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01/03/2010
Early January.
“Wake up, Bloodhound, it’s January and you haven’t been sighted for months.”
“Give me a break, there’s been nothing much to write about that I haven’t covered before. What can a Bloodhound do? No scandals, no need to speculate about recruits or players we’re going to lose and there are no massive financial losses to agonise over. There’s not even a Committee election to focus the mind. I’ve been watching pre-season, too - nobody’s dropping out the back, they’re all keen and there seems to be a large squad of blokes over 195cms who all look as if they can play.
I’m not writing until there’s something new to write about and as far as I can see, that’s not going to happen for a fair while. Don’t wake me up unless the grandstand burns down or something.”
Late January:
“Wake up, Bloodhound, the grandstand ………………………..”
Two days later:
For no particular reason, your Bloodhound thought it was time to resume duties and once again report on the state of things at City Mazda Stadium. The grandstand wasn’t as user-friendly as the last time I saw it, so I moved up to the Mound Bar. Property Stewards, sorry, Property Managers, were comfortably ensconced behind the bar, handing out guernseys and other paraphernalia as if they were at home. Well, actually they were, they’d just changed sides of the bar and it was the only time in the history of any football club that you could see smiling property stewards.
Chairs and changing room for the players had been organised and arranged and the Medical team had already requested that their new room became their permanent home, not that the view of the oval and the TV set showing the cricket had anything to do with it.
I surreptitiously joined the playing and official group (well, there was nothing surreptitious about it really, detectives just like using the word – it gives the impression we’re detecting), to hear CEO Kym Russell tell us that everything was under control after the fire and to carry on as normal.
That’s the trouble. That’s exactly what I was talking about before. No scandals, no gossip, no disasters, nothing to write about.
Isn’t it wonderful.
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Pre-season camp time. It’s one of your Bloodhound’s favourite excursions, a chance to get to know another Riverland town and enjoy a couple of days watching the players work hard while they’re bonding. Due to the onerous nature of constant detecting, I always book a room at the local hotel as soon as I know the camp dates so that I can get some proper rest and recuperation. Those support staff who know me tend to scoff at this and use totally inappropriate and unfair words (soft comes to mind). This doesn’t usually bother me much and I prefer to remind them of the benefits of planning ahead.
Renmark was at its beautiful best this year and once again our Riverland hosts did everything to make our stay totally enjoyable. Dwayne Ruddock and his team showed the other players how to pitch a tent and the players were kept busy with training sessions and team meetings, with a lawn bowls evening and a game of golf for variety. I checked the schedule and soon realised I couldn’t properly fit everything in, so to fulfil my duties, I settled for the bowls, the golf and the dinners.
Bowls is a sedate game, but it has to be said that your Bloodhound didn’t actually excel. There were reasons for that – a lot of bad luck and a propensity for my bowls to unluckily, but regularly, finish in the ditch. Thinking it was ten-pin bowling and not lawn bowls for a while also didn’t help and the fact that our opposition contained the Coach and also Club President, Paul Sperling, clearly an experienced ‘ring-in’, made things even more difficult. I can’t remember if we won or lost, perhaps the latter, can’t be sure.
Training was sharp, but the golf game had to be the centre of attention. Modesty forbids me mentioning that your Bloodhound’s team won the day and although Simon Munn and Scott Brown perhaps showed just a tiny bit more golfing ability than the Bloodhound, I reminded myself that it was a team effort. Besides, I walked a lot further than most and became well acquainted with the outskirts of Renmark and the bull-ant population of the Far North-East.
Enough of that, I headed back to Adelaide with pleasant memories of a great two days and plenty of excitement about the challenges ahead.
One sour note, though. There’s still a lot of fitness work to be done by our new recruit, Nat Caruso. As the following picture shows (surreptitiously taken by the Bloodhound), Nat must be dreading the next skinfold test.
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Footy at last! An internal trial on a pleasant Saturday morning.
Your Bloodhound has seen a few internal trials over the years. They’re often scrappy affairs, with some players playing for their careers and some not needing to. They all need to this year and it showed.
With our first trial coming up this weekend, the Bloodhound is back on deck and will appear weekly, although in a shortened form (the article, not me, I hope).
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Oh, I nearly forgot. There’s always politics in a football club and there’s always staff who think they’re in the wrong role. They’re not, they’re just always wrong.
After much thought, I’ve decided to publish the evidence I collected to prove this theory and here it is.
Full-forward, Property Manager ‘Ditts’.
Scott Bricknell, Nat Caruso, Michael Shearer and Tom Keough listening intently to the Coach, Property Manager John.
Charlie Walsh
Oh, the detective work continued and I have cracked the new, secret and obviously compulsory players’ code, as given away by Trav Ronaldson and Bronik Davies.
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