A Football And Golfing Tragedy

Not quite on terms with Othello et al.

Friday night saw the inaugural weekend of the new Hyundai A-League. It’s now called football and no longer known as soccer. Perth Glory took on the Central Coast Mariners from New South Wales. A crowd of 11113 people turned out for the late 8pm kick-off. What a disappointment. We have an Australian midfielder in the name of Simon Colosimo who did bugger-all for the whole game. Within the first 10 minutes we had the best chance of the match when our new 37 year old striker, Brian Deane, the first player to score a goal in the English Premier League, headed a ball down beautifully for Bobby Despotovski to tap in. If only he had touched it.

As it was the first half ended scoreless. The second half saw the Glory coming to the Shed end which is always worth a goal. Hmmm, the only goal of the match came from the Mariners with one of the best strikes I have ever seen from about 35 metres out. Hugely disappointing.

When I arrived home I noticed a message on the answering machine and it was my golfing partner for the next day. He was quite sick and wouldn’t be able to make it. So, to round off a disappointing evening I watched England pile on the runs against Australia in the Fourth Ashes Test.

Saturday morning I struggled out of bed and rang my former golfing partner to meet up with him later in the day at his shop. Then I rang Miky and Yu-Jin and things seem to be improving for them. Miky is not pleased with her 12-15 year olds whom she is teaching grammar as they have a very limited vocabulary which means they are unable to understand even a simple sentence. Korea’s schooling system has a bit to answer for, methinks.

I rang the golf club to cancel my booking for a group of four and then see if I could join a group of three. Had to get there reasonably quickly and got ready and took off. Upon arrival at the golf course I noticed that I didn’t have a handle for my buggy. It wasn’t in the car or in the boot so I drove home. It wasn’t in the house or in the car and I checked both twice. Not wishing to pay money to hire a buggy I tried to install an umbrella as a handle and that was fine with the buggy.

Headed out to the course again and once I put the golf bag on the buggy I realised that there was too much weight for the umbrella. Giving up and deciding to hire a buggy I picked up my bag and realised that there was a strange club in the bag – my buggy handle. Aaagghhhh!!

Paid my fees and I could’ve teed off straight away but I preferred to wait for 20 minutes as I needed a warm up. I soon wished that I hadn’t as on the practice putting green I was sinking a number of three-putts which augured badly for a good game.

Managed to get off the tee much better than last weekend but could not hit anything from an 8-iron down and my putting was terrible. Actually played the front nine four shots better than last weekend including one ball into the water. I played with three blokes for the front nine.

On the back nine I joined a couple of Englishmen and they were a laugh. They played quite nice golf and we cracked lots of jokes. I had a good time – except on my approaches to the greens. To hit a cracking driver off the tee followed by a lovely three wood off the fairway and then to hit my 9-iron approach to the par-5 green sideways into the trees most very bloody frustrating. This scenario occurred on several occasions.

A funny thing happened on the 17th. I had the honour to tee off first and sent my drive straight into the trees. I played a provisional that went into the trees as well. Played the provisional from under a tree and punched it out, directly towards the golf buggy that the Englishmen were on. I got a decent piece of it and it slammed into the front wheel of the buggy and scared hell out of them. I ended up finding my tee shot and whacked that back out onto the fairway followed by a three wood that nearly cleaned up one of my playing partners. It was a few metres away from him and was never going to hit him so I didn’t bother yelling “fore”. At least he saw the funny side of it.

A pretty terrible round all up actually.



Went home and had lunch then drove to the city to catch up with JJ, my former golfing partner. He had some nice things in his shop but as I wish to buy them duty free I’ll have to wait until I’m about to travel. They closed the shop and were heading back to their car when they decided to stop for a snack in a Malaysian restaurant. JJ’s shout so I have eaten out since Miky and Yu-Jin left but I didn’t pay, so it doesn’t count. JJ and his family are lovely people and we’ll probably catch up when they return in December. Nice time to play golf me reckons.

On the way to the shop noticed a tourist shop selling cheap hats, and no wonder – ”AUSTARLIA” hats for $2. I’d be surprised if they got $2 for them. I’d be shocked if they were manufactured in Australia. And dismayed.

Last night was spent watching Brett Lee take the long handle to the Poms with three massive sixes. Not that the rest of the Aussies batted well but to see a tailender smacking the Poms about was the highlight of the day.

Footy tipping has been ok so far. I picked the West Coast Eagles to lose at home and they had won their last 19 home games. With the minor premiership up for grabs it was an important game but the Eagles lost. A few weeks ago the bookies stopped taking bets on the Eagles finishing the home and away season on top as it was so obvious that they weren’t going to give up top spot. Funny thing football.