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As a Sydney Swans fan, I’m actually struggling to come to terms with this new paradigm. I’d always quite liked being affiliated with everyone’s second-favourite team, and I enjoyed the fact that so many opposition supporters quite liked my team.
It made me feel loved, because I am extremely irrational.
But now, we’ve entered a new age: the age of Buddy. And the Swans have gone from “everyone’s second-favourite team” to “worse than Nazis”. Now Sydney lose a game to the so-called Greater Western Sydney Giants, and the whole world is gloating.
And I just don’t know what to think.
It’s not that I don’t want Buddy in my team – obviously any fan would be happy to have such a prominent t-shirt entrepreneur on their side. But it gives one pause when, with Round 1 not even finished because it’s a split round for some reason, everyone is already talking about his terrible influence on the team and the culture and the very city itself.
Can Sydney survive Buddy? Bear in mind his contract runs for nine years. This means that if, as most experts agree, the first game of a player’s career with a club is a certain indicator of how the rest of his career will go, we are in for nine years of missed shots at goal, ill-tempered scuffles and rumours about how terrible he is for younger players.
Not to mention the fact that if this trend continues, Sydney will lose to the Giants every week for the next nine years, which is a dreadful prospect and could get very boring.
I think that now is probably a good time to weigh up the pros and cons of the Buddy deal and decide whether it’s worth continuing with the experiment, or whether we – by which I mean the city of Sydney and all who love her – should cut our losses, pay out the nine years of the contract, and move on sadder and wiser, but also free.
First, the pros:
1. He is a supreme athlete with amazing capacity for outrunning and out-manoeuvring his opponents, faster than anyone of his size and bigger than anyone of his speed.
2. He can kick goals every now and then.
3. He’s grown a nice beard recently.
4. If you kick a ball at him, he’ll probably catch it.
5. He has a winning smile.
6. His dance moves are phenomenal for such a big man.
Pretty impressive!
But then there are also cons:
1. Being a supreme athlete can sometimes make you look like a bit of a show-off, which could cause other players to sulk.
2. Sometimes when he tries to kick goals he doesn’t.
3. Beards probably won’t still be in fashion in nine years.
4. I dunno, there’s just something about him that seems kind of ‘off’, don’t you think?.
5. Look at him out there, the smug bastard. Look at his stupid big face.
6. By the end of his contract his knees may well have literally fallen off.
7. Seriously, he’s being paid a LOT of money. Way too much. Are they INSANE?
8. Seriously. Dude.
So as you can see, there are certainly more cons than pros.
But does this mean the Buddy deal is a bad deal? What if Sydney wins the next three premierships? Will it be a good deal then?
What if Sydney wins the next three wooden spoons? What if Sydney wins the next three premierships, but in all three Buddy is on the sideline with osteitis pubis?
And what if they win the next three wooden spoons but Buddy wins the Brownlow and the Coleman medals in all three years?
And why don’t players seem to get osteitis pubis anymore? Did they find a cure for it? Or were all those guys who had it just faking?
It’s impossible to answer these questions with any kind of reliability. After just one game in Swans colours, the only thing we can say with any certainty is that Lance Franklin is a bad player and the GWS Giants are unbeatable.
But I choose not to give up hope.
I think of the tale of Dustin Fletcher, who has forged a successful career lasting more than two decades despite the fact that when he was born he was, technically, a spider. I think of Robert Harvey, who won two Brownlows despite having no legs. I think of Shane Crawford, and I don’t know why.
For all these reasons and more, I think that Buddy can defy the odds. And I think he probably won’t.
But maybe he will!
So have faith, Swannies. If Round 1 2014 has taught us anything, it’s that almost everyone involved in the AFL in any way should just shut up.