The clownfish lives within a poisonous anemone and yet is not eaten by its host, because it provides a service - eating the things the anemone can’t, thereby keeping it clean and healthy. There are those birds that clean crocodiles’ teeth, and of course the planet would be utterly barren if it weren’t for bees paying for nectar by carrying pollen everywhere.

There are millions of life forms, from bacteria to vertebrates, whose existence is dependent upon the successful sharing of resources and service-provision by and for each other, showing the beauty and complexity of the interconnectedness of all life on Earth.

Which makes me wonder: Fevola. Bingle. How Come That? What, if any, purpose do they serve, singularly or combined? Bingle never did anything except look halfway decent in a bikini and score herself a gig in Australia’s dumbest ever tourism campaign. Fevola plays selfish football, when he can be bothered playing at all, and has a knack for fucking over his teammates, his club and the AFL itself on a regular basis.

Together they have given us the most tawdry and uninteresting scandal Australia has seen since that little girl from the Sydney Olympics posed uncomfortably in lingerie for FHM. The only, I repeat, the only reason the BingleSuesFev story is still alive is because the entire country is saying, very loudly, “who fucking cares?”.

Oh yeah, and there’s the link with Pup rushing home from NZ to break up with the dozy schlapper in person and the ensuing “is he grown up enough to Captain Australia?” non-story. Which has died in the arse since he belted out an easy ton against the Kiwis three days later.

Well, that’s 279 words more than these imbeciles are worth. Sorry.

* *

Well the footy finally gets going for real this week, and I fucking love that Round One clashes with the Grand Prix, and the AFL just aren’t at all worried. It’s a fair bet that the eight games of footy over four days will draw more punters through the gates than the four days at Albert Park. But we won’t know, because the GP won’t release attendance figures based on actual attendances, it being too difficult to add up things like, I dunno, number of tickets sold…

Surely the state government will twig one day soon that the GP is a loser, financially as well as in every other way, but that’s a pretty vain hope; if they haven’t worked it out yet, as crowds decline year on year and the F1 itself becomes more and more pedestrian, they won’t bring themselves them to admit it until staff outnumber patrons.

* * One of the curses of the footy season is the tipping competition. I’m in at least two that I know of, and am being roped into a couple of supercoach leagues at work and my local. This is getting ridiculous, given that I also produce Melbourne’s most informed and sane robot-based tips each week on our website. There is, believe it or not, sport out there other than football, and there are, believe it or not, things that I like to do other than pore over teams and form and weather reports and whatever Mike Sheahan reckons…

To simplify things for me, and for you, I’ll be going with the following rules for the season, feel free to apply them (or variations) in your own tipping comps:

Always pick St Kilda.

Always pick Geelong. Except when they play St Kilda.

Never pick Fremantle. Ever. Even when they play Richmond.

Mostly pick Collingwood, unless there’s a famous American being frotted by Eddie McGuire in the Members’ stand, in which case they’re guaranteed to play like Perez Hilton.

Pick Melbourne sometimes. Give money to the homeless guy at the train station sometimes, too.

If the homeless guy’s got one leg and a sick-looking dog, pick North Melbourne.

Pick Footscray. Until the finals.

If a crazy old man shouts at you “Donate your body to science you fool, put flags on the goalposts and argle bargle past the borgshnaffle”, pick Essendon.

You can pick Richmond for a laugh, when Cousins is playing, which won’t be often.

Don’t pick Port Adelaide or Unleaded Adelaide if you want to sit anywhere near me at the pub.

You can pick Brisbane if you want, I don’t really care.

You can also pick Sydney if you want, but just remember, every time you pick them, it gives Demetriou a warm tingly feeling about NSW, and he commits another million bucks and four of your players to Western Sydney.

Don’t pick Carlton, especially when they play Hawthorn.

Don’t pick Hawthorn, except when they play Carlton.

If a bikie looks at you funny, pick West Coast.

More generally:

Enjoy this year, because next year sees the introduction of the AFL’s latest Golden Child, the Gold Coast, and there go all your draft picks and most of your best players (bye bye Gazza II) for the next ten years, and huge chunks of AFL rescue cash for the twenty after that.

The year after next, you can start composing your prayers for the ragged corpse of North Melbourne, which will be dragged behind a ute all the way to Western Sydney and handed over in a “merger” (AKA: murder), and North’s entire membership will be kidnapped and forced to live in Western Sydney’s home ground, because that’s the only way they will EVER get anyone there.

Throw soup cans at Grant Thomas and Terry Wallace whenever you can, although you’re unlikely to see either of them anywhere near a footy ground any time in the near future.

Send maps of Australia to Demetriou, with fucking great red circles around Tasmania, and arrows pointing to it, and words like “They play AFL, dickhead”, and shade NSW in grey, with another arrow, saying “They fucken DON’T!!!!”

* *

I know I promised to lay off cycling until June, but bear with me for a sentence or two. I’m trying to write this with a head full of codeine and my left thumb in a splint and my right shoulder and knee being enormous giant hurty scabs, thanks to bastard fuck-arse tram tracks being exactly the right size for my front wheel to get stuck in while I’m doing 30km/h down Chapel St.

It got me thinking about how utterly unprotected you are on a bike, and how much more careful I’m going to be in future. Also made me realise, again, how ridiculously fucking tough pro riders are; they’ll fall at twice the speed I did, lose three times as much skin, and be back on the bike for another six hours the next day.

Long story short, lovelywife and I spent most of the night in the Alfred Emergency Department watching all the PFO’s (Pissed, Fell Over) wander in from St Patrick’s Day celebrations. I wish I knew the names of the good folk who put me in the recovery position and called 000, and the ambo’s who arrived shortly after and got me to hospital, and my bike and my daughter home.

Loathe as I am to admit it, there are decent people out there, and I’m very lucky that some of them were around when I had my fall.

So, thank you, whoever you are.

* *

Juzzy’s Online Footy Tips

Yes folks, Melbourne’s most unreliable footy tips are back.

Every Thursday Juzzy will be throwing together whatever comes to him as he makes his morning ablutions and presenting it on our website for our tipping pleasure. .

Feel free to get online and tell him how rubbish they are.

He’ll like that a lot.

www.kingstribune.com/footy-tips

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