Thursday, August 22, 2013

It's Demetriou who needs banning

Somewhere in a parallel universe a former wingman of no better than moderate competence, but with a definite gift for self-promotion, has assembled in the same room the presidents of all the clubs in the sporting organisation he heads. The Wingman has been flexing some muscle lately, leaking highly damaging assertions about one of the club's coaches, evidently in the belief that he is both the sporting organisation's untouchable supremo and the tubby essence of the very game itself. Standing at the head of the table, he begins by telling the assembled presidents that a cancer is eating the heart out of the code and that he takes their support as a given.

At that precise moment, one of the presidents first raises a hand and then, as he begins to speak, lowers it to point an accusatory finger at the Wingman.

"The cancer is you," he says. "You are the one who has turned a beloved, homegrown game into a vehicle for personal aggrandisement.

"You are the one who, when Gillard tried to take away our pokies revenue, told us to shut our mouths and cop it sweet, so keen were you to curry personal favour with a corrupt government. No doubt you believed that betrayal would do you some personal good."

Then another president rises.

"You are the one who has crusted our sport with sideshows and politically correct absurdities. We all want to see Aboriginal players do well, but smoking ceremonies and pale "aunties" in possum coats do nothing but patronise and insult them. Would you have demanded the Christian Minister Doug Nicholls venerate the Rainbow Serpent just because he happened to be black?

"Moreover, you are the one who has denied our clubs the services of players whose private activities in their own time have outraged the politicians and lobbyists.

"Will you now remove from the record books the names of a three-time best-and-fairest who could not keep his trousers hitched when schoolgirls were around? Will you also erase all mention of another giant of the game, one who did hard time for theft and fraud?

"You, Mr Wingman, are scum indeed."

Yet another president rose to speak, the sound of his scraping chair muffling the thud as the Wingman's jaw hit the table's top.

"You are president of a winter code, yet you flit off to America at the height of the season to pursue a better job and a bigger cheque. You are the president who winters on Lake Como every year, when our sport needs you, or someone more competent, in the throne room."

By now the Wingman, accustomed to the deference and gratitude of tame reporters prepared to parrot any and every slur against his enemies, is stammering, trying and failing to form a coherent word. His attempts are rudely cut off.

"You are the man who has shown not the slightest concern that the cheapest seats at this year's Grand Final will cost a staggering $180! Is this how you make sure a fine sport remains 'popular'?"

The dam breaks. Now the gripes flow like rain in the drainage gutters of storied local grounds no longer used. The Wingman's mouth remains as empty of words as is the magnificent Princes Park of spectators -- the former a blessing, the latter a testament to the contempt in which the Wingman holds both clubs and fans

Arrogance. Deviousness. Intrigue. Egomania. Greed.

Then, at last, the most telling charge of all.

"Earlier this year, when Gillard needed a distraction from her AWU scandal, you stood with many of us on a dais and decried 'the blackest day in Australian sport'. According to what you said then, our game is riddled with drug cheats, which you have done your worst via leaks, and on the basis of the confused evidence, to demonstrate.

"You also endorsed the view that match-fixing was rife and that organised crime was a looming threat.

"As you have made the consequences of that first allegation so much worse than they needed to be, bringing our sport into disrepute, and as you have produced no wisp of evidence to support the later accusations, I move that you be dismissed from your office. Further, I move that your severance package consist only of a one-way ticket to Lake Como, issued on condition that you guarantee never to return."

The presidents' hands shoot up as one and the great game is saved.

Later, as the presidents congratulate themselves on saving their sport from a usurper, one of the merrymakers, somewhat short-sighted, mentions that the code should never, ever have appointed to high office a man who wears a fur coat.

"That wasn't a fur coat," he was told, "the Wingman is just a fat, hairy wog."

Alas, all of this happened only in that parallel universe. Back in Melbourne, the Count of Como continues his reign of error, untroubled and unconstrained.

May the Great Bunyip help footy to survive him.

UPDATE: One of these people knows and cares about footy. The other spends two months every winter in Switzerland.


17 comments:

  1. To be honest I am not a huge follower of football but I think you have it correct.

    Gillard needed a headline to take the heat away from her. She called the walking headline, let's continue to call him Wingman, and he was happy to oblige.

    If anyone has caused disrepute to the AFL it is him and his sycophants. I hope Hird takes him to the cleaners and then the Bombers stomp on his grave.

    Talk about a series of actions that can only add up to one of the greatest acts of bastardry ever!

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  2. Elitist individual aspiring to trample over an Australian institution to further edge his snout to an international trough.

    Sounds familiar?

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  3. Bravo, Bunyip.

    I've just about given up on AFL and it's all the fault of that fat Greek bastard (with a little bit of help from apeman Goodes and Eddie the Imbecile).

    Long may he burn in hell.

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  4. He has the right attributes to be a Labour pollie - oh hang on he already is, just not an elected one. And Rabz got it right about Goodes. The "Wingman" allowed the identification of an under aged "offender" which is a situation not allowable under the real law.

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  5. Until it suddenly died without notice in 2005 (as these things do), I used to receive unsolicited copies of Latrobe Uni's Alumni e-magazine.

    Apart from boasting about the Uni's academic coups and trying to flog various Latrobe-branded gimcracks, it had a section on the achievements of prominent alumni. While Don Watson used to get a bit of attention in the earlier editions, later issues were pretty much exclusively given over to by articles on the life and works of the Wingman, one could be forgiven for thinking that he was the only successful person ever to graduate from Latrobe (perhaps he is!).

    Of course, beating Don Watson in a self-promotion contest has to be considered as something of a feat!

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  6. Ah, the delights of the Junction Oval,(and later Linton St) Glenferrie, Windy hill, North Melbourne, Carlton and (yech) Victoria Park and South Melbourne (for the Lakes Premiership, look it up, you youngsters)watching a true 'battle' of hard men in hard situations. When a shirt front was legal and when if you didn't get your head down and arse up to go for the ball...
    Now, the ruckmen have about two metres to get some momentum going for the ball, everyone leaves the field as clean as when they started...etc. etc. etc.
    It's been sanitized to death, with workplace health and safety...a work place, for Fs sake?
    Too bad, my beloved game!

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  7. Top form Bunyip.

    Andrew Demetriou's social engineering legacy will be eclipsed only by his impending and ultimately doomed foray into State politics with assistance from his similarly porcine and morally bankrupt think-tank bestie Evan Thornley. That same Evan Thornley who managed to seek economic rent by fleecing a dim-witted duo of Victorian premiers into facilitating his electric toy car masturbatory fantasy, all of which collapsed in spectacular failure.

    Both will duly receive their comeuppance.

    Sadly the AFL has become an almost unrecognisable morass of flaccid slogans and undergraduate-level political posturing, vanguarded by an administration in abject denial about an insidiously pervasive drug culture that will further erode the public's confidence and affection for this once great Victorian sporting tradition.

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  8. Why is just everybody getting into such a flap? It's not as though this problem is confined to one Club, or even one code/sport.
    This outcome is as predictable as tomorrow's sun.
    When you mix people with very low intellect, skill sets that any ape could copy ( and do better), obscene amounts of money, what happens?
    Well goodness gracious me! Graft, corruption, violence, a 'win at all costs' mentality, and morals you wouldn't want your son, and particularly your daughter, to know about.
    Apart from the occasional bent jockey and prize fighter who hid lead in his fists, prior to about the 199590's it seems that sport was a wholesome. enjoyable, fair and suitable for all families. Not any more.

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  9. The charge sheet from the AFL to Essendon states that “Robinson and Dank referred to various substances as “amino acids” or “amino acid blends”, terms of no scientific meaning”.
    That the expression “amino acids” has “no scientific meaning” will come as news to a great many people. I look forward to Andrew Demetriou receiving a Nobel Prize for so comprehensively clearing up such a long standing and fundamental misconception in biochemistry.

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  10. I said as much, nowhere near as well, on Bigfooty recently. Next year if this continues we will see a round celebrating "anyone who we happen to have forgotten about".

    However the dealings with Labor over many recent years have damned Demetriou and tarnished the AFL Commission as incompetent gravy trainers. The bells are tolling, and the vultures circling.

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  11. Regardless of who wins the election, the deranged tanty-throwers of the left will continue to run Australia with the hysteria that has ruled the country since 2007: first it was gerbil worming, now it's AbbottAbbottAbbott666 and the threat to take away the moochers' Free Stuff™. The destruction of the AFL by the freedom-hating fascist scum and their useful idiot Fat Andy -- all to get the Liars Pardee re-elected, blackest day in sport, rah rah rah -- is simply another triumphant episode in the left's march through the institutions. On September 8, the fascist scum will simply control one fewer of the pillars they need to suffocate the civilisation: the parliament, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the media, academia. One out of five. Woo hoo.

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  12. As an ex. Pom I have zero interest in your aerial ping-pong but I do think Red Symons is a smart cookie and having listened to him chatting with Mr Demetriou on a regular basis I am inclined to think Demetriou is a bit of a, sway with the breeze, wanker.

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  13. I've given my AFL membership the flick based on my visceral hatred for Fat Andy and his destruction of the beloved game. First he came for the Demons and now he thinks that he can do the same to Essendon with the same dearth of hard evidence.

    I'm not an Essendon supporter but I will no longer contribute a single dollar of my hard earned to the Wingman or his gutless lieutenants on the Commission.

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  14. Indolent said:

    Off topic I know but Mike Carlton's latest tweets are fascinating. He began by tweeting in Latin to show his many followers what a clever fellow he is. Wearied by googling Latin phases he closed with the following tweet.

    "And so to bed. Exeunt, pursued by a bear"

    Some may think that Mike was merely showing off again but those that read his column(sic) every week will know that he chooses his words carefully. He is after all a master of seditious allegory.

    "...to bed...pursued by a bear." Is Mike trying to tell us that he is not only bi-lingual but also bi? A twink perhaps.

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  15. It's much worse. When I watch a game now I don't even understand what's going on, yet I grew up playing it. The wingman/unionist has turned the great game itself into a parody of what it once was.
    Most recently, one of the last bastions of skill that was uniquely Aussie Rules, the handball, seems now to have disappeared forever.

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  16. Does his family come from the same village as Eddie Obeid.

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  17. That's Princess Goodes, Rabz. Strewth, show some respect to royalty.

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