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?”