Sam Kekovich Goes Berzerk - Grand Final 27 September 2008

Former North Melbourne great Sam Kekovich apparently had this to say at a speech he made at Centre Square on Grand Final day.

For those of you who are unaware, Centre Square is the name of a corporate function at nearby Punt Road Oval. Attendees go there to get liquored up before moving over to the MCG where they move into their corporate boxes to watch the match.

This is the text of the speech:

My fellow Australians.

I've been invited here to talk to Centre Square, in these big marquees on Punt Road Oval. And speaking of Punt Road Oval, let me tell you something for nothing - Jack Dyer would be spinning in his grave if he could see the place right now. Full of a bunch of Collins Street corporate criminals, Chapel Street designer cats and Toorak poodle rooters who have about as much interest in football as Paris Hilton has an interest in astrophysics.

Captain Blood didn't break every bone in his body and commit multiple acts of on-field heroism and homicide so he could see his beloved home ground turned into an over-priced pre-match party for chardonnay-swilling spivs and their assorted hangers-on attending their one footy match of the year, whilst tens of thousands of hard-working honest battlers who love the game and love their team are denied the chance to attend the greatest game in the world.

I've had a gutful. Whilst this bunch of Armani-wearing, Audi-driving, Prada-carrying try-hards monopolise priceless vantage points in the MCG, millions of genuine footy fans who have followed their team through thick and thin have to make do by watching the game at home or down at the local pub, whilst the Melbourne spivocracy get to sit on their fat posteriors in a marquee and wouldn't even know the way to the MCG without a tour guide.

Since most of you haven't attended a single match this year and know nothing about football, let me give you a few tips - Geelong wears blue, Hawthorn wears brown, and in case you were wondering, there'll be no fashions on the field at half-time, and no, the Lexus Centre across the road is not a prestige car dealership.

Centre Square is not only unfair. Centre Square is not only inequitable. Centre Square is downright un-Australian! And so are all of you! In fact, I bet you're all so un-Australian that you all hate the Anzacs, you booed Cathy Freeman, and you want to cull cute cuddly koalas because one of them once jumped out in front of your Range Rover on the way to Mount Hotham.

But it's not just you who are at fault. I also blame the AFL - those out-of-touch, opera-loving elitists at AFL headquarters who are responsible for this unconscionable abomination need to take a good hard look in the mirror. That is if they can handle the sight of moral and spiritual bankruptcy staring back at them.

I also blame the government. Our new Prime Minister has clearly failed his first test of leadership if he thinks it's acceptable to allow an event like this to go ahead without a pre-emptive strike by the SAS. The PM is doing nothing to ease the squeeze on working families on the bottom rung of the ladder of opportunity who just want to see their team in the Granny. But he'd better get his act together and do something about it, or millions of angry footy fans will do it for him. Revolutions have been started and governments have been overthrown for lesser outrages than this. And people ask why we need capital punishment.

So cut off your silver tails, tear up your fur coats and get fair dinkum. Our great Australian game is the greatest game in the world – the game of the people. Not some once-a-year marquee piss-up for an overpaid, over-dressed pack of passionless corporate cretins who only turn up for the free chardonnay and then spend the actual game looking about as interested and excited as a line of Easter Island statues.

So don't bother coming across to the MCG this afternoon, because you're not welcome. The next train out of Melbourne leaves Richmond station in 10 minutes - so make sure you're on it. Or, better still, under it.

So don't be un-Australian - everyone here in Centre Square can get stuffed! You know it makes sense. I'm Sam Kekovich.

If this is true, I give him five stars.

If not, I still give it five stars.

Ben Cousins. Again. Yawn.

The media have gone bananas again.

Not that Ben Cousins doesn't bring it upon himself, though.

But let's just re-cap for those who don't know who Cousins is.

Cousins is probably the highest profile footballer in the AFL at the moment. He won the Brownlow Medal in 2005, which is the league's official Best and Fairest award, voted for by the umpires who officiate at each game.

In 2005, he also won the Leigh Matthews Trophy, which is a Most Valuable Player award voted for by the players. I will note here for my non-Australian readers that the Matthews Trophy doesn't have anywhere near the amount of kudos that the Brownlow Medal does as an individual award, but it still shows the level of esteem he is held in by the other players.

In 2006, his club, the West Coast Eagles, won the AFL Premiership for that season. This makes him officially a champion.

But off-field is where, like another great champion, Wayne Carey, he is more likely to be remembered.

During the end-of-season celebrations in 2002, Cousins was involved in a punch-up with fellow Eagle, Daniel Kerr.

In 2005, Cousins and team-mate Michael Gardiner famously refused to aid police after an incident involving a stabbing and a shooting at Perth's Metro City nightclub.

Incidentally, West Coast management told the pair that they were on their last warning after this affair.

And in early 2006, Cousins stopped his car and did a runner after noticing a booze bus up ahead, and working out that he was well over the legal blood-alcohol limit. He was fined for that, and no doubt copped some ridicule from other players over it.

Then in December 2006, he was arrested outside Crown Casino in Melbourne after getting a little rowdy and then passing out outside. Some incriminating photos were published by the media from this affair.

West Coast's management pretty much went on record at this point and basically indicated that the club would do nothing about Cousins' repeated indiscretions for no other reason than that he is a star player.

But the most recent events are surreal, even by Cousins' low standards.

Cousins' was suspended indefinitely after not showing up to training on repeated occasions.

Speculation mounted before finally it was revealed that Cousins had a drug problem.

Now this is where I get upset.

Cousins problems, bad as they are, relate to recreational drugs. The way that the media are going after him, though, you'd think that he was busted for blood-doping or something anabolic.

Now the AFL does not have a good record with regards to recreational drugs. Being sponsored every other year by either Victoria Bitter or Carlton Draught is hypocritical in the extreme. Alcohol is a recreational drug.

But the AFL wouldn't be alone in this regard.

Cousins should not let his recreational drug use interfere with his career as a professional footballer, however, his recreational drug use is his business, and his alone. And let's not forget, that this only came to light because several Eagles, including Cousins, were drug-tested the day before this was made public.

Some in the media are trying to spin it that Cousins' fall from grace is due to breaking up with his long term girlfriend, but this is also none of anyone's business.

So why are sporting bodies so fixated on recreational drug-use? Provided it doesn't interfere with one's career, one should be free to do whatever they like in the privacy of one's own home, or in a club, or at the pub?

Some have suggested that it's to protect sponsors from Big Alcohol who rather like people to keep chugging their product. If they're not because someone's smoking grass or having a few hits from a ice pipe, Big Alcohol is, quite rightly, going to get upset. After all, they sponsor the game and it's not through altruism, either.

AFL footballers are largely well known for their superhuman intake of alcohol, and this makes them all round good guys in the eyes of the media.

But here's the rub.

While Cousins' "substance abuse" problem is well known, when was the last time you heard of a footballer being 'outed' with an alcohol problem?

Since Cousins' problems were made public, several other key pieces of innuendo circulated about other players' problems in the same vein. Pun unintentional.

But we all remember Dale Lewis being sent to Coventry by the media for suggesting that footballers recreational drug use was anything other than alcohol.

The AFL, the media and the West Coast Eagles Football Club are seriously guilty of burying their heads in the sand on this issue for too long. People, and I like to think that footballers are people too, indulge in all manner of recreational drugs. Just why the hypocrisy exists is a complete enigma to me.

Edit 27/03/2007: Greg has put up a ripper post on this, and my learned advice is to check it out.

Footnote: The mighty Swans play the Eagles this weekend in Round 1 of the 2007 AFL Season. Go Swans!

Whatever happened to sportsmanship?

Folks, I must be the last guy to notice this, but Australian sportsmanship is amongst the worst I have ever seen.

A series of events has piled up over the past few days to lead me to this sad conclusion.

1. Brendan Fevola

Firstly, and this is best discussed in this excellent post by Greg, is the mental picture that one has of Carlton full-forward Brendan Fevola losing his mind in a pub in Galway, grabbing a barman who refused to serve him any more beer and putting him in a headlock.

Fevola was on the end-of-year junket known formally as the "International rules" series that is used to be played between a team of Irish amateur gaelic footballers and a team of professional Australian rules footballers from Australia.

Fevola then went on to play the race card in his defence - a somewhat bizarre and undignified rant about the Aboriginal members of the team copping a sledging everywhere they went. Never mind that this is no excuse for assault.

The AFL immediately sent him home. At least they did the right thing here. But more on the AFL later.

After doing a runner to Scandinavia, he has since returned to Ireland to be formally given an 'adult warning' by the Garda. But that's not the worst thing. At the end of the home-and-away season, Fevola was talked about as a future skipper of the Blues. Ain't gunna happen now, buddeye.

After Fevola calms down and pulls himself together, the resulting interview titled, 'Why my brain finally walked out the door,' should make ratings history for the network that manages to land it.

2. Willie Mason and rugby league

After Fevola's indiscretions, we then had rugby league forward Willie Mason punch someone on the rugby league field in a test match between Australia and Great Britain.

This was bad enough, however, Mason showed some initiative of sorts by claiming as a defence that this was a pre-emptive strike, and that had he not punched, he would have been punched. Fortunately, he was disciplined by whoever the tribunal/judiciary body is that deals with international rugby league matches and given a ban. For 1 game.

Mind you, rugby league is not a good example. Punching is routinely overlooked in rugby league, leading to lenient sentences being handed out and cries of inconsistency. Also, the administrators of this particular sport seem to take some misanthropic delight in playing up this gladiatorial aspect of the game.

Australian coach Ricky Stuart put it best when he said this:

"I see this is a part of football. The media promote it. Our marketing promote this. Tell me you won't see Willie Mason on the TV again dropping this bloke. We're talking about tribal war here . . . that's what gives our game the X-factor.

"That's Test-match football. That's what makes our game so different to every other footy code and every other sport. I don't condone violence but don't put it in the papers, don't put it on TV. Don't promote it."

When rugby league's hypocrisy can be laid so starkly bare, it's no surprise that players such as Mason get so ridiculously out of control.

3. The second "International rules" "football" "test match"

And on the subject of thuggery, getting back to "International rules" for a moment, the events of the second test match on the weekend in Dublin between Ireland and Australia had to be seen to be believed.

During the week, the media played up comments by Australian players that the match was to be a "square up" after one of the Irish players was suspended for kneeing. That's right. They were getting "square" with a player who wouldn't even be taking to the field.

The Irish coach has called for future series to be scrapped, calling the Australian players "thugs" in the process. Irish administrators have referred to "thuggery". About the only people who appear to think that there is no issue here are the Australians who do not seem to understand what the fuss is all about.

The odd thing is that Australian coach Kevin Sheedy appears to think that (a) the Irish were the aggressors in the first and second test match, and (b) this sort of "physicality" is actually part of the game.

Now, I'm not sure what planet Kevin Sheedy thinks that the rest of the world is these days, but he was certainly watching a different game to the rest of us.

The object of the game is to get the ball from one end of the ground to the other and score goals. Sheedy appears to think nothing of what seemed to be the unstated aim of the Australian players to knock as many Irishmen unconscious as they could.

To further hammer home the disconnect that appears to exist between the GAA and the AFL, we have representatives of the GAA, none more strident than Sean Boylan the coach who has said that he nearly didn't take to the field after half time, and that the series will not continue on his guard.

The GAA's president Nicky Brennan agrees and has called for the series to be axed.

On the other hand, the AFL's Mike Fitzpatrick seemed blissfully unaware that anything untoward had actually happened, although he admitted to being "uneasy" about the events that took place in the first quarter.

If uneasy was all he felt, queasy is how I feel.

4. Champions trophy presentation

The Australian cricket team have had this happening for some time.

Whether it's Glenn McGrath picking out his "bunny" for the series, Shane Warne doing his bit for the reputation of straight white males everywhere or whoever else getting sent home a bit of nocturnal silliness with alcohol.

The Australian cricket team have relished their "arrogant" reputation for some time. In fact, one (I forget who) seemed to think that this was a good thing: "It shows that they fear us."

Great. What it shows, dickhead, is that they don't think of you as a bunch of good blokes.

After winning the final, the trophy was presented to them by a local politician and senior national cricket administrator. OK.

What happened next was astoundingly stupid, even for this team of geniuses. As they shook hands with the VIP, one of them apparently said, "Hiya buddy!" before they physically shuffled him off the podium so they could showboat with the trophy in front of the camera.

The Indian media went berzerk. The Indian cricketers, even the softly spoken Sachin Tendulkar were amazingly critical, and the Australian players themselves didn't seem to know what they even did wrong.

In a sign that this kind of disrespect is not thought of terribly highly on the sub-continent, one of the locals painted their goat green and gold and wrote the name Damien Martyn on the side, after the cricketer who did the shoving of the official. Ricky Ponting, Australian captain is also said to have manhandled the official.

So what has caused this epidemic of poor sportsmanship?

It appears that you haven't made it in the world of Australian sport unless you are acting like the world's worst moron.

Is it insecurity? These guys have all left school and found that the nerds that they beat up at school are truly running the world.

Personally, I blame Lleyton Hewitt and Anthony Mundine. They were the first of this current wave, and they deserve to be carpeted for it. Mundine at leats gets away with it because boxers are at least, thank you Muhammed Ali, are supposed to act like complete tools.

Lleyton Hewitt, on the other hand, just don't get me started.

Listen. John McEnroe was a complete dill. He might have been a phenomenal tennis player, but he acted like a tosspot. And yeah we loved it, but we weren't looking at the tennis. We were looking at him acting the goat. And the crowd egged him on, too. People still wander up to him in the street and yell at him, "You cannot be serious!!"

And so it will be with this lot. And we won't remember them as the great sportsmen that they might be. We'll remember as this bunch of idiot frat boys, instead.

And why not?

I have a platform, so I can let rip with full impunity.

As a completely unrepentant Swans fan, I couldn't let this go.

Congratulations to Adam Goodes for winning the 2006 Brownlow Medal (pictured left).

It comes at the start of a momentous week, which, I hope, will result in the mightly Swans lifting the silverware in what promises to be a huge 2006 AFL Grand Final.

Sadly, I will not be able to watch it. My sister is getting married that afternoon, and I will be required to attend the wedding.

Which is good, of course. But it doesn't make me feel any less disappointed that I won't be able to see the moment of glory as the Swans take away their second premiership in a row.

So we're taping it and watching it on Sunday. If anyone tells me the result before the end of Sunday, they can consider themselves cactus.

Go Swans!

Clash jumpers - so what is the deal?

Eddie McGuire has had another go at the AFL over clash jumpers.

This time the AFL are going to make his beloved Pies wear a clash jumper.

The smartarse response initially from Magpieland was a suggested clash jumper that was, rather than white stripes on a black background, black stripes on a white background. A lot like their original jumper, actually.

The AFL rightly hit this suggestion for six, so el presidente Eddie has weighed in and told the AFL that Collingwood don't wear anything other than back and white stripes.

McGuire has a lot of pull, but I doubt that even he will be able to weasel out of this one.

So what is the big deal? Why, says the media, are we only hearing about jumper clashes now? Isn't the system of dark shorts at home and white shorts away meant to solve this?

These arguments are tired and old and have very little basis in reality.

About 10 years ago, which is about a third of my life, the media was pro away jumpers, or clash strips after beating up an incident in a Melbourne vs Essendon match.

What happened in that game, and my memory is about 75% on this, is that a Melbourne player somehow handballed to James Hird who ran past with his jumper down over his (white) shorts.

And every year this gets blown up again after a similar incident.

But hang on, someone is asking, dark shorts and white shorts are traditional, aren't they?

Wrong again. Tradition is black shorts and white shorts. Sometime about 50 years ago or thereabouts, the black shorts became dark shorts to reflect the wishes of clubs like Carlton, Geelong, Melbourne etc who noticed that they were playing at home in shorts that were not in one of their colours.

Clubs like St Kilda, West Coast, Adelaide, Port and the Doggies are already comfortable, and so are their fans, with what is a very simple proposition - clash or away jumpers.

This is the final say that I'm going to have on this matter, so I'll have it now.

Clubs should be made to adopt a "home" strip and a "clash" strip.

Clubs who don't comply, will be considered to have forfeited.

McGuire and co at Collingwood can move into the 21st Century on this, or they can get stuffed.

At the very most, it'll only be twice a year, anyway. Really, what is Collingwood's problem?