Supers v Trinity Aquinas

11 April 2010

One Hit Wonders?

It’s a tough game footy.  The ability to put in credible performance after credible performance is not as easy as I make it look.  Consistency is gold in all facets of our wonderful game.  Skills, decision making and effort need to be on song to ensure you have any chance of taking away the chocolates on any given weekend.

Of course, we know in Vets footy there are no chocolates.  There aren’t even boiled lollies.  But there is definitely one team at the end of each game who certainly looks more like someone that may have eaten a chocolate than the other.  They are the team saying, ‘Gee, this beer tastes good’ whereas the other side are thinking ‘Do I actually deserve this beer’?  Of course they do, for they are men and it says in the bible and/or the Koran somewhere that “All men are created equal and therefore deserve beer after exuding equal effort”.  Social workers, with the assistance of lawyers, later added the ‘even if that equal effort doesn’t result in an equal output’.

Back to consistency.

Dexys Midnight Runners, Soft Cell, Toni Basil, Benny Mardones and The Vapors are all members of the one hit wonder club.  Ironically, their hits can all still be heard on our radio stations.  The fact that they have done nothing of any note since doesn’t seem to matter.  They are still basking in the glory of one good effort in their lifetime.  They seem to be wearing their one hit wonder tag as a badge of honour.

After this week’s game against Trinity Aquinas, our Supers side could be in danger of only having the sterling effort against Northern Warriors to hang our hats on at the bar.  We had the chocolates in our hands at various points in the game but decided to hand the box over to a more committed TA’s side.

Our very own Toni Basil, Mark ‘Aravinda’ da Silva is a good case in point.  As documented in this column last week, Aravinda was subject to glowing praise from Nelmesy after his Round 1 efforts, but sadly went missing on the weekend.  We then found him crying silently on the sidelines during the third quarter.  We all thought he’d done a calf or a hammy.  It turns out he’d copped a slight knock to his nose. 

Oh Mickey.

Of course, he wasn’t alone.  But we’ll pretend he was because it’s much funnier to leave him high and dry than it would be to name the rest of us who just weren’t up to scratch.

At least Aravinda turned up though.  Glen ‘Jane’ Austen set the world on fire in round 1 and was MIA for Round 2.  Mark ‘Devo’ Devine also didn’t rock up.  Ditto for Brad ‘Insert Nickname Here’ Bennett.  Shane ‘Muriel’ Wedding is a mythical creature down at Wembley these days.  Aaron ‘Deluxe’ Brinkworth, Ben ‘Spits’ Spitteler, Paul ‘Radar’ Brown – all vanished.  Some may have said they vaporised.

The Vapors.  Perhaps they all turned Japanese after celebrating the win in Round 1?

Alas, the great thing about footy is that we always have next week to redeem ourselves.  But we need to revisit the highlights of the game on the weekend before we can move on.

It’s an interesting place Maddington, isn’t it?  Upon rocking up, I bumped into Matty ‘Plugger’ Smith.  Matty hasn’t been down at the club for a while, so it was great to see him with kit bag in hand ready to pull on the Wembley jumper.  Of course, he’s as useful as an ejection seat in a helicopter on the field, so we ended up giving him to the opposition for his first game back.  But I digress. (Welcome back Plugs!).

As Matty and I were discussing what had transpired in the years since we’d seen each other, a classy young lady walked passed us with symmetrical tattoos on each breast, complete with the word ‘shy’ in the middle.

Welcome to Maddington.

For some obscure reason the powers that be had decided to top dress both ovals, meaning they resembled sand pits more than they did football grounds.  Bouncing the ball wasn’t going to be part of the game plan today.

Nelmesy took his whiteboard ramblings to another level this week, with about 8 diagrams on the field with names placed in various spots within the diagrams.  Due to the Vapors we had acquired the services of Joey Agnello from masters, along with David ‘Creedy’ Creed.  Johnny ‘Poohbah’ Phaceas and Steven ‘Reedy’ Reed were down for their first run of the year, and we blooded to debutantes in Nathan ‘Clear’ Colgan and Jimmy ‘Robbo’ Robinson and Holmesy.

No doubt after last week’s column you’ll be wondering where ‘Clear’ came from.  I didn’t see him.  And ‘Invisible’ has too many syllables.

I’m hoping to meet him this week.

Welcome to the club ‘Clear’, ‘Robbo’ and ‘Holmesy’.

The first quarter would see us dominate around the ground and going forward.  Leigh ‘Junkie’ Junk is struggling to recapture his MVP form from last year though and conversion was a problem.  Benny ‘Super’ Mann provided a strong target across half forward and Poohbah was relishing his opportunity to roam the forward line.  He does have a propensity to want to snap goals though, does Poohbah, and time after time he ends up kicking them out on the full.  The Warriors were playing good footy and, against the breeze, gave a good account of themselves.

In the second quarter we again dominated possession but were wasteful and turned it over more times than Tiger Woods at a strip club.  Ian ‘Trigger’ Booth, Brett ‘Flicka’ Althorpe, ‘Holmesy’ and Sean ‘Irish’ Delaney played a magnificent quarter in defence and repelled numerous Warriors forward thrusts.  At the pointy end ‘Super’ kicked one of the goals of the year into a stiff breeze from 45m out.

At half time we had our noses in front and had played poorly.  Surely we’d flick the switch and run away with it in the third.

We flicked the switch alright.  Into the off position.  The Warriors dominated the centre clearances and, running into the breeze in the third quarter, slammed on the goals.  ‘Flicka’, ‘Super’, ‘Trigger’ and ‘Poohbah’ continued to play stand out footy, unfortunately they were the only ones playing good footy in Wembley jumpers.

It is at this point, due to contractual obligations, that I have to mention Joey Agnello in the match report.  With no Masters game this week, Joey kindly stepped in to help out the Supers and took the field at some point in the third quarter.  Ordinarily, Joey would write the Masters match report and dedicate it to the 2 things he did during the match, but that will fall to me this week.  So here they are.  In the third quarter Joey ran on to the footy and had Poohbah running past him in more space than he knew what to do with.  He duly ignored Poohbah and took the shot on goal himself and proceeded to kick it out on the full.  In the final quarter, Joey was running toward goal and merely had to pick the ball up and pass it to Creedy who was alone inside fifty and would have strolled into goal.  He duly ignored Creedy and proceeded to soccer the ball along the ground to the advantage of the only defender in sight, who duly picked the ball up and delivered it to a teammate on the wing.

He makes it sound so much better in his reports doesn’t he?

I must admit though, that Joey did show some extraordinary pace in attempting to follow up the soccer kick – albeit to no avail.

Joey’s opportunity was about as close as we got in the final term to kicking a goal and a more disciplined and skilful TA’s thoroughly deserved to take home the imaginary chocolates on the day.

Pick of the Bunch:  Flicka, Trigger, Poohbah, Super

Turkey of the Week: This week the dinner voucher from our good friends at Alaturka goes to the man who redefined the art of shepherding on the weekend.  Steven ‘Reedy’ Reed went to lay a shepherd for a team mate who would have then run into an open goal.  Alas, Reedy took out his team mate with a sensational hip and shoulder to the head.

Enjoy the dinner Reedy.

Rookie