I was privy to attend Truck’s farewell bash. The following are some quick notes:
The party was held at Line in the Sand nightclub on Arden Street. It was a mostly upbeat event and quite well patronised.
Andy Mcgrath was determined to get a close parking spot, but panicked and quickly resorted to his bad habit of parking around the corner.
Although Will Snelling lives close, he got cold feet about making the distance and ended up being a no show.
Ben Hobbs was not invited for a reason nobody can work out.
Tex Wangeneen was invited to attend but was mystifyingly asked to stand outside the whole time and never got to participate. This was a real shame because his family had traveled to accompany him.
D’Ambrosio was invited but chose instead to join the Collingwood celebrations held after their big win that afternoon.
Archie Perkins mistakenly thought it was a fancy dress party so he came in costume, dressed as a sensible person, but when he realised it wasn’t a fancy dress party he quickly changed into a weird hat and ridiculous necklace.
Draper arrived with his girlfriend, a bit of surprise after they had a tumultuous last few weeks. Apparently, some couples therapy helped them reunite, with the sage advice that Draper’s relationship can survive anything if he only treated her half as good as he treated Jeremy Finlayson, proving very successful.
Preparations for the event went smoothly but with some notable hitches. Xavier was put in charge of organising the music act and even though Kiss was available, X went for a double act starting with Milli Vanilli before a smooth and seamless transition to Stephen Kernahan.
Barham was in charge of the caterer and even though he had one booked, he changed his mind at the last minute to go for someone better credentialed at the last moment. Unfortunately, that caterer was never available and they were left without anyone half capable, so they just ordered Uber Eats.
The food got eaten quicker than expected, with a very hungry Dodoro forced into offering a future second for the last dim sim.
Nick Hind was given the honour of sitting at the head table next to Truck, but he declined and sat as far away as he could. After assessing the food options, he decided he could do better at his local BBQ chicken store and left early.
Kelly was brought into the party to look after the smalls, which included Truck’s kids, but for some reason spent very little time there.
Laverde was assigned to the role of MC but nobody heard a thing he said because he was at least 10cm too undersized for the microphone.
Heppell gave a rousing speech to the captivated audience. He thanked Truck for his service before stating that he would always unconditionally stand up for his teammates, he just wouldn’t veer to the left or right as that required agility.
Brasher, a staunch supporter of Rutten to the end, was asked to give the keynote address but had a conflict in his calendar. Instead, he sent a 5 hour pre-recorded video that proved insufferably boring and didn’t go anywhere.
Dev Smith got into a bit of a scuffle with one of the guests and was ordered to move 50 metres away. He argued and it soon became 100 metres.
After dinner and the speeches, the guests moved to the dancefloor. As usual, Merrett drove standards, excelling during the first dance bracket. Unfortunately, his form declined once he realised he had left the tag on his shirt.
Caldwell didn’t last very long on the dancefloor. After only a few minutes he sustained a soft tissue injury. The injury gave Brayden Ham the opportunity to insert himself into the party, where his presence was unnoticed and his impact was negligible at best.
Parish was prolific on the dancefloor, doing his best work in close, but unfortunately, he didn’t cover much territory and kept on looking backwards.
The night was drawing to a close and the last thing left to do was giving the group gift. Shiel impressively took the present under his arm and rushed majestically towards Truck to give him it before accidentally disposing it into the wrong person’s hands. The gift was a 6-month gym membership. It was formally Stringer’s, but since it’s the off-season he has no use for it.
I would say it was a fabulous night and a fitting tribute to the great man. Sheedy, Madden and Wellman were called on post the event to do an internal review of the party for the next coach’s farewell, tentatively booked in for next year, but ended up doing an external review through both orifices after consuming bad prawns.