Run Ben Barba Run!

Yeah Nah The Boys..

Making a really negative blog post is great. It relieves me of my many stresses. Kicking someone repeatedly in the head while wearing a pair of jack boots probably has the same effect. Or so I imagine. I don't know. I'm a pacifist. The Von Trapp to your Nazi. And if the Von Trapps taught us anything it is that Nazis can be thwarted by girls in pinafores. The End.  

With this in my more relaxed and at ease mind I can now turn my attention to several highlights of round 16.  

The second greatest thing this week was Ben Barba’s man of the match performance in Mackay.

The best thing was that there was a game in Mackay, between the top two teams. I have spent a lot of time in Mackay and the surrounding hinterlands. It’s one of those sensational places that manages to be both offensive and charming, albeit charming in an abrasive, amphetamine-edged way. It’s rude and rough and full of mean looking men who work in the mines and their mean looking dogs and women.

Once I spent a night in a rainforest shack getting wasted on rotgut wine with Scott Prince’s mother. CD’s of Guido Hatzis’ greatest radio moments boomed on continuous loop all night, at her insistence. Not my thing, but Guido Hatzis is a lifestyle choice.  

Anyway, Mackay is Ben Barba’s hometown, and the place he referenced in 2011 when he said that as a youth he developed his step by running from cops. He is now, according to every section of the media, an official “excitement machine”. I think the last person to be labeled an excitement machine was Josh Dugan. He's busted a lot nowadays. He still makes me coo like a dove though, which is nice.

Ben Barba has excitement up the wazoo. He was awesome in Mackay against the Storm, he whipped the crowd into frenzy, and he blew kisses and waggled his finger like G.I. used to do and afterwards he said the whole experience was “the best thing besides my kids being born.”

Elsewhere, in a game preceded by Mad Dog McDougal waving a wooden spoon around obnoxiously on the sideline (Matty Johns, later – “What’s happened to McDougal, has he got stuck in a dryer or something – he’s Benjamin Button – he’s shrinking!”) Nathan Hindmarsh pretty much single-handedly steered the Eels to a victory. Now there’s a sentence I’ve written never. Hindy was Paul Gallen-esque. AND it went down to golden point and we have all seen far too many heartbreaking scenes of a heartbroken Hindy after far too many golden point losses, I really didn’t know how many more he could take before he went on a shooting spree or something. The situation at Parramatta these last few years have pummeled a once robust and irreverent Hindy into an apologetic, barely identifiable corpse. On the weekend he rose up from the ashes of his faded glory and fucking flew. Here’s what he said about his man of the match performance: “I just thought bugger it I’m just gonna enjoy meself”. He’s a true treasure.

Another standout event was the courts stripping Josh Dugan of his driving license. We’ve been through this before. We will probably go through this again.  He is in the middle of a vivid and impressionable youth, after all – surely he is entitled to scatter witches hats at roadwork sites and speed through school zones extravagantly? (I’m not saying he did this. What I am saying though is that I would do this (below) if he were to pass me in the street.)

After his court appearance he said that he is much smarter for it. Footballers say the stupidest things. Where do they learn these phrases? At what point in their careers are they taught not to make unconstructive remarks? Around the same time they are taught to preface every remark – particularly if they are responding to a compliment relating to their existence as an individual – with “the boys”,  and preferably with “yeah nah the boys…”

Here’s how it works: (Picture a post-match sideline interview, and prepare to gain no insight whatsoever into the interviewed footballer’s mind.)

“Ben Barba that was an outstanding length of the field run you pulled off there in the 76^th minute, you slipped past at least five Storm tacklers and chasers, some would say you’re slippery as a greased pig and twice as fast..”

“Yeh nah the boys put in a real solid effort we trained well all week and we’re just happy to come away with the win.”

There are three components to this sentence that basically constitute everything a footballer has to say in interviews, ever, no matter how hard the interviewer tries to get the player to say something interesting or expansive about themselves. And because the interviewers are invariably box headed ex-player buffoons - Gasnier, Tallis, Fitler, KIMMORLEY - who spent their playing careers making the same evasive comments they never try particularly hard anyways. Also, they are all invariably dim-witted. Michael Parkinson, your job is safe.

Let’s break it down.

1.       “Yeh nah the boys”. This negates any suggestion of individual effort, excellence or indeed existence. It just shuts it right the fuck down. Next! 

2.      “We trained well all week”. This is like me saying “I looked at Facebook well all week”. Of course they train well. They’re professionals. It’s what they do. In the same way, of course I look at Facebook well. I’m between jobs. What else would I do?

3.      “We’re just happy to come away with the win”. This one is readily interchanged with “We’re just happy to get the two points”, or “We’ll take the two”. Usage usually depends on the nature of the win. If it was an ugly, hardscrabble, or offensive match or one that the victors had no business winning but somehow did, they’ll go the “We’ll take the two” route – see: Paramatta Eels. “We’re just happy to come away with the win” is used after a confident, decisive or spectacular victory, such as Manly’s 38 point thrashing of the Roosters on Sunday. “We’re just happy to get the two points” lies somewhere in the middle of these two. Usage is suggestive of inconsistent, erratic, thrilling or outlandish passages of play and a score that seesaws extravagantly and unpredictably over the eighty minutes - see: Wests Tigers, South Sydney Rabbitohs.

Anyways, moving on from the assertion that footballers are robotic, witless and mentally slow on most fronts, let’s now return to Josh Dugan, who is obviously none of these things (coochie-coo!!)

Here is an actual visual image of what went down when I was there to watch him walk out of the courthouse in Canberra after he lost his license in 2010, bearing in mind, of course, that I am the Hoda to his Beyonce.

He is becoming as thickset as a steer now. This is sad, but inevitable. The NRL: Turning fawns to fat necked steers since 1909.

Now, turning from steers to snakes: 

Obviously I still think Brett Snake Stewart needs to pull his head in and get a hold of himself before further mental disintegration and hair loss occurs. But that article in Good Weekend about his accuser’s father and family background had the unwelcome effect of making me feel great sympathy for him.

Which is annoying.

In my experience sympathy leads to empathy and from there it’s a slippery slope that usually leads to eventual feelings of warmth good will and camaraderie.

When it comes to Brett Stewart, none of these are feelings that I need to feel.   

This one time I found out all this stuff that this girl I had not been able to handle for years had been going through with her wayward miscreant of a boyfriend and baby daddy. The sort of galling, how DARE he stuff that would make you want to throw things against walls. (As it happened, she did throw things against a wall – and by ‘things’ I mean ‘him’. I know. How awesome. Go girl.) Anyway, all this had the strange effect of making me feel great sympathy and a good deal of tenderness and good will toward her. It was a strange sensation. Unfamiliar. I waited for it to pass but it didn’t.

Is this now what I have to look forward to with Brett Stewart? Fuck. Football is supposed to be simple. Love the Raiders, hate the Rabbitohs, respect the Storm. END OF FUCKING STORY.  

Josh Dugan in 2011...& those other guys..

2011. I know all this eye-bulging, jaw-slackeningly mesmerising shit happened because I have a vague, sepia-tinged recollection of the overall season housed in my head. Problem is that this off-season has been dragging like an absolute bastard, and things are becoming blurry. Also, the tedium of the finals series forced my mind to retreat into a place of wind-blown splendour, where separated lovers think about each other and stare out of windows into rainy nights. It was a choice between that or confronting the hideous reality of Sydney's northern beaches, and my mind cannot process plague proportions of affluent WASPS any more than it can accept the carpet that covers the floor of my ensuite. Carpet around a toilet is, like people who live in Manly, a concept too terrible to bear. Anyway. Because my general posture is backward-looking and nostalgic I'll try to sift through the bored shards of my off-season psyche and dredge up some of the high and lowlights of last season.

Let's start with the people I love or approve of.

-Josh Dugan's Origin debut. Seeing him cross his arms and tap his sky-blue clad shoulders as he ran out of the tunnel looking hotter than the centre of the sun was a sight to squeeze the hardest of hearts. I shed tears.

Just on this -  it's been a terribly long time since I've seen any new Josh Dugan pictures and experienced the heart arrythmia that accompanies this. What, do 'they' think we have better things to do over summer or something? Because 'they' are wrong. Damn wrong. I can only assume he's doing okay there in Canberra. I mean, as okay as anybody can be in Canberra (don't start me). Josh Dugan underwent a brief excursion into irrelevance last season. I didn't like it. I can't imagine he enjoyed it much either. Bitch just kept on getting himself hurt, and the Raiders kept on losing and the whole season had a horribly monotonous, yet anxious rhythm and was as unsatisfying and unsubstantial as a bowl of rice bubbles: ie. shithouse. The essence of football is knowing what's going on, and knowing who's liable to do what in any given situation. Josh Dugan took this far too far last season. How many times do we gotta see him doubled over and clutching at a colt-like leg or limping from the field, grimacing so hard that his face looks like an old man's knee? How many times, Lord? His constant injuries resonated with me in a painful fashion. Usually I'm a fan of a little painful resolution, but not in these many instances. It fucking blew. On a vaguely related and similarly painful note, the Raiders receieved ten percent of the vote in Rugby League Week's readers' poll for the 'club that won't win another premiership in the next ten years' category. Sad.

-Todd Carney drinking himself out of another club. You gotta love him. Whatever he does he gives it his goddamn ALL. And we will know him by his trail of empties.

- Paul Gallan's audacious performance in Origin II. Gal played out of position at front row and for the whole eighty minutes. What a warrior. He should be stuffed and mounted in a glass case and hung on the wall over my fireplace.

-Terry Campese's seven minute season. Yes, Campese played for approximately seven minutes, for the entire season. On the upside, this gave him time to knock his wife up again about five minutes after she had their first baby, which is nice.

-Jarryd Hayne. He saved someone from drowning in the sea and then spent the rest of the season headbutting people with simple-minded merriment and considerable panache. Players, punters, whoever. He's brilliant. Such is his charm that everybody loves him all the more for his bursts of violence. Plus he rocks rosary beads like nobody else, with the possible exeption of Madonna circa 1986.

-The words 'he's just a grub.' Post game press conferences can be painful to watch. The air is often thick with unreality. Players and coaches (discounting Tim Sheens) habitually squander the opportunity to judge, slander and insult opposing teams, coaches, referees, fellow teammates and the people who set the prices for the stadium snack bars. This is a damn shame. A grim-faced Nathan Hindmarsh did his bit to rectify this when he capped off a spiteful Eels Bulldogs game by refusing to elaborate on Michael Ennis beyond these four words, forced from between gritted teeth: "he's just a grub." Excellent. More, please.

-Michael Ennis being voted the game's 'Biggest Grub' by fifty one percent of the RWL poll. Legend. He compounded this by extending his scope and burning the shit out of Brendan Cowell on the League Lounge with a derogatory comment about his cardigan. Bless.

-JT watching QLD celebrate their sixth straight Origin series from a wheelchair with his head lolling around like a bladder on a stick. This was actually a terrible sight, but JT is so cool that he can carry off wheelchair-bound weeping while loaded on pain-killing drugs and still look like Harry Callahan.

-Benji Marshall belting someone who yelled out "hey Benji, Lockyer's better than you!" outside McDonalds on George Street and being found not guilty. Good to see that his nifty sidestep also applies to matters of the law.

-Ricky Stuart losing his fucking mind in the coaching box when the Blues won Origin II and unleashing a frenzied flurry of punches into assistant coach Gavin Wood's ribcage.

-Jamal Idris rag-dolling the nippy but not nippy enough Nathan Gardner by lifting him up by his ripped-down shorts, like a piece of carry-on luggage, and tossing him around, bare-assed, for a good thirty seconds. Mark Geyer compounded the hilarity later by pointing out that "you could see his junk" You could, and we did.

-The Battle of Brookvale. Awesome. This was an explosion of violence so glorious that it should have been italicised with a burst of surging trumpets. Anybody who watched any of the three thousand replays of this charmingly retro incident without miming uppercuts in their living room has no business watching league and should switch codes immediately.

-The Rabbitohs Broncos game played in Perth on the world's worst-draining surface, ie. a lake. It was wild, as all things in the West should rightly be. Senior-cit Bunies coach John Lang launching into a celebratory, 'arthritis-be-damned' belly slide through a puddle afterwards was a lovely and altogether unexpected final flourish.

-Billy Slater holding up play, and David Williams' badly injured neck, after a tackle went bad. Billy Slater is no paragon of virtue - fact is I can't stand the prick - but this just struck me as very sweet and sporting. However, I also remember roaring my approval when Paul Gallan stomped, with undisguised savagery, on an opposing player's neck as he lay twitching on the grass post-tackle, so it's all relative.

-Reni Matuai and his at once attractive and repellant reptile eyes making their NRL return after a two year ban for drug use. He's hot, and he has a bankrupt-soul spookiness about him. Like I said: hot.

-Darren Lockyer kicking the field goal to get the Broncos to the qualifying round with a grotesquely fractured cheekbone. Bonus points for the fact that this put the Dragons out of contention for the season.

-Micheal Jennings handing out two thousand free tickets to fans from his own pocket as punishment for showing up to a training session blind drunk. That'll learn him.


So that's the champions. Now, to turn my attention to the fuckwits and fools.

-Brett Stewart breaking into a  ' giddy-up gallop' to celebrate the club try-scoring record at Manly in a stupid swipe at David Gallop for suspending him for four weeks in 2009.

-Brett Stewart telling David Gallop he owed him an apology when collecting his premiership ring. In the absence of hard proof and the ability to read lips, I can only assume that Gallop's response was somewhere along the lines of "boo-fucken-hoo."

-Brett Stewart becoming increasingly erratic, delusional and paranoid.

-Brett Stewart in general. Just a massively unpleasant person.

-Ryan Tandy. He poured ill-repute on the game like gravel off a fucking dump truck all year long.

-Mark Gasnier announcing his retirement and cutting short his comeback contract by two seasons, allowing him more time to squirt the sauce. Presumably.

-Isaac Luke's incessant canonballing. Small man syndrome. How else to explain his obsession with getting all up in David Shillington's grill (not literally - he only reaches Shilly's waist) on an annual basis in Four Nations games?

-William Hopoate quitting NRL to become a Mormon missionary. Just what God needs: another Hopoate on his hands. This is an exercise in industrial-scale pointlessness that only Ned Flanders could possibly approve of.

-Robert Lui. Ugh.

-Mal Meninga penning that inane column after the Origin series win calling elements of NSW rugby league 'filthy rats', among other things. About as novel as an SBS program with the words 'Nazi Germany' in the title.

-Matt Orford. What a disaster. This nuggety little fuck caused me and every other Raider fan (assumed) a considerable amount of pain early in the season, and as such I don't blame whoever it was that keyed his car at Bruce stadium in what was obviously a well-founded fit of maniacal resentment. His ineptitude was very hard to take, okay? That Titans Raiders game back in April? Where he inexpicably lost the ball in a scrum feed and pushed the game into golden point and then let some only slightly less inept Titan (Greg Bird, I think) cross to snatch the game? Dreadful. A defeat dished up in the incapable hands of the Titans was an especially low-point in a season littered with low points, the key one being that the Raiders suffered their longest ever losing streak. Historic horror.

-The disconcerting trend of players getting their surname inked on their body. No comment necessary.

-John Sutton. When he's not being incompetent on the field, he likes to spend his spare time being a Bra Boy. Deep though my respect is for all things Bra Boy, this guy just cannot fucking play. He's awful, it's fantastic. Watching Souths play disastrous football is one of life's great pleasures. It fires my core.

-Daly Cherry-Evans coming home from the Kangaroo tour with a massive hickey on his neck and being met at the airport by his girlfriend. The Tele provided breathless coverage of the issue as it unfolded, which remarkably did nothing to spoil his aura of apple-pie wholesomeness. (He said one of his 'teammates' gave it to him. Along with the crabs, ringworm and rickets.)

-The increasingly fickle and disposable nature of the whole NRL business. There was a dull sense of agitation and fatigue in the air this season. Players and coaches were shuffled, traded and shunted relentlessly. It was distracting. It's also an irritating and unwelcome reminder that the game is no game at all. We know this is the case, of course, but rude and ill-timed reminders (see: Manly one week after winning premiership, the poor bastards) detract from the joy of the game. We have so little opportunity for unadulterated escapism as it is, is there no place where we can retreat from this shit?

So that there is 2011 as I remember it. This has restored in me a sense that I am in charge of things - meaning my faculties, mostly, but also that all my grudges, obsessions and irritations are in order. This is comforting. It doesn't go so far as to suggests that my eye for the 2012 season will be infused with Sphinx-like focus and cathedral-like calm, but I imagine that kind of simple serenity would fucking suck.

Des Hasler Giving Me A Nose Bleed

Y'all better get ahold of your socks because I'm about to knock them off. This Manly shitfight, and the Des Hasler defecting to the Dogs thing? I am bereft of opinion*. Interest, too. I know. I can scarcely believe it myself.

Occasionally I have found my mind drifting idly toward the topic, but it tends to skip right over the Manly boardroom bit and settles instead on Michael Ennis. As in I start wondering what Michael Ennis makes of all this fuckery. I know the answer. He'd be fucking loving it. If anyone has a keen understanding and appreciation of primordal psychological warfare it is Michael Ennis. Bitch RESEARCHES the lives and backgrounds of players from opposing teams so as to be able to sledge them to the best of his already impressive ability. That is some shark-like gusto right there. Respect. By the by, did anyone notice how much street talk was thrown about in the 2011 season? Everyone started talking street, myself included. Exhibit A: Tim Sheens saying 'respect'. As in: "I'm really impressed with what the Storm acheive - respect." Well, I found this extremely odd. That's all I'm saying.

Deep though my respect is for Ennis and his special kind of glowering, insane resolve, I feel mild envy bordering on wild jealousy when I think of his club's culture. I mean, Jesus Christ. One minute they're embroiled in the Coffs Harbour rape scandal and the next they've got the shrewdest CEO in the league rebuilding on every level and orchestrating the coach-poach of the century, what the shit?? What the shit, yes, and also word to the Raiders, what's your excuse?! A dog blew Joel Monaghan and the photo was a social media sensation the world over - where are the reverberations and instigations of positive change from that crisis? Leave it to the Canberra club to not make an occassion of such an unfortunate incident. That's just typical of the whole flaccid and lacklustre place. It's a monument masquerading as a city. My mother just visited me. She recounted a small altercation she had with a man from Canberra on the beach in Jervis Bay recently who, as well as being something of a dickhead, was also a self-proclaimed dog whisperer who suggested in a pompous and condescending fashion that she bring her crippled whippet up to Canberra for some 'treatment'. "Oh no," she said, (with her usual force and conviction, I imagine) "I'm not going to that place. Horrible. My daughter lived there last year and had a total breakdown and as soon as she moved away she made a complete recovery - forget it." Isn't that just the last word in excellence? For all her early flirtation with senility she still has some serious form. Respect.

Where was I? Oh, right, Des Hasler. So I saw him in his new blue and white Bulldogs training shirt and found it a jarring and unsettling and altogether satisfying sight.

And then, because I am highly skilled in the art of relating everything no matter how obscure to the Raiders, I immediately thought of how jarring and unsettling and altogether unsatisfactory it will be to see Josh Dugan in a different coloured shirt when that terrible day comes. A non-lime green shirt. My god. I call this 'Looking Into The Face of Something Horrible'. It is an undertaking I try to avoid. Something else I try to avoid is anything pertaining even loosely to Brett Stewart; unless of course it affords me opportunities to bitch extravagantly about him. I thought that the talk about him exercising his Des Hasler get-out clause for 2012 would grant me this opportunity but DAMNATION the sulky bitch will be remaining at Brookvale until the end of 2014. Apparently. As Dessie just demonstrated with superb rat-like cunning, things change. And as the slippery-as-a-greased-pig Tim Moltzen proved, contracts and signings don't mean a goddamned thing. It is my Christmas wish that 2012 is the year of Brett Stewart's ultimate undoing. He's already out on the ledge. Some small episode, coupled with the fact that his mind is already snagged on the belief that the NRL and the wider world have fatally wronged him, could well combine to ensure his slow descent into hysterical paranoia kicks into overdrive and leads to full-throttle implosion. I know, I know. I do occassionally have the urge to perform acts of anarchic subversion. More common, though, is the urge to see Brett Stewart suffer in his jocks. I tend to go with my neuroses and prejudices because they stay solid when everything else is as shaky as my mother's trifle. Crumbs of comfort and such.

So, yeah, UP THE DOGS. I find it strange to be condoning the Dogs, I really do. Still, it's like Best and Less. It's not that there's anything wrong with Best and Less per se, it's the customers. With the Bulldogs it's the fans. They're grotesque. Look into a Bulldogs crowd. It looks for all the world like some very large mission or asylum has just turned everyone out for the day. I love this, of course. Also, I envy them their deranged ugly fanaticism, expecially when it intensifies to fever pitch, which is pretty much their restive state. "Unfortunately, I can't remember a thing about the game. But the police told me I had quite a good time" - words every Bulldog fan worth their salt has said on at least one occassion. L'adore.

........I wrote this and then I went to sleep and had a dream about Des Hasler. I sat next to him on a team bus and we spoke in low intense voices about important and high-risk coaching strategies which have unhelpfully eluded me upon waking. I do remember that he was seething with raw intensity and barely leashed rage. Like Brando as Stanley Kowalski, only less surly and more savvy. His eyes were kinder too. But only just. He was so intense that I got a nosebleed and had to swap seats with Steve Matai. What a guy. What a dream. What a game. Goddamn.


*Over the course of writing this my perceived lack of position on the matter has proceeded through a series of well-worn phases - hating on Brett Stewart, loving on Michael Ennis and fretting for the Raiders -  which have all restored in me the reassuring sense that I am in charge of things**.


**Which I'm really not.

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.

Major Todd To Ground Control

It's a funny thing. Toddy getting the sack kind of feels like I got the sack too. Is this my narcissistic personality disorder rearing it's golden head? Probably. Anyway, It's been terribly destabilising for me, all this business. I can only imagine Toddy's turmoil - is it any wonder he's fratenising with Lara Bingle? HOWEVER. Soon as he's spotted mixing it with Kyle Sandilands we will know that rock bottom has been reached and from there the only thing to be done is to call his mother - for the love of all that is good and holy won't somebody CALL LEANNE!

In the interim, I just feel terrible for Toddy. My anguish is not even eased by the obvious and kind of awesome assumption that someone, somewhere, throughout the course of all this slowly unraveling unpleasantness, uttered the words "we need to talk about Todd". Word, bitches, word.

Toddy, you is my favourite rebel, second only to Lil Wayne. Sorry, but he's got you beat. Anyone who leaves jail looking like this (y'know, as opposed to looking like Johnny Spit or a version thereof - see below)

and rolls up to court looking like this (see below) is okay with me. And by 'okay' I mean 'god', obviously.

The renegade attitude can take a person a long way. To court and to jail, yes, and all the way to France, even. Maybe.

Do most people still think he needs a punch in the dick? I'm a trifle out of touch down here in Victoria. People philosophise about the Pies and the Cats round these parts and have only the vaguest of understanding of NRL. This understanding extends to the loose acknowledgement that league players are very big, very violent and very stupid. The first two are givens, and the latter I can only assume is due to the relentless forward motion of the line in NRL, which I guess can appear a touch simplistic to the typically dim witted AFL afficionado. I mean, there can't be any other reason why they'd think league players are damned fools, so...

It has also come to my attention that the rural AFL fans around here think NRL is kind of ,well, gay. It's the scrum thing. They can't get past it. It captures their imaginations like nothing else. Time and time again I have found myself defending the scrum as a legitimate way of restarting the game to some semi-demented, homophobic hayseed - and I don't even entirely understand the purpose of the scrum myself, other than appearing to provide a convienient platform for refs to rouse on players who are getting under their skin over the course of the game.

Anyways. Precisely what constitutes a failure is a nebulous and elusive thing - unless of course you're Matt Orford, in which case shit is crystal - but even going down in flames Toddy is just as boss as ever, isn't he?

I just find him sweetly absurd and endlessly endearing. I can't understand people who huff and froth in self-righteous indignation about his various misdemeanors and indiscretions. Don't they remember when they too found out everything they had learnt about life thus far made them totally unsuited to cope with it? Have they forgotten their own dark nights of the soul?

Life can be terribly unkind. People too. 

Where's a merciful, forgiving God when you need one? No, not Nick Politis - he's busy taking sun in Mykonos. Not Noyce, either, he's busy being a dumbshit. And Gallop? He's too tied up with engineering the Stewart brothers' downfall (according to the Stewart brothers) to fulfil any duty of care toward our wayward Toddy.

With a mind like his, were the Roosters a good club for Toddy? He appears not to have been too happy there - but he appears not to have been too happy anywhere. I know the feeling. It comes from pain, damnation and the impossible. It gnaws and eats and you shove against it if you can. And when you can't? You go to ground, you ride it out. Alternatively, you follow up a trip to a tattoo parlour with a night of dedicated public drinking with two teammates during an alcohol-ban. Hey, whatever it takes. Pity about the photograhers, though.

Look, I don't buy the whole 'he's out of control' school of thought. I'm more down with the 'he's doing what every young Aussie guy does - he just happens to have a media profile' angle. He's young and handsome-hot, he has plenty of money and he lives in the city - he is the very quintessence of your typical early twenties type guy. In fact, I wager that he has a more wholesome sway than most. He's country, ya'll. (Remember that was Britney's defense when she was caught driving in LA with her baby on her lap - "I'm from Louisiana - I'm country, ya'll"? I mean, no further questions, your honour.)

What the fuck are your early twenties for if not lurching from crisis to crisis and reeling around in Hungry Jacks outlets at 5am?

Okay, so he may have something of a vacuum where his conscience ought to be but this is a trifling matter between him, his conscience and his Roosters teammates. Braith Anasta wanting to horsewhip him? By all means.

But the screeds of rage and invective insult from much of the media? It upsets me. I meet it with a short, sharp and succinct "get fucked". And Toddy? I welcome him back to the sweet milky bosom of an uncertain future with weary fatalism, rum, and rohypnol.