Things went badly pear-shaped for Karl Langdon on last night’s 6PR sports programme. He’d done a pretty good job all week inserting bears between the audience and the stark reality of last weekend’s results (example – Tuesday night: “So I want to ask our listeners who they think has been the greatest centre-half forward they can remember?). Anything to take the focus away from Freo’s mighty start to the season and bright prospects for the future, and anything, ANYTHING, to divert attention away from the present and future train wreck that is the ooftits.

Trouble was, as in all all scandals, diversionary tactics just build pressure, and the dam wall burst last night when the Eagle’s announced the selection of 2006 premiership passenger Ashley Hansen for their loss against North Melbourne on Saturday. Well, the phones lit up like Colin Barnett’s nose with calls for Worsfold’s head, Sumich’s head, any bloody head; hurt and mystified followers moaning about their forward line, their back line, their past, their future... and suddenly Karl was under the pump.

Seriously under the pump, as it turned out, because he got no back-up from Hardie (who’ll, let’s face it, stick the knife into anything that’s down but still breathing) and – horror of horrors – the Slapper, who’s obviously not been attending briefing sessions in the West Coast Media Department bunker recently. Anyway, the further it went, the angrier and surlier Karl got, the more defensive and insistent he became that, somehow, what he perceives as the Eagles’ mighty past will somehow determine their future: “Can’t we talk about something else” he muttered as yet another caller questioned the Lynch/Hansen fiasco, “I’m bored with this”.

And then he said the oddest thing. Leaning into the microphone, a bit like Rush Limbaugh doing his sincerity shtick, Langdon explained why the Eagles would beat the Kangas this week. “Did you know” (I thought he was going to say “dear listener”), “that since John Todd was sacked by the Eagles in 1989, they have never lost three games in a row. Never”. It was like a universe (not this one, I suspect) stopped. I swear I could hear Hardie and Jakovich take in breath. A pin dropped noisily in the next room.

So here’s a list of the times the Eagles have dropped three or more games in a row since 2000. Sorry for taking up all this space.

1996: rounds 2 – 5 (4)
1997/8: rounds 21/22/1 (3)
1998: rounds 4 – 7 (4)
1998: round 21 – QF (3)
1999: rounds 15 – 17
1999: rounds 19 – 22 (4)
2000: rounds 12 – 17 (6)
2000/1: rounds 19 – 22, 1 – 2 (6)
2001: rounds 5 – 12 (8)
2001: rounds 14 – 17 (4)
2001: rounds 20 – 22 (3)
2002: rounds 18 – 21 (4)
2004: rounds 4 – 6 (3)
2008: rounds 2 – 8 (7)
2008: rounds 10 – 16 (7)
2008/9: rounds 20 – 22, 1 (4)
2009: rounds 8 – 12 (5)
2009: rounds 14 – 17 (4)

What’s going on in this turkey’s pinbrain? Does he think all we can remember are the big old years. Doesn’t he know that results get printed and stored for future reference? Hasn’t he heard of the internet?

He’s a sad, glib, stupid hack with a self-appointed agenda and fewer and fewer people with the lack of self-respect to be in his little posse. And he’s living proof that you can be a fool or a liar, but it pays not to be both.