Whispering_Jack

Quite frankly, so do I.Perhaps I should have finished the last effort by waking up and realising it's all been a bad dream.

How are you going to do that? You're supposed to be tied up to a chair ATM, dummy!

Well ... it seems nothing much has changed here in the last couple of days although I must say that it's strange spending days at sea when you have no contact whatsoever with the rest of the world. Here's an update from when I previously left you:- The banana yellow Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2 Spyder was resting silently and alone in the car park in front of a building that bore the name 'The Choko Williams Gymnasium'. We were inside the Breakfast Point complex. It didn't take long for us to overpower a couple of security people and switch uniforms and though I felt uncomfortable wearing the charcoal and orange shirt, the disguise was perfect. We burst our way into the gymnasium building and were immediately confronted by an unexpected sight. Lined up in front of us were hundreds of sky blue fruit crates with images of bright, sun ripened bananas on their lids. When we prized them open, we discovered something far more dangerous than everyone's favourite fruit. Inside the cases was a cavalcade of heavy weaponry ranging from handguns to 12 gauge shotguns, repeat action firearms, bazookas, Uzis, RPG's and mortars. It was dawning on us that this was no ordinary gymnasium. Moreover, we were now sensing that this place held the secrets to something far more diabolical than merely the setting up one AFL club as a patsy on some clapped up tanking charges. Just then, we heard voices and so we quickly hid behind a row of banana crates as they walked past us. I could just make out the formidable outline of Phil the Michelin Man and his son who limped behind him but it was the third man who caught us completely off guard. It was the man who had been instructing Dean Bailey on the stolen audio cassette which Phil was now handing over to him. They called him 'Mr. Demetriou'. "That was a fine piece of work Phil and it more than makes up for you missing out on Kurt Tippett and the embarrassment caused when you confused O'Rourke with Toumpas at the November draft. Still, once I destroy this, we can proceed with my dream of taking over in this country and tomorrow, we'll rule the world". He threw the cassette to the ground and was readying himself to stomp down hard. In a moment, it would be smashed into a thousand pieces. I had to do something but I failed. They came up behind us and got me twice, once hard across the back of my neck and a second time with a blow to the kidney. I noticed from the corner of my eye that Redleg was already on the ground and then nothing but blackness. When I woke up, we were both gagged, bound and tied to chairs. We were back on the ship as it headed towards Brisbane. If nothing else, it shows that I'm quickly running out of ideas and my story doesn't make sense or have much of a plot but I'm told this is a prerequisite to getting a gig at Fairfax Media so I'm cool with all that ATM.

Hot off the press. We were at wit's end. The ship was about to dock in Sydney and the tape was missing. The cruise line's entertainment director was heavily concussed with no memory of the vicious assault that preceded the theft of the tape we hoped would prove the Melbourne Football Club innocent of all charges against it in the forthcoming tanking trial at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The ship's security cameras proved useless; the criminals who committed the outrageous theft were far too clever; all footage of the passage outside was blocked by a large figure rendering identification impossible. We had reached yet another dead end in a series of dead ends and decided the situation was so hopeless that the only thing left for us to do was to disembark and mingle on shore with the ship's American tourists. We were carrying the thoughts of that depressing prospect with us down the gangway when we noticed him. He bore a distinct resemblance to the Michelin Man, obese beyond imagination but the furtive looks over his shoulder and the fact that he was ripping into one of the largest ham sandwiches you would ever see, gave him away. It was the ship's guest lecturer - Phil of the fifty banana a day diet and it dawned on us both at the same time that he had to be our man. His huge shape was what had blocked all vision of the attack on the security videos. The give-away was the back pocket of his trousers bulging with ugly excess fat and from which you could just make out the outline of an audio cassette. He was a fair way in front of us and before we could apprehend him, he noticed us and took flight landing on the dock with a thud that registered 6.5 on the Richter Scale. The banana yellow Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2 Spyder was waiting for him and we immediately recognised the young driver who was revving up the motor with a sense of urgency. He managed to prize his passenger inside (I'll never know how this feat was achieved so efficiently and expertly with a man that size but my guess was it had been rehearsed many times) and, with wheels screeching and the exhaust belching acrid gusts of smoke into the dockside air, they were on their way heading in the direction of The Rocks and the city centre. Hot on their heels, we jumped into a waiting taxi and I pleaded to the driver, "Follow that car, driver!" He gave us an expressionless look indicating he failed to understand my request but fortunately, Redleg is a linguist of great cunning and possesses an expert knowledge of the Urdu language. Seconds later, our pursuit began and, though our quarry was at least a hundred metres ahead, I was confident I knew the place where the chase would take us. Breakfast Point.

No it won't. The media is so lazy and so obsessed with Melbourne that they've become completely incapable of stringing together more than a few words on any subject without dropping in the obligatory reference to the Demons and the T word no matter what story they happen to be covering at the time:- http://www.couriermail.com.au/sport/afl/star-hawthorn-recruit-brian-lake-issed-infringement-notice-after-drinking-heavily-in-sorrento/story-e6frepf6-1226552981484'>Footy star Brian Lake and wife locked up for four hours after drunken verbal stoush "The weekend incident caps off a turbulent off-season for the AFL. A group of Melbourne players was involved in an ugly spat with fans during the Boxing Day Test. A decision into the Melbourne tanking allegations is due this month ... " Take a bow for your flatulent reporting Alex Whatsyourname but you've been completely outdone by the Karachi Daily Dawn (thanks to Redleg's expert translation from the Urdu language):- http://dawn.com/2013/01/13/six-arrested-in-new-rape-of-a-bus-passenger-in-india'>Six arrested in new rape of a bus passenger in India

Just woke up, opened the blinds and had the Opera House staring back at me. Some disappointing news to report. We've lost the tape. Here's what happened after we left Hobart on the trip north: Back at the ship we played the tape over and over on the entertainment director's machine. It contained several clues as to Melbourne's innocence in the tanking affair. It opened with an instruction from football manager Chris Connolly to skipper James McDonald concerning what to do about the coin toss before the Round 18 game v Richmond. "Remember James. Heads you win. Tails Zulus!" It went on and on like that until well after the final siren without a skerrick of evidence to suggest anything other than that the coach and his assistants were doing their best to win the game with an undermanned and wounded side: one that lacked talent and which, like Carlton and Richmond two years earlier and Collingwood and others before that, fully deserved the benefits of a priority pick in the AFL draft. There was even a brief interlude when Bailey and one of his assistants discussed whether or not they should give Jack Watts another game before he reached puberty. Even the entertainment director who knows nothing about AFL was suitably impressed as well as wanting to hire Connolly for the comedy gig on the next leg of the voyage to Auckland. Just then, the ship's alarm rang. It was time for an emergency drill and the voice on the loudspeakers called all passengers onto deck 7 where they kept the life rafts (or "ve vill shoot you!"). We returned to the entertainment director's cabin after the drill and encountered a horrific scene. He was bound, gagged (they had put a banana in his mouth) and tied to a chair, the furniture rearranged and the room in a mess. Either, he was into something kinky or some foul play was afoot. We settled for the latter when we saw the cassette player. Our precious tape of the Jordan McMahon game was missing! The evidence was gone. I'm sure you're asking yourselves whether Redleg and I made a copy? More bad news. We didn't have time. However, there's no need to panic. I'm sure we'll think of something to ensure that we get the tape back.

Stop posting at such a momentous time in the history of our club and the game?We have work to do in Sydney and neither of us will rest until the club is vindicated and we can drink our banana smoothies once again without looking over our shoulders.

Redleg might well be acting dumb but we've been working hard in Hobart today to try to solve the conundrum of the tanking story. We are about to sail off into the wide blue yonder in the direction of Sydney but, below I set out my diary of today's events as they unfolded in Tasmania's capital city:-It was our last day here and we went on an excursion to the MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) which is about 20 minutes out of old Hobart town. Unlike Redleg who fortified himself for the ordeal the night before with a concoction made from bananas called a "banana foster", I had to be taken there at gunpoint by she who must be obeyed. I mean, the MFC is currently under siege and our wives are taking us on a tour of an art gallery? Let's get real, please! We took the ferry up the Derwent River and passed the Cadbury Chocolate Factory. There have been rumours that the company intends to come on board as a sponsor of the MFC and I have no problems with that proposition. In fact, I tried to arrange a meeting with executives of the plant to convince them that we Demons are a solid upstanding bunch of decent human beings and had nothing to do with the alleged match fixing they might have been reading about in those funny Victorian newspapers but the execs wanted nothing to do with us so the next stop was MONA. Now, both Redleg and I are anarcho-primitive philistines who have no place in a modern art gallery and we were soon bored witless by the wild mix of antiquities, modern and contemporary art and audio-visual displays which (as far as I was concerned anyway) were all a load of carp - literally. Anyone who has been within smelling distance of Cloaca Professional, a machine which turns food into excrement would attest to this. And after queuing up for half an hour to get into the death room, which wasn't nearly as confronting as we expected, Redleg and I were already working out an exit strategy. Then a strange thing happened. We passed by Sydney Nolan's Snake and found ourselves in an alcove where a green button on the wall invited me to press hard once, upon which I started hearing voices through the speakers. One of the voices was familiar - it was Dean Bailey. "OK. Nathan Brown's a bit of a worry. Who have we got left to put on him?" Then, I heard another voice coming out of the ether. "Try PJ on him. He's got the pace and the agility and if you move Ricky up forward, he might just get a goal to put you in front". At first, I froze when I realised to whose voice those words belonged but I quickly gathered my wits, pushed my way beyond a screen and grabbed the cassette from a console and placed it in my back pack. Then, I ran up two or three flights of stairs with my chest heaving pushing past crowds and shocked attendants. I hailed a cab and within a quarter of an hour was back on the ship where I played the tape through in its entirety. It was in fact the missing audio from the the Jordan McMahon game and I had my proof that there was no tanking. This was all the evidence that was needed to put an end to the sham of a farce that would surely now become the great AFL tanking fiasco of 2009. I had no doubt about the identity of the other voice - the one who was advising Bailey during that frenetic final quarter against Richmond and provided him with all of those brilliant moves that all but won the game against the Tigers. His voice was distinctive, his initials were A.D!

If you saw the ladies who are giving RL the many "admiring glances" then you might see it in its proper context. They define the meaning of 85 year old cougars. Even more ridiculous is the stuff I'm reading from our local rags about the tanking inquisition. It's gone from the sublime to the absolute ridiculous. The stuff I'm writing from the ship is far closer to reality than some of the carp this Pierik guy is writing about although I'm almost certain that he reads Demonland posts before he puts pen to paper.

I can assure you that the going hasn't been all that easy since we left Adelaide. We were on the high seas and out of communication with the rest of the world for almost 48 hours as the ship headed first south and then in an easterly direction across the treacherous Bass Strait. Our own independent investigation into the tanking affair was seemingly over, so Redleg and I reconciled ourselves about the events of the past two days by visiting the upper deck where we sat by the swimming pool sipping on banana daiquiris admiring the young Brazilian guests in their skimpy swimsuits. It was a hard life ... until the seas became angry and we had to go below decks. Redleg noticed the envelope first. It had been slipped under his stateroom door and contained a not too subtle message, "Here is an invitation you've been waiting for - an opportunity to meet and listen to the one and the only Dean Bailey this evening at 7.00 pm. Starlight Room, 5th deck." I received a similar note under my door and we spent most of the afternoon discussing this new and intriguing development. It was clear that while we were back in the city of churches, Bailey had been avoiding us but here, on the high seas out of the world's gaze and with not a reporter or AFL official in sight, he was willing to talk. Would he spill the beans on the long running scandal or were the events of 2009 as stale as the snapper we had consumed in the Demetriou family fish and chip shop we visited before the start of our investigation? We wore the obligatory dinner suits (we thought they would act as an effective disguise) and made it to the Starlight Room at exactly 7.00pm but noticed that quite a crowd had gathered inside. They were listing to an American crooner playing songs on a grand piano. "I get my kicks from champagne ..." Bailey was nowhere to be seen and we became really worried when we realised that we were back on eastern standard daylight savings time and hadn't reset our watches. It was really 7.35pm and it suddenly dawned upon us that we had missed our assignation. "I get a kick ... yes I get a kick outa ... you ... " The entertainment director came out onto the stage and announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for a wonderful performance for the velvet voice of grammy award winner, Dean Bailey, tonight's act direct from Chicago in the US of A." So he wasn't "the one and the only Dean Bailey" after all and we had reached yet another dead end. As we trudged out of the Starlight Room in disappointment we noticed a sign advertising tomorrow's main activity. Accompanying a photograph of an extremely obese man was the topic of his lecture: "Phil's fabulous fifty bananas a day diet".

Was it red?

Today was our last day in Adelaide and Redleg and I were determined to track down the man who held the key to the tanking conundrum, Dean Bailey. However, we weren't going to make the same mistake as yesterday so we looked up the telephone number for the Crows and dialled ... "Welcome to the Adelaide Football Club. Home of the Camry Crows. If you are enquiring about club membership packages, press one ... if you wish to make a purchase from our range of club merchandise, press two ... if you want to contribute to our special Kurt Tippett clawback fund to help us pay the AFL's disgraceful salary cap breach fine (all donations are tax deductible), press three." We finally reached a number that allowed us to speak with a human being and I asked the young lady at the other end to put me through to Stephen Trigg. There was hesitation before the voice responded, "Mr. Trigg isn't working here at the present time ... " "But it says here in the AFL Guide 2012 that he's the CEO; we need to speak with him urgently about one of your coaches ... " "Oh, that's OK sir, they should all be in their offices this morning. To which of our coaches do you wish to speak?" I gave her the name and thought I could hear her rifling through a long list of numbers before she finally got back to me. "Mr. Bailey. That would be extension one, eight, six ... I'll put you through now ... A familiar voice responded but it wasn't that of the former Demon coach. "Clarrie, is that you? We're the two blokes you met at Alberton yesterday. What are you doing at Crows HQ? "Ah, on Tuesdays, I'm working at the Adelaide Football Club. Mr. Bailey's not here but perhaps there's something I can do to help you?" "Clarrie, there is. You can empty the contents of every bin in his office and hold it for us. Don't throw anything away. We'll meet you at the club in 15 minutes ..." We spent the better part of another hot Adelaide day sifting through the contents of Dean Bailey's garbage but alas, we found nothing. Not a single scrap of evidence to suggest that Bailey was planning to impart any of the tactics and strategies he used with the Demons in 2009 on the Crows in 2013. We did find the remnants of two folders containing 800 pages of fol de rol over which someone had scribbled child-like cartoon characters resembling Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck but there was nothing of substance in either volume and given where their custodian had dumped them, he thought so as well. The closest we came to finding anything suspicious was a banana peel but we quickly dismissed that as a red herring. So for the second day running, we had come up against a dead end. Our investigation was going nowhere ...

Of course we then realised that Bailey's at the Crows so we might venture out there tomorrow.

Redleg and I are carryimg out our own independent investigation of the phenomenon that has come to be known as tanking. Our first stop was Adelaide where we sought to interview former Demon coach Dean Bailey. We arrived at Alberton Oval this morning with the temperature nudging 40 Celsius even though it was still early in the day. The first unusual thing we noticed was that there was not a soul around. No Hinkley, no players and no Dean Bailey which was unfortunate because we'd spent a day navigating the rough waters of Bass Strait with the aim of securing an interview. We'd endured the sickening nausea that comes even when a big ship encounters waves of ten feet up to thirty at times so it was a major disappointment to miss the great man but he was nowhere to be found. Never mind, we eventually found this bloke named Clarrie who agreed to speak with us: DL: Clarrie, can you tell us about Dean Bailey's position on the tanking enquiry? Clarrie: Sorry sir but I can't tell you a thing. DL: Why is there a cover up going on here? Clarrie: No, no. It's only that I've just arrived here from the Phillipines ... DL: But you work here. You must know something? Clarrie: I'm on the cleaning staff. I know nothing about the football. DL: That's OK. If you hang around this place for a few months more you'll be qualified for a job on the coaching staff. Good day sir and good luck. Well that's it. A wasted morning in Adelaide trying to get to the bottom of the tanking enquiry. Still, I think that as usual, we got a fair bit more than they put in the newspapers. Next stop, Hobart where we hope to catch up with a prominent MFC sponsor.

Redleg and I are on the banana boat. Good omen - one of the flags they were flying over the deck was red and blue. Next stop Adelaide where we hope to interview Dean Bailey about his views on the tanking controversy. In the meantime, rough seas expected and we'll be out of range till Monday morning.

I don't recall Hazelwood getting a gig in Perth. His only international appearance was in an ODI in 2010 when he took 1/41 off seven overs. He's injured and has no hope of going this time around.

Great! The wives love Chadstone as much as we love the G.

Forget Australia v Sri Lanka for a moment. Was anybody concerned for NZ when they were 1/0 at the start of their second dig?

It already is although I have to forewarn that Redleg and I and our respective wives are about to embark on a cruise around the coast of Australia and during much of that time we will be out of range for Demonland so the supply of news here will dwindle to nothing from time to time in the next 12 days. I agreed to this stupidity (I fear the onset of sea sickness already 24 hours before we board the ship) before I discovered the club had appointed Jason Taylor to cover recruiting. I was going to check out the prospective 2013 recruits for Todd in every capital city. We're not stopping in Perth because we already have the best from there in Jesse Hogan. In the meantime, could someone please confirm whether a banana daiquiri is a reliable cure for seasickness?

Disappointed in the Maxwell 12th man decision. With a 2-0 lead in the series, Watson a doubtful all rounder in the future and two batting champions leaving the game in such quick succession, I would have thought playing Maxwell in this test was a no brainer.

I heard part of the news last night on the way home from dinner and thought it was a T20 game. Philander's comeback figures of 5/7 pretty stunning. SA batted out 64 overs till stumps for a handy 3/252. IMO they should introduce the mercy rule for situations such as this although, as they say in the classics, cricket's a funny game

Is that Saddam or Nasser making a comeback or do you have a dodgy spellcheck?

I may be wrong but I have this feeling that the NSW thing might be changing. If you include Maxwell who looks like playing in the third test, then 4 of the last 5 test debutants would have been Victorians. I'm not sure NSW has a batter outside of the current test players who has instant credentials for a test place ATM.

Fantastic word BD. I reckon it must be at least 35 years since I last heard anyone use it. Those of us who have followed Melbourne through thick and thin for so long must be nincompoops. And if we were doing that in the 50s, this might bring back some memories especially for those of us who came from the bush.

I wonder how bold Inverarity and his fellow selectors will be now that Ponting and Hussey are both out of calculations for the tours of India and England? Usman Khawaja and Alex Doolan appear to be the next cabs off the rank (along with Maxwell) but I wonder if they're prepared to really look to the future and blood someone like Peter Hanscomb on the tour to India?