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There is no hated foe this weekend. There is no cheating, drug induced charade of a club, nor the other slash wearing foe that once swung fists from behind and so will forever be branded cowards (hence their sash is yellow).
This week we play Sydney. Now I remember that song as a kid about the vitriol between Sydney and Melbourne, but really that’s a political thing, not a football one. As a kid growing up Sydney didn’t even know what football was, they were still throwing the thing backwards pretending to be lads from Cambridge or Oxford. We had to transplant a team there to show them how football should be played.
The sad team that happened to was the old Swannies. Once the powerhouse of the 30's with Pratt soaring up into the heavens, they fallen far and had become the poor man’s North Melbourne – and isn’t that saying something…sort of a beggar’s beggar. The thing is, you can’t hate a beggar, even if that beggar has fallen on their feet. So it is that I can’t hate the Swannies.
I remember them as a kid. I remember Teasdale and Bedford, Rantall (who left for a time to win a flag) and even later for Sydney, blokes like ‘The Tilt’. I never hated any of them. Perhaps that infamous Bloodbath drained all the hate out of us, and took whatever passion this old team had and left them barren. Certainly when I was a lad the thing they were most famous for where the old night games down at the Lakeside oval and, of course, for Bobby Skilton ...he just about carried the hopes of that whole club about on his thick old bones.
So how strange that this weekend we must play the bones of this old side, the transplanted bones, resurrected into a strange creature that has some of the traits of the old Swannies and yet plays a hard, professional brand of football that any old Bluebagger would be proud of.
This is a semi-final. Win this one and we play off in the Prelim. So though there is no hate, I want to dance a jig on the old bones of Bobby Skilton. I want us to smash this mob, to crush their Sydney-esque belief they have a right to be treated with respect.
I want to drag them down to the pit of despair where they might meet those old bones and see what becomes of teams that challenge the old Bluebaggers. I want a bloodbath..but of a different sort, one where our speed and skill execute them as bloodlessly as any poison ever did.
It’s Warnock to Judd, Judd to Garlett and goal! Warnock to Gibbs, Gibbs to Murph and goal! So many goals that the old crooked bridge the Sydneysiders rave about will level out under the weight of all that leather. I want to smash them…though 1 point will do.
I want to win.
I want that prelim!
Imagine then.
Imagine beating Freo over there!!! Oh how MM will smile. How the Bluebaggers will dance that famous da da daaa jig.
So this Sat Night is the another step on that old road we once knew so well its smell was stuck to our very blue-stained skin. That old road that every spring put a smirk on the lips of every Bluebagger that there ever was.
Remember them times?
I want them back!
So this Sat it’s the Swans to be trampled beneath our run...to stand and stare as Yazz burns the grass, as Hendo risks all, as SOV kicks another through the big yawning sticks. Bring it on. Its September. Its a Semi and we are Carlton!
Believe?
Oh I believe!!!! I @#$%&! Believe it's about @#$%&! time we stirred the @#$%&! pot!!!
Go Blues!
by 17 points.
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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!
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