Boyd's Bitchslap, Hayne's Backchat, Campese's Comeback

Can’t keep up? Allow me to bring you up to speed, time-poor peasant.

So. Six rounds down. Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks. You really wouldn’t want to spend much longer than six weeks with Pa Bundren though would you, even if he was your own creation.

·         In league, the 6 week mark is really when you are forced for the first time since season’s start; when you were all flush with that dumb optimism that exists irrespective of reality, to reevaluate your top 8 aspirations. Cowboy fans and the deluded loons who annually espouse their penthouse potential I’m talking to you.

·         Unless you are a Storm, Manly or, god help you, a Rabbit supporter, chances are that your club has already demonstrated a dazzlingly varied array of inadequacies designed to challenge your patience and sanity nearly beyond endurance. Well, endure you must. This is football, and football, like life itself, mostly consists of endurance and suffering.

·         Dave Taylor has been dropped, for reasons that nobody has bothered to make clear. Seemingly, nobody has had to bother because no one cares enough to ask. Those who would normally ask are too busy making off-colour and cruelly unsympathetic cracks about Josh Dugan. I suppose the word is that he has an attitude problem, but saying Dave Taylor has an attitude problem is as obvious and unhelpful as saying the Freemasons have an image problem.

·         Jarryd Hayne is a player operating under conditions of severe personal stress. He offsets this by engaging weekly in vigorous and one sided dialogues with referees. Sometimes he takes a few minutes time out in between bouts and plays a bit of football. The Eels are locked several years deep into their slow and untidy spiral of decline now, and the strain is showing.

·         Ricky Stuart is operating under some stress too. All coaches do, of course, but not all coaches front post-game press conferences with the brimstone of a southern Baptist preacher and not all coaches care enough to make a $10 000 investment in the future of the game which is going straight to hell as they see it.

·         Darius Boyd gave another arresting press conference. In it, he gave nothing away to the assembled media other than the one thing they already knew from years prior, which was that they were dealing with a halfwit who was still not even remotely acquainted with proper press conference etiquette. Far be it from me to dish out unauthorised psychiatric diagnoses but he does seem to have advanced several shades up the spectrum since becoming a Knight.  

·         Misery continues to seep through Ben Barba’s barely maintained façade. There’s an ocean breaking inside the poor boy’s brain. You can see the tide washing in and out of his eyes. Barba was last year’s excitement machine. Josh Dugan was once an excitement machine. The game is littered with broke-down excitement machines. It’s a veritable Somme, and very sad.

·         Terry Campese finally made his comeback. This just leaves us waiting on Jesus now. Of course, the thing about comebacks (and this is where Terry went wrong last year) is that you are expected to come back and stay back. It’s not compulsory, but it is the preferred method.  Seven minutes of flabby play does not a comeback make, although as exits go it was spectacular, in a tragic Shakespearean way. Raider fans, who are well accustomed to pain and tragedy, absorbed the psychic pain with trademark weary stoicism facilitated by extra lashings of class A narcotics.

·         Recently, the Raiders have overcome trying circumstances to win 2 games. In a row. I believe this is what hubris-bloated commentators officially refer to as “a roll”. The other week against the Roosters, when the Raiders finally, after 45 profoundly painful minutes of play, completed a full set of six, Brandy Alexander called that “a roll” too. Raiders. Severely lowering standards since the mid-90s.

·         Sonny Bill is back too. I find it hard to summon interest in someone who seems to be so solely committed to self-interest, but he has rendered the Roosters vaguely watchable, which is not a sentence I thought I would write in Braith Anasta’s absence. 

·         Paul Gal was supposed to hang his junk out for charity. He arranged his underpants into some sort of crudely fashioned G-string instead. The whole this was a touch underwhelming. As in, I wasn’t all like:

·         Finally, there’s Todd Carney to consider. Because I haven’t, for fucking ever. I realised this a couple of weeks ago. I made a note of it.

 

Look at that unmarked neck and chest flesh. This is so sad. Lest we forget.   

Dave Taylor is Dense - Part 1, of many

Last week was a big one. Heavy. Between Katie giving Tom the slip and Origin putting me through the wringer and then the Raiders upsetting the Storm in fabulous fashion and my baby lamb having her tail cut off and given to the farm dog to run around with in her mouth as a chew toy for the next two days the damage to my nerves has been considerable.

Regardless, the rat-wheel keeps on rolling.

It rolled out a rude truth about Queensland and the Maroons. I needed something to ease the pain of the Blues’ substandard performance in game three, so this is medicinal – it is balm, soothing and smooth, a cool hand on a hot fevered forehead.

Even so, these Queenslanders, they are trying my patience.

Research (vague, sullen rumination) revealed to me that the players who have migrated to the southern states for club football seem to have rounded themselves out, as players and as people. Publically, definitely, and probably privately too, although in a world where ET can be exposed as a sordid philanderer you never know for sure do you? Anyway, these migrated players have grown gracious and civilised. They are in possession of their wits. Sometimes they even use them. Think Darius Boyd, David Shillington and the Big Three.

Those who have continued indulging in an alternative, soft-edged reality by staying in Queensland are charmless, devoid of grace. Their wits are slower, their vowels are flatter, and they play like dogs. Justin Hodges is a dog. Brent Tate, Ben Hannant, Sam Thaiday, Corey Parker: dogs! Mongrels, hurling themselves repeatedly against chainmail fencing and seeking to separate toddler’s faces from their skulls.    

The exception here is Dave Taylor. He went south, yes, but it didn’t exactly take, did it*?  As such, he will soon be returning to his shallow-end-of-the-gene-pool roots, having signed to play for Gold Coast next year. The rigours of polite Sydney society were obviously too much for this unreconstructed behemoth. This doesn’t surprise. He is a caveman. He looks like his concept of food storage does not extend beyond the hanging of a carcass within a cave. He also looks insufferably, unspeakably stupid. The fact that he signed a major deal with the Titans at the height of their much publicised financial meltdown, while they were reportedly struggling to pay their current players, is clear evidence of his dwindling cerebral resources. Here is some more:  

In the olden days, before the advent of emoticons, floriography was the go. People would exchange flowers to convey emotions. This went far beyond our unsubtle use of red roses, a tacky signifier of relationship-based guilt available to buy in well-stocked service stations. A tuberose, for example, signified voluptuousness, heather expressed admiration, and primrose said I can’t live without you.  

So, say I handed Dave Taylor scarlet geraniums. Scarlet geraniums indicate stupidity. He would probably eat them on sight but if he cared to respond he could hand me a daisy, saying “I share your sentiment” a general geranium, which would say “you are childish”, or a bay leaf: “I change but in death, bitch.”

Dave Taylor is so dense that he had to be told to take up a hobby. By a coach. He complied, because he is nothing if not dim and pliant, and bought a boat to catch fish from.

Dave Taylor is so dense that he fell out of bed at Origin training camp and sustained a semi-serious head injury. Or so the Maroons would have us believe. Even if he didn’t fall out of bed, even of this was an excuse that they invented to cover up evidence of mass team drunkenness, the fact that they allocated him an alibi involving falling out of a bed speaks volumes. Do you know what it says? It says ‘we believe that you will believe that this is a man too stupid to lie safely in a bed.’

Do you think they would have assigned the same excuse to Billy Slater, or Cameron Smith, or Cooper Cronk? Of course not. They would have said they strained their eyes in an all-night, three-way chess marathon or something.

Southerners will appreciate where I am going with this. Queenslanders will have snagged their slow-moving, sub-par minds on the mention of carcasses hanging in caves two paragraphs up. They will not make it this far.  Story of their lives.

*See also: Nate Myles. Combine a heavy team drinking session in Terrigal with unreconstructed ablution habits and what do you get?  An un-house-broken Queenslander taking a dump in a carpeted hotel corridor, that’s what.

- Johnathan Thurston is excluded from all of this for obvious reasons – these being that he is an unearthly being who transcends time, space, place and state lines.  He’s really good-looking, in other words. A stone-cold fox.  (Lillies, Calla – magnificent beauty)

Corey Parker Fights the Power and Other Unauthorised Ravings of the 'I Love League' Variety..

Corey Parker's next tattoo

So. Another day, another reason to love Paul Gallen. I just heard his favourite player of all time (Kanye: OF.ALL.TIME!!!) is Bradley Clyde. A retro Raider! Good for you Gal.

Years ago, my stepdad got swept up in the excitement of a Navy gala auction of some kind and, as a present for my brother, bid furiously on and eventually won a soiled tracksuit signed by Brad Fittler, who he'd mixed up with Bradley Clyde. Anyway, my brother didn't want a damn bar of it, and to this day I still wear that tracksuit. Just kidding. My stepdad marked it up and sold it on, it's the Navy way. Like webcam.


Last year during finals time I became alittle swept up myself, what with the Roosters being my number two team and all. I started emailing my brother candid shots of Braith Anasta and Anthony Minichello, and probably Todd Carney too. This, knowing he hates the Roosters with a passion that borders on the pathalogical (but who doesn't, aside from me, James Packer, John Ibrahim and those chook-pen dwelling degenerates?) and also knowing full well he's never forgiven Carney for ballsing up so bad back at Canberra and putting the kaibosh on what could have been a beautiful relationship.* He finally responded with a terse one line demand: 'stop sending me Roosters pictures, they offend me'. He's sensitive that way.



offensive? I think not

  *Not too long ago we had one of those reverential, nostalgia-tinged 'imagine-if' conversations to the tune of 'imagine if he was still there and playing alongside Duges how fucking phenomenal would that be?' and both of us ended up trailing off and then terminating the conversation abruptly in that way you do when touching on subjects too raw and painful to bear thinking about.


what was....



...and what is.
dammit.



Memos of the Miscellaneous Variety.

Re. Dave Taylor in Origin.

And they said he was too fat. Has George Rose aka the poster boy for the player with the fuller figure blazed a trail or what? Dave Taylor represent!

Here's me thinking he got left out of selection and theorising freely that the fact that he drives a RAV4 had something (or everything) to do with it. Don't try and tell me that selectors didn't take this into consideration and express deep concern. You know, along the lines of it just not seeming right to give a spot to a mammoth man FROM ROCKHAMPTON who drives around in a hairdresser's car. Anyone who's ever been to Rockhampton knows that the place is like the Deni Ute Muster ALL YEAR ROUND. I shit you not. The place is lousy with them. You're nobody in that town if you don't drive at least one ute, and have at least one more in the garage at home. Preferably a feral one. You know, for a project. Or pig-shooting. Trust me, I know, I considered moving there.

Re. Corey Parker's Origin selection.

I'm a little ambivalent about this guy. My Bronco loving mate isn't. He nominated Corey Parker, after about 20 seconds of deep thought, as the stupidest man in league. I'd posed the question but I can't for the life of me remember who I'd thrown up for my pick. Dane Tilse? Maybe. Timana Tahu? Probably.

In his favour, he's Michael Ennis' best mate, which I like, and they both call each other 'Bruce', which I love. I guess he can play an okay game too, he seems solid enough.




Anyway, because I'm shallow as hell it only takes one small incident, however innocuous, to send people, places or organisations screaming up my Shitlist or, more rarely, my Lovelist. It's just my way. Parker made the latter WITH A BULLET a few weeks ago.

There he was, screaming expletive laden instructions and getting all up in the grills of the Baby Broncos out there filling in the Origin gaps when Cecchin FLIPS OUT and starts in with talk of sin bins and dissent. HUH??

It played out alittle something like this:
(or it would have if it had of been Braith Anasta. You get the idea).

Parker yelled something along the lines of having the right to address his teammates in any way he saw fit, and then Cecchin forgets himself completely and busts out the gesture beloved by patronising superiors in workplaces the world over: he laid his hand on Parker's arm. As in 'cool it, fool, and submit to my might' (or something). That is some 'The Slap' shit right there, by the way.

From here all it took was Parker snapping "DON'T TOUCH ME!" and I pretty much approved of and authorised his existence entirely right then and there because I say exactly the same thing when men in pink shirts lay their hands on me. It happens A LOT you know.

Re: Tom Leahroyd Lahrs: what the..?

He finally finds some form in the City-Country clash only to fracture his cheekbone and his eye socket while BLOWING HIS NOSE, IN THE DRESSING ROOM, AFTER FULL TIME? Bitch must blow with some serious gusto. Whooooshka!


Re: Is this a great country or what?

The Match Review Committee established a few weeks ago that Jeremy Smith's hand appearing to 'make contact' with Cowboy Kalifa Faifai Loa's backdoor was a "prank gone wrong". They're inter-team cousins alright, calm down people! Digital penetration in public is totally acceptable among cousins! I know if I had a huge hot cousin of the caliber of Faifai Loa I would totally thumb him by way of greeting too. High fives and ghetto handskes are tre`s pass`e.

In their ruling they said of Smith that "his finger is actually touching the lower left buttock and the player said there was no pressure applied" and I imagine everyone is relieved.




a more traditional way of greeting

 
Re: Footballers on trains. Doesn't seem right somehow.

Manly battle axe Joe Galuvao has been forced to ride the rails to and fro training. Not because he lost his license like everyone else in league at one stage or another but because of petrol and toll prices and the demands of his towering mortgage. The trip from way out West to Narabeen takes him two hours and he says that although it's not that bad "the biggest thing is all the weirdos on the trains".
Well, welcome to the real world, Joe. It's a jungle out here.

Still, I get what Galuvao's saying: