My Brother is a Self-Hating Raider Fan

The Raiders.

Maddening.

They madden no one more than my brother.

It pains him to follow them, yet he does so forensically.

They drive him to aggressive distraction, yet he cannot stop with them.

It’s a deeply complicated business. To cope, he does what we do when those we love but wish to Christ we didn’t love disappoint and pain us – he treats them with obsessive cruelty and holds them in serious contempt.

And while he claims to wish he could quit them, somewhere, in the dark recesses of his brain and bone marrow, there is great love and tenderness for the Raiders.  The conflict this creates  - great and abiding loyalty overlaid with everyday weariness and woe – is essentially what makes him a self-hating Raider fan.

My phone reception was down all night so we didn’t get to exchange the usual stream of profound and brutal texts. He doesn’t have Foxtel so he goes out in public to watch them and this probably magnifies his pain when they lose but he seems to like sitting among down-and-outs and listening to their unique commentary and some of the things he hears we immediately incorporate into our own commentary, like a few years ago, when Daniel Vidot made a break, and an old man stiffened, sat up ramrod straight and screamed “RUN YOU PIECE OF SHIT!” We use that one a lot.

In the early hours of the morning my sleep was ruptured by my phone barring up and receiving texts, including the mysterious question from my best friend: “Are you the feminist environmental league????” but mostly coming from my brother.

They are looking alright but no better than the Warriors. What happened to Shillo? Is Earl down too?

William called. No voicemail message was left.

God Croker is a ball hog – pass it to your winger you fool IT’S A TEAM SPORT.

William called. No voicemail was left.

This is turning into rot.

William called. No voicemail was left.

Total rot.

William called. No voicemail was left.

This is the worst set I have ever seen.

William called. No voicemail was left.

This is killing me.

 

Apparently it didn’t kill him because after he’d left (“the place went OFF after that last Lee try!”) and returned home he had the wherewithal to call my old broke-down phone, which I had had the wherewithal to switch on, and after raving excitedly about the mystifying nature of the Raiders, which is what we do following 90% of their wins and most of their losses too when I think about it, he said “Alright I have to go – my Kiev’s will be overdone – I slipped home at halftime to put them in the oven – but I tell you, if they’d lost I would have come home and thrown them against the wall!”

He would have, too, and the thing is it requires almost no imagination to envision the circumstances in which this could have occurred. Maddening.

The Grand Final

Grand? Hardly. Final? Very.

Two teams:  the Warriors, who offend no one and endear themselves to many, and Manly. Manly are a team only a mother could love. Granted, there are plenty of Manly mothers, but still. Their very presence in the final soured my festive spirit and I'm not even talking about Brett Stewart specifically. Not yet, anyway. That bitch will get his later. I mean, Tony Abbott supports Manly. Hugh Jackman too, and I bet Baz Luhman does as well and I hate all three of these men and thus rest my case. Manly blow, in a word. Need I say more? No. But I will anyway.

The Highlight  

'Sup Steve Matai! Outstanding. His bloodied head, leaking profusely and later wrapped in bandages was a stirring sight and the standout image of the afternoon. Matai is a simple man. He is programed for violence and he delivers the goods. He plays with authority. I like this. He also plays like a creature accustomed to hunting down its meals. I love this.

Jamie Lyon also delivers the goods. He hunts pigs, did you know? In his down-time? He also has a face like a dropped pie. On grand final day it looked like a dropped pie all squirted with sauce because he too got all dinged up. I feel like I should find him really distasteful but find it impossible to do so. He may be about as interesting as a coffee table but I cannot hate a man who drives to training in a late 1980s Holden Rodeo ute with a rusted out tray. Impossible. Rough edges and extracurricular activities of the redneck variety are GO. Also, it amuses me to know that Manly has a redneck captain. The biggest redneck I can think of off the top of my head is Phil Anselmo from Pantera, so Lyon has a ways to go, but, still...

Oh yeah. Matai stuck two fingers up behind Joe Galuvao's head during the national anthem - you know, the bunny ears? Oh my god. This is proof that if you look like a bison you can get away with anything. A striking set of cornrows don't hurt the cause either. Unless of course you've been in Bali, in which case you're tragic and quite clearly fucked.

Now. After applying that creamy layer of approval to proceedings thus far it is with a heavy heart (this is bullshit, I clearly love it) that I turn my jaundiced eye to:

The Lowlight

- cue crashing cymbals and jeers and the hurling of soft food stuffs - because this is the part where I get to thunder BAD TIMING, BRETT and pretend through those three words that this is a real newspaper headline and not a two-bit blog. Maybe one day. In the meantime, MY GOD was that bad timing! My god! Fancy winning a grand final and only minutes later being unable or just dead-set unwilling to muster up the basic good manners to be gracious to David Gallop on a podium on a national stage. My god! Anyone else would have happily worn Gallop as a hat at that moment. Not Brett Stewart though, no. This makes the fact that he is a total fuckwit official.

I say fuckwit but I think if  I were limited to having only one word to describe Stewart in light of this latest episode it would be 'dick'. It's monosyballic nature endows it with a certain blunt irrefutability, and it's suitably broad while still being closely affiliated with generalised arrogance and stupidity and both pedestrian and specialised idiocy. Okay good. Now that I've settled that, let's review the situation.

Manly win the grand final. Mass celebration and flagrant emoting ensues. Confetti rains like Agent Orange. The world is a place of golden splendour, ANZ Stadium it's enormous racing heart. As the hysteria is taking hold, and moments before he gets a giant bucket of Gatorade dumped over his head coach Des Hasler, referring to Stewart's tumultuous few years, says happily "I think he's finally got some closure". Moments later again and there's Stewart up on the dais responding to the congratulations he receives by asking David Gallop if he had a daughter. Or words to that effect. Maybe. In any case, whatever was said may never be publically known because the NRL moved swiftly to have those who were within earshot banned from talking to the media. Call me cynical, but, smoke, fire, all that shit?

Apparently this much is clear. Stewart, in part, is said to have exclaimed "David, you owe me an apology" and Gallop, god love him, remained gloriously stony faced and responded "Well done". Gallop, goddamn! Later he said 'I'm being really careful with all this", which seems a classy and tactful way of saying "I think Brett Stewart's mind is malfunctioning and that he is on a fast track to becoming a drained, deluded and hollow husk of a man so let's all sit back and watch him unravel shall we, AND PASS THE PIZZA-SHAPES".

Suffice to say that if his intention all this time has been to recruit others to his version of rality then he is in need of urgent and intensive psychological attention. Or a series of beatings.

Such is my distaste for all things Stewart that his brother Glenn's theatrics left me cold. I mean, I suppose an audacious grubber from inside his own 20 that was scooped up by Michael Robinson to set up Daly Cherry-Evans' quickstepping series of dummies and sensational try in the next play only moments before halftime was something to behold, if you like that sort of thing. I don't. The piece of play that resulted in Cherry-Evans' pants being pulled down? Much more to my taste, as was the admiring accompanying commentary from either Gus or Rabbits: "They pants him AND THEY KEEP HIM DOWN!" It was probably Rabbits, now that I think of it. He has that lovely way of switching seamlessly from soft, tender admiration to overwrought bellowing and back again just as suddenly in a way that creates a lovely, edgy tension for the listener.

Now. Manu Vatuvei. He came, he bulldozed, he scored a try - we can ask nothing more of the Beast. He manages to be one of the most formidable bitches out there and at the same time always looks like he's getting great joy out of proceedings too. He has a 'Life of the party' vibe about him; none of this 'I'm only here for the free food and drinks' attitude that some players appear to have *cough - John Sutton - cough*...
 Anyway, I managed to lay my hands on a copy of Manu's daily schedule. Here it is.

David Williams, who seems to have carved a successful career out of being as charming and welcoming as a pie cooling on a windowsill dismissed talk of his disappointment at not being able to play due to that horrendous neck injury by saying he was just relieved not to be the one having to shape up against Manu. He seems a very sweet-tempered and glass-half-full type, doesn't he? As opposed to the egotistical and morally muddy type? Also, he's a bandit for a photo shoot. Let's review the evidence to take us out.

five reasons to hold off killing yourself until after the weekend

People - myself included, hence the blog - are prone to talking a lot of shit. It's what separates us from the dumb beasts. We are still dumb beasts, mind, but we have A LOT OF NOTHING TO SAY AND IT'S ALL TERRIBLY IMPORTANT. This has become fabulously apparent during this bloated September sports schedule. If September were a person it would be spread-eagled across a sofa with loosened pants - like you do after Christmas lunch? Yes, plenty of sport this September, which means miles and miles of newspaper copy picking over the excruciating miniature of every possible angle and also the conjuring up of some impossible angles, too. It's rich, superlative-ridden stuff and it makes for great reading if you're that way inclined.

I was sailing along happily, having dismissed the grand final's significance with a lazy hand swat and a scornful head toss ("Manly? Auckland? Pooh!") until I read some (thirty or forty odd) articles and found my indifference dissolving faster than a Sunday morning aspirin. Really, if seeing photos of Steve Matai projected onto the Harbour Bridge doesn't razz you up you need to check your pulse and your priorities, because it was an arresting and stirring sight. Bigger than God, and with better hair!

So. Sunday's Grand Final. Yes, it's Manly vs New Zealand, and no, you can't spin a silk purse out of a sow's ear but there's still good stuff to be had here. It just requires some rifling through the rubble of having one team everone hates and one team no one cares about in the grand final. I am happy to do that rifling. Here's what I've found.

1. Shaun Johnson vs Daly Cherry-Evans.

Everyone is getting plenty of froth and lather up over the fact that the game could well come down to a battle between these two rookie halfbacks, and that earlier this year Johnson was playing in the NSW cup - having now only played 15 first grade matches - while a year ago Cherry-Evans was playing in the QLD cup. Everyone is also excited over Johnson's razzle-dazzle. He shows-and-goes! He steps! He jinks! He's Stacey Jones, Andrew Johns, and Benji Marshall! Especially Benji Marshall! He does seem to have some of the mercurial Marshall magic. I know, I YouTubed him. He also has a lovely baby face - it's Ferris Bueller-esque. Also get this; he has never played against Manly before. There's something sweetly thrilling about all this. However. If your tastes don't run to baby faced Kiwi boys it will still be worth tuning in purely to see the head on Cherry-Evans. It's pin-esque. Yes, he is a pin head of the highest order. All pin heads are great - Novak Jokovich is especially awesome - but Cherry-Evans is particularly amusing because his pin head sits atop a disproportionately thick and muscular neck. It's remarkable really. In addition to this, he is a very sweetly spoken and well-mannered young man, which is nice. Lastly, he's a pretty okay player too. I mean, he makes everyone he plays against his bitch, so if that's more to your taste you should definitely watch.

2. Manly vs David Gallop.

This is actually deeply unpleasant, this business. Distasteful. The fact that two years of animosity between the NRL boss and Brett Stewart threatens to boil over on Sunday - and by 'boil over' I obviously mean that Stewart may well lose his barely-held-together shit during the official presentation and go postal on Gallop - is a disgrace and YES I DO FEEL LIKE ALAN JONES WHEN I USE THE WORD DISGRACE WHILE WORKING MYSELF INTO A TOWERING RAGE. God. This is why I try to avoid talking about this fued - it inflames my righteous ire to talkback radio-like proportions. Anyways. The possibility that this might actually happen on Sunday is not too far removed from the realm of reality due to the increasingly undeniable fact that Brett Stewart himself is now so far removed from the realm of reality. God help the guy. Nobody else can.

3 Manu Vatuvei.

He made his gold teeth by melting down his grandmother's gold rings, he rocks a rat's tail like in a way that only one other man in the NRL can and he employs a ghetto-fabulous finger-waggle as his try-celebration of choice - what's not to love? Nothing! There is nothing not to love about Manu! He's Manu, muhfuggers!

4. Des Hasler vs Ivan Cleary.

This is night to day, sweet to sour, Betty to Veronica type stuff. While Des Hasler turns into a raving, head-set abusing piece of meat while encased in the coach's box, Ivan Cleary sits sphinx-like in stony, poker faced silence. Both are equally unnerving. The difference here is that outside the high-pressure confines of the coach's box Cleary is as humourless and hollow-eyed as Dessie is gruff and flinty and endearing. I love a man of few words but I just cannot abide Ivan Cleary. He is reptilian and glacial and when he does speak it sounds like he swallowed a computer manual at some key point in his development. Des Hasler, on the other hand, gives charmingly off-kilter interviews, rips doors off their hinges when his team plays badly and has that ever so slightly threatening air that those of us with an unreconstructed wish to be thrown over a man's shoulder find appealing. Plus, he has that fabulous, incredible mane of hair. He's basically the Paddle-Pop Lion. So, hands down, he's already won. Worth watching to see his hysterics in the box, though. 

5. Mnaly vs Everybody Else.

Rugby league is a tribal game. Less so nowadays, but still, it's why we love it. Manly make out like they understand and embrace this fundamental fact but I'm not entirely convinced they do. You know that old thing of there being two teams to support; your own, and whoever happens to be playing Manly? The Manly club and Manly fans over on the insular peninsula have always claimed to pride themselves on being that team that everybody hates but the slightest suggestion that it might actually be true sets their insecurities aflame to such an extent that we have this untidy saga of resentment and hostility slowly unfolding over two seasons and showing no signs of abating. Stewart, you deadeyed dumbshit, you were suspended for four matches - TWO YEARS AGO - for getting trollyed at your season launch. Let it go, for chrissakes. Write it on a piece of paper, if you can manage that, tie it to a balloon, release the balloon into the sky and LET IT THE FUCK GO. Enough already! It just really grinds my gears, y'know?

Obviously, then, I can't possibly go for Manly on Sunday. Football blinds me to my principles but even I have limits.

Okay. There's my five reasons, picked from the rubble, to watch the game on Sunday.
Do with them what you will coz come Monday you're on your own again.