The Dugan Saga

Fucking Josh Dugan. Ever since he left the Raiders he’s been a source of renewable energy as far as irritation is concerned.

I didn’t overly mind him going to another club at first. I didn’t want to go down the ‘if we can’t have him no one should’ pathway because it is an ugly way of thinking and one best left for the family court systems and dissatisfied fathers who kill their partners or children and then themselves. And just quickly while I’m here has Dugan’s stinking shitbag of a spawn been born yet? Because if any stinking shitbag is worthy of commemorative crockery this year surely it is Dugan’s and not, as general frenzy would have us believe, Prince William and his cardboard-cutout-gyro-reticulate-eyed wife’s Royal one?

Now though he’s just getting on my nerves. Everything gets on my nerves of course. Because they’re shot, mainly, but also because everything is fucking annoying, one vile task after another in a vile horizonless tapestry, so much so that my mother has developed a catchphrase out of my neuroses so that every time I say something is getting on my nerves including and often referring specifically to her she just says “you and your nerves”.

Yeah. Me and my nerves.

In any case, I hear he has said some derogatory things about the Raiders. I say ‘hear’ because I have not bothered to ‘read’ these things because I am ‘lazy’. And also because I like to adhere to that great and proud tradition of writing slanderous things about somebody without bothering to avail myself of the information on which I’m largely basing my slander. Yeah, cunts, welcome to the internet.

 

 

Whatever it was he said, it’s safe to say he doesn’t seem to have a sophisticated grasp, if any, of the delicate circumstances surrounding him, and really why would he what with moving fairly seamlessly from the Raiders to the Dragons to Origin?

As upward trajectories go it is fine and faultless, but rude post-Raider realities have forced me to concede that what he needed was an injunction, ala Todd Carney, in which to turn a few tight transgressive loops of a downward spiral.

 

This didn’t happen. Those stupid photos of him laboring manually on a building site while wearing a pristine white hoodie don’t count and neither do any of the other small indignities he has heaped upon himself recently and now the Dragons play the Raiders this Saturday and I guess as grudge matches go this will be a good one even though there is no justice because were there any justice my personal preference for Dugan’s punishment would surely have been implemented post haste and instead of playing football he would be spending his weekends  tonging sausages on a hotplate outside of Bunnings because this far more than football is a test of the deep and involuntary stuff of a man and quite frankly who wouldn’t want to see that?  

 

 

Canberra Raider Fans - A Guide

Raider fans can be divided into two loose groups*.

You have your deluded fools – know them by their seemingly bright but actually dead-from-never-having-lived eyes - and you have your weary fatalists – jaundiced, hollow of eye, with a keen sense of the absurd and the tragic and a propensity for passing dark comments concerning the soul-crushing shuffle toward grim death that passes for life.

If you’ve ever trudged down the cycle way and through the tunnel in the bush out the back of Bruce stadium to return to your freely-parked car after a rude loss in what was most probably just one in a spirit-sapping string of rude losses you will know them, this second type. 

Few who have stared into the void can resist the lure of anarchic, mounted-curb parking**. Something – or everything - about it attracts the jaundiced fan while the perky optimists who have never seen into the abyss or screamed into the sky hand five dollar notes to men in hi-vis vests for the privilege of parking in an orderly and easily accessible fashion.

If you don’t attend Raider home games, and quite frankly who can blame you, the delusionals are still easily identifiable. Just follow the Raiders on Facebook and scroll through the avalanche of comments that appear after every post. Like most breeds of idiot they are not shy about making their presence known.

I think this is the year for the Raiders. Go Raiders. Mack us proud boys. Goo the green machine! 2013 here we come. With Berrigan back we can’t loose!

I have nothing against delusions. Some of my best friends are delusional. But the reality writ large on a brightly lit screen can be jarring if your nerves are at all raw. It is for this reason that I suggested several Raider fans I know start filing their nerve endings in February. I did not know that Josh Dugan would run sharply afoul of coach Furner after only the first round and have his $650 000 a year contract most probably evapourate in a dramatic swirl of pre-mixed liquor and profanity.  I praise Jesus that I didn’t know either because no amount of nerve-filing could have prepared them for this and they would have rotted out with the weight of it.

So when the Raiders announce their round 1 team lineup on Facebook and they’re missing three of their four spine players and are without a goal kicker and several hundred people who are blind to weird and volatile realities post comments like GREAT SIDE and WE WILL CRUSH THOSE PANTHERS LIKE ANTS  -  there’s that one guy who writes “we’re fucked”. 

Well, guess what? He was right. We really are fucked.

And you know what else? We kind of like it that way.

*Please note that I am ONLY talking about Raider fans here. Do not assume that fans of other troubled clubs *coughCRONULLAcough* have the same or similar characteristics. For example, it is my understanding that fair portions of the Shire’s population have been inspired to go out and get commemorative Sharks neck tattoos this last week, rendering them eternally ridiculous. No, they are a team with their own unique problems and fans, and just as Germany is a country now forever stained in our collective consciousness by a string of poorly-received 20^th century wars and related unpleasantness, so too are the poor Sharks. It’s all very unfortunate but then show me something in this world that isn’t.

**Because everybody knows that the way you park provides clues about your essential character. Like when George Costanza compares parking garages to going to a prostitute: why should he pay for it when, if he applies himself, he can eventually get it for free? Yes.

TRUST NO ONE They could be on the sex-offender list, or Queenslanders

Ambition, betrayal, divided loyalties and frequent use of the word ‘filthy’ to describe an emotional state… no, it’s not the Australian Labor Party, it’s the Kangaroo team.

>>The overarching theme of this post is TRUST NO ONE   

In addition to trusting no one, it is useful to maintain a raging and uniform hatred of all human life, while reserving a particularly potent and highly personal loathing for Queenslanders. Sons of bitches.

That horrendous song of theirs that is too stupid for me to even attempt to reproduce here is irritating enough on an annual-for-the-last-seven-years basis.

BUT TO BREAK INTO THAT SAME SONG THAT SAME MAROON VICTORY SONG AFTER A WIN WITH THE KANGAROO TEAM WHICH FOR THE UNINITIATED OR THE IDIOTIC IS COMPRISED OF BOTH MAROON AND BLUES PLAYERS JESUS CHRIST IT’S ENOUGH TO MAKE ANYONE EXPLODE INTO AN ITALICISED OUTBURST!

Cameron Smith has disappointed me. In the grimly parental ‘I’m not angry I’m just disappointed’ vein. This is similar to the ‘Clint Eastwood addressing an empty chair at the Republican National Convention’ vein. Just when I started liking the bastard. You see! Drop your guard for two shakes and people destroy it and any tenuous faith you may have allowed yourself to have for humanity like fuckwits stomping down crowd barriers at a Limp Bizkit show. That’s right Smith, the truth is out asshole. Again!   

People, pretty much whoever the newspapers can reach for comment who isn’t spread-eagled across a sun lounge or hunched over a craps table in Vegas including but not limited to highly relevant sporting identities like Steve Waugh and Ricky Nixon as he exits court facing various charges of assault (he threw up a peace/V sign! Like the President Nixon!) have said that Cameron and Billy are good blokes and that this means breaking into their inane Queenslander song can’t have been premeditated, because as we all and particularly Ricky Nixon know, good blokes JUST DO DUMB SHIT OFF THE CUFF THEY DON’T PLAN IT ONLY BAD GUYS PLAN IT.

Really when I think about the Maroon mentality it doesn’t surprise me. The fuckers know how to win a game but have never shown any awareness of the spiritual and moral bankruptcy that stalks them. So thanks, Queensland, for further substantiating my theory.

Anyways, how boring was that game. God. It rendered my usual state of watchful intensity totally redundant, I was in a slack-jawed stupor from about the 12 minute mark and I barely noticed anything at all after that; whether this was because nothing actually happened remains unclear although I do recall Paul Gallen getting a flick pass away and finding that vaguely entertaining in a zany kind of a way.  

The only thing that could have redeemed and actually made the whole affair awesome would have been a brawl breaking out during the singing of said song. Oh, the buttoned-down traditionalists may have objected but many others would have applauded the audacity. In any event it would have been an incredible end to the 2012 season. It would have taken me to my happy place. But no. Alls that happened was “one of the Morris brothers – Josh or Brett” was seen covering Robbie Farah’s mouth with their hand, and various Blue Kangaroos were described as being “filthy”.

I know that feeling.

>>This incident is indicative of the general decay eating away at the fabric of the modern world. Discuss.