Cameron Smith's Catastrophic Plan

It started off so innocently. Tell me something that doesn’t.

First it was Horse Weyman, for reasons which are still unclear, but, okay. He seems harmless, you let it slide, you’ve made a life out of ‘letting it slide’, after all.   

Next, G.I. Well, you can understand it; I’m coming from a place of respect, he’s a leading proponent of devastation and now that he no longer looks like Precious he has a certain sleek allure and has anyone actually ever made a successful tackle on him I mean one that he didn’t casually reel out of? I think not.

Now, though, Cameron Smith? If I keep this up there will be no one left to loath. Where the fuck will it END? What, with me liking Jamie Soward?? That is the last frontier. As far as I am concerned, if I cross that terrible threshold it’s finished I’m finished this blog is finished and I will surrender myself via voluntary admission to the nearest locked ward for some electroshock therapy and Vaseline-related violations. And that would not do. That wouldn’t do at all. Vaseline is vile stuff. 

I’ve always enjoyed detesting Cameron Smith. Now that I don’t, it feels like a loss.

The son of a bitch made a clean sweep this year. Captaining the Storm to a premiership, a seventh straight Origin series and 2 from 2 Kangaroo victories over the Kiwis. The only other players to achieve this are Lockyer and Langer and they’re Broncos and if there’s one team that annoys me more than the Storm the Rabbitohs and the Tigers it’s the Broncos.

Once I started empathising with him it was all over. It always is. Empathy is an irritatingly powerful tool for dismantling prejudice, ill-will and irrational dislike. The empathising began when I started watching him closely. I can’t remember when, or why, I started doing this. I can’t remember when the sight of poplar trees dropping their leaves started setting off my preoccupation with time and death that has come out of nowhere in the last two years. I can’t remember when I vowed to never read Ulysses because to read it is to condone it, or when I decided it was ethically okay to eat Hungry Jacks but not McDonalds. You just do stuff and say stuff until gradually and then suddenly it’s entangled within you and then it is you.

So I watch him, doing work, going about his terrible business all calm and laser-like and perfect and I know I FUCKING KNOW what is going on in his head with every play every tackle every kick every run every metre and most of all with every idiot opponent he encounters and the song lyric equivalent of this is that they are all, to paraphrase, microscopic cogs in his catastrophic plan designed and directed by his red right hand and also Craig Bellamy.

Cameron Smith Making Me Say Wow Now

The Storm.

Sons of bitches know how to win a grand final.

What the hell kind of performance was that?

I don’t know. And critiquing high-caliber, clinical playing is not my forte what with the Raiders thing, you know…but I liked it, I loved it.  

It felt like a grand final. Last year’s was such an interminable affair that the only thing I can recall is Steve Matai’s bison- like head getting opened up right above the eye, a big scoop-n-split that sent blood flowing artfully down his face. Other than that I got nothing and I’m none the poorer for it. Let’s move on. Back to Sunday. To headier times.

To Joey Johns THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE RUGBY LEAGUE WORLD behaving adorably even when ESPECIALLY WHEN being dispatched from a Blackhawk helicopter, fleeing from the Apocalypse Now-esque blade situation and fighting his way through the hurricane-strength wind that looked for all the world like it was going to tear away his suit pants and jacket in a spectacular wardrobe malfunction.

Speaking of tear-away pants how is this seedy photo of Channing Tatum from back when he was a stripper?

Anyway, the game.   

There was a good stink that caused Gus Gould to employ the words ‘brouhaha’, ‘melee’ and ‘fracas’, as well as the phrases ‘an allegation of biting’ and ‘they’re not exchanging Christmas cards’.

What he didn’t say was words to the effect of

“Allow me to give you a brief lesson in the human condition. Humans are about 70% water, and the rest is all guts, bone and minerals. But, although we are a highly evolved animal, we sometimes experience slippage and revert to raw savagery. James Graham appears to have suffered such a lapse by appearing to catch hold of Billy Slater’s ear with his teeth and appearing to tug at it with a good amount of force and barbarism.”

He didn’t have to say it. The implication was clearly there.   

There was the Storm being as clinical and cold of heart as ever. It would have been a harrowing, harrowing experience for Dogs supporters. They just didn’t get a goddam look in. Ever. It even depressed me for twenty minutes or so before I pulled myself together enough to revel in the splendour of the Storm and the stricken looks of the blue-and-white-wearing crowd as the experience became increasingly unbearable. Poor bastards. In football we try to grasp a feeling outside of ourselves and our tarnished existences. This is preposterous because very few of us, proportionally, follow a winning team. In reality, football, like life itself, is mostly about endurance and suffering.

Aside from or in spite of the cruel and awful nature of existence from which there is no escape outside of death my wish-list from a previous post was pretty well fulfilled. I take satisfaction from this, because if not this then what?..

1.Craig Bellamy got the Gatorade dumped on him. From behind. He shook his fist and grinned and looked a.) a bit like Mickey Rourke and b.) like he wanted to crash-tackle the culprits and grind them playfully into the ground. He looks so fun, what with his air of salaciousness. I would love to get loaded with him.  

- ‘Insiders’ who were at the Novotel after the game reported that Bellamy “was merrier” than any time they could remember, and that Billy Slater had “forgotten the bitten ear”.

2.Cameron Smith looked happy and relieved and gave a rousing, statesman-like speech. How can he be so laconic and so slick at the same time? He’s terribly talented. Authentic, too. This is where Cooper Cronk is lacking. His Clive Churchill medal acceptance speech sounded totally computer generated. When he addressed the team with a stilted “and to the playing group – you are my mates” it sounded exactly like those drooling aliens on The Simpsons when they had designs on becoming president and tried to talk as earthlings would.    

Anyway, Cameron Smith impressed me deeply and I really haven’t shaken off the sensation and it’s a little disconcerting but really, how good is he? Very, is the inevitable and undeniable answer. Very.

“I’ve been asked a few times whether this one would be sweeter,” Smith said after the game. “I guess there’s a small spot that says yes.”

The Dogs are Having a Party! And Bellamy is Invited!

One more game, the Big One, and then the fall of civilisation i.e. THE OFF SEASON. Again. Christ. Cultural bankruptcy beckons.

Well, in the meantime, I hope it’s not rational opinion, objective analysis and up to the minute betting odds you’re here for. If it is, you are clearly lost. You are probably one of those dickheads who are not only inept navigators but are also unable under any circumstances to ask for directions due to your overinflated ego in which case I will offer unsolicited directions STRAIGHT TO COOPER CRONK’S WEBSITE coopercronk.com. Douches will find it informative and inspiring. Everyone else will find it squirmy-funny and unsettling on a sliding scale. Exactly how unsettling you find it will depend on your tolerance levels for new age rhetoric and raging narcissism. Mine, as it turns out, are low. Lower than Clint Eastwood’s balls, if you will.

I look forward to the day when I can invest emotionally in a grand final. Hoo boy won’t that be something? In the meantime, we have the Bulldogs playing the Storm. And while it’s a shame the Raiders or the Sharks didn’t get through (and what a final that would have been and one day will be god willing please god), it’s fantastic the Rabbits and the Broncos didn’t make it either. One hand washes the other, and so forth.

In any case, I’m not too concerned with who wins. I see pros and cons for each outcome.

For example, on the one hand I would love to see Craig Bellamy getting a giant bucket of Gatorade dumped over his head. Which indicates I would like the Storm to win.

On the other hand, I would love to see confetti and shredded raffle tickets mashed with glitter and whatever other garish pulpy matter they void onto the field and the heads of the victors from the air above rain down all over Michael Ennis. He does such a good job, not only playing a vigorous and antagonistic brand of football and captaining a team but in keeping track of what make and model of car every player from every other club drives so that he can cut any opponents brake lines at only a moment’s notice. That’s a real one-percenter. Take note, aspiring sociopaths. I would like to see him holding that big trophy thing aloft while grinning toothily and I would like  knowing that all the while the hamster wheel inside his head was still turning, turning….

If this is indeed the outcome, let it be known that the real reason for the Bulldogs’ hot blaze of glory has little to do with Des Hasler’s scientific and analytical style of coaching and penchant for making players ingest imported calf-blood milkshakes and everything to do with the fact that HE CREATED A NEW TEAM SONG PARTWAY THROUGH THE YEAR TO ‘MAKE IT RELEVANT’ AND WHEN THE PLAYERS, WHO ALL COLLABORATED ON THE LYRICS (AS IS EVIDENT) BELT IT OUT THEY ARE LED BY FRANK PRITCHARD ON GUITAR. It climaxes with the following:

“The Dogs are having a party,

The Dogs are having a party,

And (insert defeated team) are in the bin!”

Well, we’ll see about that. Literally. On Sunday.

Anyway, continuing with the one hand washes the other theme, I’d also love to see Cameron Smith really inconsolably upset, stricken, ashen, bereft, but, by the same token, I’d quite like to see him pleased and at peace too. I like to despise him and enjoy despising him but every time I see him on panel shows and hear him give his lucid analysis I end up thinking he’s great and admiring him for the obvious ice that runs through his veins. Is he going to make a great coach one day OR WHAT? It is my personal dream (not the only one, but one of several) that he coach the Raiders one day. To September glory, obviously. It is important to have long-range goals and dreams. That’s what the professionals tell me. The ones with framed qualifications hanging on their walls. But I digress. The other thing that impresses me about Cameron Smith, aside from him being very cool and very controlled and thus the ultimate big game player is that he is a great lover of history. I understand this to mean that he spends his free time on elaborate civil war reenactments and listening to Wagner’s operas at very high volume. Blake Ferguson and Sandor Earl spend theirs at Time Zone. Playing Guitar Hero.

Actually, I don’t really need to see Cameron Smith happy at all. I just remembered all those Origins. I’ve seen quite enough. Too much, as it were.  

This brings me back to Bellamy. Everything about the Storm brings me back to Bellamy. He’s the only thing I actually like about the entire outfit, including but not limited to the playing roster past and present, the shady fiscal history of the club and their associated moral transgressions, their colours, their mascot, their name, the name of their home ground, their wrestling skills and subsequent talent for slowing the ruck down to a slow benzodiazepine crawl, their staunch structure and their annoying and frequent habit of winning games with ease. What’s to like?

Well, Bellamy.

Bellamy coiled like a reptile in the coaching box.

Bellamy radiating a barely suppressed rage.

Bellamy contorting his elasto-silicone face into all manner of gruesome and painful expressions.

Bellamy inflicting irreparable damage on Mount Franklin bottles.

Bellamy rolling his eyes in their 360-degree-gyro-reticulated sockets.

Bellamy extending his telescopic hyper-stalk neck to full height.

Bellamy conveying the impression of a man perpetually on the edge of violent explosion.

Bellamy actually exploding violently.

Bellamy.

Recently Bellamy said that, retrospectively, he finds his behavior in the coaches box “quite embarrassing at times. [But] not all the time.”

“I don’t particularly worry about it too much but I don’t like it when they see me going off and saying the things I shouldn’t be saying. It is embarrassing for me and a little alarming for people at home watching.”

It’s not alarming, Craig. It’s awesome. Don’t change.

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.