Round 20 - St.Kilda v Hawthorn

Friday 9 August 2013, Etihad Stadium

Walk a mile in Buddy's Shoes 

Hawthorn has been using Buddy for six years to sell memberships and promote the club, so it’s only fair that Buddy use Hawthorn to promote his new Buddy boots.

"These boots are made
for sittin'"

Breaking his six month silence on his contract negotiations and using the launch of his new range of footwear to announce that he ‘wanted to stay at Hawthorn’ may not have shed any real light on his intentions for next season, but it certainly guaranteed that his product launch made the news on every TV channel and other associated media outlet.

As free advertising stunts go, it was straight from the manual – make an ad newsworthy and save on marketing costs.

And just to ensure all angles were covered, Buddy’s occasional confidante and current Ashes combatant, Kevin Peterson, also got tweeting about the boots. That made the news too.  Though not as much as KP’s silicon accessories. Though that might have just been a silly-con

Perhaps if Buddy had been able to convince James Hird to say he’d drunk AOD-9604 from the Buddy boot and got a heckler to hurl one at Kevin Rudd during the leaders’ debate, he’d have achieved saturation coverage – and possibly hero status if the shoe hit.

In the end, Buddy didn’t play in Friday night’s match against St.Kilda, which gave him a chance to do a half time interview on Channel 7, where guess what, he was able to spruik his boots again. It’s what Tom Waterhouse calls an ‘embedded’ commercial.

So all power to Buddy and long may we walk a mile in his shoes, or Buddy boots, or as Amy Winehouse calls them, her “Fuck me pumps.”

We’ll buy the Buddy boots anyway to go with our Nena + Paesadena t-shirts. We’re just waiting on his line of fragrances and lingerie. I’m not joking…I drink beer from a Buddy stubby holder, why wouldn’t I spray on ‘Buddy Odour’ and wear ‘Buddy Briefs’? (Hey Buddy – those names are trademarked ok.)

Rock the Whitten Bar

It’s fair to say that without Buddy, the match lost a bit of its cache, notwithstanding the insight-less Channel 7 half-time interview.

"I'm telling you Tony, Roughy's kicked four"

Most post-match reports about the game suggest it was a dour and boring affair; only marginally less dull and predictable than Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott’s leaders’ debate.  Some even found it more harrowing viewing than Patrick’s death in ‘Offspring’, while others were so lulled into a comatose state they turned over to the Fourth Test looking for sporting action.

This is not to say it compared to the infamous ‘shame game’ between these two teams from 2007. This was a veritable goal feast compared to that match. But even so, it was the sort of game that the app ‘Snapchat’ was designed for: short 1-10 second grabs that are automatically deleted. OK, so ‘Snapchat’ was mainly invented for sexting, but that isn’t to say it doesn’t have other applications, like footy matches with five or so separate moments that might be construed into highlights worth posting to someone. (You have to wonder how it is that staff for the former US Congressman – note the ‘former’ – and current New York City mayoral candidate, Anthony Weiner, never told him about a sexting app that deleted the evidence.)

But the match had its highlights: we won the very first centre clearance, which after last week is something worth celebrating. Sewell took it from the bounce and fired it into our much heralded multi-pronged, uber-forwards…um, Spangher and Grimley.  Really, how seriously was Clarko taking this game?

For the second consecutive week, Cyril seemed a bit off the pace, so much so that by the second quarter, Bruce Macavney observed that he looked a bit “wider in the hips” – they were Bruce’s exact words. Talk about how to give a bloke body issues.  If Cyril is ‘wide in the hips’ what does that make Stewart Dew?

The Rough was also evidently bored and decided to take matters into his own hands, grabbing a spilt ball and storming into goal for his second. Gunston slotted a nice set shot and Spangher kicked one off the ground. A 5.10 quarter was wasteful, but still set up a reasonably good half-time lead.

For the third quarter I found myself in the Whitten bar which is behind glass on Level 2 behind the goals. I don’t know which end; I can’t tell the two ends apart at Etihad – not unless they called them the ‘Dunstall’ and ‘Huddo’ ends. Seriously, who are Lockett and Coventry? In any case it was an ideal location for even though I couldn’t really see much, the only action that took place happened right in front of me. The Rough took a kick from the goal square, but the first I knew of it was when the ball thundered into the glass right next to me. It was quite exhilarating to see the ball that had just come off The Rough’s toe so close. It must have been how the Navy Seals felt when they turned a corner and found Osama Bin Laden right in front of them.

Isaac Smith also kicked a nice long goal in the third, but that was about it. Likewise for the final quarter – Breust took a nice strong one-handed, not-looking mark, and goaled, but on the whole it wasn’t a classic encounter. It was to football what the Rudd-Abbott debate was compared to a Hawke-Fraser debate from 83.

It’s worth noting however, that for a number of weeks now, our best players have been Smith, Stratton, Puopolo and Savage – who finally has a haircut that lives up to his name; he looks like Joe Strummer from the ‘Rock The Casbah’ era Clash.


Final scores: Hawthorn 14 18 102  d   St.Kilda 7 14 56


What we learned: that being a person of interest to the media is the same as having your country stolen, your culture desecrated and your people slain and disbanded. Speaking at a lunch before the Sydney Collingwood match, Eddie Maguire equated the ‘absolute injustice’ he felt at being ‘done over by the media’ (can you believe he said that without any apparent irony?) gave him insight into the daily life of Indigenous people in Australia. If it wasn’t so laughable, it would be laughable.

Jobe Watson after Dr Reid's latest
course of supplements 

What we already knew: Essendon and four of its henchmen; Hird, Cochoran, Thompson and Reid, have been charged with bringing the game into disrepute. Really, what’s new? Essendon has been bringing the game into disrepute for over 100 years.  Just while they’re thinking of penalties, perhaps they should force on them a new away strip - this perhaps?