There was good news and bad news for
mothers who tried to escape the heat by taking their kids down to Melbourne’s Fitzroy
Pool (aka the “Fitzroy Back Beach”) yesterday.

The good news was that three lanes had been
roped off for a professional football team to swim laps as part of their
pre-season training. For the Fitzroy women, this presented an
unexpectedly high level of eye candy but the bad news was that the players
didn’t come equipped with a mute button.

Oblivious to the wider crowd, including
plenty of kids, the players spent the entire session letting fly with a stream
of obscenities whenever they came up for air. It didn’t help that their trainer urged
them on with regular sprays of possibly even more colourful language.

Eventually, our scout had to ask pool staff
who these foul-mouths were, and was told it was Melbourne Storm. We’ve checked
and there was a booking under Storm’s name, which was signed off on the day.

Yet when our source rang the Storm’s
headquarters to complain about the language, she was told the team didn’t go
near Fitzroy pool, training all afternoon at their ground (Princes Park,
according to their website, which listed yesterday’s only activity as a 3 pm
skills session).

Which raises a contender for sports story
of the year: which group of buffed-up, blue-talking athletes is going around
town pretending to be the Melbourne Storm? If we were the Storm, we’d be looking into
that.

Have you seen other teams training? Was
their behaviour and language better or worse than the Fitzroy display? Do you
know the actual identity of the fake Storm team? Let us know at
sport@crikey.com.au