Real Men Eat Couscous. Greg Bird Understands This.

Rugby league is in great shape, make no mistake. Still, there are two things I wish I could change about the game (three if you count my proposals for radical wardrobe changes including the abolition of all Spanx-like undergarments and the reintroduction of V-neck jerseys, but this is not my immediate concern today).

Neither of them have any bearing on the actual game, mind, because I think the players and the greater NRL organisation ('sup Politis!) have a pretty good handle on that side of things, and I'm no expert. I could be, but I'm not.

No, my two key concerns are largely superficial. I'm nothing if not consistent.

The first thing I would do away with is the bizzare unspoken law that appears to forbid footballers from talking about themselves. Ever. In any fashion. We know it's a team game, guys. The swarms of men running around in identical jerseys kind of acts as a permanent reminder. I know, right, who knew?

Lest we ever forget, though, we need only look to any player during any interview, ever. Any attempt by an interviewer to elicit from the player a comment, however vague or benign, that relates to themselves, is met with automatic and repeated reference to "the boys". So "You had a great kicking game tonight Toddy" is met with "Yeah, nah, the boys played really well." Slight variations of this exchange make up the meat of every interview with every player. It's maddening. Effective too, in terms of  giving nothing away whatsoever. I'm thinking of implementing it in my own life, actually.

Full credit to The Boys

The peculiarities of footy-speak is a topic unto itself, really. Their ability to string any number of cliches together into a sentence, with varying degrees of succes, it has to be said, is in itself a remarkable talent and one that is deserving of an entire post, if not a thesis.

Sadly though, this is not our theme today. No, our theme today concerns the second thing I wish I could change; namely that I want The Facts on what these big bastards eat.

Footballers must eat a lot. I mean, look at them.

I'm a huge fan of hearing about their dietary details. I feel this is something we could all do with more of in our lives. Well, why not? We are deep into the age of food as fetish as it is; why not enter into the spirit of the season? Never mind for a moment that I find the current obsession with food - the slavish and erotic first world devotion to it I mean - to be slightly depraved and in terrible taste. No, never mind that at all, because one of the things that made me really want to get on the Twitter was reading that Greg Bird had tweeted about spending all afternoon cooking shanks and spicy couscous. And about his plans to brutalise Parramatta in an upcoming game, lest we lose sight of what a hard cunt he is even for a moment, but still. Greg Bird eats couscous? He cooks couscous? Amazing. My world totally tilted on its axis for a second there.

I can't help but feel Greg Bird should be eating something more like this:

I suspect I'm not alone here in my desire for dietary detail. If you ask me, we the public don't get nearly enough information here. Oh, sure, we get the odd fragment, but it's always in passing and it's mainly through reading articles about Greg Inglis.

My brother saw a bunch of Sharks eating at Sizzler once. I know, how retro, right? He kept an eye on them and said they were remarkably restrained and ate only from the pasta and salad bars. None of those steaks that drape like curtains over the sides of the plate, in other words. He also said they all looked like they were about to explode out of their T-shirts in the manner of metamorphosing superheroes, i.e. they looked FIT.

Anyway, he is a fan of competitive eating. Not in any official, regulated, hotdog eating contest sense - he's strictly freelance - and the main point he wanted to drive home about the encounter was that he easily ate them under the table. Which is the whole reason you go to Sizzler of course. No-one goes there expecting to walk out with their pants still buttoned, do they? Nobody in my family does anyway.

That wasn't a fat jab at Greg Inglis earlier, by the way. I can't stand the guy, but I sympathise with his struggle to, uh, be likeable and come across as an even remotely pleasant human being. Good luck with that personality thransplant then, G.I.

All that eleventh hour reneging on handshakes and the shilly-shallying around with his legal bills and the dicking around of the Broncos really took its toll on the guy at the start of the year, apparently. This is when he began a kind of savage descent into squalor and started to bear a striking resemblance to Meatloaf, circa 1992.

 His diet went awry and he turned to white bread. He drank three cans of Coke a night - he was really livin' la vida loca, obviously, and here's what he had to say: "I love my Coke. I love my white bread".

Tell it again, Inglis! Now, I have never been able to swallow even a mouthful of fizz so I don't get the Coke thing, but I can relate to G.I. with  the white bread bit. I am a fucking bandit for white bread, the cheaper and nastier the better. I blame my mother for this, as well as for all the other ills of the world (shoutout to Freud: respect!) because I had one of those wholesome childhoods devoid of sugar and television and  - as I have bitched about extensively - SALT. This meant that I had embarrasing brown bread sandwiches when all I wanted was a lunchbox full of Rollups and Le Snacks and Ovalteenies. The residual effect of all this is that my favourite food in the world is lavishly buttered ,white sesame-seeded bread rolls.

Anyway, I would love to be able to tell you that this fragment of information endeared me to G.I. but I cannot. Still, it hasn't hurt. Baby steps.

Inglis has now banished the white bread and the Coke from his life and is ON. THE. UP. For reals. He looks as severe and as muscular as a mountain range. Fierce, even, and he's definately shaken off the sluggish, vague vibe he had going on for a while there. Early in the year I saw him sitting injured in the stands with Sam Burgess watching a game and it looked like nothing so much as a surly, sunglasses wearing thundercloud sitting alongside a shining sunbeam of sweetness. It was around this time my brother did away with his name altogether and started referring to him only as 'that slug'. Me: "Did you hear G.I. got hitched on the weekend?" Him: "What?!! What woman would marry that slug?!!" etc, etc....

For those of you who are interested in such intricacies - and how could you not be - he now drinks Coke Zero, and "It's rye bread instead of white".

I don't remember G.I. ever looking like this, but there you have it. The hips don't lie.

Now, far be it from me to rain on G.I.'s parade, but I've got news for you, homeboy. New studies just in have shown that in the long run drinking diet fizz will basically make you quote FAT AS FUCK unquote.

Entirely by the way, did you know that Paris Hilton pointed this out many a moon ago in her Confessions of an Heiress book? "Never drink Diet Coke. Diet Coke is for fat people".

I don't know if G.I. has read this book. I'm not entirely convinced that he has read a book, actually. Anyway, this totally makes Paris some kind of whore-bag Nostradamus because seven years after she made that astute observation the University of Texas has released a study finding a 70 per cent increase in waist size among people who drank diet fizz compared to those who drank regular fizz. If you care to investigate this in more detail the study is titled "Diet Soft Drink Consumption Is Associated With Increased Waist Circumference in the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Ageing." Cue Stampede.

Let's turn now to two football players I hitherto could not give two hoots about: Trent Merrin and Adam Cuthbertson, and their attempts to keep their weight in check.

For the past TWO YEARS Dragons prop Merrin has eaten the same meal for dinner EVERY NIGHT. Can you imagine? Chicken breast, steamed vegetables and one cup of pasta FOR TWO YEARS? Me either. Hence the liberal use of caps - that means I'm aghast, people.

Likewise, Adam Cuthbertson revealed that he worked hard to drop weight over the pre-season and that in order to keep it off he does things like take the cheese off his sandwiches. This rivets me. Somewhere else I see it written that, prior to the lifeline the Dragons extended to him he was a footballer who "Ate recklessly". That is a gloriously ambiguous and intruiging phrase, isn't it? It excites my attention no end.


I don't know what all this means. Perhaps there is some comfort to be had in the knowledge that footballers are not insulated from the larger ills of society, be they struggles with weight or struggles to stay on the right side of the law or what have you?

Or maybe it's like the Stars without Makeup syndrome. Maybe I like reading the stuff that reconfigures them, for a minute at least, as white bread loving bogans who can stack it on with the best of us. You know, as opposed to the carved-from granite behemouths that run out of the sheds every week and knock the stuffing and the shit out of each other for our entertainment?

Toddy to the Backseat, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT PAUL GALLAN

Step aside Todd Carney (Oh, wait, you already have, to the Newtown Jets, way to be intuitive, baby, and p.s you wear blue well - not as well as you did the lime green, but still..)  because WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT GAL.

I have been in the grips of a major Gal-swoon since Origin II, it shows no sign of abating, and, really, why would it? It may well be permanent.

Truth be told I'm still now coming to terms with the fuck-off incredible game he played out there on Wednesday. Whoever heard of a front rower playing for a full eighty minutes, and terrorising the opposing team THE ENTIRE TIME?? Anybody?..... Anybody? No, me either.

218 metres from 27 carries? What kind of engine does this guy have for chrissakes?

This is the man, bear in mind, who spent a sizeable portion of his 21st birthday on a rowing machine, rowing furiously, until he threw up lavishly, so we know he's no stranger to the hard yards. Obviously he was bound for Spartan glory from the get-go, and with the head he has on him is it any wonder?

Not only is the guy fit as a trout, he's classy to boot. Shrewd, too.

Gal decided that it would be him - not fellow prop Tim Mannah - who would take the first hit-up in the opening seconds of Origin II. His intention was to put his own personal stamp on the Origin clash from the outset and to show the Queensland forward pack that he would not only lead from the front, but would brutalise and destroy from the front, despite being much smaller than the average front-rower.

When asked why, specifically, he said that as a kid, he used to rush home (from punishing the equipment at a gym, it's safe to assume) to watch the first hit-up of every Origin game, as "usually the bloke got hammered". I love this comment, and the reasoning behind it. Blokes getting hammered is a fundamental reason why I watch, too; every game, every week. I think it shows not only in his game, but in everything he does, that there is not a player out there who loves the game more than Gal, and that, at heart (and know that it's a freaky, Phar Lap sized heart, too) he is just a huge, huge fan of the game who never forgets how lucky he is to actually be able to play it for a living.

I am absolutely of the opinion that the NRL needs more hard-yakka players like Paul Gallan for the future. Not only because, out on a blues bonding-session the other night he shoulder pressed a 110kg Polynesian bouncer and punched out ten squats to amuse his teammates, but because if we start breeding more eighty minute players like him we can bring the interchange down to six and have a fair-and-square, old-school style, eighty minute contest.


Remember when Greg Bird used to play for the Sharks? Me either, really, although I do remember the unsavoury manner in which he left them. Anyway, Bird and Gallen were apparently known in the Shire as The Bruise Brothers, for obvious reasons, and have remained close mates; united forever, I imagine, by their penchant for brutality. Last week Ricky Stuart, Origin culture-vulture that he is, had every NSW player pick out someone special and influential to present them with their blue jumper at Coogee Crown Plaza.

Anthony Minichello chose fiancee and shoe-queen Terry Biviano, Jarryd Hayne, Aku Uate and Trent Merrin all chose NSW great Steve Roach, Mitchell Pearce and Anthony Watmough chose their mums, Tim Mannah and Luke Lewis chose the legendary Glen Lazarus, Michael Ennis chose his wife Simone, and Greg Bird chose Paul Gallan.

On stage, Bird started to cry, could hardly speak, and struggled through a speech about how much Gal meant to him. In Blues training, apparently, Bird targets and goes after Gallen like he can't stand the sight of him, and it's been commented upon how they continually wrestle and fight in tussels that almost always end violently, yet wake up best mates every morning.

I don't know why things like this strike me as charming and emotionally stirring, but there is no denying that they do. I don't even much care for Greg Bird, if for no other reason than I suspect Ed Hardy items are a central component of his wardrobe - although I understand that if I were to judge players based solely on this criteria I would be left with, who, maybe the Ed Hardy eschewingAlan Tongue and Petero Civoniceva? - but they warm my frosty heart all the same. Obviously blokes getting hammered is not the only reason I love footy so much, then, although it certainly doesn't hurt.

Whiskey Oscar Whiskey = Origin.. Part II

Now that the dust has settled and I can think about it without trembling, it has to be said:

What a win.

Also, thankchrist the Blues got up, because I really needed a good cry.

My last one was during the Royal Wedding, and since occasions of such magnitude are few and far between I really have to take any oppurtunity to indulge in 'event tears' that I can get. In real life I hardly cry. I think I'm over medicated. But this is neither here nor there, because we have Origin ashes to pick through.




Were Queensland on the backfoot or what? Those bitches were scrambling out there, sometimes literally. They even started making mistakes and everything. Incredible. Cameron Smith probably didn't make any mistakes, because he is Golden Boy; 1348 touches in 13 games for 0 errors, in case you missed last week's 'Mr Perfect' headlines, but he still lost, and he was still totally peeved in the post-game on-field interview.

Even though he restrained himself from making his usual bitchy and ungracious "they didn't win the game, we lost the game" type remarks he was well miffed. I think in the aftermath of such crushing defeats he'd be the glacially silent type, all barely leashed fury, simmering and glowering and tense around the jaw...I dont know. He could be a really nice, chill guy. It seems unlikely, but I suppose it's possible, in the same way that it's possible that Greg Inglis could actually be likeable. And that, in some circles, passing a kidney stone could be considered fun.


Speaking of fun, doesn't Sam Thaiday have an absolute ball in Origin games? I don't know how the guy manages it, but he is up in every bitches business at all times and loving every filthy minute of it. You can tell he wishes all 26 rounds were played at Origin level intensity, purely so that he can indulge what are clearly his deeply violent urges on a far more frequent and far less penalised basis. He reminds me of the red cattle dog my family had growing up, he would fight other dogs wildly and indiscriminately and with absolute, undiluted joy and relish. He would pant and grin for hours afterwards; lavish fights delighted him like nothing else, except maybe rolling in shit, which was his other great passion. Like I said, reminds me for all the world of Sam Thaiday.

Sometimes it takes a lacerated face and gushing blood for me to realise a man is hot. Oh, hai Luke Lewis, welcome to my radar! 

Making that fucking phenomenal try-saving tackle on whoever that about-to-score Maroon also helped, although, let's face it, if it had been Anthony Watmough or Mark Gasnier or Jamie Soward it certainly wouldn't have set my man-o-metre to shudder. Kurt Gidley is about as far as I'm willing to go down that slippery slope of 'taking impressive achievements into account and allowing a certain amount of leeway when considering hotness', frankly. Even low-rent bloggers have to have standards.

Here is a small selection of further bloodied footballers that I find infinitely, boganishly appealing:

Ricky Stuart wrote last week that he had initially paired Watmough and Lewis up to room together on Origin II camp, "until Luke said he can't handle Choc" because he was too much of a night owl. Substitue the words 'night owl' with 'dick head' and we probably get a clearer understanding of the situation. When informed that Lewis was going to be switched for the more easy going Anthony Minichello, Stuart wrote that Choc just laughed and said he'd been afraid he was going to get crash-tackled during the night if things had kept going the way they were, which half made me wish things had continued on as they were...

As it happened, Lewis was taken away from Watmough and put in with Ben Creagh, who Stuart said is at the opposite end of the scale to Choc. A decent bloke then, in other words.


Still on camp, Grandma Hopoate dropped in during the week and mixed up an industrial sized trough of special fruit punch for the boys to stick their snouts into. There were some charming pictures of Blues in towels swilling lurid pink punch. In all honesty though I find the whole Hopoate clan unseemly and Spencer Pratt-ish in that they are always around,  seemingly lurking and with a mini-van at the ready, but that's me.

I don't doubt that the Blues played extra hard because Grandma Hopoate had promised to serve up another vat of her famous watermelon, pineapple and coconut elixir in the sheds if they won. I would have liked to see a frenzied Greg Bird tip the whole cauldron of it over his head like Beau Ryan did that time after a particularly spirited win with that fully loaded esky while the Tigers were screaming their team song all around him, because that was fucking great. This probably did happen, actually, because if there's one thing we all know it's that Greg Bird is partial to throwing a drink or two around.

Finally, and maybe above all, I wish Josh Dugan could have been a part of the win, but until he puts some meat on those skinny foal-like legs of his this may remain an elusive dream. This, I hasten to add, may well happen - he put on five kilos over the off season  - or it may not. Sometimes dreams have inconclusive or dissatisfying endings. Blogs, too.