Bring back the Ansett/Wizard/NAB/Whatever Cup

Bring back the Ansett/Wizard/NAB/Whatever Cup

GuyWhoLikesSport

What’s the most indelible image in the history of football? 

 Alex Jesaulenko’s mark?

Leo Barry’s?

Garry Moorcroft’s? 

More recently you could make an argument for the photo of Buddy after he kicked his 1000th?

Even Tayla Harris’ now famous shot for goal? 

Maybe it wasn’t a football act.  

Could it have been Nicky Winmar pointing at his skin? 

These are all good answers, but they’re fighting for second place.  

The answer is the photo of Grant Thomas and Lenny Hayes grimly hoisting the Wizard Cup aloft. Looking at that photo you can’t help but wonder whether that victory came at the expense of Thomas’ sanity on Twitter. 

Why did we throw that away? No, I’m not talking about Wizard Home Loans.  

I’m talking about a preseason competition.  

I had the thought when I was sitting and trying to watch Richmond v Melbourne at Casey.  

It just occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, we need to try and get some structure back in this thing.  

I’m not saying that the structure must be in any way related to actual football, just that there should be some structure. 

There is no sport in the world where the preseason is good or even meaningful.  

Preseason football is like Madam Web. Somewhere between weird and bad, and so weird and so bad that it’s good.  

So, I’m not going to delude myself into thinking that playing for the We’ll Pass on Every Rate Rise in Full but Only Give You Half the Rate Cut if One Ever Came Again Cup would force any semblance of competitive play.  

No, it’s about the weirdness.  

Have the preseason bring in the Dakota Johnson energy.  

Maybe Sydney Sweeney will come.

Remember how weird the 2008 Stock Market Crash Cup was?  

Remember the super goal rule where if you kicked it from outside 50 you got 9 points?  

Bring that back for a Get Your Loan Approved in Seconds (don’t ask about the rate) Cup.  

If Sydney Sweeney came and saw Adam Saad launching shots from outside 50 at Preston City Oval while munching down a borek from the Preston Market, there’s no chance she’d leave the city. Then we’d all have a shot. 

 What about the rule where if the ball hits the behind post and careens back into play it’s a live ball.  

What is wrong with that? It was truly funny watching a player remember half a second after the ball hit the post that the ball was, in fact, still in play.  

 It’s like the whole game was happening in the world of The Lobster. Totally divorced from reality.  

 But so much of football is divorced from reality.  

 Think about it. The songs. The banners made out of crepe paper by random people. The sheer number of rules that require an umpire to decipher what was in a player’s head when making a split-second decision before getting crunched.  

Footy doesn’t make sense. That’s part of the beauty of it.  

It’s like when Ben Affleck seems to have evaded capture after murdering dozens of police officers at the end of The Town only to go and hide in what looks like Florida mere seconds after Jon Hamm emphasises that the FBI is a NATIONAL organisation.  

That sort of thinking can’t be tied to any even vague sense of reality, and yet the idiosyncrasies are why we love it.  

It’s true of footy but it was truer of the even weirder version of footy that got trotted out in January and February.  

It might also get more eyeballs.  

Every year it feels like footy sneaks up on me, at least in part because there isn’t a complex around preseason footy.  

If you make it a competition with totally irrelevant stakes, like it was, it would at least be more compelling to more people.  

It might even make the bit players who come in in round 15 of a season because a club is down to their fifteenth half-back flanker a minor celebrity.  

At the very least you’d have some intel on him instead of relying on your autistic fan friend who goes to the VFL games.  

And it’s not like the commentators couldn’t use a warmup.  

It wouldn’t hurt for Brian Taylor, for instance, to brush up on the names of some of the lesser-known player names.  

Just bring back the Panasonic/Fosters/Ansett/Wizard/NAB Cup!

Not because it would be good footy.  

Not because players would try in the preseason.  

Not even because it would be good business.  

No, bring it back because it would be weird.  

And it’s important that footy stays weird.