The Demons face Geelong this weekend. Perhaps this is why Melbourne coach Dean Bailey is setting his supporters up for a ‘competitive’ loss. I counted him using the word 27 times in his press conference at the MCG on Thursday. Don’t believe me? Watch the video.

‘The Spray’ is part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival that starts this week. It’s held in the Carlton Football Club change room, which is pretty cool in itself but the show is a cracker as well.

Footy is back for 2008, how exciting. All footy fans can approach round 1 full of optimism, hopeful that new players and established players returning from injury will create the right balance for a shot at September glory.

I’ve never been able to understand why some lament the omnipotence of AFL footy in Melbourne… just embrace it! Thou shalt have an allegiance, thou shalt compete in office footy tipping (no tanking to collect the boobie prize please) and thou shalt cast aside Collingwood supporters.

Waleed jumps the footywrap train two weeks out from the start of the 2008 season to discuss the Saints NAB cup win, Stephen Jurica, Collingwoods new captain Scott Burns and more.

Take on Paul with League code: 744899

Take on Jeff with League code: 180522

Soon after, across town, Sheedy was asked to recount his three favourite memories of Hird. One was the 2000 premiership. Another was his courageous return from a fractured skull and the courage he displayed when he charged at the ball ‘no reserve.’ Sheedy’s final recollection sets him apart from his contemporary. ‘Hugging the fan was a big one.’ Some in the room begin to laugh but Sheeds is deadly serious. How absurd that this memory be listed as one of the great Essendon champions crowning achievements I wondered and yet as time passes, it is probably one of my most vivid football memories.

James Hird had plenty of reasons to resent the game that gave him a long list of serious injuries, the worst of which was a fractured skull in 2002. Despite all this, he celebrated the Dons’ final handful of wins in 2007 with conviction. He embraced team-mates like families at Tullamarine embrace loved ones returning from a sabbatical. He celebrated his last game at the MCG by taking his three children onto the hallowed turf for a kick after the final siren. Stoping to smell the roses had never been so perfectly exemplified in footy. For a moment, he reminded us to savour footy.

Since his retirement, there are some signs that Buckley is spending less time red-lining and more time enjoying life. He joined the crew of Hugo Boss II for the Sydney-Hobart yacht race. He’s going to jump behind the wheel of a Fiat 500 for the celebrity race at the 2008 Grand Prix and he enters 2008 as a media personality. He will join channel seven’s commentary team on Saturday night. He is Wayne Carey’s replacement at 3AW.

The day Buckley retired I remember driving home from work and listening to talkback radio holding an open forum on Buckley’s career. The callers bagged him relentlessly. How could it be that a champion who has won a Brownlow medal, six club best and fairests and a Norm Smith medal be reflected upon like this. Hours earlier Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse described him as ‘the grandest footballer I’ve ever seen.’ Talkback callers chose words like ‘receiver’ and ‘over rated’ to describe him.

Buckley has always answered his critics by training hard and dominating games of footy. To be a successful television personality though, he will need to learn to become more relaxed, at ease and likeable. The stony, hard focus approach that he adopted during his captaincy at Collingwood might not apply here. He may need to take a leaf out of Hirdy’s book and learn to enjoy footy like the rest of us.

Paul and I got our name on the list for the media day at the Whitten Oval this year; a chance to train with Rocket Eade and the Western Bulldogs.

Rocket walked over to give us an address before we started our revised training program. I was really excited to hear him speak. I’ve always wished I could eavesdrop on the AFL coaches marshalling their troops. I knew this was going to be nothing like one of his halftime tirades but nonetheless I was intrigued.Before Rocket had uttered his first sentence, he paused. Paul, with his aviator sunglasses and earring in its usual place had caught the coach’s eye. Rocket said: ‘we’ve got a few rock stars playing in our team… we don’t want any rockstars with the media do we?’ Paul offered to remove his earring but Rocket laughed it off. This wasn’t the day for serious discipline, it was a PR exercise.

Later I asked Scott West what Rocket might have done if Paul had been recruited to the club and turned up to his first training session dressed like that. West replied: ‘he probably would have torn the earring out, taken the glasses off and stomped all over them.’ He also explained that eye contact is very important to Eade. Clearly Paul had gotten off lightly but the other thing we quickly learned about Rocket is that he has a great sense of humour.

The legal waiver we had signed hardly seemed relevant as we began with a jog, some stretching and some light runs and hurdling. No doubt our program had been adjusted to reflect the physiques of those in attendance, most notably Tony Jones from Channel 9 and Ricky Olarenshaw from Channel 7. Ricky looked like he could play on a forward flank for the Bulldogs this year if required. Paul asked me if I thought it was weird that he had come down to train with the team at the media day. There were no cameras there and he wasn’t learning anything he didn’t already know. It was a bit weird. Perhaps he just misses being part of a footy club.

Soon after, when the players joined us, we did a couple of drills. There was a noteable shift in pace. Eager to prove myself, at one point I grabbed a loose ball and shaped to handball but all in the one motion I was tackled and the ball spilled loose. What shocked me the most was that I never saw it coming. I’ve played footy before and always thought I had a pretty good awareness of what was going on around me but trust me, with the Bulldogs around, I had no idea. First year players seem to have to come to grips with this very same feeling every year. The disposals and tricks that set them apart as juniors have to be executed with tremendous speed when you reach the AFL.

The final station in our program was some strength work with specialist coach, Tim Smith. He used phrases like ‘drop and give me twenty’ as throwaway lines, apparently oblivious to the enormous task it presented the humble members of the media every time he used them. I carried out his instructions dutifully. Again, he was not giving it to us with both barrels but I got the impression he was not a guy to be messed with (or maybe that was because Rocket had warned us earlier that he had just got out of prison.) Paul asked him who the toughest player he’d ever seen was. Without stopping what he was doing and with little deliberation he named Darren Milane. Paul wasn’t surprised. He later explained that en route to Collingwood’s 1990 premiership, Milane had rebroken his finger in every finals match. Pretty hard to argue with that.

As the session wrapped up, Rocket thanked us for coming down and asked us to ‘take it easy’ on them this year, just as they had gone easy on us, the only exception being Tony Jones who, for some reason, all the players delighted in roughing up.

- Ben Cousins sacked by Eagles over new drug alligations
- Former Pie captain, Gavin Brown, named as Collingwoods stand alone VFL team coach
- Sydney have delisted Luke Vogels, Simon Phillips and Jonathan Simpkin
- The Saints have delisted Barry Brooks, Fergus Watts, Phil Raymond and Justin Sweeney
- Former Swan, Pie and Blue; Barry Mitchell will coach the Box Hill Hawks
- Former Crows players Ben Hart and Matthew Clarke have joined Adelaide’s coaching panel
- Hawks delisted players Matt Little and Josh Thurgood have joined retirees Ben Dixon, Joel Smith and Richie Vandenberg exiting the Club
- Lance Whitnall delisted from the Blues
- Matthew Knights has culled off Mark Johnson, Kepler Bradley and Lachlan McKinnon from the Bombers list
- Melbourne’s list has been shortened; Ryan Ferguson, Daniel Ward, Simon Godfrey and Heath Neville have been delisted and veterans Nathan Brown, Clint Bizzell and Byron Pickett have all retired
- Adelaide has delisted Jason Torney, Ian Perrie, Matthew Bode, John Hinge and Darren Pfeiffer
- Jason McCartney and Brett Montgomery have joined Carlton’s coaching panel
- Round 1 of season 2008 will be played over Easter March 20-24
- Collingwood will play an NAB Cup match in Dubai, expected to be  against Adelaide on Saturday, February 9

Will keep you posted, Paul

Imagine the damage my first 22 would do on Grand Final day!

Would love to hear your thoughts…

1. J. Brown (Brisbane Lions)
2. C. Cornes (Port Adelaide)
3. C. Judd (West Coast)
4. M. Pavlich (Fremantle)
5. D. Cox (West Coast)
6. G. Ablett (Geelong)
7. A. Goodes (Sydney)
8. M. Scarlett (Geelong)
9. J. Bartel (Geelong)
10. D. Kerr (West Coast)
11. C. Mooney (Geelong)
12. D. Glass (West Coast)
13. N. Riewoldt (St Kilda)
14. L. Hodge (Hawthorn)
15. S. Black (Brisbane Lions)
16. P. Burgoyne (Port Adelaide)
17. K. Cornes (Port Adelaide)
18. C. Ling (Geelong)
19. A. McLeod (Adelaide)
20. S. Johnson (Geelong)
21. B. Harvey (Kangaroos)
22. B. Johnson (Western Bulldogs)
23. L. Franklin (Hawthorn)
24. S. Mitchell (Hawthorn)
25. J. Corey (Geelong)
26. J. Hird (Essendon)
27. S. Burgoyne (Port Adelaide)
28. B. Lade (Port Adelaide)
29. B. Ottens (Geelong)
30. S. Lucas (Essendon)
31. S. Goodwin (Adelaide)
32. B. Kirk (Sydney)
33. M. Egan (Geelong)
34. N. Dal Santo (St Kilda)
35. T. Lockyer (Collingwood)
36. B. Ebert (Port)
37. C. Jones (Kangaroos)
38. D. Milburn (Geelong)
39. H. Shaw (Collingwood)
40. T. Cloke (Collingwood)
41. B. Sewell (Hawthorn)
42. D. Swan (Collingwood)
43. P. Bell (Fremantle)
44. J. Adcock (Brisbane)
45. D. Fletcher (Essendon)
46. N. Foley (Richmond)
47. B. Harris (Western Bulldogs)
48. M. McVeigh (Essendon)
49. B. Fevola (Carlton)
50. Q. Lynch (West Coast)

I guess we aren’t dealing with brain surgeons when it comes to footballers - but if you had a choice between playing for (a) a club that hasn’t played finals since the year you were drafted to the AFL or (b) a club that was 5 points away from a Grand Final appearance 10 days ago - where would you go?!?!

Perhaps the Captaincy was the sealer???

The All-Australian midfielder, 41, collapsed at his home in Cottesloe and was taken by ambulance to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. It has been reported that he died from a heart attack.

Chris Mainwaring played 201 matches for the Eagles between 1987 and 1999. He was a member of the club’s premiership teams in 1992 and 1994. He was also a member of the first ever Eagles’ team, named on the wing. He was an All-Australian in 1991 and 1996.

Mainwaring was most recently on the selection panel for this year’s all-Australian team. The football champion also worked as a sports reporter and newsreader for Channel 7.

Chris Mainwaring will be sadly missed by the football public. He will be remembered as one of the modern games’ most naturally gifted players. Few could forget his many electric runs up the Subiaco wing.

Paul

Celebrate all you Cats fans. What a dominant performance in season 2007 culminating with the premiership. In the last footywrap of the year we dissect the Grand final and reflect on our first year in Showbizz.

Knights has been a development coach at Windy Hill and is believed to have beaten Damien Hardwick, former Bomber and current Hawks assistant.

Knights played 279 games for the Tigers and captained the club from 1997 - 2000. He was also named on the bench for Richmond’s Team of the Centuary.

That year I was part of a TV audience of over 30 million people worldwide that watched the game. I was careful to ensure I didn’t miss out. The weekend before I had bought entry tickets to the Aussie theme pub which could not accommodate all the interested ex- pats. Like many other Australians working at my English language school, I had called in sick from work. My severe case of finals fever had all but cleared up by Monday.

The owner of the bar provided Aussie beer to authenticate the experience. Streamers in teams colours stretched across the ceiling. Speakers had been set up so the commentary was audible. Pies were provided at a cost of 700 yen each. A little expensive but it had been so long since I had eaten one it was worth the premium.

Despite all this, the TV on which the game was screened was quite a modest size. The Colonel, who played for the Tokyo goannas as a rover, battled for a vantage point. He commented on how he had forgotten how tall Australians were. No longer were we peering over the tops of heads like we had done in the train on the way down.

Hundreds of thousands of ex- pats living overseas will face the same dilemna on Saturday the 30th Septmeber. Where to find a TV showing the AFL grand final. I asked the question on an footy forum, ‘where have you watched the Grand final?’ and the responses were diverse. Imagine how Daniel felt in 1998 when he flicked through the channels in his New York hotel room only to stumble across his team playing the Kangaroos in the Grand Final. The crows finished 5th and lost their first final but the complicated finals system that year meant that depending on other results, the crows could get a second chance. This permutation had escaped Daniel, who placed a quick call home to confirm the details. There must have been some shouting in the hotel that night. I wonder if the neighbours would have been more forgiving if they had understood the gravity of Adelaide taking the premiership cup home for the first time.

There will barely be a country on the globe that doesn’t have an AFL fan frantically searching for coverage of the game this weekend. Even the troops in Iraq will scream and shout when the national anthem draws to a close and the umpire bounces the ball

Two years ago, the grand final did not disappoint, the Swans beating the more favoured Eagles by four points. It made me miss home. Mum sent me smarties and vegemite while I was living in Japan. My Dad sent me newspaper cuttings about the Tigers which I carefully read and pined on my corkboard but nothing will made them feel closer to home than sharing the moment of the Grand Final.

Jeff Wortman

Paul and Jeff go live outside the MCG straight after the Kangaroos vs Hawthorn match. We discuss Collingwood’s extra time win and the Kangaroos return to form as well as the turmoil at St. Kilda. Watch for Jeff to get attacked by some feral supporters right at the end!