Great News

Great news!

This morning I secured the final set of tickets for the trip, for the game between Geelong and Fremantle at Kardinia Park.

General admission tickets don't go on sale until tomorrow but as a Cats member I was able to buy them a day earlier.
I had anticipated having to buy standing room but, as a special bonus, we got seats in the Gary Ablett Terrace.

Ticketmaster opened for sale at 9.00 Melbourne time so I had to get up early too!

Its all systems go now!


The Split Round

I forgot to post my tips this week but that's probably just as well because my tipping is pitiful!
Richmond didn't beat Carlton, North didn't beat St Kilda, Fremantle didn't beat Essendon and Brisbane didn't beat Melbourne!!! I did manage to get Hawthorn and the Bulldogs right but considering they are in the top three on the ladder that was no great achievement!

I'm glad the AFL made some slight change to the split round fixtures this year and are playing two games next weekend instead of one as they usually do. A whole weekend with only one football game is very unsatisfactory!
I'm tipping the Cats on Friday night to beat the Crows at AAMI Stadium, and Sydney to beat Collingwood at ANZ on Saturday. Hopefully I'll break even with my tips!!!

I listened to the last quarter of the Melbourne/Brisbane game and it was a fantastic finish. The Dees had lead the entire game only to fall 11 points behind with 2:45 left on the clock thanks to the dominance of Johnathon Brown and Daniel Bradshaw. But, refusing to accept the script, Melbourne hit back with two goals in the last two minutes to win just their second game of the season. Brad Miller was the hero, marking in the goal square to kick the winning goal with less than a minute left! The crowd went mad and the singing of the theme song rivalled a finals victory rendition!

Bizarre Injuries
AFL footy is a tough game and players suffer all sorts of injuries but this weekend has seen two of the most bizarre ever: Daniel Kerr was stung by a stingray during recovery at StKilda beach on Saturday morning, and Graham Polak was hit by a Melbourne tram on Saturday night.
Kerr will recover without a problem but Polak is in an induced coma and is out for the rest of the season; his career possibly over completely!

The Footy Trippers

The 16 people about to go to Melbourne for the big footy trip, all eager and looking forward to it.

I've had some good news in the last couple of days.

Chris, the chaplain at Box Forest, our host school, is going to pick us up from the airport on the night of our arrival. Seeing as we get in at 11.20pm it was going to be a very late night if we'd had to take the shuttle bus from Avalon and the train from Southern Cross with all our bags. He's also happy to deliver us to the airport for our departure on the 15th. Considering Avalon is 45km from Melbourne this is a big help.

Further to this he emailed today to say that they have had a couple of breakthroughs on the bedding front, they found 10 sleeping bags in a storeroom we can use and some camping mattresses, and one of the staff managed to get a local shop to donate 10 blow up lilo airbeds for us to use as well. With the beds Chris had already accumulated it looks like we won't have to take any extra bedding with us.

To help balance the ledger, I offered 10 footy tickets to the Hawthorn v Sydney game to the kids from Box Forest. These were extras that I got from the AFL. Chris was looking for suitable recipients today. This means there'll be even greater opportunity to connect and mix with the kids from Box Forest which is one of the things I've been aiming for as part of the trip.

Round 13 Wrap

I hope you're not relying on me for your footy tips! My form is worse than West Coast's! I only got three right on the weekend and have dropped to 10th in the comp at work!
Of course, there were a number of upsets in round 13 which accounts for some of my poor tipping, eg. North coming off three losses and a dismal display against Freo to beat the high flying Hawks, Essendon letting all the air out of the big Blue balloon, and Richmond stringing two wins together for the first time since 2006, away from home over Port Adelaide.
In other games I was just sucked in by the perennially diabolical Dockers and St Kilda's apparent lack of talent/committment and Adelaide's supposed resurgence.
The fickle nature of football teams and the unpredictability of this season brought me undone.

But, it doesn't matter because I'm still basking in the warm fuzzy feeling from Geelong's mammoth victory on Saturday night.

A Few thoughts on round 13:

Adam Goodes pushed his luck just a little too far and so his amazing run of consecutive games is to come to an end before he overtakes Jim Stynes. What was he thinking, hitting a bloke in the head for the second time in three weeks?
Barry Hall is back and Sydney are looming as a contender. The contrast in fortunes between West Coast and Sydney is remarkable. Everyone expected the Eagles to remain a powerhouse and the Swans to fall away, but exactly the reverse has happened.
There's no doubt that the loss of Judd and Cousins has made the difference but it is still amazing to see them so far apart on the ladder.

Hawthorn can be beaten, their diamond zone defense has been penetrated for the second time in three weeks and they've slipped to third. Lance Franklin was also contained by the Shinboners. It's hard to stay at the top and keep winning and the Hawks are showing signs of that. I expect them to rebound strongly and I pity the Eagles, who are their next victims/opponents!

Carlton got so full of themselves after getting in the top eight for the first time in about 6 years that they forgot about the fundamental things, like playing football, and the Bombers duly dumped them straight back out of the eight! What a shame! And they seem to be having trouble getting Fevola to sign a new contract. And Richard Pratt has had to resign while he faces charges that could see him imprisoned for 4 years. How unusual for a Blues president to be embroiled in controversy? Pig's %#@*!!

How many more times will we have to hear Gary Ablett called the Brownlow favourite over the next 10 weeks? Yes he's in rare form, yes he's rightly favourite, yes he may win it, but, he doesn't need the pressure of it being announced every time he touches the ball or does something good on a footy ground. He had to endure favourtism on the night last year and despite a fellow Cat winning it, it was clearly disappointing for him not to win. He's super talented, but also delightfully modest and unassuming. Asked about his 37 possession 2 goal starring role in Saturday night's game his comment was "I went all right". Yes he did. I hope he wins the Brownlow, but like him, I want to see him win another premiership medal more.
Hopefully the ever-increasing media pressure won't get to him.

It's a small point but if I hear one more commentator say "Brad Ottens is a beautiful kick of the football" as he lines up for goal, and misses, I'll scream! I've lost count of the number of times his kicking has been praised immediately before he kicks another point. He may have been a great kick at some stage, but he isn't any more.
While I'm sounding off I may as well get a couple more things off my chest.
Number 3 for Geelong is JIMMY Bartel, he changed it from James a couple of years ago yet still, commentators keep calling him James.
And, there is no Jarrad Rooke at Geelong.
There is a MAX Rooke, he wears number 33 and changed his name by deed poll before the 2007 season, not that any of that matters to the commentators who continue to refer to him as Jarrad!

One more gripe. Why do umpires have to keep yelling out "Play on Play on Play on" when they've decided sopmeone has had long enough to take their kick and they want to speed the game up. Calling out "Play on" once is sufficient. Any player caught holding the ball in such a situation needs to listen better. The instruction does not need to be repeated three or four times to ensure they've got the message.

Cats destroy Eagles at Subi

Mark Thompson is happy and so am I! I just asked for a Cats win for my birthday but they delivered a good old-fashioned shellacking! A 135 point victory, the biggest loss West Coast have ever had at Subiaco! 28 goals to 5! Gary Ablett was on fire, Chapman and Mooney kicked 5 goals each, Tom Harley dominated the air and the Cats were rampant all over the ground!
Favourite Daughter, Sport Boy and I had a ball, especially in the last quarter. 1000's of Eagles fans left at 3/4 time, where was their loyalty? They were only trailing by 116 points! So we took the chance to move out of the confines of the sub-zero altitude seats we were in behind the goal and up to the grandstand on the forward flank where the view was a million times better and the yo-yo exercise everytime someone in the row wanted to come in or out of the ridiculously narrow aisles gave way to a panaramic view of Subiaco Oval and the Cats continuing on their merry way to a thumping percentage boosting victory.
Add to that the fact that North Melbourne unexpectedly knocked off Hawthorn today and my birthday present was complete, Geelong now a game and percentage clear on top of the AFL ladder!

Round 13

My tipping started badly, I got sucked in by Freo's false promises and St Kilda's dismal performances!

The rest of my Rd 13 tips:
Hawthorn over North Melbourne
Port Adelaide over Richmond
Geelong over West Coast
Brisbane over Adelaide
Sydney over Melbourne
Carlton over Essendon
Bulldogs over Collingwood

Today is my birthday!!
47 years ago I arrived and the world hasn't been the same since.

All I want as my present is the Cats to beat the Eagles tonight.
I'm heading up there with my son iin the morning, and my daughter is meeting us up there at the game.

GO CATS!!

Tickets

The money is coming in steadily to pay for the trip which meant that today I could spend some of it!
About a thousand dollars on footy tickets in fact.
We now have tickets to the Carlton V St Kilda game at the MCG, the Essendon V Brisbane game at Docklands, and the Hawthorn V Sydney game at the MCG.
I haven't got the most important tickets yet, for Geelong V Fremantle because they don't go on sale until July 1.
I also booked the final plane tickets for my return to Perth after my excursion to Sydney to see the Pope at World Youth Day.

It's all coming together nicely.

I'm meeting with the kids tomorrow lunchtime; I need to take photos of them to make there ID tags and let them know about a couple of minor changes to our flight times.

Round 12 Wrap

As I predicted, it was a tough round to predict! I got 5 out of 8 and although I'm still 7th in the tipping comp I'm now 4 behind the leader instead of 2.

I enjoyed watching Geelong beat Port Adelaide (again) despite their attempts to rough up Gary Ablett. Good to see the Cats back on top of the ladder thanks to the percentage boost and Hawthorn's narrow win V Adelaide.

No surprise that Lance Franklin wasn't suspended, there are protected species in the AFL and the latest superstar is one of them.

2008 has seen the re-emergence of the full-forward with both Franklin and Fevola regularly kicking big bags of goals. When they get on a roll there's almost no stopping them.

Who'd have thought Carlton would be in the eight? Judd, Fevola and all those number 1 and priority draft picks are really paying dividends. Will they stay there? St Kilda and Port are no threat and Richmond won't make it so the only real competition for 8th spot looks like North Melbourne whose wheels have fallen off lately.

Round 12 Tips and previews

Round 12 Tips:

It's a tough round to tip this week, following several weeks of fairly easy tipping.
Several games could go either way therefore I'm not confident, but here's who I think will win this week.

Essendon V West Coast
Essendon have lost their last 8. West Coast have been getting thumped, then threw away a match winning lead against Sydney last week. Neither is convincing but purely because the game is at Docklands I'm tipping the Bombers.

Western Bulldogs V Brisbane Lions
Both in great form but home ground advantage just tips it the Bulldogs way.

Fremantle V North Melbourne.
We all know the Dockers have been hopeless, their best chance is to be behind at 3/4 time. The Roos have lost their last couple so they really need a win. Freo ought to win at Subiaco but I think North will just edge them.

Sydney V St Kilda
This one seems a little easier, the Swans are in great form and had a great last minute victory against the Eagles last week while the Saints have been less than ordinary. The Swans to win at home.

Adelaide V Hawthorn
The game of the round, both going great guns with Franklin on fire for the Hawks and Thompson in Brownlow winning form for the Crows. Home ground advantage could be the deciding factor, the Crows to win in a close one.

Geelong V Port Adelaide
The Cats are back on track after the wake-up call from the Magpies and should be too good for the Power down at the cattery.

Collingwood v Carlton
The Blues pinched a thriller from Port last week and the draft picks and Judd are starting to perform after years in the wilderness but Collingwood are on a roll having won their last 4 and should be too strong before a big crowd at the G.

Richmond V Melbourne
The Tigers have fallen in a hole after some better signs earlier in the season but Melbourne have been down an even deeper pit. Jim Stynes messianicstyle arrival as President might just stir them up enough to cause an upset but I expect Terry Wallace to be breathing fire at Punt Road and Richmond should get up in a close one.

AFL Round 11

Footy Blog

I've decided to expand the vision of this blog, to extend its use-by-date beyond the trip to Melbourne and turn it into my regular footy blog, .

I'll give some opinions and commentary as well as posting my tips and previews each week.

A few observations from Round 11.

Adam Goodes should not have gotten off without suspension. A cynic would say that the AFL did not want his run of 202 consecutive games to come to an end when he is so close to breaking Jim Stynes' record. The inconsistency of the tribunal and match review panel is becoming more and more of a bad joke.

Hawthorn can deny it all they want but they are protecting Lance Franklin and refusing to acknowledge there are issues to do with his behaviour that need to be addressed. Football players doing the wrong thing and getting into trouble, often as a result of alcohol, is nothing new, but clubs should take a leaf out of Geelong's book. The way they dealt with Steve Johnson's drunkeness at the start of last season ought to be the blueprint for all AFL clubs. Players are young, fit, cashed up and "worshipped" and have lots of free time: that's a recipe for trouble.

Will it take another death, ala Darren Millane, before players and clubs rein in their behaviour?

Comebacks:

No team is safe until the final siren sounds. Fremantle at least gave themselves a chance of winning this week by not being in front at 3/4 time but both Port Adelaide and West Coast let match-winning leads slip in the final few minutes and seconds of their games.

You know how I said we had the tickets for the tri[p? Well .....!

Footy Trips, like life, are seldom straight forward or short of drama!

Yesterday the mystery of the return airfare non-payment was resolved, then completely messed up again, by yours truly, fearless trip-leader and faithful blogger!

I'll try and encapsulate the unfolding drama in point form.

May 30: successfully paid for Perth-Melbourne leg of the trip, 16 air fares at a little over $3500 using direct bank transfer.

May 30: Unsuccessfully paid for return leg, reason unknown.

June 2; Rang airline to query lack of confirmation. "It's in the system, can't do anything but wait"

June 5: Checked bank balance. Money from airline refunded with error message on payment!

June 5: Re-submitted payment via bank transfer, dismayed to find that fares had increased by $20!!

June 5: Moments after clicking "send" on payment discovered to my horror the reason for initial problem amidst realisation I had just repeated the error!!!!!!!!!!
(I had failed to insert a booking code into my payment, thus rendering the money "unidentifiable" by the airline and destining it to gurgle around a few computers for a few days before being refunded back to my by-now embarrassed account!!!!!)

Period of dismay and strong urge to swear followed.

June 6: Talked to ever-helpful bank manager regarding possible solutions to my dilemma.
Dilemma heightened by news from airline that the original tickets are still on hold but unless paid for by Sunday will be lost!
Now have two lots of tickets on hold, neither paid for, neither confirmed!

June 6: Rang airline, "It's in the system, can't do anything but wait"
OR
"You can pay by credit card which will secure the tickets immediately"
The risk of repeating the various forms of bank transfer our collective brains had come up with being that the payment might not be approved in time and the booking would be lost anyway, what with the weekend coming up and the slowness with which banks process things you need urgently versus the speed with which banks process things they need urgently, like your money!

Sorry if I'm confusing you with the convoluted nature of this transaction history. Let me reassure you at this point, this story has a happy ending!

June 6: Rang reliable benefactor with bigger credit card and generous spirit (G'day Dad) and explained problem. Asked silly question, "Would you be happy to help me out of this self-made mess?"

"Happy!"

Hahaha, nervously rephrasing, "Willing?"

"Yes" with rider, "When do I get my money back?"

Based on past and painful history, about 4 or 5 days.

"OK"

Back to the airline web page, find booking, seek to pay with Benefactor's credit card, no provision via web site to make such transaction!
Ring airline, speak to Dale, helpful young man, explain predicament.

"I can process that for you over the phone"

Gave required numbers and details, Dale punched the info into his trusty keyboard, and voila, our airfares are paid! And, as a bonus, at the original price, thuis saving us $300, or more accurately, saving me from having to ask the parents for an extra $20 each!


Finally, can safely say we've got our tickets!

Many thanks to Reliable Benefactor :)

Received confirmation email and itinerary from airline.

Parent Meeting

We had a good parent's meeting tonight to go through the final details of the trip. Everyone seemed happy with all of the arrangements, and the lower price. With an extra person coming and a number of cost reductions through group booking discounts, the final price has come in just under $900, pretty good for a week in Melbourne with everything included. I feel pleased with the way the trip has come together, the itinerary, the price etc.

The boys, and one girl, didn't say much at the meeting but the parents asked a few questions as we went through the details.

They had to put up with my constant references to Geelong of course!
I'm just glad West Coast are languishing at the bottom of the ladder so I don't have to put up with their supporter's!

Next thing is getting the final payments in so that I can start buying the tickets for the games. Buying 16 tickets all together at games is not that easy and the sooner we get on to it the better chance we'll have of getting seats as a group.

A New Blog!

It was about time I started another blog! And with the footy trip to Melbourne coming up, now is a good time. This will be the place to come to follow our adventures when we go to melbourne in July. There are 13 kids and 3 adults from Busselton going, from July 8-15, for a feast of sport and AFL footy. We're going to 4 games while we're there, Carlton V St Kilda, Geelong V Fremantle, Essendon V Brisbane and Hawthorn V Sydney.
The kids are all big footy fans which suits a footy-mad bloke like me whose motto is "Too much football is just enough"!
We'll do lots of other footy related stuff while we're there, as well as getting a bit of culture in one of the world's great cities, galleries and museums and sight-seeing and shopping etc.
But, mostly, we're going for the footy, and we can't wait.