It was put to me recently that I don’t like Brisbane. Now, the suggestion is not entirely without merit, however, an assertion such as this has to be based upon some evidence.

For example, when I was eighteen I fell for a girl and followed her to Brisbane and she turned out to be really annoying and not interested in me at all but I was so in love with her I shagged her best friend the night before I came home and Brisbane is just one of those horrible memories I’ve put away with the bottle-green corduroy pants and shiny black school shoes that Mum used to make me wear on weekends.

Lovely co-editor is sniggering from the other end of the couch, but just a tad nervously as she wonders whether I would’ve followed her all the way to Brisbane. [You bloody better!! I don’t like Brisbane at all and I’d be really pissed about being stuck there without someone to rant with - Jane]

Other more readily available evidence of my dislike of Brisbane can be found in the fact that that I omitted Brisbane from my AFL Season 09 Predictions in the March Tribune. Certainly, if one were trying to support an assertion that I didn’t like Brisbane, a fact such as this would greatly assist in making one’s case.

However there may be other reasons for this omission which I beg you to consider before passing judgement on me. One possibility is that I was paid large sums of money by sports betting organizations to stay silent about the prospects of the Lions, in order that the odds, and investments, will go the bookies’ way.

Another possibility is that I just forgot.

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The Monthly Snore:

There’s going to be a new rule re rushed behinds this year. The introduction of a new rule should be cause for concern, given it’s a pretty big change. However, the rules and their interpretations change at least forty-seven times in each game, and that’s after the umpires have sat down with the league at the start of the season, and a couple of times mid-season, to have the rules clarified, and then rules can be read and re-read in eleven different ways when they get to the tribunal and the appeal board and the lolcats running the match review committee, so why are we all renting our garments and throwing poo around the room? Indiscretions by star players in finals will be treated more leniently than those by lesser lights mid-season, Collingwood will continue to bitch, and we all give thanks for the departure of Goldspink.

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Memo to other sports journalists: Ben Cousins and Chris Judd are not the only players, Eddie is not the only club president, and Geelong are not the only team. Andrew Demetriou and Adrian Anderson are the only ones to blame.

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So the Vics have finally won the Sheffield Shield, and thank the Lord they won the thing with its real name (remember when it was the Pura Milk Cup? Bleah). Having watched us come nowhere for years, or more recently watched as we took all before us all season, only to lose final after final, it feels nice to see the Bushrangers finally hold some silverware aloft.

The way it was won gives me pause, however, and it has to do with the vagaries of this magical game we call cricket. Having finished the season on top of the ladder, we hosted the final, as is good and proper, but we had more than a home ground advantage; we didn’t have to win the final in order to win the Shield, we just had to not lose.

There are four possible results in first class or Test cricket – either side can win, plus there’s a draw and a tie. Three of those four results guaranteed us the shield. As long as we didn’t let Queensland win the game, we were through. No need to take the risk of playing for a win, we just had to bat them out of it, and while the rain was a shame for the spectators it just made the draw, and therefore the Shield, more inevitable.

With interstate cricket so vital to the fortunes of our national side and yet so ignored by the media and the public, surely it makes sense to do away with what has been for the past few years a boring and pointless final. When the home team has to do no more than ensure they don’t lose, the final ends up cheapening the Shield for all concerned.

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I went to the Grand Prix once, and I had access all areas, and while the racing itself wasn’t that interesting, it did afford me the chance to see bogans frolicking in their natural environment. It also made me realise why people like it: the noise. It will damage your ears if you don’t take precautions; it’s so loud, such a primal scream of raw power and aggression that it grabs you by the colon from the inside and yanks your guts up through your throat. Which is more fun than it sounds, believe me.

I’m aware of all the issues that the Albert Park GP raises – motor racing itself is an anachronism in these days of dwindling fossil fuels, greenhouse gases and so on, the pit girls and the way women are treated as ornaments in general is a bit offensive in the twenty-first century, and it’s bloody inappropriate to shut a public park for so long and render the golf course unplayable for months at a time.

I’m aware of all that, and yet I still can’t get passionate about opposing it. Until I start thinking about the money, and the deceit. Along with all the costs of building the grandstands and the bars and dismantling it all again, and paying for hundreds of police for the whole four days and all the rest of it, we are paying Bernie Ecclestone $47 million for the privilege.

When the odd citizen puts their hand up and says “Um, sir, that’s a lot of money, what do we get for it?”, Brumby drones out this year’s “projected benefit to Victorians” and the “mosaic of major events”.

He’s unable to show us the real cost, or crowd numbers, or whether there is, indeed, any money in it for we Victorians; he just relies, as state governments have every year, on some rubbery guesstimate at extra economic activity generated by a very rubbery set of figures reliant on overseas and interstate visitors.

If there actually was money being made out of it, and crowd numbers actually were as brilliant as claimed, then they would actually release the numbers, wouldn’t they? But they don’t. They can’t even give a real crowd figure based on ticket sales and corporate packages, because this, apparently, is too difficult over a four-day event. (Gee I dunno, Racing Victoria manages it for the Spring Carnival, as does the tennis every year…?)

Instead, they release a number based on the number of entries through the gates, which is bloody hilarious given that staff (security, caterers, cleaners, marshals and so on), police and journalists are wandering in and out a dozen times a day each.

Yes, that’s right, the policeman who doesn’t buy a ticket and is there to do a job, gets counted as an attendance, and if he leaves the complex and re-enters a few times, he gets counted as a new attendance each time.

Thus they are able to quote what-fucking-ever number they want, and there’s no way to check it. It’s our money, Ralph – we should have some say in how it’s spent, or at least the right to fucking know how it’s being spent.

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In the absence of coherent paragraphs, here are a few musings:

A rubber chicken assaults a frozen chicken, and that’s apparently funny, and it’s also the only story worth running in the sports pages this week, despite the fact that ST KILDA ARE ON TOP OF THE LADDER.

Eddie McGuire is complaining again.

Someone was assaulted at the MCG and the offenders were instantly arrested, which gets me to thinking that maybe whoever runs crowd control at the footy should be employed at Sydney airport.

I stand to be corrected, but I haven’t seen ONE “Buddy Beautiful” headline in the little paper yet this season….

I’ve got the iPod on shuffle at the moment, and I’m wondering if Nick Cave would ever go to the footy? According to lovely co-editor, no, he’d be too busy wanking and preening in front of the mirror, then I ask her what’s her excuse for not going to the footy and she says it’s nothing to do with being a wanker, she just has taste and class, and I say yeah that’s an easy sell when you’re busy throwing the broken bits of breakfast bowls against the wall and shrieking about cigarettes. Then Slipknot come on and I give up thinking about football and go with the Demetriou-in-a-dungeon-it-rubs-itself-with-the-lotion-or-it-gets-the-hose-again dreams…

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It’s a bit difficult to give weekly AFL (and whatever else blips my radar) tips in a monthly magazine, and if I were to put four rounds’ worth in at a time I’d either be very rich or end up looking pretty fucking dumb. So as a self-motivational tool (Deadline, you fucker!! Deadline!!!!), I’m going to endeavour to put my tips on the website every Thursday night. Check the sport button on the website regularly, and give me lots of shit if I fall behind.

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