- What the fuck?
- What are the odds of 'David Warner' and 'context-appropriate shot selection' ever being used in the same sentence?
- How much shit am I going to cop tomorrow from smug Kiwi fuckers at work unless these useless twunts extract the digit?
- Is it just me or does Ricky Ponting look vaguely Down's Syndrome?
What the fuck just happened then?
The Bluffer's Guide To Superbowl XLIII
The game.
Rugby made stupidly complicated. Four tackles to make ten yards. Bust it up the middle with running plays or hoof it up the paddock with throwing plays. Make your ten, get another four tackles. Don't make it, cough the pill up. If you're in range, get the ex-soccer player with the big chocco name to kick a field goal. If you're still stuck in your own end, chuck it to the ex-AFL dude and kick the living shit out of it so they're running it off their own goal line. Can't chuck it forward unless you're behind the advantage line (line of scrimmage). Gotta catch passes on the full. Don't belt anyone in the scone. Apart from that, pretty much open slather. Dudes who chuck it or catch it get paid more and laid more than the big fat bastards who make sure they don't get pole-axed in the attempt. Any questions?
The Superbowl.
The Superbowl gets played by the winner of the NFC and the winner of the AFC. Sorta like ARL vs Super League, or at least it was when the came up with the idea - as an attempt at unification between the two leading gridiron leagues in the country. It usually gets played somewhere warm in the first week of February. They tried it in Detroit a few years back and are unlikely to do anything as fucking stupid ever again. This year the Superbowl, number 43 in the series, is being held in Tampa, Florida, which appears to be a large seaside retirement village. The local equivalent would probably be moving the NRL Grand Final to Tweed Heads.
The teams.
The AFC champion is the Pittsburgh Steelers, who are equal with the Cowboys and the 49ers in holding the record for winning the most Superbowls (five). The Steelers' game plan is centred around the tactic of beating the living shit out of anyone who even vaguely considers matriculating the ball beyond their offensive line, and has been since their first Superbowls in the '70s. The NFC champion is the Arizona (nee St Louis, nee Chicago) Cardinals, who are the oldest surviving organisation in the league, and having sucked a suckload of suck for almost that entire period. Until this year, they were distinguished in the Superbowl era as having moved cities more times than they'd won playoff games (one.)
Both teams have a bit in common. During the war, they merged briefly, on account of the limited availability of on-field cattle given they were all off getting shot at in foreign fields. More recently, the Cards coaching staff - in particular head coach Ken Whisenhunt and offensive coordinator Russ Grimm - are ex-Pittsburgh dudes who were part of the staff who won Superbowl XL but were passed up for senior coaching roles after the retirement of head coach Bill Cowher, in favour of new Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin. As such, everyone knows a lot about how everyone else is going to play, even though they've only played each other once since all that shit went down, in the 2007 regular season (the Cards won by a touchdown).
Both teams have quarterbacks with Krauty surnames who've won Superbowls before. The Steelers have plenty of players still kicking around from their win three years ago, chief of which being QB 'Big' Ben Roethlisberger. Big Ben is lucky to be walking, let alone kicking around, having munted himself helmetless into a parked Camry on his motorbike in the off-season following the Superbowl win, and never playing the same since. Mind you he wasn't really much chop before the crash - racking up the worst stats of any winning QB in history in SB XL - and it's fair to say the Steelers' strength is and always has been defence (or dee-fense to give it its correct Septic intonation), with a series of large men ranged up with intent to cause grievous bodily harm to person or persons opposed to their bearing. The spearhead of the Steelers' D is a big Samoan fullah called Troy Polamalu - possibly the only able-bodied footballer of Islander extraction who the All Blacks haven't tried to claim as a New Zealander - who basically has a roving commission to amble about the place and fuck people up with extreme prejudice. You'll see him barrelling through the offensive line to try and sack the opposition QB as often as he'll be out in the backfield mugging some hapless wide receiver. On the offensive side, most of the Steelers' productivity goes through Superbowl XL MVP wide receiver Hines Ward - who'd been in doubt with a dodgy knee for most of the fortnight before the game, and might be a bit ropey in the match - and running back Willie Parker, another SB XL veteran who was crook for large swathes of the year but will likely be well-rested for the big game.
The Cards have been getting less respect than Kevin 07's anti-porn internerd censorship campaign, having been tipped to play like arse and lose like dogs in every game they've played in the post-season, largely based on their fairly horrible late-season form - having sewn up first place in their (fairly weak) division, they tanked like a Russian tennis pro and lost some horrible games, including 47-7 against the Patriots (who didn't even make the playoffs). However, the post-season Cards don't appear to be on speaking terms with the regular season outfit that wore the same jerseys. They've stopped throwing the ball as a first option, finally getting use out of their big-name, big-money running back Edgerrin James (The Edge - no stupid cowboy hats or lingering solos in 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' here though), and prehistoric QB Kurt Warner, who won and lost Superbowls with the St Louis Rams in the late twenties (sorry, in HIS late twenties, ten years ago) has made the most of two awesome receiving options in Anquan Boldin (you gots to love those Seppo sports dude names) and Larry Fitzgerald (OK so they're not all untrammelled gold), who's taken a bunch of AFL style pressure marks in heavy traffic to score touchdowns in the playoffs. The Cards are weaker on D, but their big dog on that side of the ball is a fullah called Antonio Smith who loves sacking people more than Donald Trump, except with more convincing hair. Strayan interests will centre on ex-Geelong captain Ben Graham who is the Cards' punter - having caught up with fellow ex-AFLer Sav Rocca during the Cards' narrow conference title win over Rocca's Philly Eagles - though Strayan interests will probably attempt to ignore the fact that in order of importance the punter is marginally behind that of the place kicker, who himself is somewhat behind that of the team bus driver, the video guy and the kid who peels the oranges at half-time.
Determinants of success: the big questions.
- Whether the Steelers' defence can deals with the Cardinals offense
- Whether the Cards' first-timers have the bottle to win on their first SB appearance
- Whether the Steelers' stable of no-name receivers can step up if Hines Ward's MCL doesn't hold up
- Whether the creaky old greybeard with the zimmer frame puts on a decent performance (equally applicable to Kurt Warner or Bruce Springsteen in the halftime show)
- Whether Springsteen will get his rack out Janet Jackson style
- Whether any company in the US actually has enough spare change in petty cash to afford the $3mill needed to buy a 30 second ad slot at halftime
- Whether your boss will actually believe your excuse for calling in sick, particularly considering he's here at the pub as well with you
- Whether there is any mass-marketed Amurikan beer that's actually worth drinking*
- Whether that Seppo backpacker chick is believing any of the bollocks you've been talking for the first three quarters of the game and is any more likely to let you shag her as you are of winning Australia's Next Top Model with your underpants on your head
Nostrildramas' Big Pick.
In a fairly ugly, grinding, defensive game - Steelers by a few.
Sorry bandwagoneering Geelong supporters, people who like watching the ball getting thrown about a bit, and a couple of hundred thousand Steeler-hatin' Cowboys fans.
The Doctor is OUT.
*This Weak was brought to you in association with MGD, $15.99 a dozen this week at Woolworths. As always check your local guides for details.
POSTSCRIPT
OPERATION ENDURING SUCK: MISSION REPORT
In breaking news we can report that the latest phase of Operation Enduring Suck was successfully executed as of 2345 hours AEDST this evening, despite the stoic efforts of the New Zealand top order who with traditional Kiwi chippiness refused to let themselves be one-upped by Australians in their special area of expertise, i.e. getting out for fuck all. Their objectives to this end were abetted by the contribution of the umpires, who would appear unable to discern their arse from their elbow without recourse to an Anatomy textbook.
6 comments:
I am certain you wrote this entire post just so you could use the word "matriculating" in context!
Great post, the Aussie cricket team suck and now I have some kind of understanding about the Superbowl. Not enough to care, but enough to convincingly pretend to care if required.
"Rugby made stupidly complicated", Rugby Union is stupidly complicated!
Even though Steelers hould win this with some comfort I'd still like to see the Cards get up.
MD- good price, good selection for Superbowl.
The goddamn bowlers have got to get their act together. NZ scored 23 off extras in a game they only won on the last ball. Australias economy rate was awful.
Good superbowl piece. Am watching the big game now. As a Cats fan I'd like to confirm my allegiance to the Cards.
Naut - absolutely. I should just explain for anyone who doesn't know that 'matriculating the football down the field' was an expression invented about 40 years ago by former Superbowl winning coach Hank Stram which has pervaded NFL parlance despite making no particular sense in English, or probably in Uzbekistani.
NFL makes union look uncomplicated, and IMO union is horrifically, near unwatchably complicated (and the ELVs haven't helped much) - and that's from a guy from northern NSW (though only private schoolboys played union where I'm from) who now lives in NZ. Ironically the guy who best explained the rules and the point behind them was an old flatmate from UNSW who came from Texas and played union at uni there.
Therbs - feelin' ya on the Cards, love to see the first timers (probably only timers) get up but it ain't looking flash at 20-7 Steelers deep in the third quarter. Didn't need a sick day in the end as our 2 yr old had an argument with a slide at the park and hairline-fractured his tibia so we've spent most of the day in and out of medical centres. Poor little bugger's now trying to figure out how to get about the place with a toe-to-thigh cast on.
Lobes - bang on - and the selectors finding us a fucking functional middle order would be a good idea as well. Marsh pulling a hammy might be a godsend, get Katich or someone else dependable in to open, bench Dangerous Dave Warner, find out where Brad Hodge got to (did the selectors lose him down the back of the couch?) and get back to having some sort of reliable backbone to the batting lineup. As for the bowlers, Tait's chucking was wider than Oprah and less reliable than a Latvian pacemaker. With Clark and Lee out, we've got nothing. Leaves you watching Kasper and Dizzy dropping it on the spot in the beach cricket thinking 'If only ICL guys weren't banned from internationals...'
Dear Dr Yobbo
Another great post.
Operation Enduring Suck - it appears OP ES has entered phase II as Ricky takes a breather for the remainder of the series. He seemed the only bloke who could score runs v the Saffers. I do not predict big things for us in this series.
It was noted in the paper this morning that the boys are going to be away for 300 days of the next twelve months. Lucky that we have so much depth!!! Thanks to that fabled First Class system of ours.
We can't put a decent team on the field at the moment- imagine what it will be like by the third Ashes test. That deadbeat PM of ours needs to stop worrying about the economy and give Cricket Australia a real serve. Unemployment on the way up while our cricket team is on the way down - coincidence? - I think not.
Hope your kid isn't to badly shaken up - and just want to make sure that you didn't actually push the kid off the slide so that you didn't have to face the jeers from the nefarious Kiwis at work - that would have been understandable - but wrong I suppose.
And I couldn't find Asahi in a 5L keg - I may have been hallucinating
The monster is fine, just slightly annoyed that his leg appears to have been swapped with the one from the Michelin Man. He has a high threshold of pain, like his mother. She married me after all.
The Kiwis - I love 'em (well some of 'em), but they're professional martyrs. 'Nuff said.
There are plenty of good cricketers in Straya - it's just that the selectors keep picking the lame, the sick, the retarded and the can-barely-walk-any-more-from-being-pounded-up-the-dirt-by-the-selectors.
Post a Comment