Clerk: Be seated.
Chair: Good evening, gentlemen. Tonight ...
COUNSEL: Objection, m’Lord. An A Priori Assumption.
Clerk [quietly]: Ducks on the pond.
Chair: Counsel, there’s no need for titles. This isn’t a formal court and I’m not a Lord. And anyway, I haven’t said anything yet so whatever you are objecting to, it’s out of order.
Clerk [louder]: Ducks on the pond, m’Lord.
Chair: I heard you the first time, Clerk. Yes, I see there are women present. Now, as I was saying, The Bill is on at 8.30 tonight and I don’t intend missing it. In this case, The League versus Gavin Malone, we’ve seen people like you up here before ...
Counsel: Objection, your Honour. Ab Initio, people like whom?
Chair: Footballers, Counsel. Do you have a problem with that? Is your client not a footballer?
Counsel: Oh.
Chair: Yes, I thought so. Tonight, to speed things up, we’ll start with the sentence and work backwards. Gavin Malone, you are sentenced to 10 weeks suspension. How do you plead?
Counsel: Objection, your Honour. It’s an Abuse of Discretion to ask a player to plead before the charge is read.
Chair: Order! I remind Counsel that no lawyers are allowed on the other side of this bench. Are you a lawyer, Counsel?
Counsel: Not yet, your Honour.
Chair: Good. Let’s keep it that way, shall we? And let’s keep the legal constructs for another place. Now, Malone, how do you plead?
Malone: Guilty, your Honour, but I didn’t mean to hurt him.
Chair: Good boy. Eight weeks. Now, who has the charge?
Reporting Officer: The alleged footballer Malone struck another player with a closed fist.
Chair: Umpire, what happened next?
UMPIRE: He fell down.
Chair: And then what?
UMPIRE: And then what what?
Chair: Is that all you have to say?
UMPIRE: Just about.
Chair: That’s pathetic. Let’s take another couple of weeks off. Six weeks. Who had the closed fist?
UMPIRE: Malone.
Chair: Who was the other player?
UMPIRE: I’d prefer not to say.
Counsel: On a point of order regarding Admissible Evidence, Mister Speaker …
Chair: Be quiet, Counsel. You’re not in the House. Now listen, Umpire. Unless you name the other player, there is no case here. If this is the best you have, you’re the one who is in trouble.
UMPIRE: It was the brother.
Chair: What was the brother?
UMPIRE: Malone.
Counsel: Objection! My client can’t be two people, Ad Seriatim.
Chair: What?
UMPIRE: The brother was the one who Malone hit with the closed fist.
[pandemonium in the room.]
Chair: Order! Order! Bailiff, put some clothes over that naked man.
[pause. order is restored.]
Chair: Now, Umpire, let’s go though this slowly. You say that Malone hit the brother Malone with a closed fist. Is that your general thrust?
UMPIRE: Malone did it, not me.
Chair: Yes, yes. Is that your allegation?
UMPIRE: Malone hit the brother.
Chair: Now listen to me, Umpire. I invite you to consider your response to this question very carefully. Are you aware that these two Malone boys play for the same team?
UMPIRE: Not when he hit him.
Chair: I beg your pardon.
UMPIRE: When he hit him, they weren’t playing.
Chair: Oh, so the three of you were in the car park after the game, I suppose, settling bets on the outcome of the match.
UMPIRE [amazed]: You’ve got it in one, your Honour.
Chair [unfazed]: So what made you think you could report him?
UMPIRE: Orbus est nunquam mortuus, your Grace.
Chair: Now I’ve heard just about everything. In this case, I find…
COUNSEL: May I Approach the Bench, your Honour?
Chair: You may not.
COUNSEL: I’d like to make an Admission against Interest.
Chair: I don’t care. The case against Malone is dismissed. Umpire, cancel your appointments with the hair stylist for a couple of weeks and, Counsel …
COUNSEL: Yes, your Honour?
Chair: The next time you appear here, I’ll expect that you may have moved forward from Section A in whatever manual of legal terms you are using.
COUNSEL: I’ll try, your Honour.
Clerk: All rise.

There’s only one Nigel Smart

Verbatim: The Language Quarterly published a wonderful essay by Pete May about British soccer chants, republished by Harcourt Inc in 2001. Many of the chants are familiar to Australian crowds, especially the variations of the Spanish song Guantanemera. We know this chant well. Gary Ablett, there’s only one Gary Ablett. It’s a chant for all seasons. Insert Stewie Dew or Fergus Watts and it still works well and is flexible. As May wrote, England had two players named Gary Stevens in the 1986 World Cup squad and the fans sang Two Gary Stevens! There’s only two Gary Stevens! In another variation, one club taunted its opposition with Sing when you’re winning, you only sing when you’re winning. One coastline club responded with Sing when we’re fishing, we only sing when we’re fishing! Another version was sung when a player missed a shot: Score in a brothel, you couldn’t score in a brothel!

AAMI Stadium chants are brain-dead. Ad-dee-laide…Clap…Clap…Clap. Pow-err…Clap…Clap…Clap. Just in case you can’t follow this metronomic complexity, it’s up there on the big screen after every goal, week after week, year after year for the fans of both clubs. Victorian commentators are correct when they call AAMI Stadium moronville. The people in the PA/Big Screen broadcasting box should have their contracts paid out right now, be given digital watches and told to never apply for this job again. And tenders should be invited.

On Sunday, June 20 the inadequacies of that control box were revealed, starkly. Deep in the last quarter, with the game won, the crowd started a soulful lament. Nigel, Nigel, Nigel. It was a chant for the last First Crow and for 14 years of bitter sweet sensations, half-way through Adelaide’s worst season. Given the size of the stadium, it was the only chant which could maintain fidelity. After the final siren rang, for once the Adelaide crowd had stayed in their seats for Nigel Smart’s last moment. I expected Nigel, Nigel, Nigel to reverberate around the stadium for 10 minutes as he stood in the centre and drank in the feeling of the people. But No! Those idiots in the control box played the club song over the tacky PA over and over again as the crowd slowly dispersed with their singing voices mute and their tails between their legs. Those idiots turned a significant moment into just another exercise in crowd control. Damn them!
One last steal from the Pete May story – and this one comes from the 1960s. When Liverpool took possession in those years, the fans often chanted Attack! Attack! Attack! Once, a cat ran onto the pitch. Those fans, unfettered by a braindead PA control box, chanted A cat! A cat! A cat!

Rising, shining

At Round 13’s end, Adelaide conceded a spot in the final eight. It shifted its bar and that’s a good thing. For years, a Fremantle weekly refused to acknowledge the existence of the WC Eagles and published their premiership tables as if there were only 15 teams in the competition. Adelaide fans should now treat the bottom eight as if there is no top eight and thus aim at a good finish. Ninth equals top, tenth equals second. You get the drift.
I have Adelaide finishing at 7-15 for a useful third in the second rung and a position from which it can mount a return to the real world.

If it trades some quality players for first round draft picks, if it shakes out some corporate complacency, if training is more invigorating, if its flush of youth creates a new culture, if there is a new club song, if other clubs slow down for five minutes, if those bastards in the PA box are given the boot, some of us will renew our season tickets.
The Power’s season is beautifully poised. At 9-4, Port has survived 13 weeks of savage injury. Many key players are fresh, ready for the next 13 weeks – nine minor rounds and four finals. Right now, you expect each team to beat those below it. Port faces St Kilda in Round 14 and Melbourne in Round 19. I have them at 17-5 and third to St Kilda and Brisbane at the end of the minor round.

Mark Williams is enjoying himself this year and may be dissolving his finals voodoo as Adelaide’s ghosts disappeared one by one in its premiership years.

Michelangelo Rucci, bless him, has kept the hometown focus on the Adelaide board, Carey and Ayres for a string of laughable headlines during some of the moments when Port has stumbled this season. Port has a media-cold zone at the moment, to its advantage.

The focus is on St Kilda and Brisbane, with increasing attention being paid to Melbourne as a non-pretender and Geelong as a dark horse. Round 14 won’t change things that much, whatever the result, but if Melbourne holds its ascendancy, a defeat to Port in Round 19 will give the competition an enormous national wake-up call. Port’s charge, then, will suddenly be red-hot. Game on!