Sydney 28.12.180 - Richmond 9.8.62 Hmmm, well, this wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear for the first game I got to listen to live on the Internet. I've waited all season for an afternoon game...and I got this!

When Sydney was up by 2 goals in the opening minutes of the first quarter, the radio announcers had this to say about our boys:

"body language not good for Richmond"
"crisis early for the Tigers"
"long way back for Richmond"

Two goals down and that is what they were saying already! It didn't get any better from that point on.

I turned the game off at half time, which was after midnight my time. I was hoping to pull up the club webpage the next morning and find a miracle but it wasn't meant to be. Too many players of ours out of the game, and apparently there's some sort of Telstra curse as well!

From: Chris Greenway
Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2006 2:52 AM
Subject: Rd 7 2006
Hi Becky!
Well, that was a debacle. Did you listen to the whole thing? I don't blame you if you didn't. However having said all that don't really feel that bad about it, certainly not as bad as I did about the Bulldogs loss, I'll tell you why and it may put a few things in perspective for you:

Firstly I don't care what the scoreboard says, Richmond did not lose that game by 118 points! We lost it by 113, not much of a difference, but it's still important. There was a goal to Richmond that the obviously vision impaired goal umpire registered as touched, despite the fact that the crowd, the players and the commentators all thought the opposite and the TV replays confirmed that we were right and he was wrong. That's only one example. The entire umpiring exhibition for both teams was a comedic affair. I lost count of the obvious mistakes made. They keep bleating how they want respect, teams don't get respect unless they play well, if these idiots in the coloured uniforms could do their jobs competently maybe they would get that respect.

With the injuries to Thursfield, Schulz and Gaspar and then the late withdrawals of Ray Hall and Andrew Kellaway Richmond's defence consisted of Joel Bowden (although why his brother Patrick couldn't have played there is beyond me) and Luke McGuane in his first game.

It was at the Telstra Dump. I doubt there's a team with a worse record at that place, it's a graveyard for the Tigers. Someone should burn it down. Sydney were at full strength and they were on.

Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2006 8:55 PM
Wallace knew what we were in for, and I'm sure he's going to do his best to keep morale up among the new kids.

He was absolutely right - almost every experienced defender we have was unavailable. Maybe Gaspar, Kellaway, Hall and Schulz aren't putting fear into the opposition, but they aren't exactly the newbies we sent out.

From: johnq
Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2006 8:55 PM
Subject: Ouch!
Yeah . . ummm . . . it wasn't too good Becky was it? I'm sorry it had to be the first game of the year you listened to. I must admit I didn't watch the last quarter - I'd had enough. I knew when I turned the game on and they said that Andrew Kellaway and Ray Hall were late withdrawals that we could be in trouble.It made a big hole in our defense. It probably would have been a good idea to have had Gaspar on the bench - even the commentators were saying it was a bit surprising that he didn't play. We've got some hard games coming up too.

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