Grande Finale

For years as Carlton struggled through the celler of the AFL ladder, Sydney has been my surrogate team to get excited in the finals. But that was when sydney where underdogs, never viewed as contenders, last year they snuck in to the big day with last minute snaps and clinched the deal with a dramatic mark. This year they were defending champs and mercilessly crushed the dreams of up and coming teams like fremantle with their boring style of play.
There is a very bad person inside me, indeed inside all of us that was delighted at seeing Barry Hall crying after the siren went. I sympathise of course it must be terrible for him, I imagine he's beating himself up at the way he just choked and choked badly yesterday when all look to him for leadership.
I did actually feel bad for Goodesy and Kirk and all the Sydney contributers that actually gave us a contest after the second hand, but what does Barry Hall get paid to do? lead mark and kick goals. He fucked up and missed out on the chocolates, lost his self belief to after marking a few times within range to handball off to some dude who got taken to ground by West coast defenders.
In the end all he had to do was kick another point.
So the game wasn't as good as last year that had pretty much all you could ever ask for in a grand final and I'm out of surrogate teams which means carlton will have to fucken pick and pick well and maybe even win 5+ games next year to keep me going.
I went to a party that didn't really go off yesterday but better than that was a crowd of people that actually cared. Again the bad person inside of me was made powerful by their heartbreak so I enjoyed myself none the less and gorged myself too so it was infact a pretty awesome day.
But this has to be said of football, it is truly truly a great sport. Between it and basketball you truly have everything. There's room for soccer too of course. But the real threat to AFL is the duty of care the sport has to it's players. Footy is becoming basketball slowly. High possession handball games, the Adam Goodes rule that turned the ruck into a basketball tap out the rules are being changed anually to reduce the chances of getting injured in a full contact sport.
Now for me contact sports are like wr, I'd rather sit on a comfy couch and heroically watch from a safe distance and let them poor folk put their necks on the line (hey who wouldn't) so don't accuse me of trying to be macho, but special provision needs to be made so contact sports can exist. Players need to be aware of the injury risks and then choose if they want to partake or not.
Sports stars are human beings too but the reduction in risks of the game is making our great game boring. Even simple shit like kicking to contests, 90% of marks now are from clean cut little chips. Football is going to become more like netball if something isn't done to pit player against fucking player.
The fact is that in basketball a 'non-contact' sport where fouls are handed out for any rough play, fouls still happen all the time. It's still a physical showcase of athleticism.
Now I have heard shit about netball being underserved and how little the national netball team makes compared to AFL and equality and shit. But the simple fact about netball is that it is a fucking shitty game. The few times I ever played it I was Goal Defence or something. The Goal shooter had the ball and she was shorter than me so I stuck my hand up to block her. The ref moved me back so I couldn't block her anymore. Nor can you jostle them out of the way. Infact watching most people having a crack at netball you realise what a counter intuitive game it is. The real reason netball recieves so little support is that it is marginally more of a competition than aerobics.
The real question is why doesn't WAFL recieve as much support, or televising. I recall in highschool the girls footy team having just as many spectators and just as much support with the added bonus of fewer tools in the team.
But I don't need to justify any sports as being really valid at the end of the day if you can make a paypacket out of a recreational activity you deserve to laugh yourself to sleep at night.
Or in Barry Halls case cry yourself to sleep on your million dollar pillows.
It was sweet to see Sydney defeated by stoppages in the end, beaten at their own dirty fucken game, maybe they'll sit back and say maybe we should opt for some risk and break our game open a bit, elsewise they'll never truly be dominant. But this has to be said, a 1 point margin is a rare thing in footy, it's rare in basketball, it's common as fuck in soccer and about as common as nil-all-draws and resolving the world cup in a penalty shoot out which just shouldn't happen. There will be measures put in place to hopefully change this shitty way of settling the match, but in my opinion replacing the penalty shootout with a quick draw shoot out may be better. The player that misses their oponent is shot dead that way they don't have to be spat on by italians or stabbed by argentinians, the blow is swift and fatal instead of something that makes a traitor out of you to your country and keeps you up at night for the next four years.