inside word on AFL 2008 - Carlton are losers

I don’t know all that much about the AFL, and I care even less. I know about as little as it’s possible to know, while living in Melbourne and glancing at the sports pages every couple of weeks.

But I do have an idea of the rules and how it all works in a general sort of way. Which makes me worry a bit about the Carlton team, who I ran into on the tan this morning.

The first thing is they were walking up and down Anderson street in a big bunch, stretching right across the path. I thought at first they were afraid they might get lost, but decided on reflection they simply had no awareness of the other people trying to use the path.

Call me naive, but I always assumed positional awareness might be a good thing in an AFL player - to know where you are on the playing field and where everyone else is. Brendon Fevola clearly hasn’t mastered this, on this morning’s evidence.

Secondly, as I said above, they were walking. Aren’t they supposed to be elite athletes? Shouldn’t they be able to run? I did 6 reps of Anderson Street, and they only did two.

Slackers.

Running
Anderson Street reps this morning. 12km all up.

Cricket
It seems the Indian Cricket team have taken their bat and ball and are threatening to go home. As far as I can make out it’s because little Harbajhan called little Andrew a monkey. Or perhaps it’s because he didn’t call him a monkey. I’m not sure: it’s all a bit hard to follow.

Also, Ricky Ponting may or may not be a “cheater” and the umpires make the rules up as they go along (six and out and stuff).

They’re not alone in acting childishly of course: everyone involved seems to be a bit worked up, encouraged by armies of people writing in to the newspapers who clearly have too much spare time on their hands.

The sensible thing would be for India to shut up, play the next test and try to actually win for once. Seeing as we’re talking about people who can spend whole days discussing “googlies” and “silly mid-ons”, sensible probably isn’t an option.