A triumph for footy, for a number of reasons

by NEIL BELFORD

SOME post-grand final observations...

1. Malthouse is a hoax.

He was found out again, basically he is an alpha male with no idea, which I don't really care about, but he has spent his career trying to do to football what England does to soccer - with predictable results when it really counts, but it is really boring for the rest of us in between times..

However because of his success with those early 1990s Eagles he actually changed the course of the game for five or six years. If Leigh Matthews had been made coach of the Eagles in 1989 they would have won every flag from 1990 to 1995 but such was Malthouse's ineptitude he lost the unlosable in 1991, and didn't get close in 1993 when the side should have been at its peak..

If for some freak of history (like every Brisbane player got SARS on the flight to Melbourne) and Collingwood had won this year, it would have taken the game until 2008 to recover..

I can't believe the media let Malthouse blame the players. True to the bully Malthouse is, it is always someone else's fault. It wouldn't have mattered if Anthony 'sook' Rocca had played, Jason 'sook' Cloke was there to reveal what a loss he wasn't when it counted. Both those players needed to be told, in public, by their own coach, what they did was stupid and they got everything they deserved..

Malthouse needed to tell them to demonstrate a bit of true courage and take their punishment like real men. Like they respectively didn't after they respectively belted someone who wasn't looking - but that is not the road a culture of sooks takes..

Bullies are always sooks..

Anyway it was as plain as the nose on your face that for Collingwood to have a chance they needed to take Steve McKee and probably Jarrod Malloy into the final, but Malthouse has this curious article of faith that you don't need ruckmen. .

Sorry - to win flags you need ruckmen in spades. And on the brink the great Malthouse panicked, and played his show-pony loose man in defence as a centre half forward. Presumably he didn't want Jonathon Brown exposing how ordinary the Cloke kid is when he has to play on someone.

2. Eddie McGuire.

Well I think McGuire might have had an epiphany at about the 10 minute mark of the last quarter..

Sooks never win, not really, not ever..

But they often get close, up to a point being a bully and a sook works. Collingwood has the biggest culture of sooking in the history of the universe, they make it an art form. .

The captain is the biggest sook of all, if he really wanted to make a statement he would give Michael Voss the Norm Smith medal that is rightly his, but because of the relentless McGuire marketing to the media, Voss was ridiculously overlooked. .

That marketing will never win a flag for you though..

But back to McGuire's epiphany, he was quite different this year to last year. He was in fine sook form last year, blaming Brisbane for being better. As did his coach and team. .

This year he had the sense to congratulate Brisbane, and tell the minions off for booing them. It must have dawned on him what the attributes of a champion are. That single fact is the brightest light on a gloomy horizon for Collingwood. When they stop being legends in their own lunchtime the club might actually taste success..

But the road ahead is black indeed when McGuire can't order the sook team to get out of their comfy seats for Sunday lunch and go out on the ground at Sook Stadium and console the 5000 faithful who came along to the wake anyway. Gutless actually - that act was worse than anything that happened on the ground on the Saturday and would not have happened at any other club.

3. The Melbourne press was so so wrong.

They really are one small to average sized brain with about 60 pairs of hands. Looking at the playing lists on Saturday morning I was wondering what drugs they were on installing Collingwood as favourites. In fact I was starting to question my own sanity..

Congratulations to each and every one of those Collingwood kids for making it but really they had no chance, and the outcome was only distorted by the fact that Brisbane went off about 10 minutes before the final siren blew. So this fit, rested, team of ordinary triers that haven't travelled since about round three did about as well as you would have expected of them.

4. Brisbane Lions.

Awesome - Unless they are playing Freo, I hope they make it four, they are everything that champions are. No 'quality people' here, no stage managed media performers, instead you have fantastic football players like Martin Pike, Jonathon Brown, Jason Akermanis and so on. Ask a question - you get an answer. .

5. Leigh Matthews..

He has in common with Malcolm Blight, the fact that he was actually a champion so he doesn't need to dominate or bully his players. He is quite happy to let them be champions in their own right, and he does everything he can to facilitate this. .

It is so refreshing.

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