In the first of a new series, our resident medic trains his stethoscope on Punt Road.
If you are a Tiger, you would be feeling quite toothless right now - 25 years of failure, made of five consecutive five-year plans that have produced three wooden spoons. If I was a vet, I'd call for the tranquilliser; not for the tiger but for you.
Still, as a doctor, I feel well-qualified to fix it, so the AFL's champion of broken promises can leap 15 rungs and win the 2005 AFL premiership. How? By not changing a thing.
I consider 2004 a season full of interesting portents from the league's anorexic heavyweight. Four wins were scavenged from a possible 22. More ominous are the VFL/AFL records that show the Yellow and Black have not beaten 2005 premier Port Adelaide since 1998 or, for that matter, some club called University since 1914.
But this is where the bad news stops. On the field, Ty Zantuck, a backman who walks as though carrying invisible suitcases, has a public breakdown. It is, as we say in psychiatry, "positive anger". He can take no more and slams Hawk Mark Williams' rag-doll head into the MCG mud over and over again.
Then he pleads to leave Richmond. He's sick of the senior players. The club says yes, but counters he's a disruptive influence. So what senior players are the club protecting?
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Surely it's not Darren Gaspar, the $600,000 defender whose house is hermetically sealed because he's allergic to dust. It might be Wayne Campbell, the only AFL footballer in history to do a career-threatening injury celebrating someone else's goal. It's not David Rodan, aka the Human Vacuum Cleaner, because he's too young to be old, and everyone loves young Krakouer, despite the fact the kid hardly touches the footy.
Most probably, Zantuck is sick of Richo, the big No. 12 who runs as though remote-controlled by a giddy four-year-old girl in pig tails.
At the end of season 2004, a fellow called Plough replaced another called Spud to mastermind a five-year plan, presumably one with a rural theme. Lying on the couch in my 24-hour psychotherapy surgery, Plough revealed his new forward strategy. Campbell will play forward-pocket and kick 25 goals, or, in Tiger leadership speak, be injured 25 times.
Nathan Brown will be in the other pocket to kick 40 or so. Richo will patrol the centre half-forward line for Iraqi terrorists and bees.
How did that make you feel, Plough? I asked. Plough said he held a man-to-man conference with Richo. He took the superstar through the strategy on the club whiteboard but warned him not to go too far the other way and stray into the back line, especially near Zantuck.
"There will be an invisible electric fence five metres beyond the centre half-forward line," he said. "If you cross it, you will be zapped!"
Richo startled and got up to leave. He missed the door, had another go, missed it, had another go, missed it. "Go straight at the door!" Plough said. He had another go, missed it, then finally walked straight through the middle.
But, as Plough confessed, if Richo swallows the invisible electric fence thing, he may be too scared to move at all.
The Tiger Army are on the march. The only way is up. Football is played in the mind and that loon Zantuck and his baggage are not gone yet. He is the future and should be captain.
I'm not a vet. I can't physically help a sick tiger. But in this case, I don't need to. At Tigerland, it ain't broke, so for goodness sake, don't fixx it.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2004/11/26/1101219746191.html
