answer is yes, you can generally be sure he’s involved beyond the ruck contest in a big way.
Beneath him, Shaun Higgins continued to do what he has done since he came to his spiritual home and cast aside the vulgar red from his playing colours. He, alone among our mids, gathers at speed and spreads from the contest. If only we had a Billy Hartung or three scampering alongside him as he breaks to the wing.
Cunnington gave off more don’t-argues than a puritan preacher. As the game fell more and more into disarray it seemed to burn within him as a personal grudge. Pray for Travis Varcoe, everyone. If he gets yet another Cunnington palm in the sternum, it may permanently impact his ability to generate speech.
Begone.
Considering for most of the match our starting centre lineup consisted of a combination of Ahern, Davies-Uniacke and Simpkin, maybe it’s not all that surprising that we struggled to match Collingwood as the quarters rolled on.
Our boys are young, with young bodies. But they kept cracking in. In the last quarter in particular Ahern and LDU kept getting the footy, kept willing themselves forward and kept getting involved in chains of possession. As a contest it was a hard match to watch, but if Brendan Bolton was sitting in our coaches box he’d have filled the post-game press conference with so many references to green shoots that the federal police would have busted in and shoved him in the back of an unmarked van for “questioning” about commercial drug manufacturing.
The future is bright. And up until the last few weeks, the present had altered everyone’s expectations on what to expect 2018 to be. What happened on Saturday is never going to be accepted as an “acceptable effort” by Shinboners – but in the face of what we all rationally expected this season to look like prior to its commencement, I for one am churning through videos of the first half of 2018 as a soothing balm for a week in which I will consciously abject to viewing and/or listening to any football media prior to team announcement on Thursday evening. But then I’ll be back on board and rolling again.
That was our first real stinker of the year. Let’s hope it’s the only one.
Especially as we’re now back in Hobart. Eagles on Sunday. I won’t say the word “fortress” in anything resembling a prediction, as that would be the kind of jinx inducing statement requiring a swift uppercut delivered to myself by myself.
But we do play well down there.
It’s Higgins’ 200th. Enough said. And if the lingering stench of last week isn’t enough to make the lads to realise that their arms are there to tackle, and not just act as balance beams for some kind of Greek folk dancing, we don’t deserve to make finals anyway.
May the Bellerive breeze and the spirit of Jarrad Waite bless us all.
Come on you Roo boys.
O'Shanassy street 