We all knew this was coming. The more games we won the more the balloon was being inflated. The routine of winning was becoming normal and anything less just not meant to happen. But you knew that teams drop games eventually and that it was going to happen at some point, I knew though when it was going to come it was going to hurt and be hard to deal with. Not because it’s the first but because losing when you’re doing well always sucks. You’re trying so hard to setup a good season, top 4 ideally. Losses are never fun but in this kind of season they are hard to let go.
But wow, what an amazing and triumphant way to bring up loss no.1. Not in a 5 goal loss, not in a ‘oh we were just so off our game today, loss we needed to have’ game. But a ‘16 points up with 8 mins left and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory against a bottom 6 team’ kind of job. No pain spared and everyone crying all the way home.
The one positive thing is that the sideshow is over. This club never deals well with sideshows. Adem Yze’s game streak? Nup too much of a sideshow let’s drop him (granted he was playing poorly). So now it’s over and it’s time to move forward.
The game itself. I always seem to hold the 2002 game against Freo in Perth as a reference point for a game we haven’t played all that well in and you were never comfortable but got what seems to be close to a match winning lead, then things start to fall flawlessly into place for the opposition and the dream fairytale victory right at the death. Today was one of those for me, there was never any comfort and we never looked like taking the game by the scruff of the neck. The game for the most part was not on our terms and we looked scared out of our skin especially when the Crows took the ball through the corridor.
I don’t know if others are as harsh on some of our performances as me but we had some serious passengers who put in total shockers today. Had we been playing the Dogs or Port we would have been blown off the park. I would put Clarry’s game amongst a handful of games I’ve ever seen where a man has been possessed and he literally looked like he had the ball on a string. It seemed to bounce up for him and that last goal was magic. It hurts so much that he wasn’t able to will us over the line. We may not have deserved it but he deserved it. Trac was reasonable too if not always clean. Gawn was good around the ground despite a few drops and the holding the ball late, and Ed Langdon I would say were the only ones who looked like they played on a winning team. There is a massive drop off to the rest. Jetta, Fritsch, Hunt, Weid, Pickett, Jordan, May all played like potatoes. I though Gus’s game was decent, was working very hard. Lever was ok in moments, made some total balls ups though and the fans didn’t they love it. I can just imagine those numps walking out of Adelaide oval talking to their friends, their wives, their girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, brothers, sisters saying crap like “How good was it that we got one over that runt!” Laugh it up you peanuts. I hope you get a bad batch of Mclaren Vale tonight that tastes like p-155.
Our backline chose today to totally forget what they have done so well through the year killing contests in the air and being clean on the ground. We gave away countless goals thanks to crappy in the air stuff. Even that last Mark Walker took was stupid in my eyes. Our back line couldn’t catch a cold today, which is actually good because I’ve got one right now. And May, my god this was the most shocking game I’ve seen from him for a while.
Im going to finish this here because now I gotta find some way to get my mind of football for the rest of the evening. What a cruddy result, I was hoping we’d just win forever for the rest of my life. Ok now I’m getting silly. Maybe I’ll come back when I’ve cooled. I hope we are back, there’s gonna be some wound licking firs but come on Dees.