Media

BEAT-UP: Geelong Addy talks up violence despite Police insisting crowds were purring like contented Cats

The Geelong Advertiser is the prince of regional daily newspapers (newspaper of the year, if you don’t mind) and it’s well worth a read today to see a city gloat about the Flag Geelong probably shouldn’t have won this year compensating for the one they probably shouldn’t have lost to Hawthorn last year.

A heroic win indeed in one of the most exciting games you’d ever see with patriots from across the globe telling VEXNEWS they watched the game in the most random of circumstances, including one who’d found the only good broadcast of it in Paris on Iraqi TV, complete with commentary in Arabic. What Uday & Qusay made of the whole thing we will surely never know.

THE ADDY BEATS-UP THE VIOLENCE
But for all its usual splendour, The Addy did confuse a little this morning. It splashed with “Louts spoil party” including shock revelations that a Cats bogan-warrior was busted with a meat-cleaver down his tracky dacks after a fight. Surely a tribute to the tightness of man’s garment or the receptiveness of his bum crack. Or both.

The Premiership celebrations were presented as if a drunken bunch of UDL-chugging hooligans had popped into Bunnings to stock up on weapons of war before descending on the town. Gangs of New York meets Don’s Party.

Yet the same breathless story – just a few pars in – had a Geelong top cop saying “Despite some pockets of behaviour being a bit unruly, generally the crowd was well behaved.” A pocket can’t be unruly, except in the case of Age scribe David Rood’s stylish linen pants when he’d used too much skin-irritating enviro-friendly detergent, but you get the idea. Geelong was quite peaceful in its delirious drunkenness and the louts hadn’t spoiled anything at all other than potentially their Police record.

BUT ARE NOT-SO SECRETLY THRILLED
Lest you felt they were party-pooping, the next 12 pages were devoted to stories about Geelong’s against-the-odds victory, including what some cynics might argue was not really news, a story reporting that a pregnant woman attended the screening of the game on Saturday at Geelong’s home ground. She was hoping for “another Joel Selwood.”

No story was too trivial to be excluded from this magnificent gloat-fest, with a story on the traffic logs of the Addy’s website indicating just how loved Geelong is across the world, as Cat-fanatics logged in for the Addy’s livescore service and other good stuff. A map was displayed, just in case you didn’t know where the visitors where from, geographically speaking.

After decades of dashed disappointment, the team that perpetually broke the City’s heart, forging possibly the most fatalistic and superstitious bunch of supporters in the League, no-one begrudges them celebrating in the most enthusiastic air-punching style. Their powerhouse status, now secure, has been a long time coming.

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