Blue Day

Well, I think its safe to say that there won't be a 'Phil Jackson' of AFL until they give me a crack at senior AFL coaching. Most likely contender is Leigh Mathews, but alas, the draft system works too well, and it's hard to build a 10 championship dynasty as coach.

Impossible you say? Well keep in mind that Phil Jackson coaches in a league that plays 80 games in the regular season with two whole sub-competition (east & western conferences) and 30 teams or 32 or something. They go on 9 game road trips unlike the occasional 1 week road trip to Perth here.

So I would say, yes it's doable.

What I like about the AFL code in particular though, is that a coach can't say 'time out' and adjust, to have a chance at being a fair comparison to b-ball you would need an interchange bench of 20 or so, so you could replace everyplayer on the field and then some.

So yeah, 'stoppage' in AFL is nothing like stoppages in b-ball. They don't take ad breaks in AFL stoppage time, and that is a great thing.

But what it means for a coach like Brett Ratton is that when the game starts slipping from your fingers, it keeps slipping.
The Zen Master often just goes 'time-out' the moment anyone breaks a 12-0 run the Lakers have on them. (this would be the bare-bones equivalent of having 6 unanswered goals in AFL) instead the blues left Judd resting on the sidelines as the midfield fell apart and Bradbury completely outclassed his defender as he turned the margin from 5 goals to 5 points.

Then the game was well and truly lost.

Funnily, when it was like 100 to 70 I said to my brother 'my blues can lose it from here' and they delivered. What was frustrating and dissapointing though, is the failure to make the transition from the 'regular season learning side' to one that realises that you lose last night you throw away every single joule of energy exerted in the season leading up to it.

It's funny to think a Lions-Blues Rivalry might emerge from this over the next few years because they seem to be at roughly the same stage of development, and they deserved to go through to face the dogs. Dogs vs. Blues would have been a 'Win-win' situation for me though, as the dogs were always my secondary team. I will be backing them, then St. Kilda, then failing that anyone but Collingwood. I would take Adelaide over collingwood.

Anyway, that was dissapointing, because the mistake of match ups, and just losing that fundamental 'ABC - Always Be Closing' mentality that Phil Jackson so successfully instilled in the Lakers during the Orlando-Lakers finals series, the blues instead had Fev revving the team down at 3-quarter time with the rousing 'Just a half hour more boys' speech.

If I was coach I would have dragged Fev there and then.

I would have been 'I don't want you guys thinking anything but "How can I inflict more pain" why aren't the fans crying, why aren't the players crying? You fuckers, there is no game beyond tonight, there is nothing beyond the next possesssion, so don't fuck it up!'

Or something.