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.   

The Raiders are a Polite & Dignified Team Who Know Their Place in the League

Round 24 – Raiders vs Roosters.

“EVERYTHING ON THE LINE!!! TENSE!!! BUTTHOLE HASN’T BEEN THIS TIGHTLY CLENCHED FOR AGES!”

As that strident and evocative text from G-Spaz on the frontlines in Canberra demonstrates, this was a must win game.

Brandy did his bit to build a mood before kickoff. He went as far as to orally punctuate his own sentences “They’ve gotta win. They’ve just got to win this one. Full stop. (pause) It’s a must win. Full stop.” I was tightly wound and can’t quite remember what I muttered, I think it was “alright prick, comma, we get it – dot dot dot shut up already.”

Brandy struggled to disguise his weary contempt for both teams as the game progressed. The subtext of his entire call was “ever imagined what it would be like having an orbital sander pressed to your brain? That’s what watching and having to call this game feels like. Kill me. Exclamation point. ”

I understood. But, Brandy, not all games can be pretty. Also, your stinking Panthers are engaged in a gripping  and high-stakes wooden-spoon off right now so, you know, shut the fuck up.

In the event, both teams were shabby but the Raiders a little less so.

Furner fooled them into thinking they were playing an away game again this week. Whatever. It worked.

I can see how this is going to go, though. You do something or you wear something and you win a few games and then it sticks and several years later you’re still wearing the same sagging, elastic-less support undergarments and they are fetid and rank BUT YOU HAVE TO KEEP WEARING THEM. In the Raiders case, this means that they will be bussed to some suburban hotel for home games forevermore.  

There is already a precedent for this type of superstitious behavior at the Raiders. See: Josh McCrone not taking his mouth guard out until he’s in the shower. This means that he spits and sprays his way through post-match interviews, mangling words and sounding like you do when you fit one of those voice distorters over the mouthpiece of your phone to allow you to make menacing phone calls undetected.

In any case, it is only partly to do with luck. Mostly it is an enduring legacy of him being shit-scared of his mother’s towering wrath as a child. And there is no reason more valid than this, for anything, ever.

When he was very small he played a game in Tumut and left his mouth guard behind. “I got in a lot of trouble with mum. She said ‘next time, just leave it in ‘til you’re all finished’ – and I did it ever since!” There’s something very sweet about this and I still feel vague traces of guilt from 2010 when I hated McCrone very hard so I am just going to leave this as the lovely story that it is. Bless.

Blake Ferguson is lovely too, huge fucking amphibious thing that he is. His habit of ending his post-game interviews by abruptly looming up into the camera like some kind of terrifying frogman and politely requesting whether he can “just say a quick gidday to Nan and Pop back in Welly – gidday!!” and accompanying this with a goofy wave and a stupid-sweet grin is awesome. He has had one or both eyes blacked out and a repeatedly broken nose for most of the season and his busted, broke-down visage has made this little routine all the more arresting. So bless him too.

So the game went on, it was pretty pedestrian, 4 all, 10 all, 16 all, blah blah butthole clenched blah, until **cue crashing cymbals** Minichello that fucking statesman hit Dugan with a high shot and busted his face right open above the eye with only a few minutes to go. I think he hit him twice, I think he cleaned him up again when Dugan, because he is wiry and strong and filled with young virile blood, bounced away from the first hit only to get cleaned up by a second, but I can’t be sure because I was yelping NOT THE FACE NOT THE PRETTY and anyway, a brawl had erupted, which was nice. The Raiders are a polite and dignified team who know their place in the league. As such, they rarely seem to fight, and pick their brawls carefully and sparingly. Yesterday they knew en masse and instinctively that Dugan’s face NOT THE FACE being burst open like a watermelon was cause for brawl. If not that then what? Things happened quickly from here. Mini got binned. The crowd boiled and foamed and mimed uppercuts. Dugan’s face was taped back together. I think the Roosters scored a try? Or did we? I can’t remember, such was my state, but we won and it took a good ten minutes for the tremors to pass. Twenty for the twitches! Heady times.

Mark Geyer is Great.

Mark Geyer rode a bull the other day. I don’t know why. He said “I’m 43 with five kids, I don’t need this” but then he did it anyway. First he rode a smaller bull called Ginger, but then he climbed aboard the ominously named Chainsaw Massacre. “They say it is the toughest eight seconds in world sport. I experienced two seconds and I have to agree. I came straight home to bed – after buying two longnecks on the way.”

James Metallica Hetfield is releasing his own line of fashionable eyewear. He says it is “built to look faster than a speeding riff and to handle the life of a road dog like me”. I think MG should be doing something like this too, I would buy MG merch. Who wouldn’t? He was some player. He was big boned and short tempered; a strange and dangerous individual who on no account should have been approached.

Then he married one of Brandy Alexander’s sisters. In today’s terms, this would be like Benji Marshall marrying Robbie Farah’s sister. Awesome, in other words.

Sister Alexander and Geyer babies – five of them – all given bogan names furnished with extra vowels and probably even some apostrophes too. I love it. Inter-team breeding should be encouraged. Players who cooperate should be awarded with cash and boat bonuses. Dynasties are sort of a thing of the past but they should be promoted as the way forward. It starts here.

Postscript:  At the very start of the season Mark Geyer picked the Bulldogs as the team to win the competition. I laughed, the people on the panel with him laughed, we all laughed. Well. Jesus Christ. The man is the Nostradamus of Penrith.

The Burgess Rabbit - Another Pest from England

Because rugby league is a ravenous and constantly evolving organism you gotta keep up or be eaten up. In an effort to stay up to speed - it was Bob Dylan who said get out of the road if you can't lend a hand and truer words have never been spoken (Matt Orford take note) - here are some loose notes. This is what comes of me blathering on all day and still not being able to keep up; loose, unadulterated notes.

Burgess brothers are coming out of the woodwork like roaches. We now have three on our hands, and I think there's a fourth still in utero/England? I googled Burgess brothers and here's what I got:

From left to right: Sam, George, Luke....

These pictures satisfied my curiosity perfectly, but then I saw photos of Sam getting lubed up at Bondi and who am I to resist a cultural stereotype?

The latest one has been described as "leaner than Sam and darker than George", which sounds promising, albeit mysterious. They are the NRL's equivalent to the Daddo brothers, basically, and just as whorey I imagine. How long since we've had a three-strong brotherhood? The Walters brothers?

Wassup with the Panthers? Arana Taumata (I know, doesn't ring any bells for me either) was accused of stealing a Penrith club doctor's prescription pad and using it to buy valium at pharmacies all over Paramatta and Campsie. Taumata's name appeared on the prescription sheets but when confronted he denied any involvement and told Gus Gould a teammate from the Windsor Wolves was responsible.

Remember when Todd McKenney was found sprawled over a park bench at 5am with GBH in his pocket and said "BUT OFFICER THEY'RE NOT MY PANTS" and got off the charges? I think that was a watershed moment that changed Australia's legal landscape forever. I know I filed that ingenious excuse away for future reference, anyway.

I'm no legal eagle but I have had the Jay Z and R. Kelly - he of the "BUT OFFICER SHE LOOKED LEGAL" defense - song  Guilty Until Proven Innocent on high rotation for the last week, and as such I am loath to cast uninformed aspersions. Still, the miniscule amount of research I did on Taumata showed that he's already had controversy-plagued stints at the Bulldogs and the Roosters (show me a player who hasn't), as well as at the Broncos, Storm, Tigers and Cowboys. Christ. I don't know about fire but that's a hell of a lot of smoke.

Anyway, that flight the Windsor Wolves took to New Zealand? That sounded like an abolute hoot. Taumata got turned around at Auckland airport and flown straight back to face Gus' great venegance and furious anger regarding the valium. Dane Laurie got hammered on the flight and was promptly sacked after a teammate dobbed him in. Someone else was forced to go home after discovering his passport had been through the wash - this is almost as funny as when that kid whose name eludes me packed his passport for his first ever away game in Queensland. Bless. Finally, Michael Jennings was fined $10 000  for drinking while off with injury. Seems a bit extreme, but there you are.

I noted with interest that the Panthers all managed to pull it together and turn up to a group appearance at Hooters in a gallant effort to promote the chain's push into the west. Apparantly even players who weren't required to attend came along and many have returned since on a regular basis. Trent Waterhouse is totally up in that Hooters shit, I can just tell.

Gus Gould going all Mao Zedong with his cultural revolution at the foot of the mountain is taking a terrible toll on his appearance. Is it just me or has he aged about a dozen years in the last few months? It's alarming. I don't know what goes on out there at Penrith but unless Sandor Earl is involved it's not pretty. I called them one of the uglier teams in the league last week and can I just say a) Not that there's anything wrong with that, and b) Manly are much uglier. Either way, Gus now looks to be going the way of Brandy Alexander: i.e. to shit. Brandy is one of the more intruiging statesmen to me, in that he looks like nothing so much as a rapidly aging accountant. I look at Brandy and see scarcely any resemblance to the guy who made me go for the Panthers back in my babycake days. It's true, I did.

Here's what I found written on the back of a magazine from last weekend:

"Brandy. So much eye makeup - eyes, eyebrows. He is cadaverous. Scurvy, maybe. Or AIDS"

Way harsh? Maybe, BUT HAVE YOU SEEN HIM? A Weekend at Bernie's type situation unfolding while he's live on air is not outside the realm of possibility, trust.

There were two other fragments scrawled onto the magazine : "Soward = Prick", and "Mini barking orders from the back"

Yep. Nothing gets past me and my hawk eye.

Compare Brandy Alexander to the man I believe to be the best-preserved and altogether most attractive statesman in league: Laurie Daly. He is the dead set Dorian Gray of the NRL, he looks fucking BOSS. I also think he's lovely. Brandy can tell a good yarn and he has a sort of hair-trigger twitchiness that I like but he seems a bit of a twit, frankly. Loz is the real deal. He says "Gorrrrn" for 'gone'. Plus I find his unwavering support for the Raiders and his absolute, steadfast refusal to ever tip against them to be beyond charming.

And that post I wrote on Matt Elliot being all elusive and enigmatic? That all came crashing down with the revelation that he was seen lunching at Gloria Jeans with Luke Lewis and Lachlan Coote. Way to ruin my cred, Elliot.

Speaking of credibility, I died a little when I heard that Gus Gould peppers his text messages with 'lol'. That is all shades of wrong and is akin to Laurie Daly weraing this Ed Hardy shirt:

On the opposite end of the scale, I fell a little more in love with JT when he said he listens to hip hop and rap. I mean, the writing  is on the wall, this pretty much makes us soulmates. We may as well have a Mickey and Mallory type hand-cutting, blood-mingling-for-all-eternity ceremony right now and be done with it, seriously. JT, call me.

Word is that last week post-game - in the showers, no less - an admiring Nathan Gardner told Paul Gallan "you're a modern day warrior". Gal's response? "You're an idiot".

Adorable. Bitch is real. He cares not for ice baths, dressing room physio and the compression garments that everyone is trussed up in like Christmas hams these days, AND his drink of choice is bourbon and coke. Word.

Let's all take a moment to reflect again on just how adorable Gal is:

Meanwhile, Chris Sandow continues to solidify his position as the game's biggest Grub. I still think he has a way to go before he strips Jamie Soward of the Grub King crown but damn if he isn't giving it a red hot go. Sandow needs to come to terms with the fact that Dave Coal Train Taylor he 'aint, and behave accordingly. Give up those ill-advised shoulder charges before you get flattened - or keep them up and get flattened, see if I care - but cut it out with the cannonball tackles already, they are unwarranted and filthy. We are hip to you and your carefully timed tactic of hurling yourself at a held up players unprotected legs and we find it and you very unpleasant. Cease and desist, bitch.

Those who pay close attention know that I don't like fouling my pristine posts with pictures of undesirables. You don't shit where you eat, people! So in the interests of keeping We Need To Talk About Todd nice I'm substituting Courtney Love and Lil Wayne for Chris Sandow.

In closing, I wish to make just one passing remark. It regards jerseys. If there is any group of men who should not be seen in round necked jerseys, it's NRL players. Not to put too fine a point on it but they're not exactly known for their swan-like necks, y'know. This is the reason they all look so good come international rep time - because the jerseys are V-neck. Not only that, but they have a natty collar. Even Billy Slater looks bitchin in such a garment, and trust me, I can  scarcely believe this myself.  See the comparisons below as evidence. Anyway, I'm all for improving aesthetics in the NRL and I don't understand why anyone would dress men already challenged in the neck stakes in jerseys that give the impression of almost total necklessness. It's very odd; and it doesn't seem right. Tell me something in this world that does, though.




Willie Mason. My brother calls him a "refrigerator with eyes", for obvious reasons.



Paul Gallan: WITNESS THE FITNESS. Fierce.

And the good ol days of V-Neck jerseys:

Some footnotes.

1) Once I said the notorious Arana Taumata's name out loud I realised he did ring a few bells -  none particularly positive.

2) On R. Kelly: I'd been listening to M.I.A.'s Arular for many a month before I picked i up on the choice gem of a line:

'Could it be/that me and he/are tighter than J.Lo in her jeans/and could it be/that me and he/are tighter than R. Kelly in his teens'. 

That just takes the biscuit in terms of awesome bad taste.

3) Chris Sandow's emergence as a grub-to-watch had me hastening to check the playing schedule in the hope that there are no upcoming Raider Rabbitohs gane. There is. Cue creeping dread. Of the apparently many thousand things Josh Dugan's precious Bambi legs do not need right now, Sandow throwing himself at them at knee height would have to be top of the list. Do not try it, Sandow. Seriously. Push me and I will push back.