Melbourne Bound

I'm off to Melbourne this afternoon for a city break. Having not been to Melbourne before I am looking forward to observing first hand the voluntary drinking of beers in small volume glasses (a 'pot' is only a half - the standard measure in Vic). If I were a complete beer geek or ticker I would be spending the weekend scooping out some of Australia's best microbrewed beers (of which all seem to come from Victoria), however I'm normal and as such, will be keeping beer geekery to an absolute minimum and doing regular touristy things. If I was a proper beer geek, I wouldn't be going to Melbourne this weekend anyway as the Australian Beer Festival is on in the Rocks.

A brief catchup of what I have been up to over the last couple of weeks when I haven't been entertaining tickers, trolls and religious freaks who seem so compelled to read my fictionous ramblings and comment with unsurpassed addiction and regularity.
Recently I supported my country Australia in the soccer match against The Netherlands. As soccer is a relatively boring game to watch (which wasn't helped by the 0-0 scoreline), I got on the piss and consumed my fair share of Victoria Bitter. I was partially sauced before the game as I had been drinking at The Captain Cook. Here I enjoyed a mix of Cooper's Pale Ale and Bluetounge Premium Lager. After the game we nicked over to trendy Surry Hills where we ended up at the Trilogy hotel. Here I got to sample some White Rabbit, a dark hop driven bitter from the Little Creatures offshoot in Healesville , Victoria. This beer is seriously good and worth having a session on if you can find it.

I also went to a wedding in Bowral last weekend where alongside catching up with mates I hadn't seen in five years, I also put away 7 or 8 litres of Hahn Premium Lager and got well and truly pissed. It was a good wedding.

BTW - please be entertained by the ticker commentary which is bound to happen. The more they comment, the more it supports the stereotype that they are sad fucks.

It's called soccer not football

Why do nearly all soccer fans outside of the UK support Manchester United? Like Manchester really.... I’ve always considered it a northern shithole. The only good thing about the place is they film Spooks Code 9 there and even that’s not enough afford any respect. I find it really ironic that everyone I know who comes from Manchester seems to support either Manchester City or Brummie team Aston Villa. When people who are local to the area don’t support a team then I guess it’s not worth supporting. So why the fascination with Manchester United? I guess it stems from the fact that they won shed-loads of trophies in the 90’s and are still relatively good performers, even if their line-up is completely comprised of moronic chavs like Wayne Rooney. I guess it’s more fun supporting the winning team than the loosing team. But why do these people become fanatical about man U for? Why don’t they just change teams and follow whoever is winning in any given season?
I don’t follow soccer but I have a soft spot none the less for Fulham as I happened to live in the area. I was local, not someone jumping on the cool bandwagon from 20,000 miles away.
Another thing that’s been winding me up a bit is Australian’s who try to insist that soccer is called football. I’m sorry this is well out of order. It’s soccer and that is the final word. I don’t care if it’s an acronym for association football. Australia and the UK use different colloquialisms for various things. For the last three and a half years I have had to put up with joggers being called trainers, capsicums being called peppers, zucchini’s being called courgettes, eggplant being called aubergine and I won’t even start down the track of what a “thong” is in the UK. So in Australia ‘football’ is rugby or any other code played by men. Soccer is a game for pseudo-men who are too scared to play football. No word of a lie.

I realise that this has absolutely nothing to do with beer, but I had to set the record straight. And finally, Rugby is the game they play in heaven while soccer is the game they play in cold shitholes in Europe when they either come up from a mine or knock off from a hard day in the copper smelter.