The New Football Lexicon - Leather Poisoning Returns | Thebigtip

Snide comments from my fan base aside, I always said Round 1 would provide the inspiration to get leather poisoning back on track.  Now the real stuff has started and the yawn-fest NAB cup can be consigned to the blurry drunken memory that was another unsatisfying February. Pre-season form means squat and I could find stats to back me up if I need but I won’t.

Histories great philosophers always preferred thoughts over numbers. Sadly, football’s respected thinkers (with some notable exceptions) prefer the safety and certainty of statistics over the lucid and infinitely variable sea that is football thought. Such commentators tirelessly grab at the stats sheet in a useless attempt to make sense of the chaos that they view. Their conclusions are, invariably, baseless, but still they insist on feeding us. For this lamentable stats-based football analysis we have Dream Team and it’s followers to blame. As a non Dream Team/Supercoach player and a football thinker of high intelligence, I am constantly offended and not a little bit shitted by networks’ constant stream of Dream Team scores.  That Mitch Robinson was rated amongst the Blues' best for his ‘numbers’ on Friday night is proof that commentators mainly rate players on statistics. Cotchin overlooked as Richmond’s best is further evidence. All commentators bring some bias into their views of games (my bias and dislike of Robinson is hereby disclosed) but using statistics as a way to objectively assess a game is even more wrong.

The bias of commentators and umpires towards Carlton legend/messiah captain Judd is becoming more obvious and irritating season by season His game was alright on Friday night but not nearly worth the praise he received from commentators. One broadcaster gushed at Judd’s massive impact despite the fact Juddy had just come on after four minutes on the bench, which his co-commentator had mentioned. Let’s not speak of the first name basis Chris and the umpires are on, safe to say that he will definitely poll Brownlow votes in Round 1. Australian football is a riveting game, albeit quite hard to understand at times.  If a new viewer is not completely confused by the rules and strategies of the game we should be thankful that some football wordsmiths are doing their utmost to destroy said viewers braincells with a new football lexicon. It is great that every season coaches players and commentators come up with new words to describe the new aspects of the sport. Awesome football commentator but fast becoming over exposed all round good bloke Tom Harley has time and again proven he is not just a pretty face with his cutting analysis and advanced use of the English language. Harley introduced a ‘blitz goal’, which I gather means a goal scored very fast, like a blitzkrieg, but with a footy and on the ‘g. He also mentioned ballistic football, which I gather means players are going ballistic on the ground and things are getting messy, like when you mix coke, pills, jager and Viagra.  You know it.

Harley was a legendary full back let's not forget. Massive Props for that. Also, evidently, a huge Wesley Snipes fan, as he kept mentioning drop zone during the game. Sick movie and I might go down to blockbuster and hire the DVD. Hell, I’ll just download it. No one will know.

Not to be outdone, players have also introduced new words to be used for the season ahead. One is ‘chop-out’ – I think it means helping hand. Eg, I was brawling in the Safeway car park and luckily Chris came out and gave me a chop-out.  The other is upside – I think this means room for improvement, or advantage. Eg, the upside of moving to the Gold Coast is the money and way hotter chicks than Geelong.

It seems that that upside may not really exist in reality.  Maybe Peter Costello, Caroline Wilson and the association of footballer-haters has turned women completely off footballers, and the boys up in the GC aren’t getting any lovin, despite their deep tans and glorious pre-seasoned physiques. Did you see Swallow in the Herald-Sun?  I only read the pictures. Maybe Queensland chicks just go for rugby players. Maybe Fev left a real mark up there.  Anyway, Alan Richardson, Carlton assistant coach, made multiple references to the Gold Coast boys being aroused this week for their first football game. “They are going to be a super-aroused group” said Richardson. I guess he meant they’d be pumped for their first game, but in the modern football world who really knows. I’m just aroused thinking of Melbourne’s first big win.