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IF
(in honour of the young Malcolm McDowell – in another life a Bluebagger Half-forward flanker for sure)
Let us move on from the disappointment of last week. Let us look forward not back. The season is about 22 games and then it is about the finals. So let us keep our eyes firmly on this week. This game. This Essendon*!
Much of sport is about hysteria. Much of it is about letting loose the emotions and forgetting that sport involves the mind as much as any game. Much is taken up with the ‘What-if’s’. We think the sport is about the purely about prowess on the field, about speed or strength or skill.
Truth is except for the rare few giants who stand further apart than all the rest, a Bradman say, or a Lindrum, a Warne or a Jesaulenko what separates the players is often as much to do with their mind as their body. In a team sport, most teams are fairy evenly matched (we’ll leave the Suns out of this point). A mature team has it over a team of kids (okay so the Suns are back in) but as the ages draw closer so too, then, do the teams.
This week we are to pit ourselves against a fairly evenly matched team. Oh I know through our passionate Bluebagger eyes this is rarely the case. I hate Monfries almost as much as I hated Kevin Bartlett all those years ago. As a boy I always felt Kevin ‘cheated’ as he tossed the ball in front of himself moments before the tackle. So, too, I feel Monfries ‘cheats’ by diving further and more often than a High Platform Diver. Truth is, though, put him in a Navy Blue jumper and suddenly his ‘diving’ becomes a skill (excuse me while I shudder at the thought).
So I implore the blue boys this week to not take Essendon* easy and yet not work themselves up so much that they have played the game a hundred times before the ball has been bounced. We must bring our best game, our best bodies and our best minds to this game.
Over the past few years Essendon* has continually beaten us with the mind games. I know sometimes it felt as if the umpires helped, but really, post 1999, they have had us in their sights and we have too often caved in to their pressure – perceived or otherwise.
This is Ratts & Co’s great test this week. I think these two teams are very even. Some parts of the Bluebagger team are better and some of them are, so that overall, we are evenly matched. The difference will come down to the state of each team’s collective mind and to the separate minds that make up that collective.
In a way I think Essendon* have us at a disadvantage. No one really cares if they win or lose. Hird has two years before the pressure Ratts is under begins to exert itself. Ratts, on the other hand, must win enough games this year to at least make the finals. This gives them a more carefree mindset than our boys and that is part of the dilemma that faces Carlton this year. It is all well and good to place yourself under pressure but then you must handle that pressure. This week is a test on wether this team, this club, is learning to cope with the expectations it (and we the supporters) have placed upon itself.
It will be a close game. Our backline is not yet fully set to prevent some easy goals. That is this year’s objective, to learn to stem those easy goals. To stand in the right places, to support each other at the crucial times, for the midfield to run hard to get back and the forwards to pressure hard enough to give the side time to defend. How well the boys support each other will go a long way to determining this week’s outcome.
And so I say this to the lads. Do not play the game out in your minds. Do not fret or worry or build it up to much. Just remember this:
If a side we to be expelled from the comp – I would vote for Essendon*.
If a side were to fall by the wayside – I would hope it was Essendon*.
If a side was caught cheating, bribing or gambling – I would suspect it was Essendon*.
If a side were found to move across to soccer so they could continue to dive and cheat and whine and fall to their knees and carry on like headless chooks – I have no doubt it would be Essendon*.
If a side was neo-fascist, racist, sexist, white supremacist and narcissistic – it could only be Essendon*.
If a side brought the game into disrepute it would not be more than Essendon* has done every time they run out onto the ground.
I hate Collingwood and see them as a rival.
Essendon* makes me want to puke.
So lads, do not fret, do not let your minds unravel before you’ve even played the game. Stay calm. Concentrate on the things you can control and let the Bluebagger army play the mind games. I’ve already imagined a thousand and one different ways we’ll beat them this week and I am certain I will think of a thousand and one more before that odd shaped ball is bounced!
This week just play the game for the full four quarters, just match yourselves on the Saturday afternoon, not before, just then, and I am certain we will win. We have Juddy and we have Garlett. We have The Giant and young Ed, we have Murph and Gibbs and Jammo and Simmo and Eddie Betts – in my mind, we have the team to roll ‘em, to send them spirally downwards.
But boys you just hone your skills, just think of the things the coaches say, just focus on the things you can control and let me stick the many pins I have into my Hirdy -Gurdy doll with its flouncing hair and stuck out ears!
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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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