MATCH REPORT

An unbiased player's Dusty view of the 50s game against Geelong on Sunday

It was with some apprehension I emerged from the change rooms on Sunday for our return encounter with Geelong. The car was lovely and warm as we trundled down the highway, but the sodden, sub-zero conditions that greeted the plucky Warriors on our arrival shrank our hearts and scrotums in equal measure. The Warrior were seriously undermanned – half the team was either in Bali, the Gold Coast or had checked the weather forecast and decided a self-inflicted nail gun injury was preferable.
The ground was three centimetres deep in water over its entire expanse. One of the Geelong players remarked just before the first bounce, that the ground had “drained pretty well, considering how much rain they had the night before”. The people of Geelong are either wryly ironic, or primevally stupid – it is hard to tell. The water was so deep in the forward pocket that our smallest player, Eddie, had to be resuscitated after he went under for the third time. Our Captain for the day was the aptly nicknamed Seal - he seemed at home in the conditions and picked the possessions at will while the rest of us fell about like drunken penguins as we struggled to stay upright. 
But the wind was possibly worse – a frigid, ice-tinged blast that relentlessly blew along the length of the ground toward the northern goal. By the end of the first quarter I couldn’t feel my toes, by half time my feet were numb. The Geelong boys handled the conditions well and seemed quite happy to splash around in their gigantic puddle, like Eskimo kiddies in an arctic toddler pool. 
Late in the last quarter I was standing in the middle of the ground, slowly sinking deeper in to the mud; with horizontal rain blinding me as to the whereabouts of the ball. I was wearing a pair of shorts and a sleeveless, polyester footy jumper. And I thought to myself: “I hope there’s pies after the game.” 
And there was.