Dave’s Football Blog

No more chatter, no more predictions, and for the players, no more drinking, please. The Australian Football League Grand Final is set to go Saturday afternoon at the Melbourne Cricket Ground — which means it’ll start around midnight eastern time here in America. I’m going to be up very, very late tonight.

If you’re in North America and looking for a Grand Final party, click here. I’ll be at the Grand Final party in Raleigh tonight, which gives me that rare opportunity to watch an AFL game with fans of Australian football — something that’s kind of hard to do in Raleigh, North Carolina.

For the record, I’m tipping a Port upset for this one. They’re the only club in the AFL that has enough speed to keep up with Geelong, and I’ve liked the way they played footy this season. The only thing that could doom them is goal-kicking inaccuracy, which ruined the Power against Hawthorn earlier this year.

Either way, though, it’s gonna be a glorious day in Melbourne. Enjoy the game, footy fans.

When I heard yesterday that USA women’s soccer head coach Greg Ryan decided to bench Hope Solo in favor of Brianna Scurry for the FIFA Women’s World Cup semifinal match against Brazil, my immediate reaction was, “What!? Why!?”

Maybe it’s because there’s a saying in hockey that you stay with a hot goalie. (What? Raleigh’s a hockey town, people.) There was no hotter goalkeeper in the Women’s World Cup than Solo. She had a three-game scoreless streak going into this semifinal. She had built up some chemistry with her backline, whereas Scurry would be coming in cold. I don’t care that Scurry had performed well in big games in the past. You don’t ditch the girl that brought you to the dance.

Result? USA 0-4 Brazil. If Scurry was put in there to stop Marta from scoring, she made a total mess of it.

This reminds me of the time when Wade Phillips, then head coach of the Buffalo Bills, benched quarterback Doug Flutie, who led the Bills to a 10-5 record and a Wild Card berth, in favor of Rob Johnson. End result? The Music City Miracle, bitches. It was a karmic beatdown of epic proportions.

Well, Brianna Scurry is the new Rob Johnson. This move created unnecessary chaos in the locker room and in the media. Ryan will be questioned endlessly for this decision. He ought to get Grady Littled for it.

By the way, that second yellow on Shannon Boxx was indeed a shit call, but after weeks of watching Premier League matches, I’m starting to develop an immunity to such things. Besides, the game was already lost the moment Hope was left on the bench.

Before the Rugby World Cup began, I held out hope that the USA Eagles might actually have a shot at beating the island nations they would face in Pool A. Their early performance against England gave me a little hope that they could finish 3rd and qualify automatically for 2011.

Silly me. The Eagles followed up a 25-15 loss to Tonga two weeks ago with a 25-21 loss to Samoa yesterday. Only South Africa remains on the USA’s schedule, and even if the Springboks put their B team out there — which they’re expected to do, since they’ve already won Pool A — they should handle the Eagles fairly easily.

All it shows, really, is that America just isn’t ready to embrace a third football code. It barely embraces Association football as it is; our obsession with the gridiron is just that great. If our own football game weren’t an ancestor of rugby, we might put a little more effort into rugby, but in the end, there are too many similarities between the two codes to get Americans to care. The fact that rugby is proving to be the Southern Hemisphere’s game doesn’t help matters any.

For those of you that care, though, there are a few pretty interesting fixtures left to determine who will qualify for the knockout stage. Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have already won their pools and advanced. Here’s a quick look at what’s left:

Pool A
Friday, 9/28: England v. Tonga
(Winner gets Australia in the knockout stage)

Pool B
Saturday, 9/29: Wales v. Fiji
(Winner gets South Africa in the knockout stage)

Pool C
Saturday, 9/29: Scotland v. Italy
(Winner gets Pool D champ in the knockout stage)

Pool D
Sunday, 9/30: Argentina v. Ireland, France v. Georgia
(If Argentina wins and/or gets a bonus point for scoring three tries, they win the pool, and France will face New Zealand in the knockout stage. If Ireland and France win and France gets the bonus point and Argentina doesn’t get a bonus, then France wins the pool and Argentina gets New Zealand. Got all that?)

There’s a lot of stuff I don’t get the opportunity to blog these days, so in honor of our guy Carlito finally opening up his account at Old Trafford last Sunday… wait, why am I celebrating the fact that Manchester United scored?

Never mind. Here are some goodies from around the web that you might have missed in the last week or so:

• NFL players really don’t move around very much. (Pens Blog)
• Why is Rafa Benitez trying to fix what ain’t broke? (Have You Ever Been to Liverpool?)
• How is Association football better than Rugby football? (Who Ate All the Pies)
• Rugby star thinks union is going soft, encourages son to play league. (Scrumbag)
• Oh, and the AFL is getting soft, too. (Fox Sports Australia)
• The WAC hates the haka. (With Malice)
• “Thierry and Ruud smoke about twenty a day.” (QuirkyNews)
• An explanation for Kerry’s All-Ireland dominance. (Green and Red)
• Sydney is tapping Ireland for talent once again. (Fox Sports Australia)
• Brazil is finally embracing women’s football. (Goal)
• Chaos in Canada? Say it ain’t so! (The Offside)
• Polish soccer fans are mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore. (Pitch Invasion)
• It’s the New Nou! (Who Ate All the Pies)
• There’s a 78% chance this site will be abused by NFL bloggers. (Sports Club Stats)
• These footballs are awfully quiet. (24dash)
• These soccer podcasts are not. (The Offside)
• And you have to find the podcasts, because the newspapers just don’t care… (USA Soccer Spot)
• …and the TV pundits don’t know squat. (Fair Challenge)
• Look, Carolina Panthers fans — it’s Reggie Howard! (Charlotte Observer)
• These two guys probably shouldn’t sit together. (850 the Buzz)
• Football is better for you than jogging. So is dancing, which I do because I suck at football. (Science Blog)

Finally, my favorite quote of the week comes from The SSW, Robert Weintraub’s new weekly feature for Deadspin, which attempts to glean what the army of ex-jocks that make up the NFL punditry is thinking every week.

Who is laughing harder, Marty Schottenheimer or Jose Mourinho?

I’m expecting the LaDainian Tomlinson-Didier Drogba pity party to commence any day now.

In case you missed it on Monday, Jimmy Bartel of the Geelong Cats won the Brownlow Medal, the award for the best and fairest player in the Australian Football League, on Monday. The above video comes straight from the ceremony, which was not boycotted after all.

In case anyone is wondering, I’m planning on going to the Grand Final party in Raleigh on Friday night. It’s a rare opportunity for me to watch an AFL game with other people who know what Australian football is, so I think I’ll take advantage of it — although given how late this game will end, I may need to get some Bawls.

My buddy JJ Cooper, who’s seriously holding it down at the Steelers FanHouse these days, would like to remind all of you that Willie Parker is currently leading the NFL in rushing and is also currently making me feel really, really stupid for picking LaDainian Tomlinson first in my fantasy draft this year. (Seriously, we all should have known that the mere presence of Norv Turner would ruin LT’s stats. Why did we still pick him?)

Clearly, that’s not the case with Parker, who’s running wild in Bruce Arians’ new offense. In fact, I believe I called that a long time ago…

That was part of a call-in I did with AOL’s Sports Bloggers Live podcast back in August of 2005. They didn’t see it coming, so somebody had to warn them.

I got a little nostalgic for the SBL days after getting word last Friday that Jamie Mottram, the former host of SBL and the man who built FanHouse into the monster it is today, was resigning his post at AOL Sports to take a similar position at Yahoo. Jamie was instrumental in bringing me into the FanHouse fold at its inception. My prediction of Fast Willie’s success may have had a little something to do with that.

So either directly or indirectly, Jamie Mottram and Willie Parker are responsible for getting me the blogging gig that paid off my credit card bill, paid for my Wii and might even get me a new HDTV soon. I really should buy those guys drinks one of these days.

Rumor has it that DeAngelo Hall got a beatdown for his meltdown. I wonder if a rape stand was involved…

I know I’m a few days late to this, but I haven’t been sleeping much, so piss off.

Can someone explain to me how Kerry County got to be the New York Yankees of Gaelic Football? Every year, they seem to end up in the All-Ireland Final, and three of the last four years, they walked out of Croke Park with the trophy. In fact, Kerry has reached the All-Ireland Final 53 times since 1903 and won it 35 times.

Seriously, how did it get to be this way? What is it about Kerry that produces so much talent at this game? Is it just tradition? Is it that their players are good, but not quite good enough to be raided by the Australian Football League?

Of all the major codes, I probably know the least about Gaelic Football — following the NFL, the AFL and European soccer is hard enough — so if any Irish readers want to help me out here, feel free to post a comment.

In case you’re not paying attention to that little FanHouse feed in the right hand column of this site, here are just a few of the items I’ve been writing about there while letting this blog lay fallow for a few days…

• Jose Mourinho’s shitcanning: Here, here and here.
• Chris Judd is leaving the West Coast Eagles. Carlton will not trade Brendan Fevola for him, and more’s the pity, because it would be the greatest train wreck in sport since Tonya Harding.
• The Carolina Panthers weren’t worth sticking around for on Sunday and are… wait for it… doomed at safety. (Mark my words, folks — the Houston Texans are a playoff team with Matt Schaub in charge.*)
• Craig Murray wants to be the canary in the Arsenal coal mine, because those books don’t sell themselves.
• The Rugby World Cup semifinals could be an all-Southern Hemisphere affair.
• It’s USA v. England in the Women’s World Cup. Pray for more rain, you pervs.

In other news, I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week and didn’t take nearly enough snapshots of my Virginia Beach trip last weekend, but there is photographic evidence, and I got a shout out from the guitarist during Mighty Lester’s awesome set, so that’s enough for me.

* - If Andre Johnson sits out a while because of that knee sprain, Houston is a playoff team next year.

It’s a fantastic weekend for football on our lonely little planet. Week 2 of the NFL season kicks off on Sunday. The Premier League and all the other European domestic leagues resume play this weekend. The USL First Division playoffs kick off tonight. England plays South Africa today in just one Rugby World Cup match this weekend. The AFL Semifinals are already underway. (I’m watching a DVR-delayed West Coast-Collingwood match as I type this.) To top it all off, the All-Ireland Football Final between Kerry and Cork takes place on Sunday in Croke Park.

Football is everywhere. And where will I be?

Sometimes, you just have to pick and choose which hobby to indulge. This would be one of those times. It’s the last weekend of summer, folks, and just as there was last year, there’s a party in Virginia Beach that’s calling my name. I expect I’ll be back at CP Shuckers on Sunday, though, watching the Panthers face the Texans and the Steelers take on the Bills, because true fans don’t miss the games.

Of course, if there were a way for me to watch those games on the beach, I’d do it, but satellite and battery technology hasn’t advanced quite that far yet. More’s the pity.

To all my fellow Railhawks fans who will be attending the first playoff game in that franchise’s short history: Sorry I’m going to miss this one, guys. Sing long and loud for me, and if we don’t pull off the upset, I’ll see you guys at the pub for some Premier League matches.

And I’ll see the rest of you back here on Monday. Whatever your football code, have fun watching the games, everyone.