Can we get a grip please. I really hope any criticism of any individual player or of the team “mentality” here is coming only from people who could get out there and do any better than McManus or Schammer or Peake or Black or whoever it’s currently fashionable to blame for not winning a game. They are all fine players who do their job well… better than any of us could anyway.

Our team made mistakes, but so did Port Adelaide. We coughed up lots of turnovers, but so did Port Adelaide. If the footie gods had smiled on us and given us even a narrow win yesterday – perhaps, for example, allowing us the two legitimate hard-fought goals that were then mystifyingly nixed by the maggots, and maybe summoning up a fleeting zephyr that would have given both Tarrant and Pavlich the extra two millimetres that would have got the ball through without making contact with the post (you can imagine a different outcome to the whole game and indeed the season if Tarrant had got that running goal) -- the Port Adelaide equivalent of Dockerland (Groganland?) would be now fizzing with savage complaints from fans about terrible errors and lack of skill from their players.

We have what it takes to beat any team, anywhere, any time. We have as much talent, skill and spirit as any other club, including the almighty top four. We haven’t managed a win because of a diabolical combination of bad luck, skewed fixturing and sickening umpiring… and way too much of the latter.

Yesterday for the first time I stood up and booed the umpires. I really have no doubt that they go out there wanting the game to go a certain way. They are vain, manipulative and utterly incompetent. Yes our players started to look shaky and hesitant in the fourth quarter, in this as in other games. Of course players are going to start to get nervous and unsure if they are having to spend time and energy thinking about how to out-strategise the umpires and get the ball through the posts in such a way that it’s going to be impossible for the goal to be discounted while you’re celebrating.

I’m thinking of making a banner… saying something simple like “UMP OR CHIMP??” or “NICE GOAL UMPIRE” (which could have a double meaning, and be interpreted as complimenting the panache of the goal umpire), to wave at the maggots as they leave. It’s something to fall back on in those moments of utter despair -- and it would be good to see about 50 such banners down the cheer squad end as they leave the field.

And if I spend hours making the banner and then never have occasion to use it, well it’s time well spent!