Round 13 - Beautiful Surprise

Sometimes life just throws up unexpected pleasures. Like finding out that your income tax return is higher than you thought it would be. Events that have an untarnished shine to them. Chipping the ball into the hole from miles away. Events that bring an involuntary grin across the entire width of your face. Beating Collingwood on Sunday is about the pinnacle of this genre of happenings.

I missed all bar the final 5 minutes of the game a fortnight ago, due to travelling interstate - and was glad to have done so. By even the most optimistic observers it was a deplorable performance. So very, very little hope was held out for this game. Wet weather at least meant we were unlikely to go down by more than 100 points. I didn’t even worry about catching the game, figuring it would be far more beneficial to be playing charades and boggle with the young adults rather than put myself through that level of trauma.

I should never have doubted.

Wallace has turned Richmond into a side with something I’ve never experienced before in my team - pride. Terry Wallace seems determined not to allow two ordinary weeks in a row. Every time we’ve put in a shocker, Wallace has drilled the team into a mentality of actually playing for the jumper, and not allowed the supporters to feel disappointed in their side for consecutive games. It is no mistake that our great win over Adelaide came off the back of a 100+ point thrashing from the Swans, nor our unlucky and honourable defeat against the Saints on the return from the Bulldogs handing out a similar size beating.

The story of this season for the Tigers has come from unexpected quarters. Patrick Bowden always looked like he would be a handy pick up: under-utilised in a Western Bulldogs side full of similar style players, but his every game this season has been better than he ever played for the sons of the ’scray. Troy Simmonds has become the player many believed he could become: now in the upper-echelon of elite ruckmen in the AFL. He is yet to have played a bad game. Was good to see a good game for Krakouer, who has looked more than a little out-of-touch recently. Devastation though, to see Chris Newman - one of the most honest, hard-working players in the league, go down with a similar severity injury to that sustained by Nathan Brown last season. He will be sorely missed.

But the game is never just about the four points when you beat a team like Collingwood. While Essendon supporters might be the most arrogant, band-wagon supporters going around, Collingwood are almost worse to put up with. Collectively they have the unfortunate combination of being both supremely optimistic and immensely stupid. No other team genuinely has their supporters believing that they will win the premiership every single year. Most followers have at least learnt that there will be seasons where you’d be happy with making finals.

This is less of a problem when Collingwood are doing badly. It’s not difficult to show the utter stupidity of the “dentally challenged” when they are sitting in spot 15 or 16. Their opinion doesn’t change, they just believe in more conspiracies against them. However, when the Maggies are doing well, they might actually have a point. They are able to combat your well-composed opinions with more than just grunts of “but Nathan Buckley is a star”, or the nonsensical favourite: “Neon Leon”. But we beat them. So for the rest of the year, unless they should happen to pinch the big cup at the end, I’ll be able to temporarily shut up even the most idiotic of Collingwood supporters with the ultimate insult: “You can’t even beat Richmond!”