HUSBANDS around Australia are strangely frenetic in their quest to complete household chores. Men, who didn't even know a broom existed in their house, let alone the cupboard it has lived in for the past 11 months, are busy sweeping, polishing, washing and dusting in preparation for next Monday, the biggest night of the year.
Kids will be in bed by 7.15pm and if they are not asleep by 7.25pm, Dads will have forced a dose of Phenergan disguised as cordial down their throats.
The bath will be run, candles lit and their wives ushered in to take a well-deserved break. As she slides into the bath with a curious look on her face, blokes will smile back, calmly close the bathroom door and start fist pumping like never before. No interruptions, no distractions. Down to the serious business of watching the Brownlow medal telecast - the most gripping night of television viewing possible. Aaah, those frocks, those stunning fake tans, tinted contact lenses and ooooh, a smell of perfume seemingly seeps through the TV and into the sparkling loungeroom. And then those wonderfully informing interviews about the dresses made by Ben 10, Mickey Mouse and Goofy give the blokes a true insight into what it means to frock up. Finally, after an hour, the count begins. Andrew Demetriou knows how to work a crowd, pausing every time he reads ``Caaarlton....C.....Cloke'', not Judd, that everyone wanted to hear. Gripping...NOT.
There's a lot to be said about moving with the times. Anyone who used a manual typewriter will tell you a 2009 keyboard is a dream. But there are some times when change is bad. And the Brownlow medal telecast is one prime example of changing for the worst. The early broadcasts were the best, when the telecast was only broadcast with a handful of votes to be counted. In a slick presentation, before you had time to grab a cuppa, the winner was having the medal draped around his neck. On Monday night, a winner is unlikely to be announced until after 11pm, more than three hours after the telecast started. Glad the kids didn't try and stay up to see if the Juddster, Gazza or Swanny won. By the time the deserving winner is bestowed the honour, a stench of alcohol is flowing from the TV (or is that the smell of the contents flowing across the couch while viewers are grabbing catnaps) and the birds are already stirring from their sleep in the trees outside.
It is time for the WAGs to put their collective feet down. I mean, how on earth could a gal keep the lip gloss glossy, the hair perfect and the tan smudge-free for all this time? Time for a change. Time to make the count slick again.
Pre-count all the votes from rounds 1-18 and build the suspense with four rounds to go. Same goes for our local leagues. Cut to the chase and then let those in attendance have a good time. At the end of the night, or almost day, everyone there and asleep on couches across the land just wants to know who wins. On reflection, maybe the kids didn't need the Phenergan - five minutes of the telecast recorded from last year would have been enough to send them off to sleep.
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