Magpies Turn To Cat Theme

CHRIS MCLENNAN, Swan Hill Guardian, September 24, 2003

It may come as a surprise to some footy fans to learn the Lake Boga Magpies took the cat as their theme during joyous celebrations last week. The Black and White army emerged on the outer flank of the show grounds in all their glory at the CMFL Grand Final complete with Joffa’s gold coat.

But it was the cat that the Magpies turned to after the game.

It appears a Magpie fan infiltrated the Swans nest on grand final day.

Ash Connick, an astute observer of the game and widely acknowledged to be one of the best coaches going around was revving up his players before the grand final.

This was the Swans second successive premiership tilt and understandably Connick and his team desperately wanted to win.

There were those who believed the Swans had dodged a bullet after Lake Boga trounced minor premiers Kerang the week before and the Swans certainly had outright favouritism going into the match.

The Magpie spy claims to have heard Connick firing up his charges by declaring the opposition were “pussycats”, suggesting they could not handle physical pressure.

The pussycat theme got back to Lake Boga coach Robbie Lee who was able to use it on his players to motivate them.

Four quarters of football later the Magpies were delighted to use the pussycat theme to rub the Swans’ noses in their loss.

The experts said that Lake Boga was much harder at the ball than their opponents and indeed the loss of several key players in Ryan O’Sullivan and Dean Bennett following some tough work turned the game.

Thus we saw the Magpie celebrations at Murley Manor take on an obviously feline flavour.

Firstly we have a cute kitten calendar turned into even more jibes against their opponents.

Coach Robbie Lee was more than willing to display one picture of a kitten having a look at itself in a mirror. Some wag had added a caption suggesting it might be Connick taking a good hard look at himself.

Other pages had similar themes.

The red felt tipped pen was produced to draw cat whiskers and button noses on the faces of the celebrating footballers.

Even worse, if there could be any worse, was the now traditional Monday afternoon fly-past of the winning team through Swan Hill’s CBD on the back of a truck.

We observed that the truck paused for enough time at Connick’s place of work in Campbell Street - Swan Training - long enough for a spot of cadence singing, “Who’s a cat, who’s a cat, who’s a cat”

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