If you've bothered to read any of my muttered ramblings in here before, you might have noticed I've sort of fallen into a habit of trying to tie footy in with various songs. I can't really explain why it turned out that way... perhaps it's due to me having a radio station playing random stuff in my head most of the time, a result of an unfortunate meeting with an angry pissed midget at a Taxi rank in Perth one night. I copped a stray aerial in the ear. It has it's advantages... if I hold my head on the right angle, face the sun and squint, I can pick up some sort of underground FM station in Paris. I dunno what they're on about but the chicks sound hot.
Anyway, something happened to me last night that got me wound up a bit. I couldn't think of a song to match it to, until I was driving down into a goldmine this morning and it all fell into place, as it can 800m underground.
I want to visit a bit of whoop ass on my favourite television swivelling carnival clown, Mike Sheehan. So, in the words of David Bowie,
This ain't rock and roll.... this is genocide.
We score free Foxtel here onsite, in our rooms. As a result, on my weeks here, I get a few more footy shows than I see on FTA at home. One of those shows...( there's a lot of 'em, seems there's a fair sized bunch of ex players and tired old hacks needing support in their dotage) is Before The Bounce... sort of a rehashed The Winners, or Talking Footy, or On The Couch, but pre-game... last shot at redemption before the fresh round starts, really, for clowns who like to shoot from the lip because that way, you're more likely to score a foot with the same bullet.
Mad Mike Sheehan, the funniest guy in television, pops up on a lot of these shows. Apparently, among other things, he's the Heraldsun's Most Senior Football Journalist. Goes a long way to explaining his senior moments, then, along with fervently recommending the Heraldsun as something to avoid like the Plague.
Yesterday, as the panel (another euphemism, really) got all scientific about how good Collingwood are and where they'd win the game against the Roos (!) Mike chimes in with
"Medhurst, playing 100% better at Collingwood than at Freo"
then follows up with a couple of inanities about that before announcing, in a passable Robert Droner Walls impersonation, that
"Freo are just a terrible club".
Now, people... both of you, I'm the first to admit that we are having a shocker of a season and it's not the first time we've done so, but for this pompous spectacled git to abuse his position on a national television program purporting to be staffed by 'experts of the game' by casting such a cheap slur on my club struck me as, well, offensive.
It offends me because this sorry excuse for a journalist strikes me as the sort of parasite who lives off the juice he shamelessly sucks from a list of friends, acquaintances and similarly disadvantaged "breeders" of the system in such a way as to appear knowledgable when I haven't seen or heard the guy offer up anything in the way of informed analysis or a fresh idea in any of the instances I've been exposed to him... yet he assumes the authority to pour scorn, to condemn and to ridicule us without gracing us with a visit or appearing to ask any of how we feel.
About OUR club.
A couple of years back, Robert Walls droned into Perth to spend a weekend rigorously examining the Toast after he sledged them on TV about their practises and culture. After he'd been and had some fine spun merino fitted over the remnants of his optical nerves, he pronounced them a fantastic organisation with high standards and excellent facilities, or words to that effect. In other words, once he'd vacated his ivory tower and tried to look the Staring Psychopath in the eyes, he folded like a wet dishrag and took his huff'n'puff home.
I'd like Mike Sheehan to front up over here with us for a week. I mean really front up, Mike... get yourself out of your Vic-centric armchair ride on the coat-tails of footy and scrub some of the brown off your nose by getting it close to the grindstone of a club that has, despite it's lack of onfield success, given it's supporters plenty to smile about and even be proud of in it's short history. I'm not condoning years of disappointing results at all but there's no way I'm gonna sit back and let some over-rated hack tell me my club is terrible. What's more, it's more of that 'boys' club pick on the helpless' syndrome we've become so accustomed to with the footy media... someone says so and so are such and such and they all fall into line behind the comment.
We've got our own journalistic joke running flat out here with the Hackdorn and Mission Man's calling out of Haggers as the worst footy writer in the country. I'll go a step further and call Mike Sheehan out as being worse than Robert Walls. If you know me at all, you'll know just how bad that is.
Just on Medhurst, as he serves as the inspiration behind this rant. Blog. Blogrant.
I was reluctant to see him go but also, I knew he'd be better off going with the limited chances being offered to him here at the time. I'd love to see him still here... but it's no surprise to me, to see Monkey Medhurst going so well for the Pies. I'm sure many of the Freo faithful would have similar feelings...we all knew how good he was while he was here and loved him for it.
For Mike Sheehan to point to Meddy's good form as a reason to condemn Freo as a 'terrible' club is shallow, cowardly mealy mouthed commentary. It's not journalism.
This ain't rock 'n roll, this is genocide...
[youtube:http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ1Quz7H93Q]