Dave’s Football Blog

So while I was sleeping last night — and having a very pleasant dream involving Tiffany Cherry and a goal square — the St. Kilda Saints kicked off the 2007 Australian Football League season with a 31-point thrashing of the Melbourne Demons. Fraser Gehrig led the way with four goals, which doesn’t suck. What depth problems?

Of course, the big game this weekend is Sydney vs. West Coast, and from the looks of it, the Eagles are looking just a little depleted. Ben Cousins has flown off to America to enter rehab — because if you want to get away from drugs, the U.S. is just the perfect place to be; no drugs here, no, sir — and a rash of groin injuries (so that’s what they’re calling it Perth these days?) will bench several starters from last year’s Grand Final. Sydney badass Barry Hall stunk up the Melbourne Cricket Ground in the Grand Final last September, so he’s likely to come into this one with something to prove.

The AFL web site has countdown timers for all this week’s games. If you live in America, add about 6-7 hours to those timers to adjust for when the torrents should be uploaded. For more legal online info on the AFL, though, check out The AFL Show on the Podcast Network. For the Yanks hearing that for the first time, the hosts might as well be speaking Burmese, but Jeff and Paul do a decent job getting you ready for the 2007 Premiership season…

Of course, that’s not the only Premiership football going on this weekend. Over in Ol’ Blighty, there’s a full slate of EPL matches, leading off with a big Arsenal at Liverpool showdown, continuing with a huge relegation battle between Charlton and Wigan, a potential FA Cup Final preview between Manchester United and Blackburn, and a very interesting Sunday tilt between Tottenham and Reading.

In America, Reading at Tottenham will be on Fox Soccer Channel, and it will have big implications on UEFA Cup qualifying. The Spurs are strong at home in White Hart Lane, but Kevin Doyle should be back for Reading, which could provide a big offensive boost. (I’m sure there’s a reason we rarely see Doyle and Leroy Lita in the lineup together, and perhaps someone in the comments can explain that to me.)

Next week will be fun for soccer fans, too, as UEFA Champions League quarterfinals begin, and the second leg of the CONCACAF Champions Cup will feature two MLS teams playing in Mexico, which should significantly increase D-battery sales in that country. If the Americans come home empty-handed, will they use the Czech cure for depression? Time will tell…

Before I forget, here’s a blog worth checking out: It’s Still Football, a new snark-filled take on Arena Football with the tagline, “We don’t know anything about the AFL, but neither do you.” I’d say these boys are doing the Lord’s work, but the Lord probably gives less of a shit about Arena Football than I do…

Meanwhile in the rugby world, there’s no Guinness Premiership action this weekend, but the National Rugby League in Australia has a full slate of games this weekend. I’ve been told by one astute reader that I should do more to explain the differences between rugby union and rugby league, as they are just as different as American and Canadian football. That sounds like a subject worth tackling next week when I get back from my road trip. I haven’t done enough with rugby here yet…

Oh, and if you want to see my latest American football commentary, check the FanHouse. Enjoy the weekend, everyone. We’ll talk again on Monday.

Every football team’s fan base has its quirks. Pittsburgh Steelers fans swing their Terrible Towels. Denver Broncos fans like to mock incomplete passes in unison. Washington Redskins fans dress up like female pigs. It’s all just part of the grand football tradition.

But seriously, could somebody explain where this tradition came from?

Chelsea warned their fans on Friday against throwing celery during matches, saying it was a criminal offence and that anyone caught lobbing the popular salad vegetable could be banned.

The unlikely warning follows referee reports which mention celery-throwing at two recent Chelsea matches and which are being investigated by the Football Association, the club said on its website.

Tossing celery. That sounds kind of dirty, actually — just like the song that Chelsea fans started singing during the dark days of the 1980s to keep themselves entertained:

Celery, Celery,
If she don’t come,
I’ll tickle her bum,
With a lump of celery.

How that managed to stick is beyond me, but if you go to Flickr and look for Chelsea photos, you’ll find a ton of them tagged “celery” — like this one:

According to the description, this was taken last year during Chelsea’s Premiership victory parade in London. A woman opened her window to take pictures of the party, and fans started throwing celery at her. No word on whether she spread Nutella on the projectiles later. (Seriously, try the ants on a log with Nutella instead of peanut butter. That’s quality snacking.)

I suppose these random bursts of creativity strike when your team sucks, and occasionally they stick around even after the team stops sucking. Detroit Lions fans should start looking for a vegetable to call their own. Oh, wait, they have one already — the general manager. *rimshot*

Hey, can someone point me to an MP3 copy of that chant? I’d like to hear Stamford Bridge’s insanity for myself.

And now, a follow-up on the ongoing saga in Perth…

For those of you in the land down under who made bets on Ben Cousins getting over his little drug problem and getting back on the field by May, start saving up now. Cousins is in denial worse than Britney Spears.

The 28-year-old, who has been suspended indefinitely by the Eagles, has continued to behave erratically and also has resisted attempts by the club to make a public statement about the severity of his health crisis.

Although the Eagles hierarchy has made it clear to Cousins that he will not be allowed back to the club until he fully accepts his addiction to the methamphetamine “ice”, and seeks rehabilitation, the 2005 Brownlow medallist as recently as the weekend remained determined he could beat his drug problem without full-time medical and psychiatric help.

Damn, he’s hooked on meth? That’s an Australian episode of Playmakers. He’ll be having flashbacks to his booze bus chase that will have him running from his dog twice a week by the time he’s 40.

He may not be the only one, either. It appears that another West Coast Eagle player, Daniel Kerr, was caught on tape four years ago talking to a convicted drug dealer. You can listen to ABC Sport’s audio report here, but to summarize, at one point, the drug dealer said something about Cousins having a “bag of fucking horse chaffe,” and Kerr sounded positively giddy. “The stakes have been raised!”, he proclaimed.

“Horse chaffe” refers to Ketamine, a strong sedative given to horses and television doctors that Peter King likes. Just to be clear: Ben Cousins and Daniel Kerr were taking horse sedatives for recreational purposes. Seriously, how are these men still alive? how are the Eagles going to put this massive distraction behind them before their Friday clash with the Sydney Swans?

More importantly, though, how fast can you Aussies put a torrent of that Swans-Eagles match online? BitTorrent is pretty much the only way for me to watch AFL games in America this year, so I’m counting on you footy fans to hook me up. Don’t let me down, okay?

(Big thanks to the vainglorious duo over at With Leather for coming up with the “North Perth Forty” tagline for this story. I wish I had thought of that.)

No matter what form of football you play, you know one thing for certain — it gets damn hot out there on the field, especially on the artificial stuff. If you don’t suck down the Gatorade at every opportunity, you might find yourself doubled over with leg cramps, and let me tell you, for a non-serious injury, a bad leg cramp can make even the toughest of footballers whimper like Dick Vermeil.

The fine folks at Stanford University’s biology department hate leg cramps, and after spending years researching the hibernation habits of squirrels and marmots (what?), they have developed the ultimate footballer’s body hack. It’s called RTX (for “Rapid Thermal Exchange”), or simply put, “The Glove.”

Wired.com writer Noah Schactman took The Glove for a test drive a few weeks ago:

The lab is climate-controlled to 104 degrees Fahrenheit and 66 percent humidity. Sitting inside the cramped room, even for a few minutes, is an unpleasantly moist experience. I’ve spent the last 40 minutes on a treadmill angled at a 9 percent grade. My face is chili-red, my shirt soaked with sweat. My breath is coming in short, unsatisfactory gasps. The sushi and sake I had last night are in full revolt. The tiny speakers on the shelf blasting “Living on a Prayer” are definitely not helping.

Then Dennis Grahn, a lumpy Stanford University biologist and former minor-league hockey player, walks into the room. He nods in my direction and smiles at a technician. “Looks like he’s ready,” Grahn says.

Grahn takes my hand and slips it into a clear, coffeepot-looking contraption he calls the Glove. Inside is a hemisphere of metal, cool to the touch. He tightens a seal around my wrist; a vacuum begins pulling blood to the surface of my hand, and the cold metal chills my blood before it travels through my veins back to my core. After five minutes, I feel rejuvenated. Never mind the hangover. Never mind Bon Jovi. I keep going for another half hour.

Yes, The Glove literally uses the veins in your hand to cool the blood in your body, thus preventing overheating and those dreaded leg cramps. Schactman also tested out The Glove’s heating capabilities, and he claims to have been able to sit in a tub of shaved ice for a very long time without becoming hypothermic.

And you thought those hand warmers on Brett Favre’s waist every December were just for show. Everyone who played in the Ice Bowl would like to send a box full of Gloves back in time right now.

The Glove was designed for military use, but right now, some of it’s biggest proponents are football clubs. The San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders both use The Glove, as does Manchester United. According to this article, at least one NFL player things The Glove may be a suitable replacement for something not quite as legal…

Ever seeking a competitive edge, athletes began paying regular visits to the fourth floor of Gilbert (Biological Sciences Building), causing one of the staff to remark that the hallways had gotten smaller. A former NFL player told (senior research scientist Dennis) Grahn, “This replaces the Juice,” referring to steroids. Weirdly, cooling does mimic steroids in the way it allows an athlete to recover from intense exertion quickly, allowing someone to do more work in a shorter period of time. But cooling doesn’t result in shriveled gonads or ’roid rage.

Perhaps this is part of the reason The Glove is popular with Man U. Given that club’s crazy schedule this year — they’re playing Premiership matches, FA Cup matches and Champions League matches at an alarming clip — they need their best players to recover as quickly as possible, and any device that lets them do that is practically a necessity.

The Glove may have been created for military use, but if it hasn’t become a must-have training tool for every NFL team and at least half the clubs in the Premiership by the end of the decade, it won’t be because of lack of effectiveness. We may even see teams using this on the field to help players’ legs gets uncramped a lot more quickly, which will no doubt prompt Tony Kornheiser to ask, “What’s that thing on his hand, Jaws?”

It wasn’t just eastern empires that developed football games back in the day. No, the Roman Empire cultivated its own game called Harpastum, and while history can’t agree on what the rules of that game were, I think it’s pretty certain that it didn’t look anything like this:

Seriously, doesn’t that look like one of those drawings from those Children’s Bible Stories books you used to see in your local dentist’s office when you were a kid? You know, the ones that tried to convince you that every character in the Bible was a.) pretty, and b.) Caucasian?

No, the Roman Empire wasn’t pretty, but it was effective, and Harpastum proved to be effective as both training for soldiers and entertainment for spectators — at least, until they got a taste for gladiator bloodshed. Harpastum was a rugby-like game which could best be described as a combination of “Keep Away” and “Smear the Queer.” Teams battled to keep the ball on their side of the pitch for as long as possible, while opponents tried to steal the ball and move it over to their side. Only the ball handler could be tackled, so teams had to master more tricky passes than a run-and-shoot offense.

How they kept score remains a mystery. For all I know, they had an official with a sundial and an hourglass, and every time the ball moved from one side of the field to the other, the ref turned the hourglass over. By the end of the hour, whichever team had the most sand on its side of the hourglass won the match. There was no Harpastum on cloudy days — unless they had two hourglasses, and you had to have some really rich refs for that.

Of course, that concept breaks down completely when you realize that hourglasses weren’t popular until the 14th century or so. (Damn that Wikipedia.) So maybe scores were based on completed passes or kicks, which made holding the ball on your side of the pitch stupid. I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone else does, either.

What we do know, though, is that Romans swiped a lot of concepts from the Greeks, and football was no exception. The Greeks had their own football game that was called either Episkyros or Phaininda, depending on which city you came from, and as with all their athletic contests, the Greeks played naked.

If any modern day footballers tried to recreate that scene today, charges would probably be filed. It was a different time, two millennia ago.

Oh, and there was one other story about a bunch of kids playing Harpastum in the streets, when one of them kicked the ball into a barber shop and killed a guy getting a shave. That story probably fueled the crowd’s desire to see more blades in the Coliseum…

Some also suggest that the Roman Army, which blew off steam playing Harpastum in base camp, carried the game with them to the British Isles, and that’s when the Brits first went nuts over football. Hard to tell if that’s true or not, but hey, apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, just what have the Romans ever done for us?

Lest you think I’ve forgotten completely about my Pittsburgh Steelers — or the fact that their former head coach now lives about 30 minutes away from me — here’s something you might want to know. Bill Cowher told the audience at a coach’s clinic in Knoxville yesterday that he doesn’t plan to get back into coaching until his daughter graduates from high school. In 2009.

Suffice to say, not too many people believe him, especially given the number of NFL jobs that could open up next January. There’s already speculation that the Cleveland Browns and Carolina Panthers will come calling if those teams don’t turn it around next season. Cowher’s always been a big softy when it comes to his daughters, though, so I’ll take him at his word here. Parents don’t want to regret not being there for their kids. Just ask Brian Cousins.

All told, I’m still relatively new to this whole Association Football thing, but I like to think of myself as a quick study. I watch the Premiership games on Fox Soccer Channel, and I have a much better appreciation for this type of football than I did a couple of years ago, when a friend of mine kept getting minor injuries while playing soccer, and I kept telling her, “Why are you still playing that evil, evil sport?” (Of course, I only kept telling her this because those injuries kept her off the dance floor, and she was one of my favorite dance partners, but there you go…)

One of the things I’ve picked up on in the last six months, though, is that soccer fans in America don’t seem to pay a whole lot of attention to American soccer. Sure, it’s big news when Fulham signs another Yank (Clint Dempsey, holla!), but that’s just a sign that the European football clubs get the most attention — especially the Premiership and the UEFA Champions League, which show up on American TV the most, in no small part because those are thought to be the top levels of the game on the planet. Major League Soccer? It’s not even close to being at that level, which is the main reason the best American players go to Europe and only the old, washed-up players sign with MLS teams.

Why? Maybe because MLS is just too damn American.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about promotion and relegation in other soccer leagues? While every other country’s league sends its crappy teams down to a lower level, MLS operates like a closed-corporation league, just like all the other American sports leagues. Bad MLS teams this season will still be MLS teams next season.

This is a flying load of horse shit. Soccer fans in America care about the Prem because there’s just as much drama at the bottom of the standings as there is at the top. We want to see which teams qualify for Europe just as much as we want to see which teams get relegated to the Championship. Why doesn’t this exist in MLS?

Simply put, MLS owners are pussies. They don’t give an actual damn about winning. They just want to turn a profit with their soccer teams with as minimal an investment as possible — just like William Clay Ford with the Detroit Lions and Donald Sterling with the L.A. Clippers. They know there’s an audience in America for this form of football, so they just throw a league out there, get the TV networks to buy into it, and that’s that.

How can you tell they’re all money-grubbing scum who don’t respect the game? Just read Soccernista’s take on Robert Kraft’s dealings with New England Revolution star Shalrie Joseph. Granted, Kraft has a history of being a cheap bastard; just ask Deion Branch. How do you explain, then, that he’ll finally open up his wallet when the Patriots finally lose an AFC title game to the Colts, but he won’t give a rising MLS star an extra $15,000 on his next contract and won’t let him transfer to a European team?

Cheap bullshit like that fueled the Black Sox Scandal in baseball nine decades ago. Who’s to say it wouldn’t breed the same thing in MLS before this decade is over? Soccer’s not immune to this. Just ask the Italians.

Then there are those international competitions organized by CONCACAF, an organization that is sucking up to MLS and U.S. Soccer in the most unfathomable ways. CONCACAF is the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football. That means clubs competing in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, which is going on right now, come from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and a bunch of Central American and Caribbean countries that rarely ever field teams that get past the World Cup group stage.

Ooooooh, pinch me. Let’s watch a bunch of MLS teams attempt to beat up on crap teams from tiny countries with lousy economies. Let’s goad a Mexican goalie into going spikes-up at our American boys, because there’s just not enough animosity between the people of those two countries as it is. And people wonder why the U.S. team never seems to get any better? How about because MLS clubs are already at the level of competition they choose to play every year, and it’s not that high?

The irony here is that some people think making soccer more like other American sports will pull more American fans. Again, this is just more horse shit. American soccer fans don’t want more commercial breaks, more loud music or more cheerleaders… wait, scratch that last bit. More cheerleaders are always good. Everything else is crap.

If you want to grab American soccer fans, give them a product that soccer fans can respect. Give them an American Premier League. Relegate the worst MLS team down to USL First Division, and promote the USL champion to MLS. Every other league worth its salt does this, and it forces club owners to build winners. Why should MLS owners be all fat and happy and entitled to tax write-offs, when no one else on the planet is? You should pay the price if you fail.

Second, open up international competition with South American clubs. Let MLS teams compete in Copa Libertadores and find out just how much further they have to go to be a true world football contender. After a few years of embarrassments in Brazil and Argentina, owners might be more inclined to open up their wallets and make American soccer something more than just a game for pre-teens, college girls and foreigners.

Those two things will make MLS something a little more than a dead end. Like I said, though, MLS owners are pussies, so they probably won’t do either. Until they do, I can’t be arsed to care. I’ll be watching the Premiership. And the NFL. And the Australian Football League, if my ISP doesn’t decide to shut me down for overuse of BitTorrent.

Apparently, the Japanese don’t think to highly of the sports bras. All the better for the rest of us, I say…

That’s Hiroko Sato, a Japanese gravure idol (whatever that means) who would make a fine cheerleader for NFL Japan. Roger Goodell, you’re missing a serious opportunity here…

More hot photos of miss Sato can be found here. No nudity, but you may not want the boss to catch you drooling.

When I started following the Australian Football League last year, I really wanted to like the Sydney Swans, because Sydney is pretty high up on the list of cities I want to visit in this lifetime. Then I heard the Swans’ club song, which just happened to be the same melody as the Notre Dame fight song. Notre Dame waitlisted me all those years ago, and because I’m half-Italian and capable of holding a nice long grudge, singing that melody just seemed wrong.

Thus, despite my respect for the total badass that is Barry Hall, I immediately gravitated toward the Swans’ main rival, the West Coast Eagles, who won the Grand Final against the Swans last September. It seemed like a good time to jump on the bandwagon.

Wouldn’t you know it? I picked a bandwagon full of crackheads…

JOHN Worsfold was in his first weeks as West Coast coach when he was warned of a drug culture in the club.

Shortly after Worsfold’s appointment late in 2001, then prominent player manager Ron Joseph met the rookie coach specifically to tell him that he was disturbed by rumours of drug use among the Eagles.

A source said yesterday: “He told Woosha (Worsfold) all he was hearing in Perth was that drugs were rife at the Eagles.”

Hrmm. Team with crappy fight song, or team with pervasive drug culture. Tough choice, that…

What “rife” means in terms of a number of players is vague, but it does suggest a disturbing number.

More than five years on, Worsfold’s comment - “I’m very, very confident that we are bordering on being a club that is totally clean from drug use” - is scoffed at in Perth and among the clubs.

Right or wrong, it is commonly accepted West Coast has a drug problem.

Gee, whatever gave them this idea? Perhaps it was photos like this?

Yep, that’s Ben Cousins, recently suspended West Coast Eagles superstar, posing with a fan in Australia. Is he high in that photo? Why don’t we ask Ben’s dad?

“I’m making this statement today, not on behalf of Ben, but as a father on behalf of his family…

“Ben’s problem relates to substance abuse and he faces a great challenge. Our family understands that this is a problem that has been faced by so many other Australian families, we are also aware that there is no simple answer to the problem.”

“We are working closely with Ben, I have been with him today and he has told me in due course he will make his own statement.”

So yeah, probably.

The blogger who posted this photo — who’s not an AFL blogger, by the way, because AFL bloggers don’t appear to exist on these here Internets — links to this story, in which another Eagles player, Daniel Kerr, was convicted and fined for “jumping on top of a taxi, pulling an antenna off and beating the driver with it.” Yet another Eagles player, Chad Fletcher, reportedly had a near-death experience in Las Vegas late last year.

Wow. Even Michael Irvin thinks these guys are a little out of control.

Here in America, the NFL Players Association is worried sick about a handful of bad apples dragging NFL players’ image into the gutter, but right now, the AFL sure looks like it has the much bigger image problem. Ben Cousins’ woes would be equivalent to, say, Peyton Manning being revealed as a crack smoker, and where there’s smoke…

I know footy fans in Australia are seeing this. “Ben Cousins” quickly became the most popular search term for this blog in the last two days. What’s your take on what’s happening down there? Post something in the comments. Enlighten an ignorant yank here.

There’s a panic in Perth this week, as the defending AFL champion West Coast Eagles announced that star midfielder Ben Cousins has been suspended indefinitely from the team for what’s being called a “substance abuse” problem.

Cousins apparently missed multiple training sessions with the team and has clashed with teammates, leaving the entire club in what’s being described as “chaos and turmoil” less than two weeks before their big AFL season opener against the Sydney Swans, their main rivals and opponents in the last two Grand Finals. Advertisers are questioning whether the team is still worth supporting after a row of bad press, trouble with the authorities, and rumors of rampant drug use.

Wow. And you thought the Tennessee Titans had it bad with Pacman Jones. Winning the AFL Grand Final has not been good for these guys. I suppose that’ll teach me to jump on the bandwagon for a team because their opponent’s fight song uses the same melody as Notre Dame’s…