What happened is indescribable. It was insufferable deceit, lies to spite the truth. Promise the world then send the world to hell. One thing is said, another meant, without the wit of a double entendre or the honesty to recognise right from wrong.
Trust is broken, and once that is gone the world is sent to hell. Excuses are meaningless, not when the evidence is so clinical, so stark that any honest member of society would recognise it and suggest the plan had gone awry. The very existence of hope and hype were sacrificed by two hours of ineptitude. Recriminations will be bad.
It wouldn’t be Collingwood without the drama. Aside from scattered moments of glory, the realisation that something will go wrong, it’s not a matter of if, is almost guaranteed.
It went wrong at the weekend. What the Magpies tried to hide was discovered. Another life, another actuality no one was aware of except the perpetrator and his minions was exposed. The fraud is apparent. There can be no denials.
When Mick Malthouse closes his eyes, images from Friday night will provide a grim matinee, a flash of agony cruelling sleep and forcing nauseas daydreams. A week is a long time in football for a coach. It can be much longer in life. The next week will be a mile wide and a mile deep, a tough duration for a perpetrator proved to be a mile wide and an inch deep.
All in the wake of the weekend are tarnished by the same angst and hurt, the same fleeting images of betrayal and contemptible self-destruction.
To live is to constantly create trust, which can be tough when life offers challenges that often end in failure. The weekend produced abject failure, one entity responsible, its actions impacting savagely against every hope and daydream thought in assurance.
Trust has been lost. It wouldn’t be Collingwood without the drama, there’s just too much pathological history to suggest otherwise. When things seem so damn good, when the season was tracking as expected and what should be the best time of their collective lives, the Magpies degenerate into apology.
Right now Collingwood is so damn sorry for the weekend. Promises reaffirmed before the game renounced, words of love, sentences of the future abandoned for all to see. The world has gone to hell, for the Magpies.
An old cliché, the victors write history is no truer now than it was when first uttered. It has always been true. The truth can be spun many ways by the winners but no one respects a liar. On the evidence provided at the weekend, Collingwood are salutary liars without conscience, guilty, brandished by wreckful history, testament from the masses, that this club just cannot be trusted.
When trust is broken, explanation is sought. Victors may write history, but liars write history too, it just isn’t always the truth. And people believe it. People believe Collingwood still has a future, that a premiership beckons, but each untruth, a performance like the loss to Geelong creates mistrust.
Mistrust can be ruinous. No one knows what to believe. Reputations are destroyed. Explainable actions, no matter how dreadful, become unexplainable despite the evidence. What happened is clear. Collingwood lost to Geelong by 96-points. The defeat has instantly become a part of infamous history, but this is Collingwood and such things are expected.
Much has been discussed and written since the weekend, the result has been analysed and no one seems clearer to the truth, which is to ignore the proof.
What happened at the weekend was shocking. Everyone knows what happened.
Collingwood has to rebuild the trust in an industry that now trusts nothing. Each breath, each training session, conversation and statement will be scrutinised for clinical signs of misbehaviour, a search for certainty, that the truth still retains lies and a club that finished on top, on the verge of something magnificent has found another way to implode.
This is Collingwood, after all, and everything is so much more dramatic for the Magpies.
An incredible lie was disclosed at the weekend. The pundits will believe what they want, that it wasn’t Collingwood, it wasn’t how they played, that injuries and suspensions hurt before the game. The same people will suggest the ball didn’t bounce right on the night, and injuries to key players were insurmountable.
Spin it how you want. What happened at the weekend will forever be what happened.
It was Collingwood at the weekend, no matter what Malthouse says. They played and lost. Lies are not required. They were caught out. Honesty is required. If Malthouse tells the truth right now he’ll never have to remember anything, because lying is hard work, too much to invent and recall. The people, too, aren’t dumb enough to remember lies, not when they’ve seen so many clues.
Collingwood is in trouble. Trust will be tough to regain. Apologising to those they hurt is contrite, because apology wouldn’t be necessary if they performed as expected, as responsibility dictates they should.
No one need say sorry if they’ve done nothing wrong.
Next weekend the Magpies will be put in front of West Coast. How they handle the Eagles will dictate their progression deeper into the finals. If they win as expected, they’ll go a long way to redemption.
But this is Collingwood. They should offer a disclaimer to supporters, our history is bad, if you support us whatever happens from now on is your fault.
That disclaimer, though, is a copout. People love popular, no matter the illicit intoxication. Collingwood, as minor premier and the team favoured to win the premiership has again tried sabotaging everything they’ve worked for, everything they wanted in one weekend of madness.
Confronting lies is always brutal. The truth may have layers, but there is only one way to tell it when the exhibition has been so hazardous. Collingwood must do what they say they will. They must win back the respect and admiration of every soul currently in horror, wondering how something so wonderful could descend into calamity.
The Magpies have been lying. Truth, victory against the Eagles, will be atonement.
Then they must do more, because one week, one victory, is not going to be enough.
Pride Cup results
| 143 | Dave (6) |
| 142 | Anne (5) |
| 141 | James (6) |
| 140 | Russ (5) |
| 138 | Sandra (6) |
| 137 | Matt (5) |
| 134 | Andy (4), Stevo (4) |
| 133 | Adam G (5) |
| 131 | Matt B (5) |
| 130 | Adam L (6) |
| 129 | Eric (5) |
| 128 | Dallas (5) |
| 126 | Jim (4) |
| 125 | Graeme (4), Paul (4) |
| 117 | George (4) |
| 114 | Wayne (2) |
