You Little Beauty

Well, I never thought it would happen..... but after spending 25 years supporting the Cats, I finally had something to get excited about. After 43 years of Grand Final heartache, the boys from Sleepy Hollow roared to life at AAMI Stadium and as the late Ted Whitten would say....."we stuck it right up ém". OK, I hear the other 15 teams supporters say, you won a pre-season comp...big deal!!! Carlton did it last year and finished dead last. St Kilda the year before and they have choked in the last two Prelim Finals, so what makes this any different?? It's a valid argument. I mean you only have to win 4 games in this comp and you've got a "Priemership". But the exciting part of this is two fold. One - we beat Adealaide....IN ADELAIDE. No mean feat, that even the best teams in the comp have struggled to do over the past 20 years and lets be honest...our record at AAMI has been worse than Perth, Sydney and Brisbane combined. The second is the fact that the AFL tried their hardest to shaft us, by having it played interstate, thinking it would guarentee the Crows a flag and a shit load more supporters than they need. So to Andrew D.... sucked in. I bet London to a brick, that if we had kicked more goals in the 3 qualifing games it would not have been played at Kardinia Park, but rather Telstra Dome, which is pretty much a neutral venue. Hence the reason why the Sevens Rugby in the Commonwealth Games was all finished by the Friday night prior to free up the ground. Added to this, we rolled the highly fancied Crows with 8 of our starting 22 sidelined due to off season surgery and rehab. We had to rely on 1-2 year players, to make up the difference...and what a difference they made. To Mark Thompson and the boys congratulations, keep up the great work....and bring on Round 1.