Essendon's progress to me is astounding. I'm even watching the replay on Foxtel as it is more enjoyable a second time around. 3 million dollars on a coaching team that will net them no more than 8 wins for the year after they were 5 wins after 8 rounds. Reminds me so much of our 2003 season when we were 6-2 and talking top 4 and finished 7-15 with Frawley gone and a wooden spoon to show for it a season later. When will footy clubs learn???
This is where we were in March
Stage 5 Optimism.
With the new pre season comes new hopes new dreams new challenges and quick fix solutions. By January these Bombers will have well and truly had that abhorrent year behind them so the law of averages says a club like the Bombers cannot stay out of the finals for too long in the modern era. Plus Santa brought me a new Essendon polo so that is definentely a good omen isn't it? Geez I can't wait till casual Friday at work and I can wear this collared masterpiece and show my true colours to all those bastards. Plus I have had enough of this cricket bring on the footy I am an Essendon fan yeah yeah yeah. Carn the Bombers.
Pre season Grand Final loses to the reigning premiers can only inflate the hype and when you beat a team of kids and a club in their first AFL season by 139 points in round 6 well the lid is well and truly off.
When Essendon lost to Richmond and Melbourne a month ago we were here.
Stage 6 What the eff/anger2.
Surely we cannot be that bad surely we can't keep
losing the way he have been. After all we managed to coax blokes from the VFL who have failed already in their attempts at AFL football to come back and play AFL football. That in itself is a top 6 job isn't it? The guys we have recruited are really good why do we keep losing? Our coach has good intentions. This is so mind boggling. I just can't fathom as to why we are not winning. We are not poo. With a bit of luck things will change I am sure of that. We are better than a 5-17 side I will tell you that, stuff what anyone says. Its time to fly the flag for the footy club what's the talk back hotline for SEN?
Even last week after the Skataboners from their tin sheds out at the abbatoirs beat them we were here
Stage 8 Embarrassment.
Realising you have become the butt of jokes from your circle of friends you find a happy medium where you love the game and go to the games
without your friends who conveniently support better sides but on the plus side you have no expectation or any goals. You find the train trip to the G or Dome quite daunting wearing your Essendon polo or trackie jacket that Santa so thoughtfully brought you, as fans from real loser clubs like North , Bulldogs, St Kilda and Hawthorn look at you like a cheshire cat who just ate the cream with a sly grin on their face laughing at your pathetic choice of team. You console yourself with the fact that they have never supported a club that had the pedigree of your team. However your current plight almost makes their annual failure for the last 100 years worth it as they may break their greatest winning margin against you each time you face them.
Devoid of pride and answers you avoid the water cooler at work on Monday as management tend to chew the fat there over the weekends footy results and your presence there no matter how brief may invoke an anti Bomber rhetoric which will make you look like a real idiot and hold you back from any promotion that you may be in line for. You have stopped sitting with the stigmatised clappers at the ground on match days. Stories of Baby Bombers and losing 1 game for the entire season become as tiresome as Collingwood's 1958 premiership anecdotes. In a last form of indignity towards you the sweet virginal girl at work with the figure of a model and a pair of t@s hand sculpted from the deepest regions of your fiendish mind who you have fantasized bending over the photocopy machine in that deviant mind of yours, who doesn't even talk to anyone unless she's spoken to overhears a conversation between you and a few workmates on a Monday in the work tea room while she is boiling water for her morning coffee and sifting through the family assorted bikkies in the tin trying to prize out a sought after Scotch Finger from the 60 Granitas nobody wants to eat. Your talking about the weekend footy and all of a sudden she is compelled to tell you she's a Collingwood fan and that 1990 was her favourite year and that years Grand Final was her favourite footy game ever growing up just to rub it in a little further after your Anzac Day loss to the Pies over the weekend. Without a meaningful response and not wanting to seem stupid and rude in case she lets her guard down one Friday night drinks night and hence ruin your chance of a quality root you roll your eyes back in a joking way as if you are ignoring her and you keep your responce to yourself. Much to your workmates amusement after she retires to her trusty pod back in the office they fall into sidesplitting laughter whilst your face turns red much like your teams sash on their jumper. Now your a two time loser you follow a crappy team and you ain't getting near this dame come Friday nite drinks no matter how much she's gonna drink. Moral of the story- Even people who you did not think could or would be threatening are making you feel threatened and are now scoring brownie points against you all because you follow a team that is the laughing stock of the competition.This creates another office problem -Scabbing smokes when you run out is becoming dangerous as somebody who has a spare one may ark up at you and remind you of your place in the football jungle whilst you are still trying to separate the Longbeach/Peter Jackson smokers from the Dunhill, Winfield/ Peter Stuyvesant smokers and you then have to subject yourself to an inferior smoke merely because the person you are asking has no idea on football and you need to fulfill that nicotine urge in your mind that will in turn take away the stress piled on you by these unlikely threatening people.
Now we are here
Stage 9 Rage. Weekend comes around and for the umpteenth time in the last few years its a pivotal game against a much more credentialled and battle hardened team. Win and you have a golden ticket into the finals. Your season is set up and you can pinpoint that game as the defining moment in which you launched your premiership or final 8 thrust. Lose and its mothballs with all the standard soulsearching questions and emotions. Guess what you lose.... badly............Poor skills, poor decison making by players, players playing in a reckless and undisciplined way, coach playing players who should have been dropped weeks ago due to their poor form and committment all make your blood boil after all you have been witness to this for the last 5 or so years. In fact lets be real frank about this you were never in this game either with the margin ballooning to greater proportions at the end of each quarter. However to your credit you keep your dignity and hold all your raging emotions in check until......... a trivial mistake by a player at a point in the game where you have no chance of winning makes you start to brood like Ted Bundy in a sorority house full of brunette haired women parted in the middle. Come the final siren you break the shackles and restraint is a futile exercise as you start throwing merchandise off your own body down onto the race as the players silently and solemnly trundle in after their awful loss. You continue by throwing your membership at the coach who chose a quick fix solution to see out his contract rather than go the full rebuild and call SEN and all other forms of radio media to express your vitriolic opinion on why your club is crap and mutton dressed up as lamb and how long will this run of crap last. Blah blah blah. You even make it on the news with the terms crisis, failure, disaster and catastrophe describing the story of your clubs shocker of a game with an image of you right in the middle of the screen giving the spray of all sprays and giving the beleagured coach another headache in his herculian task of lifting a side that can't lift.
