SHRINK!

[Demonland 73,140]

SHRINK! by William from West Perth

Melbourne (the football team) comes to Perth once or twice a year and when that happens I get a rare opportunity to support in person the football team of my youthful days. However, there are some pitfalls involved in this; mainly because said football team has great difficulty winning any matches over here.

My expectations this week were no different and the game against the Purple Haze opened much as I anticipated. Since Melbourne returned from its steamy escapade up in Darwin in Round 8, it has become oh, so predictable, conceding at least the first goal of every game (and often much more) to the opposition. Why should things be any different at any time when the team travels out here to a place where it has failed to register a win against either of the local sides since 2004?

So predictable are the Demons that I put them on my list of dead set certainties:

1. Death and Taxes,

2. Vision of Julia Gillard appearing on the front page of every newspaper after the weekend hugging and kissing a baby, and

3. Melbourne stuffing up the start of yet another game.

And so it came to pass that bang, bang, bang (snip, snip, snip - ed.) ... the first three goals of the game were in the Docker's bag before the Demons were out of snooze mode; the clock hadn't even ticked past the ten minute mark! I sat there with my two companions (both Eagles fans still celebrating Mark Le Cras' amazing haul the night before), my face resting in cupped hands and me muttering expletives about umpires and ... well, before I knew it, we were in the shadows of half time, that (snip) little pest Hayden Ballantyne (why couldn't he have kept his interchange antics for this week?) had just kicked his third and the team was down by 44 points.

By then, we had witnessed all of the usual cock ups. Last week it was Jared Rivers who stuffed up a simple short pass for an embarrassing Bomber goal. This week it was Cam Bruce's turn to kick across the face of goal and give away an easy one. We did it all. Stupid free kicks, one or two of them soft, umpire # 8 (snip). They were wallowing in the mire, the yellow maggots were hurting us as much as the purple people and the game was over. Or was it?

Jamie Bennell kicked his second goal, the siren went, and we wandered off to a bar for liquid refreshments and an opportunity to calmly and rationally discuss what could be done to turn things around for the ailing Demons and enable them to fight their way back into a game which appeared to be firmly in Fremantle's control.

That was about the time when I hit upon a brilliant idea to help stem the weekly tide that sees the Demons give away goal after goal before finding themselves chasing tail and playing catch up football. Surely, enlisting the services of a psychiatrist could do the trick?

What I really needed was a hot line to Dean Bailey to break the news to him. I would have to told him to forget telling the newspapers that he was changing the pre game routine or reminding us how many games in a row we've lost in a row at Subiaco or AAMI Stadium or telling the supporters that "the team is determined to end its worrying Subiaco Oval hoodoo against AFL top-four fancy Fremantle in the west today."

Forget that (snip) Dean ... just do something about it and hire a shrink to fix the problem. After all, you yourself said it all after the game:

"If you're not prepared to fight your way into the game from the start you are going to be chasing the opposition for the whole game and that's what we did."

So why not get an eminent psychiatrist in to talk to the players and convince them that when they go out to play it's really half time and they're already six goals down. That should rev them up and get them going.

If that doesn't work then why not give them all a (snip) rocket up their (snip) which is what Bails must have done during the main break because the minute they stepped back onto the field of play in the third quarter, you could sense that something big was about to go down and it was really big!

Melbourne took the game on and with a superb brand of running, free- flowing, fast paced football, they banged on six goals in the first 17 minutes of the term to reduce the deficit from 39 points to a solitary point. Even without the aid of a shrink, they had drawn to the very brink of what would have been an impossible victory and one that would almost have rivaled the one at the MCG against this mob two years ago. Aaron Davey and Liam Jurrah came good with two goals each, Tom Scully was running rings around the Docker midfield and Nathan Jones came to life in the absence of injured teammate Brent Moloney. Colin Sylvia came to life as well while the steadiness of Jordie McKenzie (fantastic for someone so young and really still a rookie) and James Frawley were important.

But just as the impossible was about to happen for the Demons, stage fright set in. Ryan Crowley gave the Dockers a vital goal just before three-quarter time break and Jack Watts failed to score with a difficult angle shot after the siren.

Brad Green kicked the first for the final term and the Demons soon got to within a point again. Then, for the rest of the quarter it was an arm wrestle as the teams traded points and tragically (for me and the few hundred red and blue faithful at the ground and the thousands watching in homes and pubs somewhere else) Lynden Dunn and Jack Watts both missed set shots that would have put Melbourne in front. In the end, the (snip) pest kicked a left footer that bounced through and the game was over. Fremantle 11.16.82 to Melbourne 10.11.71.

Anyway, Dr. McZyff. That's my story for the day. What's yours? By the way, did I ever tell you that this is really a comfortable couch?

Melbourne 1.28 3.5.23 9.8.62 10.11.71

Fremantle 6.3.39 9.8.62 10.10.70 11.16.82

Goals

Melbourne Bennell Davey Jurrah 2 Green Johnson Jones Sylvia

Fremantle Ballantyne 4 Mundy 2 Duffield Fyfe Hasleby Palmer

Best

Melbourne McKenzie Frawley Davey Jones Scully Sylvia

Fremantle Ballantyne Hill Mundy Duffield Ibbotson Palmer

Injuries

Melbourne Moloney (corked thigh) Green (finger)

Fremantle Roberton (ankle) Bradley (knee)

Changes

Melbourne Nil

Fremantle Nil

Reports

Melbourne Nil

Fremantle Nil

Umpires Margetts Rosebury Dalgleish

Crowd 32,816 at Subiaco Oval