It’s been a long time between drinks, Digs and Bluebells. And your correspondent has been hording many of the excellent products sold by sponsor Dan Murphy’s Cellars for just such an auspicious occasion. All those corks will be popped in celebration of our pauper’s hat-trick of wins for season 2007. We are now exactly where we finished last season – except we’ve still got 12 weeks to go.

I mean no disrespect for the Doggies. You’d have to be barking mad to do that. But I’ve been in such a slough of despond for the last six weeks that even my thousand monkeys chained to typewriters could produce no coherent masterpiece to feed gentle readers’ appetites for answers last week. I didn’t have any. I was stuffed in the past – where we always won – and couldn’t cope with the present – where we never seem to win. But the past, as they say, is a foreign country – and, hopefully, we have just crossed the border.

When my good friend Aristotle said: “Well begun is half done,” he didn’t know the half of it. Perhaps, he was referring to the last six weeks of the Carlton game plan. We always had a terrific start, followed by an appalling ending. The pattern seemed to be that the chicken was interested but the pig wasn’t committed. This is no way to make traditional Carlton bacon and eggs.

Aristotle was always of the view that each of the four earthly elements (earth, fire, air and water) has its natural place; the earth at the centre of the universe, then water, then air, then fire. When they are out of their natural place they have natural motion, requiring no external cause, which is towards that place; so bodies sink in water, air bubbles up, rain falls, flame rises in air. The heavenly element has perpetual circular motion.

The natural motion for Carlton is winning. We have not been there for six weeks (some would say ten years) so either there is something wrong with the man with the plan or, with the Ether – which is the divine substance that makes up the fifth element. Einstein plums for the Ether being out of kilter for the last six weeks shenanigans when losing from a winning position became a habit.

As Aristotle often said in his cups at the Athens Arms, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act but a habit.” So be it. On Saturday arvo we have the Hour-Late Magpies at Optus Dome to test this new-fangled Aristotle metaphysics. Frankly, I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.

Gold yamulka the previous week went to Carraz again. This week it goes to Billy-Bob Thornton for his ton-up. Silvers go to Lap-Lap, Banno, Kouta, Carlos, Waitey, the Fish and finally Tex – the righter of wrongs and the vanquisher of villains. I dips me lid and drink to the health of the entire Carlton family. May the Gods forever shine down on you all. Go Blues! – TERRY MAHER