April 2013
2 posts
12 tags
The best a man can get
The Ancelottery can’t help but find Perth Glory’s continual inability to win the toilet seat perpetually enjoyable. Their failure to ever register a win against North Queensland Fury; the signing of Nicky ‘Vidal Sassoon’ Ward; their epic capitulation in last year’s grand final after Mr. Tumble took a comic tumble; the subsequent discovery that referee Jarred...
March 2013
3 posts
9 tags
Avoid the spoon
Well done to the Unicorns! Six months ago an object of our mockery and ridicule, they’ve emerged from the shadow of The Del Piero Effect™ to win their first ever serving tray in their inaugural season.
All praise Tony Popovic, who during the course of the campaign has managed to inexplicably transform Tarek Elrich, Michael Beauchamp, Mark Bridge, Shannon Cole, Nikolai Topor-Stanley and...
7 tags
You do the math
In the winter of 2012, Cashmere John, the bestest youth team manager in the land who hadn’t actually won anything, was given his big break. As a reward for his incredible coaching talent and his even more incredible perma-tan, Morwell Heart entrusted him with the keys to the canteen at Bundoora. With the backing of many respected figures within the game, as well as Scott Munn, he started to...
11 tags
Money, money, money
It may not come as a surprise to you that The Ancelottery is not good with money. Whether it’s the extravagant purchasing of naff footballing merchandise, the hefty overdue library book fines, or the extortionate “Grant Brebner Coaching Academy” monthly membership fee - each results in the same thing… every trip to the hole-in-the-wall is a “insufficient funds”...
10 tags
Pitch Perfect
As those more cynical than us took one look at the A-league fixtures for Round 24, they’d have been forgiven for thinking that the Labour Day game between Morwell Heart and SAdelaide United would be about as appetising as a unseasoned lentil and quinoa salad.
On the one hand you had the rudderless A-league travelling circus troupe, Morwell Heart - a team who haven’t won away from...
February 2013
4 posts
4 tags
Megamind
If The Ancelottery was asked to compile a list of the world’s greatest tactical intellects we’d immediately be drawn to the counter-attacking genius of Sir Alex Ferguson. Guus Hiddink’s strict ‘no nonsense’ approach would be hard to ignore, as would Pep Guardiola’s school of tippy-tappy eye candy that perpetually leaves SBS cheerleader Craig Foster in a...
6 tags
It's not about the money
It’s tough being a Morwell fan at the moment. League away form is nothing short of abysmal, a top six finals finish teeters on a knife-edge, the price of cashmere has skyrocketed in recent weeks, and now Heart CEO Scott Munn is smarting after being “snubbed” by everyone’s favourite under-paid defender Luca$$$h Neill.
On Friday, the covetous former Al Wasl defender had a...
9 tags
Mutually Agreed
Two weeks ago, under-fire Perth Glory head coach, Ian Ferguson, insisted there was no problem between himself and Glory owner Tony Sage. ”He’s been very positive and supportive and I’m really happy with where I’m at with him at the moment,” Ferguson chirped whilst gleefully clutching his Tony Sage Fan Club Membership Card. “We talk football and he can see, like everyone else, that we’re just...
5 tags
The Expendables
Upon discovering six days ago that John Kosmina was definitely leaving SAdelaide United because he “got spooked”, board director Bruno Marveggio frantically leapt into action - by sitting down for a lavish lunchtime feast. After the third round of sautéed goose fat & chicken liver canapés, Marveggio wiped his mouth and announced “the assembly of an independent all-star cast.” A crack team of...
January 2013
5 posts
Hard luck & hypocrisy
August 23, 2011 “It’s not our style [signing a player like Harry Kewell]. For us it’s just about being a club that is built on some pretty strong basics. No single player is bigger than the club and that’s our focus… Victory has taken a different pathway, but our goal is to uncover the next Harry Kewell. Our direction is to bring young talent through. We are in this for the long haul. The circus...
16 tags
Exit Through The Gift Shop
In his sensational new role as unemployed coffee connoisseur, John Kosmina yesterday released an EXCLUSIVE! statement to footballaustralia.com.au to announce his immediate resignation from Badelaide United because the club has “no direction” and “lacks trust”.
“There is no vision. Decision-making at management level is reactive and impulsive at best, and there is no...
9 tags
Sadistic serial killers & Isaka Cernak
So, you’re the chairman of an A-league club in a country where interest in football could be described as, ‘modest at best’. You’re already competing for business and support with many wealthy, much more fashionable and successful clubs, usually of the egg-chasing variety. Your team is bottom of the ladder, having lost four games on-the-trot, most recently in a 7-1 dismantling by Bling FC (Bling...
19 tags
Emerton goal. Redmayne assist.
Finally, the wait is over. After three long years of snide comments, contracting cast-offs, signing knack-prone ageing former Socceroos, Xeroxing promotional discounts, gainfully employing an inept half-wit rookie and giving him a suit and a clipboard - the final piece of the puzzle has been added - the late last-gasp chokes caused by defensive implosions. Like the concluding scene in a hammy...
10 tags
Window of opportunity
As the date ticked over to January 1 on our George Nelson Vitra Night Clock, the over-sized window adorned with a glittering-sign reading “Transfer” creaked open, sparking yet another stirringly tedious month of uncorroborated speculation. A month where according to journalists, fiction becomes fact, and where cash-stricken desperation becomes a disastrous January of losing players to...
December 2012
4 posts
5 tags
Brains and Baths
David Hicks, Peter Norman, Julian Assange, Mandawuy Yunupingu, Kate Ritchie, the town of Albury… The Ancelottery has always admired people who take a stand. Those who display an unshakable conviction in something that they strongly believe in. Those who won’t tolerate lies or bias. Those who exhibit an unflappable moral fortitude, despite having to endure ongoing chastitisement from...
6 tags
Pep & Ernie
While more learned folk dedicate column inches to awkwardly phrased flare jokes and a knuckle-dragging racist in BAdelaide, The Ancelottery would instead like to focus on the beautiful game being played the beautiful way.
According to Elia Santoro, SBS analyst, SMH author and epitome of smugness - Craig Foster, has finally ‘put-his-money-where-his-mouth-is’, smiled inanely whilst...
12 tags
Telling Tales & Steady Eddy
The Ancelottery always looked forward to muck-up day. The smell of rotten eggs, the waft of flour in the air, the mindless vandalising of school property and the “urinating over neighbour’s houses”. But perhaps best of all was the opportunity to snitch on the bully boys, without any fear of, or time for, malicious retaliation.
After the weekend’s A-league action, it seems...
13 tags
A score to settle
After unsuccessful attempts with a bludgeon, a hakapik, a switchblade, a can opener, explosives, centrifugal force and the power of prayer, The Ancelottery now knows, that there really is more than one way to skin a cat. And so, it would seem, do Strebre Delovski and The Brenton Hayward Show.
At the weekend, both whistleblowers were faced with the unusual proposition of face-meltingly dull...
November 2012
4 posts
16 tags
Stiffness
Despite being ceremoniously dumped by Melbourne Victory in January, we never doubted that football mastermind and Ancelottery favourite, Mehmet Durakovic, would rise again from the football wilderness. True, we envisaged that this Phoenix-like evolution would happen somewhere between the car park and the souvlaki stand at Bob Jane Stadium, but never, ever, did we think that he’d return to...
16 tags
Golden Balls
After Grandpa Arnold’s uncharacteristic cheerleading that followed Melbourne Victory’s entertaining draw with the Marinaters on Saturday night, some might say it would be harsh, mean or even a little bit gutless of The Ancelottery to simply gloss over both team’s excellent first-half performances in favour of ridiculing Victory’s “schoolboy” defending, Mat Ryan’s self-professed “custard...
8 tags
Crooky's Law
Not for the first time, The Ancelottery is confused.
Following on from Bling FC’s comical capitulation to Melbourne Victory on Saturday night, and the subsequent white flag waving surrender by Head Coach, Ian “Mehmet” Crook, we braced ourselves for the media onslaught that was sure to follow. We rubbed our hands with glee at the thought of mouth-foaming journos and stick...
9 tags
Seventh Heaven
If The Ancelottery has learnt anything this week, it’s that we’re not what you might call, a ‘lucky blog’. On Monday we chose to ignore the sinister drunk with a ‘hot tip’ outside the bookies, who later it turned out, had backed the winner. On Tuesday, much to our dismay, we gave our winning lotto ticket the very best 60-degree delicates wash and spin cycle....
October 2012
5 posts
16 tags
Jeronimo!
WorkCoverSA aim to “rehabilitate and compensate injured workers following a workplace injury,” which is great news for BAdelaide United player, Jeronimo Neumann, who, in their game with Wellington Funix over the weekend, suffered one of the most horrific workplace accidents the A-league has seen since Patricio Perez met Matthew Breeze.
The gruesome injury occurred after the tiny, frail Argentine...
14 tags
Just not cutting it
Round 3 saw A-league coaches do what they do best - peddle cheap tawdry excuses for their sides inability to take three points. Central Coast boss, Grandpa Arnold, donned his grey overalls and pointed the blamethrower firmly in the direction of Ben “Average” Williams and his sackable refereeing performance, while John Aloisi thought that running around in 29 degrees was an unreasonable...
15 tags
The Boo Boys and the Bad Boy
Ever since witnessing Roarcelona put five past a Melbourne Witches Hats XI in an embarrassingly one-sided massacre, The Ancelottery has been sitting in the corner, in the foetal position, rocking gently back and forth, shivering and crying. In fact, lots of crying.
But while we’ve been pondering how Lawrence Thomas managed to misjudge Thomas Broich’s hoofed up-and-under as badly as he did, and...
Some ugly baby, huh?
After a problematic adolescence predominantly spent pointing and laughing at Australia’s Not At All Hilarious Home Videos Show, The Ancelottery has always enjoyed chuckling at other people’s misfortune. Cat falling off a sofa: funny. Skateboarder impaling himself on a park railing: priceless. Goalkeeper’s near death experience flailing his arms around outside the box before getting red-carded on...
10 tags
2012/13 A-league Season Preview
As Season 8 of the Hyundai A-league is upon us, we dust off the crystal ball and set about putting the dam into Nostradamus to give you our not-at-all biased 2012/13 Season Preview! And if it’s anywhere near as good (or accurate) as last year, we’ll be pleased.
Badelaide United
Despite spending most of the pre-season adopting the vastly underrated,...
September 2012
2 posts
9 tags
Never mind the Ballacks
From an early age The Ancelottery displayed all the symptoms of the archetypal geek – the thick black rimmed glasses, the ultra-symmetrical Byford Wool Christmas Sweater, the stammering awkwardness, the slightly fusty smell, the exceptional lack of friends – but despite all of this, we never really understood education.
Physics didn’t seem as much as the science of matter and energy, as...
7 tags
An obscure manhole from the planet down under
As the craggy-faced warbler, Bob Dylan, once sang, The Times they are A-changin’. Whether he was singing about the current state of football in Sydney is doubtful, however the sentiment is not lost. Something is going on in Sydney… There’s a ruckus in Rockdale. A punch-up in Punchbowl. An almighty row in Padstow. A fracas in Dundas. A fight in Fairfield… and it’s a...
August 2012
3 posts
10 tags
Free the Newcastle four!
The Ancelottery has a secret. No not that one. The other one.
You see, over the past four weeks at Ancelottery HQ, we’ve enjoyed the opportunity to witness the new generation of Ange-inspired tippy tappy football. We’ve poured over the fluidity and marvelled at the short, sharp, passing®. We’ve waxed lyrical about the adoption of the brave ‘false nine’ (and...
15 tags
Ready, Steady, Labrador
When the Ancelottery endures a break-up (of which there have been many) we like to buck the trend. Unlike most media-hungry D-list ‘celebrities’, we refrain from taking the opportunity to shout complex repressed abuse from the passenger window of a moving car. We don’t demand to keep the Breville Platinum Wizz Mix 600 watt Bench Mixer which has been in the cupboard gathering dust...
11 tags
Ance
Whhhhhhirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Whhhhirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Whhhhirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Clunk! Clunk!
This is not the sound of The Ancelottery office vending machine expelling our sixth fun-sized dark chocolate Tim-Tam of the day, rather it’s the number one sound you’ll hear if you stand too close to Brisbane Roar keeper, Michael Theoklitos. Especially when he’s thinking. And...
July 2012
1 post
12 tags
Nice guy Eddie
Like Tony Popovic, The Ancelottery has never had a problem in admitting that we simply weren’t up to it. Unable to cope with the strenuous rigours of A-league football, we were happy to put our hands up, acknowledge our own physical malaise and take our place on the big metaphorical Marquee Green Rimini Chair in the sky.
Twenty seven games in a twelve month period? It’s too much!! How...
May 2012
1 post
The Ancelottery End Of Season Awards 2012
Now that the dust has settled, it’s time to hand out some poorly designed plexi-glass trinkets! It’s The Ancelottery End of Season Awards!
THE MATTHEW NEWTON AWARD FOR MOST HOPELESS ACT OF DRUNKEN BUFFOONERY Liam Reddy, of course. En route to Wellington for Sydney FC’s elimination final with the Funix, the perpetually worried goalkeeper was obviously suffering with a bout of the...
April 2012
1 post
13 tags
Not so merry-go-round
Football is a sport renowned for backstabbing, greed and outright selfishness. Which is obviously why The Ancelottery has always felt comfortable within it’s egotistic cloak-and-dagger bug-eyed avaricious realm. If there’s a tough decision to make, especially if there’s a slight chance that someone might get upset as a result, we’ll make it.
But decisive action has never...
March 2012
4 posts
16 tags
Amateur hour
Before we begin, please stand, stare forlornly into space and observe a minute’s silence for Gold Coast United.
Thank you.
As you’ve probably noticed, The Ancelottery is no stranger to incompetence. Abstract reasoning, syntax and humour are just some of the things for which we display no aptitude. We don’t whinge about it, no… instead we just get on with it, striving...
15 tags
It's a Knockout!!
Filmed in front of a live audience at 8pm on a Friday night, the I’maMelbourneVictoryBigWipeoutSurvivorCelebrityBrotherIdol contestants are now down to ten! And the show just keeps on getting hotter as the contestants battle it out to win the ultimate prize - a new contract!
Regular viewers will remember last week’s episode, when elderly contestant, Tommy P, was sent packing with a...
11 tags
Everything Must Go
The Monday morning to-do list at Ancelottery HQ: locate panadol, locate coffee, locate breakfast, wipe breakfast off t-shirt, wipe breakfast off keyboard, call IT support, maintain appearance of collectedness, check news outlets, check what Clive Palmer’s been up to over the weekend. Insults? Slogans? New companies? Fly-bys? Cake? More cake? Redundancies? If only Miron was still around to...
11 tags
~ Fin ~
Finally, the season has ended. The prolonged nightmare is over.
What’s that? It hasn’t? Well, you could have fooled us.
You see, we came to that conclusion after Melbourne Victory served up the crowning undeniable piece of evidence that they’re simply, well… not very good.
On a moist Saturday afternoon at AAMI Park, Victory showed that this current team is not, and...
February 2012
5 posts
16 tags
A ceremonial post
The Ancelottery knows all about anti-climax. Anti-climax is our middle name. The harrumphing noise of disappointment. The pitying look of dejection. All that hope and promise, followed by the inevitable come down and empty words of solace. And of course, the more ardent the expectation, the more frustrating the bathos. Or so we’ve been told.
Buoyed by last week’s win over the league...
19 tags
Jekyll & Go Hiding
Over the years, Ancelottery has gained a reputation for being a glass-half-empty kind of a blog. Misanthropic. Pessimistic. Even wildly cynical, some may say. It’s a notoriety achieved by being an A-league blog that on face value, doesn’t seemingly like the A-league all that much. A site which, given any chance, will take any opportunity to formulate a tenuous, yet caustic, whinge...
18 tags
Same old
Regular readers of The Ancelottery will have noticed by now that a quiet news weekend can mean only one thing: a tired old riff or two about Miron Bleiberg. When all else fails, the ”human headline” is always on hand to help us pad out our feeble and flimsy copy with stories of lizards, ambidextrous tennis and homies. But not this weekend. Oh no. All because of this man.
And so The...
16 tags
We'll sail this Schip alone
The Ancelottery has never been good at relationship break-ups. The difficult phone calls, the awkward silences, the arguments littered with expletives which never seem to end. Not to mention the incessant The Smiths playlist on constant looped repeat.
It would seem, not everyone struggles with separation with such blatant disdain. Sycophantic Sydney FC CEO, Dirk Melton today announced that he...
11 tags
Draw ugly
Six days ago, after witnessing Melbourne Victory’s somewhat shambolic, Australia day showdown with Sydney FC, The Ancelottery sat down in front of our slightly scuffed, Jonathan Ive designed typewriter and stared forlornly at the white space where words were meant to go. What could we say about Victory’s latest capitulation that we hadn’t said before? How on earth could we spin a...
January 2012
5 posts
13 tags
F = lm(dot)ve ÷ (pe-pa)Ae
Samuel Beckett, the Oirish, black and white novelist once scribbled on the back of a packet of fags, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”
On Sunday afternoon, Melbourne Victory appeared to take Beckett’s mantra at a preposterous, face value level. Playing like a group of listless council workers on a Public Holiday, Victory were soundly...
13 tags
Smells like team spirit
Ever since Melbourne Victory took the decision to cast aside Mehmet Durakovic to a life of sitting in his PJ’s watching re-runs of The Bold and the Beautiful;and to appoint a new Head Coach that not only (a) has a grasp of the English language but (b) seems to know what he’s doing, The Ancelottery has been worried. Very worried.
For the past six months we’ve been able to kick...
15 tags
Commander and chief
***WARNING - This post contains lazy, national stereotypes***
As Mehmet “what can you do?” Durakovic was cast off without even so much as a hug, after a humbling defeat at the hands of Central Coast Mariners, Melbourne Victory were swift in their appointment of a ‘caretaker’: mild-mannered HMS Muscat.
Shortly thereafter the former Victory captain was given his first To Do list: (1)...
13 tags
#mehmout
You may not think it, but Antony Di Pietro has saved us all. Not least you, Dear reader, sparing you from a new Ancelottery blog entry filled with endless puns about “short, sharp passing™”, “consistencies”, not being able to ask “any more from the boys”, “schoolboy errors” and our ability to “hit the back of the net.” Relief for everyone...
11 tags
Commodore 64
Like all conscientious football Head Coaches, Mehmet Durakovic sat down this morning on his bean bag chair to a relaxed breakfast of sunny side up, free-range eggs and slow-roasted pig fat, and took stock of the remaining A-league season. This Wednesday, he contemplated, suckling on his creamy grande latte, will be his fourteenth fixture at the helm of an association football club, in the pinnacle...
December 2011
5 posts
11 tags
A write off
Shane Warne, Charlie Sheen, Matthew Newton, Steven Bradbury, David Hasselhoff, Meat Loaf, Lindsay Lohan, Andrew O’Keefe, Sara-Marie, the yellow Wiggle, the Chilean Miners, Bouncer from Neighbours, the Southern Star Observation wheel, that homeless busker who bangs plastic buckets, and everyone’s favourite football pundit, Mark Bosnich. Big names who’ve all been written off at...
