Hmmm....

Dear The Forecast reader,

It's time for me to reveal who I really am...yes, you guessed it, I'm Ian Donnelly! Now that I've been picked in the Storm's starting line-up this week, I won't have time to update The Forecast any more. Basically, I only started it as a way of showing Scooter that I write beter crap than he does - and I think I succeeded in that! So, yeah, apologies, but it is goodbye for now.

See you on the field,

Ian Donnelly

(ahem... well, I'm not Ian Donnelly, but other things in life have conspired against the regular, high-quality updates that readers of a Melbourne Storm blog deserve, and so, I won't be updating The Forecast again until I have enough time to do it right. Thanks for reading over the last couple of months, I've had fun doing it! Go Storm!!)

More King

I know people are pretty down on Kingy right now 'cause he hasn't come out and said, "I love playing for The Storm, even for not much dough, just gimme a pen and show me where to sign". What Kingy did say, in fact, read more like "I don't care if there's a part of Olympic Park unofficially named after me, I want cash. Serious Benjamins. No-one screws the K-man!".

Regardless, he's still a funny old bugger, as this bit of audio from the Footy Show last week shows...

New Photos

Over here.

Featuring some photos of the Storm scoring a try, playing football and ultimatley losing. And one photo of happy Bulldogs supporters.

What fun it was to experience! Sigh...

R.I.P The Graveyard?

The last time we lost three in a row at home was in 2002. I hope this year does not follow the same path as that one...

The Good
Josh Graham and Antonio Kaufusi both looked like first-graders. Jamie McDonald's interview at halftime was pretty insightful.

The Bad
Again our forwards were pissy compared to the opposition and again we dropped the ball ten metres away from our tryline and ten metres away from theirs.

The Ugly
Ray Hadley. I turned SEN on today and the first thing I heard was him saying that it's a "fact" that we get 3-4000 people to a game. @#&%wit.

When Craig Bellamy came to the Storm, he said that it didn't matter if we lost as long as the players performed to the best of their abilities. I think we need to go back to that approach and not worry about finals, top fours or premierships for the time being.

In other news, the new Star Wars movie is better than watching the Storm lose.

The Forecast - Round 11

As you can see, both team have changed quite a lot since they last met. This is obviously a good thing.

Bulldogs
Luke Patten
Hazem El Masri
Jamaal Lolesi
Cameron Phelps
Matthew Utai
Braith Anasta
Brent Sherwin
Chris Armit
Corey Hughes
Roy Asotasi
Tony Grimaldi
Adam Brideson
Dallas McIlwain

Interchange
Brad Morrin
Adam Perry
Ben Czislowski
Charlie Tonga

Storm
Greg Inglis
Matt Geyer
Steven Bell
Josh Graham
Jake Webster
Scott Hill
Matt Orford
Robbie Kearns
Cooper Cronk
Alex Chan
David Kidwell
Ryan Hoffman
Dallas Johnson

Interchange
Dennis Scott
Glen Turner
Jamie Feeney
Brett White

Yes, all very fascinating. And I think that Corey Hughes has been replaced by some other dude, now as well.

Anyway, I think we'll win, but it'll be close. On second thoughts, I don't know if we'll win, but I sure hope we do. Three loses in a row at home would suck bigtime, huh!? Storm by 10.

Knocking one off...


Rugby League Week's got some pretty good Storm stuff in it this week. Billy's on the cover, Matty Johns says that Craig Bellamy is a 'champion genius bloke' (or words to that effect) and Kingy chimes in with this qoute regarding his origin selection:


"I had a couple of minutes to myself on Monday morning in the shower after I heard I was in the team..."


A couple of minutes doing what, I wonder!?



Wow.

You see, I just thought that I was a little guy, sitting at home, making stuff up. I didn't understand the power I obviously wield.

Yesterday, I made some suggestions on how Storm management could increase crowds. Today, they responded to my comments with a media release on the Storm website. In this release, amongst other things, it is revealed that the crowds at Storm games are not, as I put it, 'a bit of a worry' and are in fact pretty damn good. Read it here.

Clearly, they fear The Forecast (and its readers!), and feel the need to defend themselves when attacked. This is fare enough. Make up your own mind as to who is in the right or wrong here. Meanwhile, I will stand firm and continue to offer ideas to help the Storm become the team it deserves to be. It's the least I can do.

My latest brainwave involves Billy Slater, the bananas he promotes and what used to be Matt King's afro. But I'll leave that for another day...