Grr-owl

So, let’s get one.

I keep thinking of The Last Dance, and MJ’s insistence on dominating the opposition. We don’t play with an energy and drive to dominate. There’s no fire, no passion, no drive, no wins.

Good footy teams have a sense of masculine presence, confidence and energy. We were smaller, slower and less skillful than North. We are nowhere. Our premiership players aren't the real thing. We were a flash in the pan....

Went to my first NRL games last season after living with Union as the expat sport of choice for 10 years. Yeah, it's a different experience to footy. The game itself is attritional, and I can well understand that many footy lovers find it boring - I always did until last season. Not sure what changed, but my guess is that I learned to appreciate the physicality, something to do with being entirely certain that I could never play it myself, and something to do with the AFL doing everything it can to take physicality out of footy, to the game's detriment imho. I also learned to appreciate the atmosphere, which is kind of like going to a factory family picnic and over there on the field the boyz are at rugger... The crowds are pathetic. At a Storm game last season the commentators were ecstatic at the crowd that almost (almost but not quite) filled a 30,050 seat stadium (think the crowd was 28000). It was a final. Most games are fortunate to get 12,000, I believe... I have a theory that this can be explained by the game requiring a body type that only a small percentage of blokes possess - that being very sturdy of limb and light of mind (dig) - whereas footy requires a much broader range of the population. This limits rugby's appeal as only a small percentage of kids could ever hope to make it. This conversely explains the dominance of NSW and QLD players in the Aus cricket team, as athletic blokes in VIC, WA, SA, TAS and those parts of NSW fortunate to live on the right side of the Barassi Line who might otherwise maximize their cricketing ability, instead maximize their footy ability with a fair chance of making it to the big leagues. This then has a knock-on effect in terms of coaches and infrastructure that only multiplies the phenomenon. No evidence. Just an idea... In any case, I'll be supporting Storm again this season by turning up to games. There's some interesting personalities in the team and there's a special kind of joy at having a team from Melbourne, of all places, that regularly pantses those Sydney knobs at their own game.

... now wondering what chance ANY team has of maintaining a critical core of elite personnel when playing an extremely taxing game style for an extremely long season... ?

Mate, you're job is awesome.

A new road will be built not far south of the tunnel....

Also, I know a bloke who used to get a load of yabbies out of the lake...

Clarissa would be a decent addition to our AFLW team....

Got Max with his knee. Max's fault. Moved into his path while Mason was in the air. Unavoidable. 😉

Of course...

Wall Street.

No, I get it.... was making a joke, of a kind. Think the kind is technically termed "sh*t."

They are reconciling three campuses into one....

Ajax play there. Bears are at Koornang Park.