Regrettable Incidents Involving Tracksuits

Has your search for meaning in the NRL this year left you with feelings of futility, pointlessness, and the creeping realisation that this time invested would probably have been better spent searching for the colt from Old Regret?

If so, forget the grand final today. There’s nothing in that for us. What we need is relief.

This brings us, inevitably, to Blake Ferguson.

I normally take pleasure in the psychological destruction of grown men but there is really nothing pleasurable about watching someone who is too stupid to run their own affairs fall into the ruinous hands of Sam Ayoub. It’s a total depressant. 

 

 

When the Daily Telegraph isn’t classily covering the case of a well-to-do white boy who got a) a lot of ass and b) murdered, they do a little round-up of legal matters which in theory profiles vaguely notable members of the public who run afoul of the law but in reality functions as an installment-based chronicle of Lara Bingle’s failed attempts to master the art of driving, basic sign reading, and simultaneous driving and basic sign reading. Her efforts to overcome her limitations appear to be ongoing. It’s a process.

Anyway, they did a little piece about Blake Ferguson. The Telegraph is as we all know a subtle and nuanced newspaper not known for its dramatic flourishes but they seemed to be suggesting that Blake Ferguson is a culturally illiterate imbecile unsuited to performing everyday tasks - in this case, dressing himself – unsupervised.

 

It was all extremely cute. I mean, isn’t everything now? The cult of cute has colonised contemporary consciousness, and mine, to such an extent that I find a footballer who is abundantly unqualified to dress himself and stands accused of drinking and touching cute. What can I say. I am a product of my times. I’m not proud of it. 

 Before they got to the cute, though, the article led with a bold claim that there was a turn of phrase being used with increased frequency in Sydney conversations: “That’s so rugby league.”

Please. At best, Joe Hildebrand made it up while he was microwaving his muffin in the tea room or something. And let me ask you this, Joe. Are you able to enjoy a robust nocturnal social life in which you manage not to glass, attack, insult or urinate on anyone? Yeh. I didn’t think so.

“The expression refers to situations where a person demonstrates an extreme lack of self-awareness or understanding of potential consequences.”

“Think Todd Carney in a Canberra pub without a urinal. That said, over to you Blake Ferguson.”

The item goes on to describe the events taking place just prior to charges being laid against Ferguson, when plans were being put in place to take him from the Crowne Plaza in Coogee to Waverly police station. Ferguson’s only instructions, apparently, were “dress appropriately.” But when a group of managers and legal types arrived at the hotel to pick Ferguson up, they found him wearing a tracksuit, rather than a suit.

Further, “Law & Order understands it was not a matching tracksuit either.”

“Arrangements were made for Ferguson to swap attire with a dark-suit wearing manager.”

“Some time later Ferguson was still wearing a very white pair of socks. Law & Order contacted Ferguson’s lawyer at the time, who said ‘As a general rule white socks should never be worn with a suit unless you’re Michael Jackson.’”

 

 

Rugby league has a bad name already, so who really cares, but this article could well set back public perception of the noble mismatched tracksuit a decade or more.

In any event, I sympathise with Blake.. I too have been caught wearing a tracksuit in less than ideal circumstances. Like the time when I answered a knock on my door that turned out to be my estranged father who I hadn’t seen in 16 or so years. I was wearing a tracksuit then. Ugg boots, too. So rugby league.

 

Raiders v. Dugan - Judgment Day

Spending more time than is probably healthy suckled up to the Dugan tit? You’ve come to the right place.

The problem with Josh Dugan and Canberra was that the Raiders demand low maintenance superstars who hum along quietly. As Dugan developed from raw housing commission colt to sleek thoroughbred his self-regard developed along with him, healthily at first, then not so healthily, until, finally, it became toxic.

 

Basically the Raiders are chronic underperformers and need to conduct themselves accordingly. This means behaving in a humble and gracious manner, and keeping the ostentatious off-field flourishes to a minimum. Dugan’s spirited accommodation of all things ostentatious defied this and, as he tells it, led to him being very cruelly cast out of Canberra and onto some crude scrapheap.

Well, what of it? I mean he’s not the first sports star to suffer under the staggering weight of Australia’s idiotic dislike of grossly-disproportionate-to-talent egotism.

 

Anyway. Tomorrow the Raiders play the Dragons in what is without a trace of hyperbole THEIR GAME OF THE YEAR. Because who among us doesn’t want to see Josh Dugan pay and pay dearly never minding the fact that this desire is pretty much redundant I mean it’s been   months since he was driven out of Canberra and forced to seek asylum with the Dragons and it doesn’t seem to have cost him much at all other than the small matter of his reputation and any lingering shreds of likeability that his increasing abrasiveness hadn’t corroded in the last 12 or so months at the Raiders anyway?

Whatever. Raider fans take what they can goddamn get.   

And as it is I’ve been struggling with this whole sordid trajectory since back when Dugan’s name was first getting mentioned for Origin:

It may help to think of Dugan as an ex. You know how you don’t want to see them reduced to a quivering gelatinous mess without you, but you don’t want the bastard/bitch soaring to lofty new heights since being rid of you either? It’s a fine line and one which Dugan has already overstepped with crude insensitivity.

Before this, even, there was that incident during his first game for the Dragons that constituted an irreparable defilement and has squatted toadishly in a dark recess of my mind ever since – the moment where DAVE DUGAN filled the big screen at Kogarah, wearing a Dragons jersey, grinning and waving and looking as proud and florid as any father ever could. Galling! All those years at the Raiders and the most I ever saw of Daddy Dugan was in the god-awful tattoo of Mr. and Mrs. Dugan on their wedding day that roams across the lower half of one of his son’s legs and stretches even my elastic boundaries of taste.

Let’s not spend a lot of time on this. He is just an asterisk now, and I’ve already exceeded the limits of both my magnanimity and medication on the son of a bitch these last few months. Alls I hope for, aside from an emphatic Raiders victory, is that he comes out of tomorrow’s game ravaged and stripped of swag, like he’s just been worked over by a pack of wild dogs.

It would be nice if I could say this with even a shred of certainty, but of course I can’t what with the Raiders being an inherently untrustworthy outfit prone to fluctuations in mood and manner that make the Greek government look stable. In any case, it’s been real and it’s about to get realer.

 

 

Dennis Hopper High Priest of Hell

-  - Forever

 

James Graham Grinding on an Old Lady

There is nothing more terrible than the NRL season yielding to another filthy and relentless Australian summer. Well, some things maybe. Being tasered to death by fucking cops when you’re just a Brazilian boy on acid.  And cops in general, the cunts. Tussling with the Kafkaesque qualities of Telstra. The faces of people in food courts. A guy I work with who I blather to about what cars I see myself owning in the future telling me he’s started pissing blood. Watching my littlest cat Gepeto crying and writhing on the carpet after an apparent but unfounded snake bite and thinking he was about to die right while I was watching Intervention (Michael, meth addict) last night. These things are terrible too.

Anyway. Summer is a horizon-less wasteland. People seem to enjoy it. I don’t understand this but I have also never understood people in fact I pretty much hate them uniformly.

Wanda – I can’t stand people. I hate them. Do you hate them?

Henry – No. But I seem to feel better when they’re not around.

-Barfly

Still, it’s not like there’s nothing going on. Just yesterday I say photos of the Kangaroos. In training shirts. With necks and shoulders spilling out of every outlet. JT, and Billy. Good stuff, this. But insubstantial. Not enough.

I also saw photos of a gathering Tigers  Sharks coach Shane Flanagan had orchestrated; a meet, greet and get elegantly soused in the yacht club event to welcome the entire Tigers team minus Robbie Benji and Lote all the incoming recruits. And Todd Carney and Luke Lewis were seated together looking fucking lewd and generally bringing credit to their entire species just by sitting there. They can’t help it. They just have a seedy air of salaciousness about them that renders them automatically awesome.

(My brother took a long range punt on a Sharks Bulldogs grand final next year, with Bulldogs for the win. If they make it to the grand final it will totally inspire me to go out and get a commemorative neck tattoo. I don’t go for them or anything but they’re that kind of team. A team to, I don’t know; bring you to your happy place just by having a go.)     

And naturally the Bulldogs Mad Monday fallout bullshit continues. I say ‘continues’ but I mean ‘is now being perpetuated by radio stations and the like who in admirable attempts to really get to the crux of the sensitive and contentious issues at hand have started asking highly qualified media commentators and social analysts LIKE LAURYN EAGLE to comment on said issues and then immediately reporting on her comments and having others pass comment on her comments and reporting dutifully on that and so on and so forth seemingly forevermore until suck me off you dumb dog becomes, like, this decade’s Carpe Diem or whatever’. I don’t know. It’s cannibalistic and unseemly. I love it. (Not really, though.)

Probably what really happened at Belmore version #1

& #2

Things have strayed into Woodward and Bernstein territory what with talk of tapes and recordings and allegations of highly sophisticated spy equipment and meticulously researched revelations like did you know there is a 91 second YouTube video of that fiend James Graham grinding on a very old woman in the lounge area of a northern English pub that culminates in the very old woman putting her hands down his pants and going the grope and that the Bulldogs are attempting to argue that the whole Mad Monday incident was a misunderstanding stemming from this video whereby a player who is recounted as  saying “There are some ladies here to stick their heads in your pants” actually said “There’s no old ladies here to stick their hands in your pants”???

I didn’t know this. Did Channel 9 know this? Did it really happen like that or are the Bulldogs attempting to create an entirely new version of reality? Does it even matter now?

I do not have the answers to these questions but I too grapple with the underlying issues of truth and reality on a daily basis and understand the elusive nature of both. For example, today I finished one squeeze-bottle of sauce and opened a fresh one and the old one was labelled 40% lower in sugar and salt but I hadn’t know that when I bought it otherwise I never would have bought it because I love sugar and think very highly of salt too I mean for much of human history the pursuit of salt drove men to every edge of the world and anyway I hadn’t thought the reduced sugar and salt sauce tasted particularly different or particularly offensive until I opened the regular sauce and holy fuck it tasted amazing it was sweet it was salty it was altogether delicious and in that moment I knew that the sugar and salt reduced sauce had been a lie and  that I had lived that lie but hadn’t known it was a lie until I tasted the truth. 

Anyway. I don’t see the sense in asking Todd Carney’s girlfriend (Lauryn Eagle that is) what she thinks about women’s role in society, even if she is an ex-waterski champion. Personally, I would have approached Kochie’s Angels for comment long before asking for Eagle’s opinion. You know, step off Catherine Lumby and Eva Cox.    

I understand though, all of this inanity. It’s the off season, after all. The Daily Tele sports section seems to be experiencing a slump similar to the one currently over/underwhelming me. This is why they did a full page article on balls. Nuts, I mean. Not, like, Steedens and Sherrins and the teeny tiny child fingers that stitch them in unlit and unregulated hives of exploitative labour all over India in an appalling but all too common example of fat first world manufacturing industry’s reliance on and exploitation of developing nations and their heinous role in perpetuating global inequality and repression.

No.

“League star proves he’s one tough nut.”

Well, shit. You don’t buy a meat pie for the meat. Nor do you buy the Daily Tele for the (metaphoric) meat.

As it happens I think balls are great in both a general and specific sense so an entire and alarmingly graphic article all about them and the injuries they are evidently able to withstand was and remains very pleasing. Some of my favourite phrases and sentiments are as follows:

 “When trainers performed an X-ray on Livers, they found his testicle had ‘shattered like a light bulb’”

“…had his scrotum ripped open”

 “…had his scrotum torn”

“…leaving one testicle hanging free”

“…after being rucked viciously by a Frenchman”

“…had the physio stitch up his scrotum, then returned to the field before he was concussed by a blow to the head. Shelford does not recall any of that game”

“…was struck by a knee to his groin and his testicle exploded”

 “Surgery was performed to remove his right testicle”

“He returned to the rink two days later to the chant of ‘Balls of Steel’’  

“…his scrotum swelled up so badly he could not run properly”

“Livers recovered to father two children”

Names I Have Called the Canberra Raiders This Year

I have called the Raiders many things this year. This is what happens when you have a very loosely edited blog serving as a dumping-ground for your unconscious. You liken your team, often unfavourably, to a great variety of… things. It’s okay though. I love them.  

They make me foam at the eyes. They make my face turn an unhealthy shade of puce. They make me snap phrases such as “do I look like I had a good weekend?” Basically, they are a team that throws up regular challenges to one’s faith, endurance and sanity. I love them for this*. As such, and in the interests of my emotional equilibrium, we share an understanding and open relationship that allows a free-flow of opinion and emotion. It’s a bit one-sided, our dialogue, but that’s okay too. They’re busy. Busy doing whatever the hell it is anyone does there in that capitalist wasteland Canberra. Busy BEING AWESOME.

Some of the things I have likened the Canberra Raiders to / called the Canberra Raiders this year:

A Russian novel

A country song

A broke down busted fairground

The foolish interlopers who while looking for gas or directions are set upon by marauding hillbillies and raped every which way in one of those seventies exploitation movies

Unsuccessful contestants in a game of Catch The Oily Pig

Refugees from a Dickens novel

Perpetrators of my regular and alarmingly violent tension headaches

A third-world country with third world hygiene standards

Boil-ridden degenerates (see above)

1980s Warsaw

Courtney Love at her messiest

Old men sucking Werthers Originals

Clam chowder

A busted arse

The best team to follow in the comp bar none

 I miss them already.

 *It’s like Seinfeld’s ya gotta see the bayyybee woman says while changing her ugly baby’s shitty nappy. “But because it comes out of your baby it smells good!”

Jay-Z's Mental Health Advice

Mental Health Advice from Jay-Z’s ‘Get Your Mind Right Mami’

Mamis! Wanting to get your mind right but not sure how to go about it? Here’s how.

1.Relax yourself; let your conscience be free

2.Make yourself hot -  the topic of discussion in every nail shop

3.Say bye to Reebok, say hi to Chanel -  say hi to Gucci, Prada as well

4.Take a look in the mirror, be proud of yourself

5.Brassiere get right  - A to a D cup -  weave get tight, pedicure your feet up

6.Hold this work in your dentures

7.Relax mami, let the Belvy flow – inhale the ‘dro, exhale it slow

8. Fuck with Hova. He can take you out of this hell

 

This is Pretty Much All I've Done With My Life So Far

OhMama MY MIND. I’m going out of it.

I thought last weekend was bad. This is worse. But by worse I really mean better. Because obviously it’s fucking awesome and exciting and this week I have been as happy as I ever expect to be.

The tension, though, it takes a toll. I have an edgy nature and a diagnosed anxiety disorder and have carefully assembled my life in such a way so as to remove or negate as many extraneously stressful or disruptive elements as possible. Friends, for example.

Finals football is taking me right to the edge and I’ve also ramped up my coffee intake which has in turn ramped up the strength and duration of my facial twitches and people have been confined to their beds with leather straps for less or so I’m told but anyway it’s been great it’s been real.

((I’m just kidding about the facial twitching business. The majority of my twitching occurs when I eat big green feta-stuffed olives at Christmas time and it’s usually confined to one eye.))

After taking Monday off and giving serious consideration to not going in all week I showed up on Tuesday but warned my boss not to expect much too much as “It’s a big week for me.” He is used to my nonsense and he doesn’t ask questions, aside from the rhetorical ones he barks continuously (see several posts back). Like yesterday, noticing that I was extremely early “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE YOU SHIT THE BED DID YOU” at a volume that suggested he was communicating from the midst of a roaring blizzard and not, you know, leaning into my car window and about fifteen centimetres away from my face.  

All week I have been slightly obsessed with Josh Young Bull Papalii. His fiery exchanges with Paul Gal took me completely by surprise. They also seemed to surprise and unnerve Gallen. Here is what The Young Bull said: “Furnsey just told me to look after Gallen out there, it was a big ask and I still can’t believe I finished it off. He’s real experienced and a real scary guy, too.”

Here is what the Old Bull said: “I don’t really care about Papalii, he hit a dog shot with a swinging arm, and once in the back without the ball. He was coming from the blindside a lot. He got me high and from the back, he did well the boy.”

I feel terrible for Gal and wish the Sharks could have made it through too so I can’t go to town on this too much. I’ve tried. What happens is I think of Gal giving the Origin losers speech this year and last, and Gal being interviewed after the Raiders knocked them out, and Gal finishing his eighth double scotch of the evening at home in Cronulla every night since Saturday like a character out of a Raymond Carver story, blankly staring into the middle distance and considering the irrevocable march toward middle age, early-onset arthritis, death, and the very real possibility that the Sharks may not win a premiership on his watch and perhaps anybody else’s watch either during his lifetime which is rapidly ticking down tick tick tick jesus christ it’s enough to make you sick it’s enough to make any man take to drink hmmm that reminds me look at that mine’s empty again ANN?? ANN!!!!!  

But, Papalii. He really did do well. Every item written about him mentions his soft voice, his shy nature, his gentle soul and his enormous appetite. All viable topics. But - and I can scarcely believe it myself - no one has addressed the enormity of his thighs. I don’t know. Perhaps – just a hunch - my priorities differ from other people’s. Someone complained that this blog had become increasingly “unnecessarily homoerotik (sic)” to which I said a. no homoerotika (sic) is unnecessary and b. are you familiar with rugby league at all hello?

I don’t think it matters what I write about the thighs. If your world view is anything like mine and you see the chilling dystopian landscape through a graphic, luridly perverted lens you will be mesmerised by the comically muscular thighs and the unfortunate cut of short from which said thighs burst forth from volcanically in the above photo and will find your eyes swiveling back there because you find the sight so attractively appalling.

His head is also hilarious. My brother says it reminds him of a totem pole. I say it looks like something you would see on Easter Island. Either way, it too is enormous, and awesome, obviously.  - *Automatic eyeball swivel* -  But sweet jesus those are some truly thick thighs!! Thicker than molasses. Thicker than thieves. Thicker than Trent Barrett. Not as thick as Mark Gasnier.

"And now Blake Ferguson's gran-mama 'aint the only girl callin' him baby"

 - Raiders Sharks Semi-Final -

Joey Johns picked Blake Ferguson as his “impact player” yesterday which as I understand it is the ‘player’ he thinks will make an ‘impact’ of some significance. He would have been my choice too, had Channel Nine have asked me to contribute. I had actually opened up 60 minutes of my schedule to specifically address the “impact player” issue in the hours prior but the call never came through..

I love Blake Ferguson. As well as being my favourite “impact player” I also pick him as my favourite ever “DOCS graduate”. Not only because he wasn’t found dead and stuffed in a suitcase as a baby, but because he is just generally awesome and adorable and athletically freaky WHAT IS WITH HIS FINGERTIP CONTROL HOW DOES HE GET THOSE PICKUPS AND HAVE YOU SEEN HIM UNDER A HIGHBALL WHAT ABOUT WHEN HE ACCELERATES HOLY FUCK HE GOES LIKE A GREEN STREAK AND HOW ABOUT THE WAY HE CAN TIPPY-TOE WHO TAUGHT HIM TO TIPPY-TOE LIKE THAT IS IT A NATURAL GIFT OR WAS IT COACHING STAFF AT THE SHARKS BEFORE HE DISSED THEM AND UNCEREMONIOUSLY DEPARTED FOR THE RAIDERS AND THE POSSIBILITY OF PERSONAL HAPPINESS AND PREMIERSHIP GLORY THAT HE DID NOT BELIEVE THE SHARKS OFFERED BUT BELIEVED THE RAIDERS DID AND DOESN’T THAT APPEAR TO BE THE BEST DECISION OF HIS LIFE HOW HAPPY DOES HE LOOK PLAYING ALONGSIDE SANDOR EARL AND JOSH DUGAN HOW GANGSTER ARE THEY HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYTHING CUTER NO YOU HAVEN’T HAVE YOU EXCEPT MAYBE WHEN HE SAYS HI TO HIS GRANDPARENTS AFTER A GAME THAT’S PRETTY CUTE TOO ISN’T IT HUH HUH HELLO IS THIS THING ON  -  -  -

                                                                                         ---

The Dream I had About Greg Inglis

A few nights ago I had a great dream it was about Greg Inglis and that’s not a sentence I ever expected to write but there you have it I was sitting inside a parked car and Greg Inglis was outside looming in teasing me about how good I thought he was while standing with his legs wide open as far apart as they could go and periodically rearranging his balls not in an obscene or menacing manner but in a toddler who hasn’t been taught the ways of the public world manner it was kind of endearing and sweet as balls themselves often are and he was saying “so I’m in your top ten then am I aye aye” grinning and fiddling and I said to get real don’t you know who you’re dealing with and woke up with that song in my head along with Greg Inglis and his balls maybe I ate too much cheese before bed that night. 

The Raiders are a Polite & Dignified Team Who Know Their Place in the League

Round 24 – Raiders vs Roosters.

“EVERYTHING ON THE LINE!!! TENSE!!! BUTTHOLE HASN’T BEEN THIS TIGHTLY CLENCHED FOR AGES!”

As that strident and evocative text from G-Spaz on the frontlines in Canberra demonstrates, this was a must win game.

Brandy did his bit to build a mood before kickoff. He went as far as to orally punctuate his own sentences “They’ve gotta win. They’ve just got to win this one. Full stop. (pause) It’s a must win. Full stop.” I was tightly wound and can’t quite remember what I muttered, I think it was “alright prick, comma, we get it – dot dot dot shut up already.”

Brandy struggled to disguise his weary contempt for both teams as the game progressed. The subtext of his entire call was “ever imagined what it would be like having an orbital sander pressed to your brain? That’s what watching and having to call this game feels like. Kill me. Exclamation point. ”

I understood. But, Brandy, not all games can be pretty. Also, your stinking Panthers are engaged in a gripping  and high-stakes wooden-spoon off right now so, you know, shut the fuck up.

In the event, both teams were shabby but the Raiders a little less so.

Furner fooled them into thinking they were playing an away game again this week. Whatever. It worked.

I can see how this is going to go, though. You do something or you wear something and you win a few games and then it sticks and several years later you’re still wearing the same sagging, elastic-less support undergarments and they are fetid and rank BUT YOU HAVE TO KEEP WEARING THEM. In the Raiders case, this means that they will be bussed to some suburban hotel for home games forevermore.  

There is already a precedent for this type of superstitious behavior at the Raiders. See: Josh McCrone not taking his mouth guard out until he’s in the shower. This means that he spits and sprays his way through post-match interviews, mangling words and sounding like you do when you fit one of those voice distorters over the mouthpiece of your phone to allow you to make menacing phone calls undetected.

In any case, it is only partly to do with luck. Mostly it is an enduring legacy of him being shit-scared of his mother’s towering wrath as a child. And there is no reason more valid than this, for anything, ever.

When he was very small he played a game in Tumut and left his mouth guard behind. “I got in a lot of trouble with mum. She said ‘next time, just leave it in ‘til you’re all finished’ – and I did it ever since!” There’s something very sweet about this and I still feel vague traces of guilt from 2010 when I hated McCrone very hard so I am just going to leave this as the lovely story that it is. Bless.

Blake Ferguson is lovely too, huge fucking amphibious thing that he is. His habit of ending his post-game interviews by abruptly looming up into the camera like some kind of terrifying frogman and politely requesting whether he can “just say a quick gidday to Nan and Pop back in Welly – gidday!!” and accompanying this with a goofy wave and a stupid-sweet grin is awesome. He has had one or both eyes blacked out and a repeatedly broken nose for most of the season and his busted, broke-down visage has made this little routine all the more arresting. So bless him too.

So the game went on, it was pretty pedestrian, 4 all, 10 all, 16 all, blah blah butthole clenched blah, until **cue crashing cymbals** Minichello that fucking statesman hit Dugan with a high shot and busted his face right open above the eye with only a few minutes to go. I think he hit him twice, I think he cleaned him up again when Dugan, because he is wiry and strong and filled with young virile blood, bounced away from the first hit only to get cleaned up by a second, but I can’t be sure because I was yelping NOT THE FACE NOT THE PRETTY and anyway, a brawl had erupted, which was nice. The Raiders are a polite and dignified team who know their place in the league. As such, they rarely seem to fight, and pick their brawls carefully and sparingly. Yesterday they knew en masse and instinctively that Dugan’s face NOT THE FACE being burst open like a watermelon was cause for brawl. If not that then what? Things happened quickly from here. Mini got binned. The crowd boiled and foamed and mimed uppercuts. Dugan’s face was taped back together. I think the Roosters scored a try? Or did we? I can’t remember, such was my state, but we won and it took a good ten minutes for the tremors to pass. Twenty for the twitches! Heady times.

Coaches - Who Cuts the Mustard, & Who Does Not

Coaching, Christ.

It is an unrelenting, nerve-shredding occupation. Coping with a whole range of players’ behavioural abnormalities? Jesus Christ. Some of those players reveal a near total ignorance of all known cognitive processes.

Remember when Gus Gould revealed that Trent Barrett was so dense and un-coachable that after much frustration he just had to tell him – repeatedly, and with some force, to JUST RUN STRAIGHT, AT ALL TIMES ?? I don’t either but my brother does because he told me about it when we were discussing who we thought the stupidest players ever were, in a conversation that inevitably originated and ended with Mark Gasnier.

In settler times Aborigines working the cattle stations would put a hat over a cow’s eyes to get it to walk calmly backwards. The farmers had never seen this done and it impressed them. Make of that what you will.

Welcome to the wonderland of first grade coaching.

Bellamy, Craig. I like the way he seethes. I like it how he puffs his cheeks and blows out air as if to say ‘well now…’ in that belligerent way of his. I like the way he occupies the coach’s box like it’s his personal pulpit. I like it how he plays the part of the crazed preacher man ranting and frothing, beneath biblical skies but surrounded by about a dozen Mount Franklin water bottles that he channels his inner seething into and systematically destroys. I like it how you look at him and just cannot imagine him partaking in flabby, human indulgences like sleep. And I love how he looks like he would be lewdly comic away from the cameras, like every anecdote would end with him braying “…AND THAT’S HOW I SPRAINED MY BONER!”

Bennett, Wayne. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Is that from Hamlet? Aren’t all those power-and-paranoia quotes? Everything about him just says ‘let me handle my business’ and as such the twitches around his mouth are more eloquent than anything he can ever actually say. I like the fact that he doesn’t much go in for talking. Neither do I. Although I am clearly not a coach. In any case, when he does speak, you damn well listen. I like that he plays an affectionate and fatherly role in Darius Boyd’s hitherto untethered life. I like this so much that it makes me like Darius Boyd. He follows Papa Wayne from club to club to club! It’s awfully sweet.

Cartwright, John. He is deep in that sink of iniquity that is the Titans. He has heavy frown-lines and an air of burnt out truculence but he seems quite lovely and despite his club’s problems I can’t imagine him indulging in much high-decibel hectoring. Also, he lives on the Gold Coast and has thus far avoided wearing pastel leisure clothes and plastic visors. A good sort.

Cleary, Ivan. If I saw him messily eating a burrito in a food court or something I might be more inclined to believe he is human but I haven’t, so I can’t. Operates with robotic unpleasantness and is already dead where it counts – behind the eyes. 

Flanagan, Shane. He was rushed to hospital with a violently twisted bowel earlier this year. This is really all I can think to say about Shane Flanagan, aside from pointing out that his name is similar to that of True Blood’s Nan Flanagan, who is fierce. Todd Carney seems to think he’s alright. He said he “treats him like a human being” while implying that Brian Smith did not. What else? He has a lovely cashew-coloured skin, and he looks like his favourite movie would be Con Air. Nothing wrong with that. I was watching Con Air at the cinema with my brother the night Princess Diana was killed. 

Furner, David. He just can’t seem to strike the right tone. Sometimes he displays that inane breeziness common to morning TV presenters. Other times he emanates an air of ‘what-can-you-do’ resignation. Sometimes he is waspish and bitchy. Where is the sense of bitter ideological betrayal and urgent anger? I want to see him lapsing into a psychotic episode or two. Something to really frighten those Raiders into some form.

Occasionally, in my more lucid and generous moments, I wonder whether perhaps it is not all Furner. Perhaps the Raiders are just a maddeningly enigmatic and disparate group of individuals who cannot get it the fuck together on a weekly basis. When I am thinking like this I feel desperately sorry for Furner and the good deal of distress they must cause him. He does come across as someone who is just bone tired - psychologically and spiritually weary. Well, what the hell? The NRL is no place for a man who yearns for leisure time allowing him the right to wear salmon-coloured slacks and drink gin before noon. If he requires a rest he should step aside and make way for someone with more stamina. But no. If nothing else the bastard has serious staying power. He is rusted onto the Raiders organisation like a fucking barnacle on a ship. A sinking ship.

In any case, empathising with Furner is an uncomfortable sensation. Thankfully it is also one that occurs rarely and passes rapidly. 

Griffin, Andy. I’m not talking about the Broncos on here. I’m actually officially boycotting them. The stranglehold they have over the Friday night timeslot is the most unfair element of the modern game. Fuck the Broncos.  

Hasler, Des. Oh my god. I love him. Here is a man who is allergic to the saccharine and the insincere. Everything he says is incredible; all flashes of Wildean wit and lacerating, droll humour. My favourite thing he said was about Brett Stewart, after he had come back from his suspension and sexual assault acquittal and was busily marinating in his poisonous misdirected hatred for David Gallop and Dessie defended him by saying “His soul has not been cleansed.” This is straight from the book of Sodom and Gomorrah. Type the words ‘Des Hasler’ into any search engine and you will be treated with ‘Des Hasler dummy spits’ as your first option.

Now he is at the Bulldogs and has every one of those Dogs doing their jobs. This sounds simple but it is not. See: Smith, Brian, and Furner, David.  

Henry, Neil. I don’t know why, but he is of limited to nil interest to me. He’s a very long way away, which may be it. I liked it in 2010 when his Cowboys were playing the Raiders in Canberra and at halftime he forgot himself or had a coaching flashback or whatever and accidentally strolled into the Raiders dressing rooms like he was still coaching them instead of the Cowboys. Awkward.

Kearney, Stephan. He was fired but whatever, I’m still including him. Kearney was like one of those fancy types of honey sold at markets - viscous and dark, with brooding undertones. You just want the Yellow-box though, don’t you, to spread on your crumpets? He was picked up by Parra because he was said to “understand how the Polynesian mind works”. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t, but either way the process stripped him of about twenty kilos. The ‘steeping in failure’ diet, that’s what it’s called. He looked like some kind of dying Christmas tree.

I’ll miss him. I’ll miss his fine looks. There has never been a coach with such spectacular cheekbones.

Maguire, Michael. Currently being feted as a man of incredible vision and ambition for bringing consistency and structure to John Sutton’s loose and lazy game. I don’t like saying nice things about the Rabbits but my grudging admission is that the improvements in John Sutton typify and reflect the improvement in the entire Souths team. God help me.  

McClellan, Brian. I don’t even know how to spell his name and I don’t care enough to check.

Price, Steve. Both his behavior and his demeanor are cowardly and evasive. He’s hangdog and reactive. Furthermore, he looks like the type who’d always be swabbing at himself with moist towelettes. Not first-grade material, in other words. The rumour that he may have fallen out with Jamie Soward gives him a little bit of cache, but until this is confirmed I will continue to despise him and his tapering face.

Sheens, Tim. Obnoxious. Paranoid. Shrewd and wily. He has an inflated sense of his own relevance, and a smirk that rivals Bruce Willis’. Irritatingly hard to dislike. 

Smith, Brian. Christ, what a crappy coach. Socially and sartorially ill-suited to such a job. Has none of the usual traits of popularity – conventional good looks, smooth manners, an agreeable temperament. As such, he is diabolically unpopular.

The miscreant Roosters have not thrived under him, apart from 2010 when they took matters into their own meaty, scandal-stained hands, administered a self-imposed alcohol ban and played themselves into a grand final. 

Toovey, Geoff.  Geoff Toovey is a revelation. Who knew Toovey was in possession of an hysterical nature? A few weeks ago, after Manly’s loss to the Bulldogs, he displayed a highly likeable lunacy that I had no idea he was capable of. In the press conference he ranted like Mussolini from the balcony. It was unreal. He was pointing and rasping and his eyes were bulging and crazy and I thought ‘now there is a man of passion and conviction.’

In addition to the confiding rasp, he has a creaky, vaguely bow-legged walk and, as I now know, is prone to explosions of paranoia. He is also prone to hyperbole. His manner of speaking is gothic and theatrical. All this is at odds with his bleached out surfer look. He says things like ‘TO FORGE A WIN OUT OF THE JAWS OF DEFEAT’, and makes frequent reference to ‘the football Gods’. What is going on at Manly? First Des with the soul cleansing business and now Toovey preaching hellfire and damnation, like Brother Justin all crazed and enraged in Carnivale?

Business as usual, really.