As mentioned earlier in the companion piece to this, morning 3 of the 2002/03 Ashes Test at the Gabba saw Your Correspondent slightly below average in terms of his intestinal fortitude. One was, not to put too fine a point on it, travelling fucking shithouse thanks for asking. Though, to be fair, not feeling quite so profoundly ill as Engerland captain Nasser Hussain who on day one had won the toss, chose to field (on the 'advice' of Qld captain Stuart Law, thusly responsible for one of the most spectacular bum steers in Ashes history) and watched aghast as Straya piled on 2/364 by stumps. By the third day it was looking pretty fucking grim for the Three Lions, finally getting a turn with the bat but still needing 130-odd to avoid the follow-on with nine wickets left in the shed.Didn't seem to deter the Barmy Army though, who were singing as loudly and as proudly about the dirty convict origins of their welcoming hosts and the copulative habits of their dubious womenfolk as forcefully as they had when Haydos and the Brown Nosed Gnome had trotted out to open the Strayan first innings on Morning One. While the tale of the scoresheet was profoundly in the home team's favour, as England wickets fell like... well, England wickets, the tale of the songsheet was anything but. To put it mildly, we were getting fucking tonked.
(As well as tanked. Obviously.)
So what to come back with in a situation like that?
Butt sex. Obviously. Version 1.0 of same ('Pommies take it up the arse') having sank like a kebab-enriched grog bog, we moved onto version 2.0, pioneered by Moff's mate Petersen - he of post-cricket-hanging-arse-out-bus-window-down-Turbot-St fame - against the Windies in 2000/01, substituting and updating racial epithets as appropriate:
(to the tune of Waltzing Matilda)
ONCE A JOLLY POMMIE
JABBED ANOTHER POMMIE
RIGHT UP THE BUM TILL THE BLOOD GUSHES OUT
AND THEY LICK IT
AND THEY SUCK IT
BECAUSE THEY LIKE THE TASTE OF IT
JABBING'S FOR POMMIES
IT'S THEY'RE SEXUAL NEED.... HEY!
RIGHT UP THE A-NUS
RIIIIIGHT UP THE A-NUS
RIGHT UP THE BUM TILL THE BLOOD GUSHES OUT
AND THEY LICK IT
AND THEY SUCK IT
etc etc ad infinitum
That having worked about as well as a chocolate fireguard, other than attracting even more security attention toward our bay (aka Zoo Section, which Moff often proposed should be encased in a Plexiglas dome for the safety of the players as well as the punters), we moved onto plan B.
HAVE A LOOK AT THE SCOREBOARD
YOU FUCKEN POMMY CUNTS
A fairly short song really, more beat poetry than anything - along similar lines to Derek and Clive's I WANNA HEAR ONE OF THOSE 'OHHH FUCKING CHRIST I'VE COME' SONGS or Frenzal Rhomb's I KNOW WHY DINOSAURS BECAME EXTINCT IT'S BECAUSE THEY LEARNED HOW TO SUCK THEIR OWN COCKS.
When in doubt, stick with what you know:
POMMIES
WANKERS
POMMY WANKERS, WHY D'NCHA FUCK OFF HOME
which, admittedly, was little more than a piss-weak derivation of our usual salute to beachball-puncturing security guards.Likewise their big brothers, the boys in blue (to the tune of Camptown Races):
WHAT'S THE COLOUR OF A TWO CENT PIECE?
COPPER, COPPER...
WHAT'S THE COLOUR OF A TWO CENT PIECE?
DIRTY FUCKEN COPPER.
Things were now looking grim:
THEY'VE GOT BETTER SONGS THAN US
DOO DAH, DOO DAH
and even the fucken Milo kids were in on the act:AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE
OI OI OI
Kids just shouldn't start chants at the cricket. It's just not right.
Finally, someone dug down fingernails-first into the sludge at the bottom of the barrel and came up with a little bit of gold.
MY OLD MAN
HE TOLD ME
ENGLAND WILL NOT BAT TILL TEA
WITH A NICK-NACK PADDY-WHACK GIVE A DOG A BONE
BARMY ARMY
FUCK OFF HOME
And the home side carried the day. Largely because England, as projected, did not bat till tea. They went on to lose the first test by 384 runs inside four days and the Ashes inside three tests before picking up the who-cares dead rubber of the Sydney Test, not that anyone really gave a fuck after Tugga's epic ton.'Four-one, we're going to win four-one' indeed.
The Doctor is OUT.
As will be the Poms by lunchtime.
Truly, July can't come around quickly enough.
14 comments:
I don't know why the fuck you are Professoring away at bloody science - you should be teaching Australian Culture!
Back to Back epic posts. I can't wait until July either. Seems so strange having no Warne. I dare say someone else will step up to the plate.
Keep em coming Doc!
Warnie's still out there - just saw him take a swig of some Yaapie's beer fielding on the boundary for his IPL outfit! Fucking legend! He'll make a comeback, put your hard earned on it. His team are beating the living fucking Christ out of the Bangalore outfit, they've barely scraped triple figures in their 20 overs.
Poms weren't out by lunch. Definitely will not bat till tea though.
This could be one of my favorite lines ever in the history of sports journalism:
"England ended the first day of the Ashes series on their knees - with the exception of fast bowler Simon Jones, who ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in his".
Between you and NatalieV talking passionately about cricket, I actually want to learn how this sport is played.
Great minds think alike - I'm watching Smithy the pie-eater take the attack to the cleaners ATM. Don't know if I can keep the eyes open for the second of the double header.
Steve - the Brits do sports journalism pretty well, other than the bipolar tabloids for whom everything or everyone is either God-like or complete fucking shit. Explaining Cricket To Americans was a song by You Am I, a prominent Strayan band, basically meaning something almost impossible to do - but we can always give it a bash.
Lerm - you lucky bastards at least get the games at a civil hour, it's nearly half one here. The second game is a theoretical construct as far as I'm concerned, I've never observed its existence in person.
I will be proudly be wearing my 1999 Barmy Army t-shirt this summer with pride. The only down side is that I will be in the heart of the enemy camp with the wife's in-laws and family. Last time when the Ashes was on in England, was 2005 and that was great as we won and I was in Oz at the same time so that was even better. I am not looking forward to our batters this summer as they seem to be able to hit nothing at the moment, but our bowlers seem to be coming good at just the right time....here's hoping that this summer will be as joyous as 2005!
Just keep singing Stu, it worked for this lot. To be fair the Barmies give fantastic crowd. They're generally good natured, love a bit of banter, and most importantly, lose well (something we're not so good at, having got bugger all practice over the years.)
The sad thing is that this sort of banter is almost impossible to carry out at modern games. Starting a chant? Security will escort you to the door. Starting a Mexican wave? Ditto. Doing anything to upset Cricket Australia's draconian 'family first' (just as scary as their political namesakes) policies? You're going home in the back of a divvy van (clap clap clap-clap-clap clap-clap-clap-clap clap clap). They have, in truth, fucked it. Even the Barmies commented on it when they were down for the 2006/07 Tour - I think their trumpeter had his instrument confiscated on Day 1 of Test 1 as an offensive weapon (they'd not even heard him play yet) - and it's pretty bloody pathetic. Not saying that gratuitous swearing or reference to sodomy is necessarily big or clever, but what's wrong with a bit of banter?
Interesting post tonight, Doc.
A crowd at a baseball game here wouldn't be quite as boisterous as they appear to be at a cricket match. The atmosphere is more like a major college or NFL gridiron game. Or were you sitting at the equivalent of the outfield bleachers? Usually that's where your more, er-colorful-fans hang out in American baseball.
But by and large you wouldn't get away with some of those chants and antics here. There's nothing wrong with some 'family-friendly' policies, but in the process, they can legislate a lot of color out of sports fandom.
You wouldn't see the players after the match-before, for sure-and one or two would be signing autographs-but by and large they make far too much to be seen with the great unwashed.
Australia v. England sounds like Cubs v. Cardinals! And I hate the Cards.
YD - it's kind of a special case. The players meeting the fans would have been at the end of the match - the fourth day of five in that game since the Poms got knocked over earlier than expected - and it's traditional in Australian and English sport to acknowledge the fans at the end of the game, home or away, whether it be football, cricket or whatever. The Barmy Army in particular are quite close to the English team who are obviously very grateful for the travelling support and do a lot of 'reach out' activities with them on tour - holding functions, having player meet-and-greets etc.
As for the tone of the piece - this was a bit ripe - the point I was trying to make I guess was that faced with the best chanting that the Poms could come up with - generally witty, clever and relatively clean - all we had in return was swearing and buggery jokes. The English have a culture of singing at sports events - honed by generations of football fans on the terraces making songs up about opposition players, refs etc - whereas our great contribution to the pantheon of sports chanting has been Godwaful rubbish like 'Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi.'
As regards what you can get away with - as I mentioned above you can't get away with this any more. I should explain that this happens in what we called 'Zoo Section', the equivalent of Bay 13 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, or the old Hill at the SCG - where the drunken yobs congregate. It's at ground level, right on the boundary perimeter. It's not generally an area families sit in (there's family-specific alcohol free zones elsewhere in the precinct.) The Milo junior cricket kids don't sit nearby either, which is just as well - they've got their own section near the players' walkway from the changerooms.
Speaking of the Milo kids - this will probably make no sense to non-Strayas - one year we somehow ended up with seats in the more salubrious end of the ground - seated behind Broncos footballer Michael Hancock and his mates - where our sledging wasn't received quite as positively by the older and soberer observers. One old bloke was not impressed by my comment 'Who's this playing during the lunch break? Awww not the fuckin' Milo kids... Who's next, Nikki Webster?' He suggested we should 'piss off to Schoolies Week'. Mick Hancock's mates reckoned it was piss funny though.
There seems to be a definate bring back warnie movement. I have everything crossed.
There is no doubt the Barmy Army are good for cricket!
You are bang on re the security fucking the game. I was at the last gabba test and a bloke had a balsa wood bat with holes cut in it to use as a beer carrier. It was conficated as a weapon. You couldn't have knocked over a drunken sailor with it. Rooted I say.
Interestingly - the only spot that you can get away with raucaous behaviour and full strength booze is the members.
I like that tradition of the players acknowledging the fans-I'd like to see that more in sports here.
Our ballparks are similar to yours in that we also have the non-alcohol 'family sections' and the sections for the more boisterous bunch (and as you've noted, the boisterous is toned down a lot these days). Although if you're a serious fan of-I'll use the Cubs as an example-and you have family, you should know that the left field bleachers at Wrigley aren't necessarily the place to take the kids.
Probably a college football game comes closest to your sports atmosphere there, as far as raucousness, people wearing the team colors, and odd traditions.
Dr Y - After Day 1 of the Sydney test of that series I was in the Captain Cook discussing the relative merits of Warnie and Tuffnel as men of social activity. My Pommy interlocutor kept on insisting we should sing. I told him that it wasn't really part of our culture. He simply couldn't accept we wouldn't follow in their footsteps. To prove our convict origins I ended up nicking his cap.
The publican and owner at the time was the same bloke who used to run the Occi, The Chambo and now runs The Metropolitan. All pubs having featured recently over at my blog.
He talked the Barmy Army into making the Cook their headquarters during their layover in Sydney that summer. Even had a couple of special events for them. Made a motza out of the soapy buggers.
YD - any sportsperson who doesn't acknowledge that his being able to earn a living from playing sport is a direct result of people paying money to watch it as an entertainment spectacle - whether at the ground or on TV - is an ignorant idiot in my opinion. Sick of sports people whinging about fans and media attention. Without fans and media attention they're playing sport part time in between flipping burgers at McDonalds.
Therbs - good to see some of those 'three dollars to the pound' found a good home!
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