It's been a bad start to the year. Particularly if you're Neal Fong, or anyone on the Eagles payroll. In fact, the roll up to Christmas and beyond has seen rather too much sadness and stupidity; sadness at early demises, and the continuing stupefication created by Club Med Subi.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I've reached shadenfreude exhaustion. I can't fill the barrel with enough fish to make it fun anymore. Club Med Subi is like a child with ADD. The doctor's been in, the diagnosis has been made, the trouble is, they've been prescribed a Ritalin placebo called Corevalues. They would've been given the last rites, but they don't even know if they've got a chaplain anymore. When Woosh says the culture has changed, he thought he was being asked about the brand of yoghurt they buy. The only thing left to do is to build a cupboard under the stairs with a lock on it.

It's all rather unfunny. You can only take farce so far before it just starts to induce yawns. It's like watching a Carry On movie and thinking, 'what happened? when I was nine this stuff was comedy gold'. The sideshow needs to finish.

I need some football.

I've been subdued for a while. Fatherhood does that to you. I wondered whether I'd be desperate for football the way I used to be just a few years ago. With so many other things to think about, footy just sort of drops of the excitement meter. But it's coming back, I can feel it. I've long settled into the routine of smells, nappies, and car trips that resemble the organisation required to take thousands of brethren into the desert for a bit of a stroll, only to get halfway to the promised land to find someone wanted daddy's dockers hat, no, not this one daddy, the purple one. And toddlers with selective hearing, the sort that can't hear you asking them to tidy their dinosaurs from a metre away, but can hear you whisper 'chocolate' from inside a nuclear fallout shelter. But I haven't got used to opening my mouth and hearing my own father's voice. I need the diversion, the escapism. I need it like Jordo needs Hase; like Mission Man needs a book contract; like shane needs a bigger garage for the Dockerland Lexus fleet. I need it to start with the Whatever Bank Paid The Most Money To Name The Crap Cup.

A repeat of the disagreement that J Carr had with D Kerr, would do for a start. While the experience left Daniel completely unable to discern house keys from sheets of glass, the other two-thirds of the awesomely awesome midfield enjoyed Josh's discussions so much they've given up football permanently. One's delisted, and fighting for airtime with other adolescent party boys in ridiculous sunnies, the other at Carlton fighting for the captaincy with a bloke with an IKEA shelf for a chin. How the mighty have fallen.

Mostly I've missed Jeff. He's probably not got many seasons left in him, but one of his is usually worth 2-3 of most other blokes. I intend to enjoy all the ones he has left. In this age of athletes playing football, drafted by a system obsessed by beep tests and basketball jumps, it's nice to see a pure footballer - who happens to be athletic - go about his business, making the best defenders look like their boots are on the wrong feet; who loses blokes that stick to him like paint to a wall, but don't know which way he's going to go because Jeff doesn't either, until his man has fallen over trying to work it out. He's one of the few blokes left that shows kids there's still a place in the game for players shorter than 6' 17''.

I think he missed being a part of 2007. I reckon the team missed him too. I want to see him back out there for 22+ games this year. I'm desperate for it. Don't tell me you're not too.