THE WEDNESDAY HORN

I was at a triathlon in Queensland on Sunday and narrowly avoided decapitation when an elderly competitor hit a pothole and went flying through the air above my head (he was, astonishingly, OK). I also missed Sunday’s representative game and was none too happy about it, though like any fan of amateur footy, I was pretty chuffed when I saw the results.
Of course, this is no time for crowing. It was March, it was an exhibition game and the primary focus was on raising money for charity. But knocking off local football’s powerhouse is something to hang our hats on. An acquittance of mine looked at the two sides on the Friday before the game and commented “surely the amateurs will win this by 15 goals – I’ve never heard of any of these EFL guys”. He’s obviously never ventured past Wobbies World to catch a game of footy.  The EFL side was still stacked with highly paid, finely tuned and well-credentialed footballers. Take Matthew Greig. A Saturday afternoon for Greig usually consists of standing on full backs’ heads and racking up double figure bags.  For Andrew Bowen, who has played the majority of his football as a forward, to stand a guy like Greig and pull his pants down is something to be mighty proud of. And given that we’ve been unexpectedly humbled by WA and SA representative teams of late, a win over EFL reaffirms that our stocks, structure and depth is still right up there with the best.
I reckon March is a great time to play representative games. That goes for the AFL as well. The fans have been starved of footy for six months are itching for a good contest. Ditto the players. Unlike in mid July, when spectators are suffering from footy overload and the players are hobbling about and desperate for a week off, at this time of year, everyone’s raring to go. The only concern is that the players might be a bit underdone but all who saw Sunday’s game report that the VAFA players were super-fit and very unamateur-like in their preparation.
Now it would remiss of me, and indeed slightly Patrick Smith-esque of me, to comment on a match that I didn’t attend. But after reading the results and chatting to a few punters who were at the game, a constant theme was the performance of the B Graders. Cultrera and Iezzi (Old Trinity), Robbins (Ormond), Gardiner (Old Melburnians), Voss (Old Haileybury) and Dowd and Simpson (St Kevins) all shone, highlighting the wealth of talent in the lower ranks.
Ben Dowd got particularly big raps. I remember watching Dowd as a teenager playing for St Kevins. He looked like he was about 12 but you could already tell that he was some player. He had a tireless work ethic and was ferocious at the ball, a bit of a Bernie Dinneen clone. A best on ground performance was fitting for a player who has always been a big name at Righetti but is now regarded as one of the competition’s premier players. Hopefully no-one comes knocking on his door with a chequebook in their hands.
As my learned, though slightly mysterious colleague Max McGraw noted in his match report, if Sunday’s game is anything to go by, we’re in for a bumper season. And while the VAFA and EFL were busy raising tens of thousands of dollars for bushfire victims, one A-Section club has been busy doing a little accumulating of their own. Old Brighton are a progressive and passionate unit who are desperate for a flag. They’ve lured David Spriggs to South Road, together with a pair of VAFA goal-kicking machines, James Gerstman and Brett Sinclair.  Their pre-season has included a win over the mighty Vermont. On paper, they look the bee’s knees. But so did Collegians last year. And like the Lions, the ‘Tonners have a couple of bogey sides who always make them fluff their lines. Still, lock ‘em in as early flag fancies, which, if this scribe’s previous prognostications are anything to go by, is enough to have any self respecting Old Brightonian running for the hills…