I swear I’ll get zero work done today. I’m so excited with the Aussie vs South Africa Test Series about to start. When it’s summer, in Australia, I can tell you that cricket’s the number one game in town. Just ask anyone around.

Pitch Report

Have been reading from the curator, he reckons the wicket was slow last year due to the domestic T20 final being 3 days prior to the WACA test and that stuffed his preperation. Surely we can chuck this garbage cricket indoors or something, just don’t fúck with our Test Cricket.

So here’s hoping for a green top that gives the Aussie and Saffa quicks all the assistance they could ask for. I want to see the WACA back to being the fastest and meanest pitch on earth.

Injuries

Stu Clark’s elbow giving up is terrible news for the Baggy Greens. Fortunately Side-Siddle is no slouch, he’s got a lot of heart and will bowl all day uphill into the wind, then rather than rest up in the lunch break he’ll get out his favourite axe and chop some wood in a relaxing David Foster tribute.

Fantasies

My fantasy team, the “Hairy backed sheilas”, is looking pretty good, despite being unable to afford all the NSW players and Hussey. Seems the folks at cricinfo have priced the Blues out of contention, which is understandable as we fúcking rock. In the end Lee had to be dropped, his pricetag of 100k was making it tough to get Clarke and Haddin.

The only good thing to come out of Clark’s injury is Siddle happens to be the cheapest bowler on the park, meaning I can afford more NSW players.

It’s time to claim my prize from the Chappell/Hadlee series, I’d like JRod to write a review of the 2007 Sheffield Shield final in the style of a madly patriotic New South Wales supporter.

Cliché Tossers

I’m honestly not too worried about the toss in Perth, it’s more what we do with it. Batting or Bowling there’s going to be opportunity to impose your will on the series. I’ll be upset to miss the cliché’s due to work so will have a go myself. The bowling team will want to take early wickets to put pressure on the middle order. They can do this by bowling in good areas and pitching it up to allow prodigious swing with the assistance of the good Doctor Fremantle.

What colour was the couch?

South Africa certainly used to be the All Blacks (Rugby World Cup vintage) of Cricket, but have they grown up? Ponting’s been trying real hard to get Smith to talk, alas young Graeme’s learnt a lot from his chronic foot in mouth of 1995. The saffas have Duncan Armstrong on the staff too, and I hear that he’s been involved in beating Australia in the past.

Donald Duck forgets to run

Anti-Siphoning

On advice from a Beer and Sport reader that I met in the pub (how random, I have a reader!), I’m going to keep my bítching about institutions to a minimum and will seriously try and get it out of the way in advance.

Perth Tests are always the worst for Aussie audiences getting rectªlly reamed by Channel 9. The schedule of play for NSW/VIC is

• 1st Session: 1:30pm to 3:30pm
• 2nd Session: 4:10pm to 6:10pm
• 3rd Session: 6:30pm to 8:30pm

For those of us who have jobs, that third session looks prime for watching on the telly, however, those fúcksticks put on their shíthouse news and current affairs shízer so we get nothing between 6pm and 7pm. Sometimes they’ll delay the news by 10 minutes, so we’ll see the end of session two, but miss the first 40 mins of session 3.
Best of all Foxtel are forbidden from showing it as channel 9′s right to exclusive coverage is protected by law. Even though they’re not actually showing it, so, by law, they have the right to deny me coverage of the cricket. C9′s Sydney number is (02) 9906-9999 and I’ll be sure to call and yell abuse at 6:31pm.

Crystal Ball

Sure the Saffas have 2 guys who bowl over 150kph and swing it. We’ve got three.
Sure they’ve got a spinner who can contain, we’ve got one who turns it and takes wickets.
Sure they’ve got a settled and in form batting line-up. Um.. oh dear.
I’m with Oooh Aaah. 3-0 to the Aussies.

Inspired by the Aethiest’s viddy-blogs, my wife and I choose to redo Toutai Kefu’s match winning try from the 2001 Bledisloe Cup in Sydney.

The comp was meant to be judged on 3/10/08 at 3pm but as yet there’s been no announcement of who won the trip for 4 to Hong Kong on 1/11/08. Well fingers crossed

The latest accusations are led by former Kiwi prop John Drake, who has assumed position as un-official spokesperson for the All Blecks front row, clearly perceiving them as a weakness and requiring a spokesperson to influence the referee. The story goes that our front row’s high body position during the “Crouch” causes the opposition pack to have to come up which puts them off.

Obviously not one to let physics get in the way of a good scrummage, Drake is ideally qualified to comment considering he watched the game on TV. He goes on to say “They probably cheated at scrum time.” Strong words indeed.

For the sake of clarity, here is IRB Law 20 (i)

A crouched position is the extension of the normal stance by bending the knees sufficiently to move into the engagement without a charge.

To Summarise, Knees bent = No cheat.

Someone slightly closer to the team, the Blecks forwards coach Steve Hansen has weighed in questioning the manner in which Burgess “spun the ball into the scrum.” Checking the relevant law, 20.6 (b)

The scrum half must hold the ball with both hands, with its major axis parallel to the ground and to the touchline over the middle line between the front rows, mid-way between knee and ankle.

Hansen may in fact have a point, if indeed Burgess is spinning the ball in rather than rolling it. Will have to check the footage on this one to be sure.

Well, on the oh so delicate subject of cheating, now that Richie McCheat is unfit we need to start some accusations of our own. Here’s a few to get started

Rodney Rodney So’olialo – lying all over the ball
Jerome Kaino – offside at lineout
Daniel Braid – doing it all night, all night ref
Andrew Hore – doesn’t throw straight
Ali Williams – grabbing the man in the air
Brad Thorn – throws people on their back causing unrelated groin injuries
Tony Woodcock – collapses scrum, weak as piss
Greg Sommerville – boring in
Anthony Tuitavake – late tackles
Ma’scar’a Nonu – drug cheat
Richard Kahui – not back 10m from free kick
Sitiveni Sivivatu – wife beater
Dan Carter – entire team in front of kicker

The Softboks under their head token puppet have developed a culture that can only be described as “Eddie Jones”. John Smit is leading by example and thinks that blaming his groin injury on Thorn’s dirty dump all and sundry to forget that he played on for 30 minutes after the fact.

Bok management are going on ad-nauseum that the judiciary is weighted in favour of Kiwi’s after Thorn got 1 week and Bismark missed 1 game for an eye gouge. Conveniently they’ve gone quiet on Bakkies Botha getting off scot free from concussing Stirling Mortlock in an off the ball incident.

Game 4 is going to be a thriller in a Sydney. The Blecks are likely to get back their captain while the Wallabies are sans Mortlock.

Ryan Cross is likely to start at 13, with Tim Tam Tahu likely to pick up his first bench spot. The Wallabies certainly have a league flavour to them, with 6, 12, 13, 14 and 19 all having spent time in the pokie subsidised code.

While in reality our chances of winning back the Bledisloe were sold by the ARU for Hong Kong Dollars, it’s a great chance for Robbie Deans to get one up on his former NZRU masters.

Bring It On!

I don’t like Peter DeVilliers. I don’t believe that he’s the best man for the job. Actually, I don’t believe he’s in the top 5 best men for the job, however he is likely the best black man for the job, no wonder he’s been branded Peter the Puppet. But he’s not the target of today’s blog.

I used to think that John Smit was a pretty good player and captain who commanded respect. Now I Smite Smit. He’s accused Brad Thorn of “unsportsmanlike conduct” and claimed that the “spear tackle” caused the groin injury that ended his tour.

Bullsh1t. He played on for 30 minutes after the Thorn hit, and from Watching the footage he was unimpaired until:

IMO; it [the injury] happens at the 35:40 mark when he is caught up on one leg driving against Williams. He goes up high on his right leg and the inertia rotates him outward, ouch I can feel my own, there is a slightly audilble yell and after tumbling down on the right side of the breakdown, he is very slow to get up and when he does, he is limping. During the ruck, you can see him struggling to get his left leg back on the ground.

Prior to that, I tracked him from the 29:50 mark and he is fine. From this point: he drove hard into 3 breakdowns, ran back 30 meters after AB grubber, no limp, and seconds later a strong, low driving tackle on Thompson at 30:26, Not the kind a person with a severe groin pull makes, all this while continuing to scrummage and generally get aroung the field. The same tackle that Nesbitt so strongly credited Burger with but it was Smit that drove him back. To me it is clear, and clearly unsportsmanlike to falsely accuse Thorn.

(thanks to Will the thrill for the quote).

Smit goes on to say “I’m really not happy about having to sit in South Africa and watch the Springboks beat the All Blacks in Dunedin.” I guess he’ll be f’ucking spewing when the Sprinboks lose in Dunedin.