Melbourne v Collingwood – a view from abroad

June 23, 2012 by sally
Filed under: NSW Demons

Well things didn’t exactly start out as planned. Recently arrived in Jakarta I headed to a pub that I knew showed AFL without fail. Strolling in I confidently went up to the owner and asked him to please put on the footy. The conversation went sorta like this…

“sorry Sir it is a Monday – no AFL on a Monday only Friday and weekends”

“No it is the Queens birthday…public holiday big football game”

“Queens birthday?”

“Yeah Queen of England…in Australia we get a public holiday to celebrate her birthday”

“It is the Queens’ birthday today?”

“No actually it is in April but….”

“But today is June?….” (now I really had no answer for this and my patience was now running thin!)

“LOOK CAN YOU JUST CHECK TO SEE IF IT IS ON!!

Success!!!….he found the game and just as soon as I finally got a smile on my face it was quickly evaporated as to my horror we were 6 goals down. As I said….things didn’t start out exactly as planned. I hate watching games where the result is pretty much decided early in the match but things did get better the longer the game went on. Clearly Neeld would not have been happy with the end result however he would have been pleased the way the boys played after quarter time. 6 of the next 7 goals is as good as any club has done against the Pies and the fact the boys fought on is enough to continue to offer hope for the club – albeit we didn’t come away with the win.

On a day where the Demons left without the points we did have some solid contributors:

I have been ‘hounding’ Howe for over a year now and he rarely lets me down. 5 contested marks in the first half, 7 for the match, our first goal and 2 for the game was a fantastic effort.
Absolutely NO bonus points for who had our most possessions on the day! Yes again it was Nathan Jones! 31 disposals was again a fantastic effort. Perhaps the club can save some money and just give him the ‘Bluey’ now…he is winning it by a street.
Again no bonus points for our leading goal kicker on the day……once again Mitch Clark…he finished with 4 and once again he can hold his head up high.
Jack Grimes (with 25 touches), Cale Morton and Jack Watts all deserve a mention on a day the club would wish they could play the first quarter again.

This week

After the bye last week, we are back at the ‘G’ and this time against the newbies GWS. For probably the first time this year we will start favourites and I clearly don’t need to spell out why this game will take on extra significance. I clearly don’t but I clearly will….

Rumour has it that it wasn’t an earthquake in Melbourne this week but actually Tom Scully and his fat wallet landing at Tullarmarine. $cully had the audacity this week to claim that he ‘left a while a go now and that people would have gotten over his defection”…..YEAH RIGHT……He will get booed and rightly so!. Not one normally to endulge in schadenfreude I actually hope we fail to hear 1 solitary boo on Sunday….this means he doesn’t get a single touch. I am disappointed Tappy got himself suspended as a few hard, tough ‘legal’ tackles on him would clearly make my day.

I say all this but actually, perhaps paradoxically, I am glad he took the money and ran for more than 1 reason. Most importantly if we had Scully today the facts are we wouldn’t have Mitch Clark and I certainly know who I would rather have in our team! Also we have graciously accepted 2 first round draft picks for his loss and with a so called ‘super draft’ this year, coupled with the coming of Jack Viney we are going to be in a great position to further lay the platform of a great side.

So good riddance Scully and go Dees!

Darren Spence

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