Chocko gesture a dedication to the departed

Chocko waving away a self-delivered pungent odour

Port Adelaide Power coach Mark Williams has thrown down a daunting challenge to the other seven coaches he may do battle with in this year’s AFL finals series. Having out-coached Mark Thompson by psyching out his opposite number in a series of projections concerning the Geelong Football Club and its ticking time bomb forward Cam Mooney, Williams is now directing his attention to the likes of John Worsfold, Adrian Clarkson and Mick Malthouse, all of whom he reckons he can “mindfuck at his leisure” in September.

The Cats, whose 14 game winning streak was brought to an end last week at Kardinia Park where the Power pinched the game while they’re travelling supporters pinched wallets, have had their season thrown into turmoil by the anachronistic trash talking of Chocko. Williams who has little respect for his peers has been known to spit in the mirror, sometimes on match day.

“He’s a man possessed right now,” said a Port trainer who wanted to remain unidentified. “Last time we won the premiership he spat at his own image just before the big one.”

After the victory over the Brisbane Lions Williams was seen posing to the crowd, clutching at his necktie to mock knockers who had labelled his team for the previous four years as chokers who couldn’t cut it under the pressure of finals. It has been revealed, however, that the gesture was in fact a tribute to Williams’ late friend Michael Hutchence. According to the Port trainer Williams hadn’t had the appropriate forum in which to dedicate the inspiration he had channelled from the late INXS frontman.

“A full house really brought it out of him” the trainer said. “For years he had motivated the players with the album Kick and got nothing. He didn’t play it that day. Hell that’s why Damian Hardwick was so angry in the first quarter. Mark felt he owed it to Hutch when they won. After all sometimes people are more conspicuous by their absence rather than their presence.”

Gould no longer angry over Wenham movie

Channel Nine NRL commentator Phil Gould has finally reconciled the fact that he will never be as iconic as Ray ‘Rabbits’ Warren. Gould was said to have acknowledged the fact while unwinding during the week with the AFI award winning movie The Boys.

In the 1998 movie starring David Wenham, Anthony Hayes who plays the younger brother of a violent brood of western suburbs Sydney scumbags improvises a memorable take on Warren’s hyper-excited commentary, what’s more, reciting a passage of play bound to bring tear to the eye of most diehard Balmain supporters. So impressed was Gould by the ‘bit’ he approached The Boys co-star John Polson who is also the founder of Tropfest, the largest short film contest in the Southern Hemisphere. It is believed that Gould asked Polson to do the same for him in a movie. Polson, having no talent, could not accommodate Gould who when in full flight with a microphone has been known to scare small children and Nine sideline commentator Matthew Johns.

Despite this Polson and Gould are now collaborating on a short film that Gould has written and plans to act in. Polson at this stage is slated to direct.

The former NSW coach and Penrith legend had been working on a project for several years a bartender at the Rooty Hill RSL where Gould drinks, claimed.

“Gus began writing a novel but then Sophie Lee sort of stole his thunder there” the barkeep said. “So he’s taking the best scenes and turning them into a narrative short.”

Known to talk shit for hours to anyone who will listen, Gould, it is estimated, has compiled over 150 hours of material dictated into a digital recorder. Much of it is rumoured to be about Warren, who Gould has become “somewhat obsessed with” an industry insider told I-Footy. It is believed that the infatuation prompted Warren to question Gould’s humanity on air during last Friday night clash between West Tigers and Sydney City in which the Roosters won in extra time.

“Some of us are only human” Warren said. “But I don’t know about you Phil.”

Warren is justified in asking the question given the lurid content of Gould’s film. Titled Always Bet on Water Getting Wet, the short is an apparent analogy for the deteriorating relationship of the two Nine commentators and something of a vanity project. Here is an excerpt faxed to I-Footy by an anonymous source:

OVER BLACK
A heartbeat is audible and rises in volume.

Fade-in: The camera moves into a light tower at the Sydney Football Stadium, where Gus, at first only a freckle against the horizon, surveys the city of Sydney. A cape billows behind the crouched figure, who is an image of stoicism, wisdom and primal sexuality. The camera continues to circle Gus from above.

GUS
(V/O)
In a city of six million people one
man served them like no other. He
captured their dreams, their fears and
tears like no other: That man’s name
was Gus. There is no one like him.

Cut to:

INT. HOUSE – DAY
The camera creeps down a corridor towards a bedroom. Gus sits on the edge of the bed talking to his trusty sidekick, a emerald green python.

GUS
You my old friend who has walked between
fire and ice with me in many battles, some of
them won, others lost, shall never abandon me.

The camera moves below Gus’s guts to reveal that the python doubles as his penis and vice versa. It coils around his waist and back again its tongue hissing the whole time.

Crossfade: The hissing becomes French fries cooking in hot oil at a diner. Sam Backo sits patiently reading the paper as Gus enters.

BACKO
You’re late.

GUS
(Sitting)
Look I don’t take these meetings lightly nor
for that matter should you. It’s about commitment
isn’t it Sam? It’s about commitment and the will to
survive. Do you realise I have a five foot long Daintree
Rain Forest Python for a penis? No? Do you know what
kind of responsibility comes with that? No? Be careful
what you wish for Backo!

Gus stands and whips out the python. Backo shovels a spoon of gravy into his mouth laconically. Fear registers on the faces of the diner’s patrons.

GUS
Every one get on the goddamn floor!

McAvaney goes five minutes without annoying rhetoric

Straight out of the horse's mouth - CLE-VAR!

During last Sunday’s anticlimactic grudge match between Essendon and Hawthorn at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the site of both team’s brutal rivalry in three consecutive grand finals between 1983-1985, Bruce McAvaney while heading the broadcast of the game for Channel Seven, lasted nearly five whole minutes without asking a rhetorical question of his co-commentators or viewers. Furthermore, for what must be the only time in his career as a football broadcaster, McAvaney was critical of the umpires. Early market research suggests viewers have warmed to the more heterosexual image cultivated of late by McAvaney.

Noted for injecting ‘special’ and ‘clever’ into individually inspired passages of play, McAvaney is also an overbearing killjoy whose Family First-like positivism induces rhetoric in the form of questions he asks of others without there being any discernible call for an answer. “Hasn’t he been good this quarter?” is one such example. Other variations include, “Don’t you just love his game?”

According to the official I-Footy time clock, McAvaney went four minutes and fifty-one seconds (4.51) on Sunday without articulating a rhetorical question. During the unparalleled interval, however, David Schwartz, who has taken the concept of special comments to a new sphere, decided to take up the slack by indulging in a barrage of “wasn’t it? and isn’t it? and don’t you thinks?” Even McAvaney sounded vaguely disgusted.

To date Schwartz’s main achievement in the media is having stood by and calmly watched an obviously disorientated Justin Kositchke slowly collapse like a felled red oak on live national television. Schwartz, who claimed that the microphone in his hand impeded his ability to assist the concussed St. Kilda ruckman from further worsening the brain damage he had incurred under former coach Grant Thomas, has since been more proactive as a media presenter.

The same can’t be said of Denis Cometti. Since moving from the Nine Network his deadpan humour has been largely lost on his cohorts. A leaked memo during the preseason competition quoted a Seven Football executive, who firmly believed “Bruce was like kryptonite to Denis.” Evidence does little contradict the executive.

Already this season, the usually accurate Cometti has seen fit to describe Greg Tivendale as a “normally accurate kick”. What’s more in round seven he made mention of the number of possessions Ryan Houlihan had amassed in a game without following it up with the word “ineffective.” Watch this space for updates on Cometti’s pending meltdown.

Doggies skipper sues Hollywood heartthrob

Johnno B Goode

In an unprecedented week of legal turmoil involving AFL footballers and celebrities it has been revealed to I-Footy that Western Bulldogs captain Brad Johnson has brought a lawsuit against contemporary big screen icon Matt Damon. The two, who became close while Damon was in Melbourne scouting locations for The Bourne Ultimatum, have fallen out after it has been claimed that “subtle use of Johnson’s shit-eating grin by Damon in Ocean’s Thirteen infringes on a word-of-mouth agreement shared by the former friends” a New York tribunal heard today.

The case is being built around what insiders are calling Damon’s “illegal use of Johnson’s happy-go-lucky image” which, has itself, been tested in recent times after the Bulldogs slumped to a series of losses and a draw at their home ground, Telstra Dome. Former Bulldogs midfielder Angelo Petraglia told an empty press conference at Werribee Oval where he often drinks, that the club had been concerned with their media image ever since several players agreed to appear in a TV advertisement with no foreseeable or redeeming qualities.

“I know I have nothin’ to do with the club anymore but I watch TV” Petraglia said. “Those Peter Jackson ads are abysmal and it has been reflected in the form of the boys this year.”

With exception to Ryan Hargreave whose own 2007 form has miraculously improved, the other cast members to appear in the advertisement have been close to woeful especially during games telecast on free-to-air TV. Daniel Giansiracusa, Jordan McMahon, Adam Cooney and Daniel Cross have even stooped to using the insipid whoring of their image on TV as an excuse for the Western Bulldogs recent poor performances. Petraglia wasn’t having any of it.

“I mean c’mon, Collingwood made that Rexona ad last year and it made The Castle look watchable” he said. “Either way Malthouse hasn’t let it drag them down and they’re going to play finals this season which is something you can’t say of us.”

Rumours that the league had secretly been witch hunting bad actors since the early ‘80s have also resurfaced. Petraglia refused to deny that an official inquiry into “soulless theatrics” was likely by year’s end.

“No one remembers Brian Wilson right?” Petraglia said. “Forget the Beach Boys nutter, the number seven at Melbourne when I played was the worst performer in front of either a camera or umpire for a long, long time.”

Wilson, whose reputation for hamming it up was legend in underground AFL circles, was widely regarded as the grandfather to the modern movement of the diving goal square goon now personified by the likes of Matthew Lloyd. Other actors schooled in this technique include Kayne Pettifer at Richmond and the entire Fremantle forward line.

Despite the Bulldogs sitting outside the top eight the Peter Jackson commercials continue to screen to critical disapproval. Writing in The Monthly Helen Garner called the five-minute long segments, “dull and devoid of charisma.” Age reviewer Jim Schembri, however, disagreed, noting that the vernacular use of “Gia” and “Jordy” expressed a special male bonding that was “missing from my life.”

Sources closer to the club were not yet swayed by the critics. In a recent poll asked of Vietnamese loitering outside the Western Oval, four out of five of the young men quizzed on the spot said they never read Schembri despite his blatant populist leanings. Even so, Petraglia wants the TV spots pulled before the Bulldogs have their own Jonathan Hay on their hands.

“You would have thought they were smoking the Peter Jackson’s” Petraglia said. “ the way they get around. There’s nothing like a well dressed loser either. Have you seen the gear Ian Healy gets around in?”

Meanwhile the Johnson vs Damon suit has taken on another twist after it was revealed that Damon had also got drunk at Crown Casino with prominent St. Kilda defender Leigh Fischer during his short visit to Melbourne. Forensics were analysing evidence suggesting that Fischer’s physiognomy was far closer in resemblance to Damon’s rather than Johnson’s. I-Footy will update the situation as news comes to hand.

Leigh Fisher's been to Bali too

Narkle helmet goes to hell and back

Former St. Kilda rover, Phil Narkle, a regular cult hero to the throng at Moorabbin in the mid ‘80s has had his crash helmet, long thought to have disappeared, finally returned. The reinforced rubber and latex item was located after an agonising search which lasted several months - in an especially ruinous condition.

Colour co-ordinated in red, white and black to match the Saints guernsey, the protective headgear Narkle wore in an injury ravaged 48 game career at Linton Street was recently auctioned off, for an undisclosed amount, to raise money for the W.A. based former champion. Unbeknownst to Narkle and his manager Doug Matera, the helmet, which former St. Kilda winger Geoff ‘Joffa’ Cunningham once told Scott Palmer had “magical powers” was sold privately to an anonymous buyer rather than offered as was originally intended for public bidding where it may have fetched twice as much.

Matera, who claims to be a third cousin of West Coast’s enigmatic forward pocket Wally, said the piece was found in an art exhibition staged by musician Luke Steele who fronts the popular group Sleepy Jackson.

“It was embossed in taffeta and being displayed as an ‘artefact of lost fashion” Matera recalled with disgust. “The guy is quoted in a Ben Lee song for Christsake.”

The exhibition held in the seaside Perth suburb of Scarborough combined video installations, pop art and found objects. Labelled “shithouse” by Dave Hickey, a passer by, who had entered the space under the impression it was a Peep Show, the exhibition failed to secure any buyers.

Hickey, no relation to the Las Vegas based teacher and writer, said that a $2 neon sign hanging in the window of the gallery had fooled him into thinking he was in for an entirely different form of show.

“They had whores in there all right” Hickey recalled. “Just not the type you want to give your hard-earned to.”

Matera and Narkle are currently seeking legal advice on what they claim as being "earnest desecration of a sacred indigenous Australian object". Compensation for damages were also being sought by the pair.

Narkle, recruited from Swan Districts (and a member of their team of the century), crossed from the Saints to West Coast where he played out his career. Around this time he unsuccessfully sued a fellow AFL footballer, whose identity can’t be disclosed, over what Narkle perceived as copyright infringement for use of the nickname “magic”.

After deliberating for several seconds, Judge Colin Judge (brother of Hawthorn star Ken) ruled in favour of the defence counsel after it had established that over 6,000 indigenous footballers around the globe “had either used or been branded with the moniker of ‘magic’ during their long or brief Australian Rules careers.”

Matera refused to comment on whether the “magical powers” of the recently found helmet were connected to Narkle’s nickname. He did, however, claim that the value of the item had been “diminished considerably” after the exhibition.

“Look, Steele’s put his painted fingernails all over it” Matera said. “It’s safe to say it’s worthless now.”

Matera would not say whether Narkle’s Swan Districts headgear would be auctioned off in the near future.

Kouta's 'Bustinest' Moves!

OK, so we had a bit of a laugh at Kouta's Souvlaki Hut, but here are some higlights from Kouta's stellar career, as reported by our Middle-East correspondent, Charlie:


1995
Grand Final – Carlton v Geelong
The Blues dominated the 1995 season like few other teams in AFL history. The Blues dropped just two matches for the season and were rarely threatened by the Cats in a one-sided Grand Final. Koutoufides had 19 possessions at half-time. Voted second-best afield behind Norm Smith Medallist Greg Williams, the 22-year-old finished the grand final with 31 possessions and eight marks. ED: Kouta shows what he can do to Pussies!

1996
Round five – Carlton v West Coast
Carlton and West Coast played a classic match at Princes Park with the Blues prevailing by one point thanks to one of the greatest individual efforts of all time. Koutoufides finished the game with 35 possessions and 18 marks, none more important than his desperate grab right at the end, deep in the Eagles’ forward line.

His performance prompted Blues coach David Parkin to say, “I think we would have had awful trouble winning the game without him”. ED : Proof that Greek athleticism will conquer drugs everytime!

1999
Round 17 – Carlton v Collingwood
“When I was playing my best football, I was playing in the midfield and basically staying there all day.” Well the Blues selectors took Kouta’s advice and played him in the middle against the Pies. Although Simon Beaumont stole the headlines kicking eight goals before half-time, the key battle was waged between Kouta and Nathan Buckley. Neither player claimed outright dominance – Koutoufides had 34 possessions and Buckley 31 – but it did reiterate that Kouta’s best position was in the midfield. ED: The great Melbourne suburban war : The Bogens vs. The Wogs.

1999
Preliminary final – Carlton v Essendon
Blues supporters love to remind Bombers fans about 1999's second-last Saturday in September. Odds-on flag favourite Essendon was beaten by the narrowest of margins following an inspirational final quarter from Kouta. The midfielder was everywhere, booting two goals and dragging down match-defining marks. He took a big grab in the forward 50m and converted midway through the term and bobbed up moments later to put the Blues in front by seven points. Match commentator Gerard Healy summed it up best: “They’ve got to match up Kouta here. He could rip their hearts out”. ED: IT's always fantastic to do it 'Greek style' with a waterlogged Sherrin to the Bummers!

2000
Round 11 – Carlton v Kangaroos
In round eight in 2000, against the Swans, Kouta notched up a career-high 39 possessions. But it was his explosive third quarter which caught the eye. He collected 14 disposals and seven marks for the term which helped turn a 12-point half-time lead into a 50-point margin at the final change. His most celebrated performance for the season, however, was in round 11 when he went one-on-one with Wayne Carey. Kouta won the duel, kicking five goals and gathered 38 possessions. TV commentator Kevin Bartlett said during the match “How many Koutoufides’ are playing today?” ED: Carey was still on a high after fucking his best mate's wife, and not quite fancying Kouta's

2001
Round eight – Carlton v Brisbane
One of the main reasons why 2001 premiers Brisbane lost this match was because of Koutoufides’ dominance. The Carlton champion had another “triple double” match with 17 kicks, 19 handballs and 11 marks to his name. Playing in the midfield, Kouta’s opponents included gifted onballers Michael Voss and Chris Scott. ED: Unfortunately that was the last time we beat the Bears :(

2003
Round 20 – Carlton v St Kilda
In 2003, Koutoufides played every match of the season and finished second in the Blues' best-and-fairest count. The round 20 match was his best match in terms of possessions - 19 kicks and 15 handballs. Yet his most important contribution in 2003 was his 31 possessions against Richmond, which helped the Blues secure a narrow
victory and avoid the dreaded wooden-spoon. ED: Well someone had to do it, coz Pagan defintely couldn't!

2004
Round 22 – Carlton v Collingwood
Although his posession total was low – 22 – his performance showed glimpses of his former magic. A pack mark early in the match was reminiscent of his commanding marks in the final quarter of the 1999 preliminary final. He also kicked a long, booming goal that matched the feats of his career-best season of 2000. ED: Every time you beat Collingwood, 1000 starving children are saved in Africa, and Greenhouse emissions are cut by 27 mega-tonnes.

And in the words of rabid fan, Athos Mousoulakis 'KOUTAMAN YOUR A LEGEND!'

KOUTA at his one-handed best. The gretest Greek-god-of-footy of all-time!

Tanks are the best defense

Tanks are the best defense

In one of the strangest press-conferences in the history of the AFL, Carlton president and billionaire businessman Dick Pratt denied the rumours that his side were 'tanking' late in the season in order to gain a priority pick. In a gallant effort, the Blues outclassed Collingwood for 3 and 3 quarters, in what should have been a one-sided affair that such a 'flag favourite' should have easily won by 10 goals. The Pies valiantly rallied home when 'gun' forward Anthony Rocca suddenly find a rare show of fitness and kicked four goal in the final term, much the the Jihadic ecstasy of the Collingwood faithful.

And despite the Carlton-Collingwood rivalry being nearly as great and spiteful as that one in the Middle-East, Pratts comments were defintely from left-field. 'You know, I give millions to Israel, and why not, they are my tribe and have been f___d over for centuries. When you are surrounded by terrorists and guerrilla 'armies' that make Collingwood supporters seem civilised and are born to annihilate you - tanks are you best defense. You remember 'Operation Shredder'? Well look it up in your dictionary next time.” With those cryptic words, Pratt swiftly left the press conference, but had these parting words: "..at least Ratts is doing a better job than Pagan!"

Flamboyant Collingwood cheer squad identity 'Joffa' was unfortunately not available for comment.