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MANNE COLDENED
“Something about this Robert Manne piece on being a Geelong tragic has been worrying me for a week,” emails Imre Salusinszky, “and I finally see what it is. Can you detect any evidence whatsoever that he has ever attended a game of football?” There’s also this curious line:
Of the hundreds of matches I have since followed, the bitterly cold 1989 grand final is the one I remember best.
Bitterly cold, was it? Manne watched the match on television, presumably indoors. I was at the MCG and recall it being mild to warm. According to a chart of Grand Final temperatures, the maximum for Melbourne that day in 1989 was 21.5 celsius (around 73 fahrenheit) - above average for the Grand Final ...
UPDATE. Nic comments: “There is something suss about Manne’s piece. Firstly, it’s ‘all about him’. Who follows a football team where your chief memories are about what ‘you’ were doing?”
Special intellectual dispensation, Nic. And from Hawthorn supporter Imre himself: “I was there in 1989 (and ‘87, ‘86, ‘84, ‘83, ‘78 and ‘71). I don’t remember it being cold, except that my blood froze around halfway through the last quarter.”
UPDATE II. “Intellectuals like myself ...” Manne becomes infuriated during a debate with mild-mannered Paul Kelly. More from Andrew Bolt.
#1—It’s unimportant if factually it was not “bitterly cold”. It’s important because it could have been.
True, and anyhow either way, it’s a sign of the approaching climate apocalypse. Listen, have we reached the tippling point yet? ‘Cause I need a drink. (What? It’s tipping point? Oh. Never mind.)
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 10 06 at 03:22 PM • permalinkKyda, imagine how disappointed Al Gore was when he found out he’d married Tipper… Curse those missing consonants!
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 10 06 at 04:30 PM • permalinkWell, in Florida people break out the sweaters when the mercury drops below 77 degrees (Fahrenheit), so maybe to him 73 was “bitterly cold.”
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 10 06 at 06:03 PM • permalinkSorry Blair, but you are failing to take into account the fact that at Mr Manne’s place, in accordance with equal opportunity principles, Mrs Manne is in control of the air-conditioning.
Nevertheless, Mr Manne is unconvincing as a Geelong tragic - not many memories of games or players in there - whereas I have been the number one fan of those Geelong Sharks for longer than I can remember.
More evidence at Mr Manne’s website.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 10 06 at 06:08 PM • permalink#7 - I took three $6 bets on the QF with the following odds:
$825 Draw-France-South Africa-Argentina
$40 England-France-South Africa-Argentina
$205 England-France-South Africa-ScotlandI didn’t like the way Australia played the other day and the changes to the England team looked good to me (I had already backed Australia to win the whole thing at $11.50). NZ hadn’t faced a team that could defend properly. They’d also let in some soft tries against countries they shouldn’t, which made me wonder whether they had a problem at the back.
Very frustrating umpiring to say the least and I think the governing body has to look at the ridiculous down-touch-pause-engage scrum process that now sees 90% of scrums ending up looking like a huge game of Twister.
Posted by Jack Lacton on 2007 10 06 at 07:24 PM • permalinkhave i woken up in a parallel universe?
two non left guests on insiders WTF?
and doesn’t Lenore look nervous and uncomfortable without a majority of group thinkers to back her up?
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 10 06 at 07:32 PM • permalinkMaybe such a fine sportsman just had it confused with that year’s Grey Cup?
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 10 06 at 07:55 PM • permalinkLook. Manne was watching it sitting in his comfy chair with his feet up on the ottaman. His mrs. had the air conditioning going full blast. He became cold. So cold. But not cold to actually get his butt out of his chair and turn it down.
So he’s technically correct.
Be glad you didn’t read his column about listening to the Ashes on the radio while sitting on the john with an especially bad case of diarrhea.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 10 06 at 08:07 PM • permalinkTim there is something suss about Manne’s piece.
Firstly, it’s “all about him”. Who follows a football team where your chief memories are about what ‘you’ were doing?
The Grand Final he mentions in 1989 was important for a number of reasons. That final was the first his team had been in for 22 years. You’d think he’d have remembered that.That game is a classic. Yeates running through the cocky Brereton, bruising his kidneys. You can see in the foootage Brereton vomiting from the pain, but he still stays out there and has a great game. Ditto ‘The Dippper’ playing a ripper of a game with broken ribs. What of the 9 goals that Ablett from his own team kicked in a losing side?
I support neither Geelong nor Hawthorn, but even I remember it was a game of ‘great footy’. For Manne to lack so much passion for any of the ‘footy side’ of things says to me that he is at best a casual aobserver rather than a supporter.
But if it means a chance to big note himself in the Age…....
Manne is a poseur who is attempting to appear as a Down to Earth Man of the People instead of a pretentious prick.
Didn’t work, bozo. You look like more of a pretentious prick after that “I love Geelong” drivel.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2007 10 06 at 09:40 PM • permalinkIs this anything like Hillary Clinton declaring herself a life-long NY Yankee fan?
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 10 06 at 10:12 PM • permalinkMy Geelong odyssey
By M Maid
IN late September I was 39 years old, and my barrista at Café Wanceur advised me to barrack for Geelong or Port Adelaide. As a complete tosser, he really did not understand much about football. All he knew was that Geelong and Port Adelaide would be in the grand final.. He wanted me to write something where I looked like a man of the people.
Although I was a gregarious adult, barracking for Geelong or Port Adelaide was essentially a solitary activity – though solitary activities are nothing I am not used to. During the long hours with nothing to do at the university I work for, I knew I would find a large pile from the sports section of the Age in the recycling bin, as well as an old copy of Zoo Weekly.
During the week leading to the grand final, I took possession of this large pile, and tried to learn something about AFL with the idea of adding to my credibility. I cannot recall any aspect of that week of greater intensity than reading these articles – apart from the time I mistook a tube of Tarzan’s Grip for the vaseline I usually keep in my desktop.
The already completely-forgotten players of this week assumed in my imagination someone from whom I could gain some much needed cred.
Since the Swans and Eagles crashed out long ago, my loyalty to the teams was total and unquestioned. My mood was dangerously dependent on their performance. Would I be able to write this self-serving column about Geelong or Port Adelaide? In some unfathomable way, thier fate was linked with mine. It remains so to this day.
Barracking for Geelong and Port Adelaide prepared me for life, in many different ways. As I read, I prepared my column, and I realised the huge potential for using enormous numbers of personal pronouns in a single sentence. Then there were the emotive short sentences. Like this.
From the beginning, scholarship was all about me.
It was then that Geelong won and I was able to erase all references to Port Adelaide in the column that I had prepared. It was then I realised that my barrista had been right. Everything really is all about me.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 10 06 at 11:52 PM • permalinkI was not there in 89, but I remember it. Not for the non-aligned football reasons, nor for the Hawthorn reasons. But for all of Ablett, the raking kicks of Couch, the brilliance of Hocking and Bairstow and the ultimately phantasmagorical inexorability of a win.
The first of the four disappointments, along with the almosts of 91 and 97 and the unfulfilled promise of 93.Posted by Simon Darkshade on 2007 10 07 at 12:43 AM • permalink#21
Manne is a poseur who is attempting to appear as a Down to Earth Man of the People instead of a pretentious prick.
So true. Got the feeling that everything in Manne’s column was a fabrication, starting with his refugee uncle. It is a reflection of the left’s inadequacies that all of them make up these stories to make themselves seem more interesting.
Manne thinks that all because a bunch of Aborigines fabricated the “stolen generation”, he can tell porkies too.
Does Manne have an opinion on where he was for the 89 Bathurst? Which segues me nicley to the fact that Lowndes and Whincup have just strung together a nailbiting back to back win in 07 at Mt Panorama.
As a Manne of the people, twould be remiss of Robert not to pass comment and/or judgement on the bogans and ferals that inhabit the top of this country hill on the first Sunday in October.
inre: the blogad on the left; It sounds like this movie. Very funny, so I recommend it.
Posted by dean martin on 2007 10 07 at 06:10 AM • permalinkI remember 1989. My father was still alive.
This year, a week or so ago in fact, probably after the AFL final, I mentioned Geelong in the presence of my youngest son who is very smart. He said it’s not Jee-long. It’s Je-long.
I suppose if I cared about AFL I might have found that out many long years ago.
Forget about the AFL, the kids overboard, and the stolen generation - the real tragedy is that England put the Wallabies out of the Rugby World Cup.
However, every cloud has a silver lining, and that’s NZ being tipped out by the French. Not that I like the French, but now the kiwis can’t give us shit for crashing out in the quarter finals.
Gaan Suid-Afrika ...
Posted by Young and Free on 2007 10 07 at 06:35 AM • permalinkThere’s nothing more reprehensible than a footy fraud. I bet he yells for offside.
Posted by Tony.T.Teacher on 2007 10 07 at 06:58 AM • permalinkMy father and I were at the 1989 Grand Final. It was not cold. It was exhilarating ... and frustrating (our family has supported Geelong since the 1940s), but it was not cold. The pre-game action was unforgettable - Yeats running through Brereton while he was uncharacteristically vulnerable because he was busy lining up a Geelong player, but it was not cold. Then Brereton and Dipper performed heroically despite their injuries — who could forget that?
Well, no footy fan could, let alone a genuine Geelong fan. The rest of the syllogism is left as an exercise for the reader.
O/T: I watched this year’s Grand Final with my Dad at the nursing home that he moved into a few months ago, and we enjoyed it immensely. Thank you, Geelong, for making my Dad happy.
Posted by Chris Chittleborough on 2007 10 07 at 09:06 AM • permalinkSo now leftwing intellectuals aren’t allowed to love footy anymore? Or people who claim to love footy or a footy team have to have gone to every game ever played?
Deep.Posted by Steven Rogan on 2007 10 08 at 07:39 AM • permalinkOf course, everyone is allowed to love footy. We just hate posers who lie about loving it.
We real Geelong fans have lots of details of the 1989 Grand Final “seared, seared” on our memories. It’s passing strange that Manne does not mention a single one of them. Anyone who saw that match, Geelong fan or not, could not stop at the words “Gary Ablett was wonderful” in describing the second player ever to win a Norm Smith medal for the losing team. (A certain over-the-should kick from a boundary throw-in demands mention.)
Worse still for Manne’s credibility, that day was not “bitterly cold”. (Though it was bitter for real Geelong fans in a quite different sense of the word.) The weather was quite unremarkable for late September in Melbourne.
(Aside: How wonderfully ironic that the previous comment is such a shallow piece of deceptive rhetoric!)
Posted by Chris Chittleborough on 2007 10 09 at 08:29 AM • permalink
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It’s unimportant if factually it was not “bitterly cold”. It’s important because it could have been.