WHO spoiled Corey Enright’s milestone 300th match for Geelong?
Cats fans, that’s who.
Well, that was the opinion of one local news outlet, anyway.
In the miserable wash-up of Geelong’s home-ground capitulation to Melbourne the finger was first pointed at the Demons as “party poopers”.
But the next day the blowtorch turned viciously on supporters who left minutes before the inevitable, bitter end on a cold Sunday night.
‘Fans let down Enright’, thundered a sport pages headline. An editorial righteously concurred under ‘Fickle fans let Boris down’.
Somehow the players who actually lost the match escaped accountability.
GOVERNMENT employees in Geelong have celebrated Public Sector Week 2015 – by walking off the job.
Members of the Community and Public Sector Union, which covers services such as Centrelink and Medicare, downed tools, or should that be pens, for a half-day protest at “attacks on their workplace rights, conditions and pay”.
That’s despite average full-time adult pay in the public sector now outstripping private sector wages by almost 10 per cent.
And it’s hard to imagine anything less than similar advantages in rights and conditions.
So why strike when every week’s Public Sector Week?
BACK in the real world, a North Geelong business is delighting passers-by with a fun spin on guerrilla marketing.
Staff are jumping around outside BCI Brands’ new Thompson Rd premises during peak-hour traffic while dressed as video game characters Mario and Luigi.
General manager Teresa Esteban says the colourful pair’s antics have been drawing plenty of response – and not only from littlies.
“It’s not just the kids that think it’s great, the adults are loving it, too,” says Teresa, who spends time herself in one of the costumes.
“Even if we don’t see immediate return on investment it makes our day to see how we’re making so many passing motorists smile, wave and toot when they see us.”
THE BCI initiative made Double Take wistful for the days of another Geelong DIY marketing icon, now sadly missed: the Grovedale bottleshop Santa.
Each Yuletide he would appear in full costume, waving generously to passing traffic on Torquay Rd regardless of the summer heat radiating from the pub’s then-whitewashed walls.
Double Take recalls the wonder in the eyes of his young son when Santa lurched through an open car window during a bottleshop stop. With thick, grimy fingers protruding from a costume that had seen better (Christmas) days, Santa gently placed a cellophane-wrapped lolly into the little boy’s hand.
“Was that really Santa?” asked the boy on the way home.
“Yes,” replied dad, “and he’s the best Santa ever.”
