On the rubber chicken circuit in Melbourne

Melbourne's a funny old place.

If the front pages of Melbourne's biggest newspapers are to be believed, the biggest issue facing the world over the last two days is a rubber chicken sex scandal.

This is red hot stuff. Several North Melbourne football players made a film in which a rubber chicken has "sex" with a frozen chicken carcass and then . . . well, that's it, really, but it's been enough to push everything else off the front pages and out of dinner party conversations here.

As the middle pages of one Australian newspaper remembered, it was former US Supreme Court judge Earl Warren who said he read the sports pages in the morning to read about man's triumphs, and the front pages to read about the failures.

Melbournians -- or at least the Melbournian media -- are suffering a failure of perspective right now right on their front pages. A non-incident has been elevated to major news by virtue of the news media itself inviting everyone to be outraged about nothing. All very amusing really, but it seems to me there are far more important issues to be talking about.

Brad Ottens' knee for instance. With Brad Ottens damaged knee keeping him out of the game against Collingwood tonight at the MCG -- and seeing him limp around Kardinia Park yesterday, it's going to be a few weeks before he's mobile again -- it's going to be a much closer game than it might have been.

Still, I agree with Geelong fullback Matthew Scarlett, who told us he expected to win by four goals. I think he's right. And yes, I am name-dropping -- if you're one of the six people reading this who know the name I'm dropping. :-)

Talk to you tomorrow. And Go the Cats!

(For those interested, here's a match preview.)