Winter Wonderland

I have been sick for the last week and you know what that means... no excuses not to spend hours in front of the tv watching sport.

First a confession... I didn't watch the Tri Nations. I do like the current Channel 7 advertisement for this weekend's first Bledisloe Clash though. Calling Robbie Deans a losing world cup coach is a bit of a stretch though since he was in fact John Mitchell's assistant but hey who's splitting hairs here? This weekend will be very exciting with the highly anticipated inaugural meeting of Deans' Wallabies and Henry's ABs... tough to pick a winner but for once I think the focus will be on the coaches and less on the players. It'll be interesting to see what they've got.

The AFL was an interesting weekend. Need to rethink my tipping strategy though, I got 3 from 8 this week. Saints looked awesome against Hawthorne who had some questions asked they just couldn't answer. Could be good news for the Swans who are only 2 and a half games behind them on the ladder. Mind you the form the Swannies showed against Carlton is a bit concerning. Darren Jolly and Jarred McVeigh have proved themselves real assets for the Swans. McVeigh has come into his own with the Barry brouhaha getting an opportunity to show his class up forward. I also like LRT on the forward line, his hands are good and he doesn't have to make too many decisions and let's face it the ones he does make are usually not very good. Ryan O'Keefe was great and so was Paul Bevan and they had to be as Goodes was not firing on all cylinders and Kirk had the almighty responsibility of attempting to contain Chris Judd. O'Dwyer, on debut, laid some good tackles and looks promising for the future.

I was very pleased (as always) to see Collingwood go down with North Melbourne showing what happens when Dale Thomas and Travis Cloke are rendered ineffective.

Geelong are simply terrifying. If they were going to be taken it should have been this week. Admittedly the Cattery is a tough place to win but the Ling and Ablett out and with David Wojcinski a late withdrawal the time was right. As we gathered round the water cooler on Monday however, it was pointed out that Geelong are not a two man team... and wasn't that made abundantly clear on Saturday. Having said that the Bulldogs should be disappointed in their senior players. Johnson only managed a single goal and so did Scotty Welsh. Robert Murphy got none. Now I am not saying that they are a two man side but when you are behind the 8 ball you need your big guns to fire and this weekend they didn't. In the end 10 goals separated the Doggies and the Cats and if that is a grand final preview I am not sure I'd be trying for tickets.


God I love Winter!