Friends, Jackets, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Arniel, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Arniel. The noble Portzline
Hath told you Arniel was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Arniel answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Portzline and the rest–
For Portzline is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Arniel‘s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Portzline says he was ambitious;
And Portzline is an honourable man.
He hath brought many prospects home to Nationwide
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Arniel seem ambitious?
When that the IR have cried, Arniel hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Portzline says he was ambitious;
And Portzline is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly Atkinson,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Portzline says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Portzline spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Arniel,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
-With apologies to William Shakespeare
In truth, we have no idea what, if anything, will happen next. But perhaps it’s fitting that there is a funereal air around the bench for the games held on Halloween weekend. The team will also be pulling out the third jerseys this evening – will last year’s bad luck charm turn into 2012’s good luck?