A Heartfelt Plea...

[Sly]

This Message knows where it's going.

I'm not a yo-yo.

I'm not a fatalist.

I have always known what I've supported and I've never backflipped. I've stood by my decisions and those who've read me and know me know that I'll admit when I've been proven wrong. But I don't change week-by-week to suit the tides. I'll praise where earned; but trust takes a whole lot longer.

Again, people who know me will know that I said that the Club was headed toward doom from 1993. Premiership - great. But it don't equal a life-time contract, literally or figuratively. And you don't leap from the fire and into the pit of hell by making appointments and keeping them out of sentimentality.

Hello - today.

Five wins on the trot last year and then a slump of total (emotional and psychological) hopelessness. We've seen that before. Fine - a huge turnover in the list and Team-strategies. Fine - there were periods in that slump in which it seemed there were no seeds toward the future being sewn (bar "experience" gained simply by the sake of players playing). It was a case of waiting.

A painful year - 2000. More painful than many others, maybe, because of the early expectation.

6-5 in 2001.

I am not sycophantic. Three performances (this year) - versus Richmond, versus the Kangaroos, and versus Sydney - were as weak as piss, (sorry for the profnanity, Mike).

Fine, again. It's the nature of today's game. There's no such thing as rebound (from a loss). It's not improbable for Teams to emerge totally at a loss in any given Round. It's not highly unusual for streaks, whether they be losses or wins. In fact, that's substantiated by many Teams (bar Essendon).

Wins. Losses. It's not that it comes down to the Team on the day. It simply comes down to the day. The form-line hardly counts anymore. Whatever happens happens.

6-5 in 2001.

I'm tired of bullshit.

This is the incarnation of the League - a handful of wins followed by a handful of losses, etc. Again, Essendon's the exception. Otherwise, it's a slaughterhouse sitting upon a rollercoaster. There hardly ever seems rhyme or reason.

This...is the life I want - no excuses, no regrets. In relation and respect to the Season, I don't care about the path (upon the Ladder) we take - but don't bullshit me.

Don't hit the despair of last Season where I came home from games in which supporters were questioning the point of it all, were questioning what they saw, what was there.

I don't want to hear about "rebuilding" or some sort of "grand plan." It's a case of do or don't. Anything else is fodder - and I saw enough of that between Leigh Matthews' latter years and Tony Shaw's coaching tenure.

Time runs out and it takes excuses with it, whirlpooling them into the oblivion of the drain.

You lose - you pay.

This is the life you've chosen.

But when it comes down to it, if you're going to stand you stand alone - and it doesn't matter what subsists around you. But you don't live off the flames of the past; you ingrain your own name, make your own way, and burn your own legend.

And when you turn around and all those eyes are set upon you, it's with envy - and that's because you've earned that, and not because you're attempting to inherit some lineage and entitlement.

But that's something that's got to be done.

So don't bullshit me.

One way or another, I don't care. But choose the path, because mortality lays in mediocrity - and each lay in affectation.

Immortality ain't free and it's got to be won.

There's a Truth and there's a Goal.

Whether it's Wanted - Take It.

Because in the end, no matter what's said and what's done it comes down to a choice as simple as Black as or White - DO or DON'T.

There's no in-between.



<B>Sly.
<FONT size="3">MTA.</FONT s>
The Collingwood Rant. </B>

[magpie_russ]

[magpie24]

Hope you had a good night Sly!!!!!!!
Read my slogan mate..................

******WE WILL RISE IN OUR WAY*****