Walter (and others): quite right, there's no bodies on the street - plenty in the ditch though.
I sat through a lecture once where a famous Eurpoean filmmaker spoke about public funding in the arts. He couched his metaphors simply - speaking about the domestication of pigs and the loss of the true taste of schweinefleisch. He said that centuries of feeding pigs garbage had made their meat taste like garbage - so much so, that ham from a wild boar tasted so unusual it was unrecognisable from what humans normally call 'ham'. What we think of, and call 'ham' now isn't ham at all - feeding garbage and eating garbage has now become an endless cycle.
I lament that when I watch football sometimes, basically because I remember (all too well) the real taste of schweinefleisch. For most of us it's within living memory - the reflexes of Maurice, the brilliance of those two brothers from down Mt Barker way. At Fremantle we were blessed with a steady stream of players that played the game with a flair few other teams could match - pound for pound we had more wild boars on the paddock than anyone else. That's why I love my team, always will (no matter what garbage gets fed me by Docker Control). I hate the idea that real wild boars won't make it into the system to take to the field - I hate all those trays filled with pink slices of something that are wrapped up in plastic lined folded paper that I'm supposed to buy and consume. Equally, I'm haunted by that photo of a kid called Waylon sitting on a bench at Perth airport, all rugged up in the middle of winter without any shoes - waiting for a flight east to take part in some silly television competition that will 'make' a footballer If that is what it takes, we've failed miserably.
Shane is right, everyone loses here - Josh, the WAFL, Freo, the AwFL and all of us.
