Canberra Raiders 2014: Die Harder

My friend supports the Broncos. This automatically renders him incapable of understanding the slaughterhouse of the soul struggle of supporting a second-tier team. He is also a Queenslander. Frankly, seeing these sentiments strung together on a screen like this is making me question how we are friends at all. Thin ice!

Anyways, because no discussion of the Raiders is complete without reference to the astonishingly innovative ways in which they hemorrhage young talent, and because I still look back on said hemorrhaged talent with a honey-glazed glow I guess I was moaning some wretched sentiment regarding Carney or Monaghan or Ferguson or possibly, depending on the extent to which he had already inflamed me with his airy upper-echelon assuredness, Travis Waddell. I can’t remember the details exactly. It was only two days ago but my mind has a tendency to slip a gear when it comes to the Raiders. Mental health experts would have me believe that this, much like my night terrors, is a side effect from suffering under the sustained weight of terminal failure and disappointment.

 ‘Oh,’ he said, with the inane breeziness common to breakfast TV presenters, ‘you should be used to it by now.’ Of course, this is exactly the type of innately annoying and unsympathetic thing a Bronco supporter would say. Storm fans too, tenfold. The Gina Reinharts of the NRL. Totally out of touch.

Anyway. I told him it never stops hurting. Because it doesn’t. But I enjoyed the sound and sensation of saying something as arresting as this so I added an apocalyptic, cinema-trailer-narrator-type element to my delivery – IT NEVER. STOPS. HURTING.  

Because just like life in general, there is always another punishment, another casual outrage, another loss.
Well, so what. We die harder.

 

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.

 

The Young & The Restless Raiders

I understand that blog wise I have – what is the correct terminology here – dropped the ball. This ball dropping extends to all areas of my life. Whatever. Dropping balls is as legitimate a lifestyle as any. Just ask the Raiders.

In the event, I actually blame the Raiders. Who doesn’t.  

The Raiders were the one relationship I trusted to sustain, distract and comfort me in times of uncertainty and I didn’t notice it happening at the time but at some point during the season this relationship took a grievous turn toward near-total apathy so that three months’ worth of incidents and machinations failed to elicit any emotion or response from me at all but seeing the Raiders describe Jarrod Croker as a “flashy” player on Facebook causes me to flip the fuck out.

Setting aside the season-spanning, serialised saga of ceaseless negativity, the Raiders appear to have reached a new juncture in their grim narrative by categorising Croker as a “flashy” player.

This is what they’ve come to. They are so parched of hope and devoid of talent that Croker now rates as a flashy player.

Ye Gods. Because no offence to Jarrod but I register strong objections to this claim. Actually, offence.  

He doesn’t pass, he can’t tackle, and even if you don’t take into account the permanent internal damage that missed kick in 2010 obviously inflicted he still looks like he’s perpetually on the brink of a psychic meltdown and needs his mum.

Here is Croker holding back the beckoning abyss

Leaving aside his undiagnosed and chronic PTSD, the nice – not flashy, nice - thing about Croker is that he has no desire to ever leave Canberra. He is HAPPY in Canberra. He enjoys a FULL AND VIBRANT LIFE in Canberra. He didn’t even want to leave Goulburn to move to Canberra and make grade because the carefully laid out roads alarmed and overwhelmed him. There is something essentially decent about this, especially in light of what has been happening at the Raiders for a long time but was thrown into rude relief this year so that they are now what are referred to in professional media circles as a “problem club”, which is also nice.   

Here is Dugan signing with the Dragons

Of course, the professionals are right, but most of this year’s unpleasant ‘problems’ are representative of a psychological syndrome at the Raiders that I notice has become steadily and now suddenly worse as the years wear on – that of finding Canberra a dissatisfying and dispiriting place to live and play in.

Canberra is not going to change. Young and restless players are going to continue to find themselves trapped in Sartre-like “huis clos” – a “no exit” hell of their own making, and will continue to lose fans and alienate people by seeking or forcing releases.

Here is Blake being bad 

Short of relocating the entire club to Perth I don’t know what can be done about this.  

Performance-wise, the Raiders veer between the passable and the incompetent. Off-field, they have always maintained a relatively calm surface which has been ruptured at obligingly spaced intervals by the sort of scandals that are better understood if you keep a copy of the ACT’s criminal statutes handy and prominent.

The gradual and then sudden unspooling of Todd Carney’s entire Canberra career, Joel Monaghan being blown by a teammate’s dog, Josh Dugan confounding everyone by turning out to be a total dickhead and Blake Ferguson making me so sad I can’t even bring myself to mention him beyond this point on here are some of the more seismic ruptures.

See also:

Coach Furner’s sacking

The senior player revolt that led to Coach Furner’s sacking

Hemorrhaging hundreds of points in a series of huge late season losses

Suffering the most catastrophic loss in club history – Storm 68 Raiders 4

Dropping from a lofty ladder position to one lower than Clint Eastwood’s balls but still higher than the Eels

Papa Josh announcing his plans to join the priesthood

Anthony Milford’s attempts to avoid having to suffer the dreadful corrosive reality of living in Canberra now that people outside of Canberra know his name        

Papa and Milford going rogue and getting on the drink two days before their must win match against the Warriors in Auckland which   

Papa throwing up in their hotel corridor

Letting Sam Williams go and now facing the very real possibility of going from having too many halves to no halves next year

Sandor Earl being awarded the opportunity to explore his capacities for regret, despair and banned substances outside of the NRL  

The death of #Dorguson

Ricky Stuart

Here are Papa and Milford being best friends



Here are Papa's shorts creeping into his crotch 

 

Here is Milford's hair
 

Here is Blake being bae

Here is everyone who has anything to do with the Raiders

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blake Ferguson & The Case For & Against Caging Footballers

 

Blake Ferguson went to court yesterday and entered a not guilty plea to an indecent assault charge.

Court documents allege Ferguson “touched vagina”.

The matter was adjourned until September, so it is for Blake, as it is for everyone, a matter of waiting.

We all wait, at all times, for everything. For doctors, for hospital beds, for transplants, for tradesmen, for Telstra, for elections, for planes, for your number to be called at the deli, for something to fucking change, for death.

Anyway, if you’re anything like me – and if you are congratulations – you will appreciate the high stakes aesthetics of his courthouse style. Internationally, Lindsay Lohan and Michael Jackson set the ‘arriving at court in style’ bar at lofty heights, well out of reach of the general population, to which, if you heed the damning reports, you would know these vagina touching NRL footballers do not believe they belong.

Many recent incidents seem to have confirmed the increasingly commonly held belief that footballers can no longer be trusted to perform ordinary individual acts in any unsupervised capacity. Maybe none more so than Russell Packer, who not five minutes after failing to utilise the unadulterated access to amenities that the dressing sheds presumably provide, stood on field and, hands on hips and before an audience of thousands, released down his leg a great stream of urine.

I’m sorry but whether public or private there’s something unseemly about a man who doesn’t hold his dick to do this. It’s animal.

Packer’s proof that performing basic ablutions are beyond the realm of what we can expect from footballers works very much in favour of the advocates moving to cage and quarantine players for all but the 80 minutes of game time required of them each week. As a movement, it’s gaining momentum.  

They say that based on the current climate very little seems to separate NRL players from the animal world already. They argue that random vagina touching and flagrant hands free urination are but two more threads that make up the ever-narrowing link between footballer and beast.

I don’t deny this. I did, after all, see that stream of piss, those stained shorts, and the sunglasses Blake Ferguson wore on his way to court to plead not guilty.

Still, I am fundamentally opposed to this movement. In actual fact I’m an advocate for footballers gaining recognition as a protected species and being awarded certain civic and civil liberties that allow them to roam among us drones free and unfettered.

 

This could be a platform from which either side could win this fucking election we’re waiting on. And wouldn’t that actually be something worth waiting for, aside from grim death of course.   

 

Coping With Canberra - A Raiders Progress Report

For the football fan, summer is the soul’s winter.

For the footballers themselves, summer is the season in which to comfortingly return to character.  As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly: Proverbs 26, 11.

In Canberra, the Raiders are busily engaging in vivid and unrestrained off-field activities which cast an impression of quality living.

>>Quality living by Canberra standards I mean. Some other, non-geographically specific things which cast impressions of quality living: STD’s, rural road signs all shot up with bullet holes, getting bit by an animal while trying to get it stoned, ever using the word ‘repo’d’, seafood extender, painting unventilated rooms, ugly dogs hurling themselves against chain-link fences, trawling YouTube for footage of Flynn from Australian Idol’s rendition of Push Up! in morning’s earliest hours, tobacco-stained ceilings, managing to have both long hair and a sunburned scalp, throwing up in potted plants and any type of heaving be it dry or otherwise, threatening loved ones with shoes, staple guns or other unconventional weapons, having part of an eyebrow missing, petrol station pies, Lowes.  

It’s grim there you know. Faded, and with a weird melancholy. So while Bernard Tomic is brawling with his friend in a spa at 5:30am on the Gold Coast, which sounds hedonistic and hot, the Raiders are making the most of things in their own ways. Recent efforts have achieved some solid results, and ACT police have netted several Raiders in their wily civic web.

-         Jack Boom was thrown out of the Foreshore festival and into the drunk-tank for several hours. I read this in the Tele and then never heard a thing about it ever again but I totally buy it the boy is clearly a fiend anyone with a face as sweet as his is a certified fiend.

-         Blake Ferguson was ejected from the same festival for allegedly “spitting” “on” “several patrons”.

-         Joel Thompson has been interviewed about a bottle being thrown at a cyclist during a post-Foreshore party at his apartment. And there are non-existent reports that coach Furner was caught throwing a car battery through a senior player’s car windscreen.   

Well, shit. We liked Brando as Stanley Kowalski didn’t we, all mute surly attitude and explosions of raw seething brutality? What’s the goddamn difference?

Just as the game itself is an acquired taste, the occasionally unwholesome extracurricular activities of the most abhorrent members of society ie. football players are seen to be unpalatable by many also.  These are probably the same flat-pack people who have never slept with a second cousin more than once, never had a dark and savage night of the soul, and never sawed the roof off their car.      

So, whatever. Football is an acquired taste. My best friend told me her boyfriend regards with distaste footballers and the women who love them. He takes it to mean they’re rough or whatever.

But, Canberra. It’s weird there. As anyone who has lived there for any stretch of time will appreciate, the urge to throw bottles from balconies at cyclists is a powerful one which is not easily denied. I myself had to consciously keep two hands positioned on the steering wheel at all times when driving such was my urge to run cyclists down in my car. Nothing personal, you understand, it’s just that they somehow became a very visual and ever-present reminder of my culturally bankrupt and capitalist wasteland surrounds. This created an uneasy atmosphere of foreboding and also made driving something of an ordeal.

So I understand and sympathise with any bottle-throwing, spitting, heavy drinking, drug use, destruction of property and homicidal rampaging that goes on in Canberra. I actually endorse it. Distractions and delay tactics employed by those seeking to avoid the inevitable incursion of real life are a necessary component to coping with Canberra. If I wasn’t so burnt-out and unambitious I would run for office and seek subsidisation for it from Medicare myself.

((*not talking about J-Bo, Gav or Terry Campese anytime I talk about how fucked Canberra is. They all come from Queanbeyan, anyways, and besides which they are three of the best and most well-bred things – animal mineral vegetable or other - to come out of this stinking age we live in.))

"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 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.

The Raiders Rattle The Storm.

The inner flutterings of my intuition told me the Raiders were going to win this game. I texted my brother, I told him “I predict an upset, same as last year!” “Not me” he wrote back. My hold on the real world has always been slight at best, but something tells me I am right and he is wrong and I serenely ignore his suggestion, and everyone else’s (except, I imagine, the lovely and ever-loyal Laurie Daley) that the Raiders will be badly beaten.

The game starts but I am making custard in the kitchen. I don’t know what I miss but it probably involves Cooper Cronk rushing around being authoritative and yappy.

Raiders post the first points, ten minutes in. Blake Ferguson does sensational athletic things under the high ball, comes up with it, slams it down, leaps up and slams the ball away. Huzzah. Croker converts. 6-0.

Ferguson is playing with two spectacular black eyes. I note with interest that he has never looked better. He looks less like a half-formed amphibian and more Tyler Durden.

Reece Robinson gets a ball to Sandor Earl and Earl gets over. It’s pronounced “Shannnndor”. Is that Celtic? Those stars on his thighs don’t look very Celtic. I remember sitting in Bruce Stadium in 2010, when he was on the wing for Penrith, staring at that star-spangled thigh and thinking it was one of the more horrendous assemblages of tattoos I had seen. This was back when Joel Monaghan was on the wing for the Raiders. It was a good time, 2010. You sat right down close to the sideline so you could hear the hits and the things that people called out to Monaghan – nice things, because Monaghan was nice – and often Monaghan, because he was right there, would turn and look and acknowledge the shout-out. Usually it was just “HEY MONAGHS!!!” but once it was “HEY MONAGHS YOU’RE A FUNNY FUCK!!” which was astute, because he was, and didn’t that sense of humour prove to be his ultimate undoing - which, as the (my) theory goes, marked the general decline in morale and cohesion at the Raiders, the results of which we are still seeing, circa 2012. But I digress.

Cameras cut to Mal Meninga sitting broodily in some lofty box. The commentators announce he has been in the Raiders dressing rooms. Doing what, I wonder? I have no time and no appetite for Mal Meninga. I would rather hear that Ricky Stuart had been in the dressing room, frankly. Croker’s conversion fails; he sends a large lump of grass a good way up into the air though. 10-0.

Play resumes and Croker gets a flick-pass away. Several seconds later Brandy Alexander says words to the effect of “Croker raced up and made first contact.” This is all very, very strange. Unfamiliar.

Fifteen minutes in the Storm get their first real chance to post points. The Storm post points. This, this is familiar. Momentum shifts and swings towards the Storm. Doom-tinged doubt creeps in to my mind. This is exactly what these Raiders cannot handle. Defensive tests unnerve them, they unravel. Earl, who has just been tossed into touch a moment prior, gets up out of the line to shut things down for Melbourne on the fifth. I exhale. Relief. After defending their own line Canberra have a good set of six. My god. Also, they’re offloading. I’ve never seen the Raiders offload en masse like this. Twenty five minutes in and their completion rate is 9 from 10. My god in heaven.

The Storm make an error. Reece Robinson passes long to Eddrick Lee, who juggles, re-gathers and crosses for a try in the corner. Croker, gaping like a hooked fish, misses by a mile. 14-6.

Next thing, while I’m occupying myself wondering whether the Raiders can get through a solid set after posting points, they are occupying themselves by immediately going ahead and posting some more points. Quick hands from Josh McCrone to Ferguson, who busts a tackle, fends like T-Rex and links with Earl – TRY!

Next, Anthony Quinn knees Ferguson in the head. It flattens him. Eventually he wobbles to his feet.

In the 39^th minute Justin O’Neil gets a second try for the Storm, on Canberra’s left side. The problem side. Fun fact that is really no fun at all: Canberra has conceded 34 tries through their left hand side this year. Their left hand side defense gapes like a ripped circus tent, basically.

Halftime, 20-12. As they run off Mark Gasnier looms up and opines of Canberra “they’re actually doing a Melbourne Storm on the Melbourne Storm!” He gets this out without fucking it up and is clearly very pleased with himself. It still astonishes me that anyone would give Mark Gasnier a microphone, but at this time I’m feeling generous and find myself murmuring something like “good on you Gaz”, which is neither a sentence nor a sentiment I am familiar with. This is an unusual night all round.

Still, I’m not comfortable. To be a Raiders fan is to be in a perpetual state of discomfort. They can’t be trusted. They are famously unreliable. Also, the Storm are irritatingly reliable. And they love a strong second half. I picture them in the dressing room, being re-programmed with Bellamy’s exclusive and secret ‘retreat, evaluate, recalibrate’ software. The thought makes me feel extremely edgy.

The second half starts. A ball from McCrone leaves the Storm looking a long way short in defense and gets Eddrick Lee over for his second try. Lee was on track to becoming a basketball superstar until advice from an uncle swayed him towards football. He’s fucking massive; a big, lanky, loose assemblage of limbs and circuitry. Croker misses the conversion. No offence, but can’t someone else do it? Actually, offence. He stinks. 24-12.

Cronk kicks a 40/20. This is not good. This is very, very bad.

The Raiders hold the Storm back, but only barely. They get the ball back and advance it up the field with an ease and aptitude that I have never seen.

With 56 minutes gone Croker scores a try from a Joel Thompson one-arm offload, much to the distress of Cronk, who is screaming maniacally at Strom players to slide across, slide across! The Storm are ruffled! Less surprisingly, so is the terminally inept Mark Gasnier. He interjects to observe that “three repeat sex – pardon me – sets - for the Raiders here…” I get up to light some incense.

Next, McCrone throws a long looping ball out to Earl. Another try! Another missed conversion.

Shaun Fensom makes a bust and sets off down the field like a great thundering bison.

Robinson gets a ball to Lee, who makes it a hat trick of tries, which in turn makes a lump form in my throat. Croker, who looks like he has a perpetual lump in his throat, makes the conversion. This takes it to 40-12, the largest margin the Storm have ever been beaten by at AAMI Park. Audacious. We really have no business beating the Storm at all, let alone at their home ground, and by a record breaking margin. I relax and begin to revel in this unaccustomed brilliance.

The siren goes. David Furner winks at some unseen person from the coaching box. Such is my mood that I find this rakishly charming. Alluring, even. Winning throws a golden glow over what would otherwise be a sleazy and lowbrow gesture from a man as flinty as Furner. Ferguson and Earl do a special handshake, one with twitching fingers and pumping motions. This is also charming.

Gasnier, chatting amiably to a peevish Jason Ryles, says that the Storm were ‘uncharacteristical.’ This is not the first time I have heard Gasnier use this non-word. I can’t help but feel that the leap from leaving an absurdist 4 a.m. voicemail message to sideline commentary has been something of a stretch for Gasnier. He is far better suited to the former, I feel. I’m no expert, but surely that must be the greatest voicemail message in Australian history. The flashes of lewd, Wild-like wit are unparalleled in their excellence.

Finally, cameras cut to the Raiders dressing sheds. They’re all in a big circle clapping and hoo-haa-ing and belting out the team song and then Eddrick Lee breaks ranks, moves into the centre of the circle, drops to the floor and STARTS DOING THE WORM.

Kearney is a Country Song, Furner is a Fuckwit.

My brother texted me. You know how you can see the first line of text before you open it? Well the first line was ‘Furner has stood down’ –  four words that exude an undeniable romance, no? The rest of the text, not so much - ‘Dugan and Ferguson from Friday for being drunk. Another great decision’ – By ‘great decision’ I think he means to say that it was an act of startling originality and initiative that has left everyone gaping in admiration; acts which are typical of Furner.  

Fucking Furner. The man is a deadest moron. His contract should be terminated, effective immediately. Not only does he lack the moral fiber and intellectual rigour to be a first grade coach, he doesn’t even have the courtesy to conduct himself in the manner expected of struggling coaches. Stephen Kearney does this very, very well. He doesn’t just wear that look of burnt-out weariness, of sad exasperation, he fucking owns it. He looks like a man who is saddled with a losing team and all the woes of a country music song – behind in his rent, no health insurance, a car that won’t run, walks with a limp from a workplace injury, can’t afford to pay his therapist… He also always looks as if he wants a cigarette. This is all very effective. Acknowledging the looming voids elicits respect and sympathy. Matt Elliot pretended to hang himself via his tie in a Panthers press conference and we not only ate it up, we understood. Furner just becomes flintier of eye and sharper of tone as the pressure and criticism mounts. It’s all wrong.  Additionally, awfully, he looks like a cop. A tightly wound, head-kicking cop.  

Of course, Kearney doesn’t have the reassuring presence of his similarly blockheaded brother in the boardroom safeguarding his job. This means that he comes across as genuinely distressed and apologetic and frustrated. Furner just looks stupid, stubborn, smug and despotic.   

Has he confused the gurglings of his unconscious with the voice of God? It’s a common mistake.  The same thing happened to Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, to Silvio Berlusconi (BUNGA BUNGA!) and may have occurred inside the mind of Greg Inglis for a while there when he was referring to himself in the third person and flip-flopping on the Broncos and being fat and such. It happens. To wit: that pop-up weather guy from Prime, Daniel Gibson. He says the most random and bizarre things, in such an erratic fashion, and only ever fleetingly refers to either the weather or to what most of us would consider reality. He seems unhinged, but who cares? He’s a two-bit regional weatherman. Furner is a fucking coach. His idiocy and incompetence upsets a great deal of people. It’s not right.  

Daniel Gibson. Don't be fooled, he's fucking nuts.

The obvious validity of my grievances will be available for everyone to see tonight, when the rest of the Raiders (minus Dugan and Ferguson) play the Rabbitohs – who I look upon with a loathing that is slightly below bottomless. On free-to-air. In prime time. The Horror.