On Monday night (23/5) all the players met at the club to sit down and have a trivia night together, which Jarred Moore and Jude Bolton hosted. (Jarred quietly informed me at the start of the night that he was the main host for the night and that Jude Bolton was in fact his attractive side-kick).
A zero tolerance of mobile phone use was declared to prevent cheating and all phones were placed at the back of the room. However, as Jarrad McVeigh’s wife is currently pregnant he insisted he must have his phone on him at all times!
Permission was granted but as she is currently six months into the pregnancy, we weren’t sure if he was an overly caring husband or just using this as an opportunity to look up answers on his iPhone.
Teams were quickly divided up with roughly five to a group. As our group assembled, I was initially concerned there were so many ruckmen, but then I was quite happy with our spread of knowledge.
We had a mix of people with differing strengths which gave us what I thought was all round general knowledge. (It seems that this was the first of many things I’d get wrong on the night).
Our team:
Daniel Currie: Strength - pop culture. In particular music and tv. Our go-to for things that might have been on Today Tonight.
Paul Bevan: Strength - sport, in particular rugby league/union. Our go-to for State of Origin questions.
Mike Pyke: Was to be our go-to-man for anything involving Canada, but we quickly realised it was best if we expanded this to anything that has happened in the northern hemisphere. Weakness - anything Australian pre-2008.
Shane Mumford: Strength - cars and food. Weakness - vegan diets and hybrid cars.
Myself: Strength - team morale. Weakness - had Chilli Con Carne for dinner.
We thought we had it all covered. We thought we were prepared for anything.
Then the questions came…
“What is the circumference of Lewis Jetta’s ankle?”
“What is the circumference of Daniel Bradshaw’s arm?”
“What is the circumference of Jesse White’s quad?”
We were not prepared for this and pandemonium in all groups erupted! As we had none of the above-mentioned guys in our group we were stuffed, and my role of team morale was already under the pump (note: Chilli Con Carne wasn’t helping either).
Somehow we decided that the base of a nearby cup was roughly the circumference of Lewis Jetta’s ankle and we took it in turns fondling the cup to estimate what we thought it was.
I had a look around the room and watched as all sorts of weird behaviour began going on.
One group was using an empty 20 litre water bottle from a water cooler to estimate Jesse White’s quad. Daniel Bradshaw was flexing his bicep for his group while they all watched on (and a few had a feel!).
Guys were playing with their own biceps, while other people were offering advice as to how many normal persons’ quad muscles equal one Jesse White quad.
No surprises as we got all our answers wrong. We over-estimated the size of Jetta’s ankle and underestimated the other two circumferences.
Then through the following rounds we battled through questions about the capacity of various AFL stadiums, and who had been Michael Tuck medallists. (We knew we were in trouble when Pykey was our go-to for the 2007 Michael Tuck medallist even though he was living in France at the time).
Unfortunately we lost and finished mid-range in the competition. The team involving LRT and Campbell Heath (amongst others) won the night.
All in all it was a good fun night. It was great to get all the guys together after a disappointing loss on the weekend, and to start to look towards this weekend against North Melbourne, down in Melbourne.
Ted Richards
@richards_report
Test your knowledge against the players and fellow Swans supporters on Tuesday 14 June at the Sydney Swans Trivia Night. Trivia topics include general knowledge, current affairs, entertainment, sport and of course Know Your Swans! Find out more.
