Rude Realities of Origin Aftermath

When something you bother to believe in ends in disillusion AND NOT FOR THE FIRST FUCKING TIME OH NO THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME WE’VE SADDLED UP THIS HORSE NAMED HOPE it resonates in a painful and very personal fashion.

But, oh well. Show me something that doesn’t. Aside from this guy of course, who seemed to grasp which way the wind was blowing in terms of our need for comic relief and acted accordingly and at some personal expense:

 

Here is a quick education in the rude realities of recent Origin history. Multiply this picture by 8. I am not in the mood for subtleties.

 

Further inflaming my ill temper is the just dawned realisation that next year the referees will have TWO opportunities for their annual demonstration of just how pliable and open to intimidation and manipulation they are.

Cameron Smith - who according to popular sporting opinion is said to be as charming and welcoming in his dealings with referees as a pie cooling on a windowsill – talks pretty to them and they practically drop drawers and bend over on the spot for him. Jesus Christ. It leaves me feeling unclean just talking about it.

It also further proves the theory that popular sporting opinion does not always refer to what I consider reality. This, incidentally, or so the psychiatrist who I avoid making eye contact for once a fortnight suggests, may have something to do with why Matt Shirvington and his big swinging balls present pre-game panel shows on Foxtel while I post on a grossly underappreciated blog?

 

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)

"CARN(ey) THE BLUES"

Blues! Finding it difficult to conjure up the requisite levels of State of Origin based excitement? Feeling like the whole thing will almost inevitably end up resembling a nightmare suffered after eating too much cheese? Already anticipating sitting in steely silence and staring into the middle distance while Queenslanders with demeanors that announce “I am on my way to rob a convenience store” and lesions that announce “I am also a crabs carrier” crow about passion and pride while meantime Michael Jennings is advised to seek work on a road gang? Me too.

These are unpromising circumstances for NSW. They are about as unpromising a circumstance as one could find oneself in.

Despite this, come Wednesday night I will no doubt be all up in game one’s business, and you know why? AS A DOG RETURNETH TO HIS VOMIT, SO A FOOL RETURNETH TO HIS FOLLY – proverbs 26, 11. It’s true. When it comes to Origin the Bible knows what is UP.

Ricky Stuart GOD LOVE HIM has been making his usual fairly spectacular and increasingly apocalyptic comments regarding New South Wales having no option other than to win this series OR ELSE. Yes, well spotted, Ricky, we are now at the “or else” part of the scenario.



Buffalo Bill - also familiar with the "or else" part of fraught scenarios.



Sam Thaiday made some crack to TV cameras about the buffet being their biggest problem during camp, the subtext being that the Maroons are such a finely tuned and highly functional team that lavish quantities of food being digested and pushed through coils of bowel is their primary occupation and concern throughout Origin camp. Maddeningly, the Blues are not in a strong position to argue against this belief.

Still, there is the very real possibility that Thaiday was just overwhelmed at being confronted, while dining, with menus that aren’t laminated and don’t have photographs of the food on it.  

Hopefully - and I say this with a sizeable serving of skepticism - the Blues are cultivating other, more impressive ways of spending their time. Like, say, figuring out how to shut down the unnatural might of Queensland’s right side-loving combination of Smith, Slater and Cronk. That’d be nice.  

As it is, I can barely bring myself to think about those three. JT either. Well, maybe JT a little, but only because he is a man of sleek allure with powerful loins and an idiot’s laugh, and if you look closely you will see that he sometimes bears fabulous, fleeting resemblance to Nick Nolte’s mug shot.

I just kind of feel like Origin is going to be some sort of Discovery Channel nature-based nightmare. Hyenas tearing open a gazelle carcass and the like. I saw something on life under the sea recently. I thought: “this is a lifestyle worth thinking about”. Take cleaning stations, for example. Apparently, these are a common feature of undersea life, places where large fish pull in to be nibbled at by smaller fish for the purposes of health and hygiene for the big fish and dinner for the little fish. Maybe Origin will be something like that, only with a bit more ultra-violence?

Oh, my God. My mind is choosing to think about obscure aquatic social customs rather than, say, the broiling majesty of Cameron Smith with his deep, concentrated, Sphinx-like intensity and hairy bunyip-like body. It’s self-preservation. The alternative is being besieged by a debilitating bout of neurosis and inhaling raw cookie dough.

Praise the Daily Telegraph then and their slew of redemptive, Todd Carney rebooted stories. “CARN THE BLUES!”, “The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise Again of Todd Carney”, etc. Right now these stories, along with my orphan lambs BooBoo and BabyCakes demanding milk, are essentially my reason for getting out of bed in the morning.

Is it just me or does he seem like the loveliest and most sweetly-natured person who is purported to have an ‘image problem’ ever? I ask you! When I take over the world (note the ‘when’ there, not ‘if’) I will redress the criteria for all this ‘image problem’ shit, and those afflicted with an affiliation to liquor of the malt variety and a propensity for setting fire to the nutsacks of close friends will rise to the top. Like cream. Just you wait. In the meantime, I understand (just barely) that some people are not fans of menfolk like Todd Carney or Tommy Lee – men who don’t subscribe to the notion that laws are supposed to apply to all people equally. Whatever. Plenty of Robbie Farah/Buster Bluth from Arrested Development types to go round for the likes of them.  

Mysterious Ways - Raiders 2012

I had a bad feeling about things yesterday. The Raiders, because they are maddening and mysterious, cannot be relied upon to win the games they are even vaguely expected to. Ever. So going into the Eels game, it felt like it could easily become one of those seventies exploitation movies where marauding inbred hillbillies set upon foolish interlopers who are looking for gas. And, y’know, rape them and stuff.

Luckily, Jarryd Hayne didn’t appear to be in the mood for such frivolities. Football, either. 

Still, this foreboding, this muted dread continued for the first fifteen or twenty minutes while the Raiders got themselves organised out there. More conventional teams tend to undertake this element of their preparation before the game actually starts – it’s sometimes referred to as a ‘warm up’ -  but no matter, no matter.

So. Basically, the Raiders won and the Eels continued the particle by particle disintegration of any hope that they will ever win a game, ever again.

It was also an afternoon of very strange football from which even a more stable person might have drawn disturbing conclusions. Happily, since I have been away, enveloped in hostile Himalayan mountains and isolated from any entertainment whatsoever aside from my mother’s very particular style of humour (she’s a nurse, so bodily emulsions and excretions feature prominently), I found the game to be pretty fucking great. Certainly it was highly stimulating. I mean, perhaps it wasn’t so great for those who are fans of defense (left side, anybody? Bueller..??) and finesse and consistency and Jarrod Croker making tackles, but these subtle shortcomings were all part of the fun. It was truly top notch entertainment. The fact that the Raiders won was a pleasing but entirely incidental benefit.

Another (far less pleasing) incidental was me spending spent 24 days with a keen Sharks fan while away. By the end of it, NAY – from the start of it – I would have rather wallowed in a pool of fragrant vomit - which I actually did do, horrifyingly – than spend any more time in his presence. Not because of the Sharks thing, though. More due to the fact that he was just such a dick. ThankGOD for the Sharks thing, really, because it gave us weighty topics to talk about – Paul Gallen, for one. And Blake Ferguson.

I also spent time with a cop – A COP , for chrissakes - from Wodonga, who confessed his deep-seated desire for Taser use to become widespread in Victoria and his longing to Taser Todd Carney. Or, as he put it, to “MAKE HIM DO THE CHICKEN.” Because that’s what they call it, don’t you know. He even gave a physical demonstration, which really did resemble what I imagine the movements of a hysterical, epileptic chicken with many millions of volts administered by a dimwitted fascist running though it would look like. Toddy, for the love of God stay the fuck away from Wodonga. Albury, too, to be safe. Unless you’re passing through on your way to mine, of course, in which case stick to the Hume and drive like stink.

Anyway. How is the talk surrounding the Eels? The apocalypse cometh!! Jesus. Hey, the other day? When my mother was rubbing crème into my feet (you heard me) and she made the observation that I had the beginnings of a corn on my little toe? Well I too am on a slip-stream to the apocalypse. I mean, aren’t we all?

Still, the Eels were groping around like eyeless worms for much of the game, they do look pretty poxy. Whatever. Forget them. Here are my three favourite match moments:

1.      Jack Wighton, who Laurie Daly had previously referred to as one of the game’s ‘merchants of speed’, scoring the winning try in the final minutes. Blake Ferguson grabbing and kissing his head and making my heart kick against my ribs. Football. Bringing us spurious, savage tokens of manhood from around the time that Christ was a hunk of flesh hanging off a cross.

2.      Blake Ferguson looming up into the camera while talking to that goose Mark Gasnier post-match and blurting “Aye can I just say g’day to my pop – my nan and pop in [insert random flyblown town name here] – how youse goin’!! –“. It was adorability itself. Gasnier looked slightly bewildered, mildly sheepish, and entirely idiotic. As usual.

3.      Man of the match Josh Dugan saying “Body’s 100% and I’m feeling fresh” YES IT IS, BITCH, YES IT IS.”  

Speaking of looks, how about Nathan Hindmarsh’s impersonation of a sweating, shambolic itinerant derro yesterday? His fucking jersey was midriff! It was riding halfway up his goddamn torso, shit was unseemly! Also, seeing him give lumbering chase as Blake Ferguson scored that spectacular long-range try (Sample text: “Go Frogboy GO”) vividly underscored the fact that the march of time is an absolute fucker, whichever way you look at it. The hooves of destiny beat for Hindmarsh and doesn’t he damn well know it. He looked like he should be slumped on a stool inside a coastal RSL club belching beer fumes into some two-bit barmaid’s face. He looked like he wished he was.

When it was all over, Josh Dugan tweeted a picture of himself sitting in his kitchen eating ham. Just kidding. He was without a shirt looking like he’d been kicked in the ribs by Gestapo boots. Like he isn’t fierce enough already, fuck! After his Raiders beating the Eels and Todd Carney’s Sharks beating the Storm and Billy Slater being binned this was more than my fevered brain could metabolise. I practically started seeing parades of pink elephants hurling past my retinas. Years of hermetic seclusion have run down my tolerance levels.

The other, obvious highlight of the round was Johnathan Thurston having to pull down his shorts and have his junk closely attended to. Midgame. As an entire stadium of Newcastle fans howled their approval. This excited me. A lean, dark and hungry looking man of doubtful repute dropping his shorts? YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT.  

Josh Dugan in 2011...& those other guys..

2011. I know all this eye-bulging, jaw-slackeningly mesmerising shit happened because I have a vague, sepia-tinged recollection of the overall season housed in my head. Problem is that this off-season has been dragging like an absolute bastard, and things are becoming blurry. Also, the tedium of the finals series forced my mind to retreat into a place of wind-blown splendour, where separated lovers think about each other and stare out of windows into rainy nights. It was a choice between that or confronting the hideous reality of Sydney's northern beaches, and my mind cannot process plague proportions of affluent WASPS any more than it can accept the carpet that covers the floor of my ensuite. Carpet around a toilet is, like people who live in Manly, a concept too terrible to bear. Anyway. Because my general posture is backward-looking and nostalgic I'll try to sift through the bored shards of my off-season psyche and dredge up some of the high and lowlights of last season.

Let's start with the people I love or approve of.

-Josh Dugan's Origin debut. Seeing him cross his arms and tap his sky-blue clad shoulders as he ran out of the tunnel looking hotter than the centre of the sun was a sight to squeeze the hardest of hearts. I shed tears.

Just on this -  it's been a terribly long time since I've seen any new Josh Dugan pictures and experienced the heart arrythmia that accompanies this. What, do 'they' think we have better things to do over summer or something? Because 'they' are wrong. Damn wrong. I can only assume he's doing okay there in Canberra. I mean, as okay as anybody can be in Canberra (don't start me). Josh Dugan underwent a brief excursion into irrelevance last season. I didn't like it. I can't imagine he enjoyed it much either. Bitch just kept on getting himself hurt, and the Raiders kept on losing and the whole season had a horribly monotonous, yet anxious rhythm and was as unsatisfying and unsubstantial as a bowl of rice bubbles: ie. shithouse. The essence of football is knowing what's going on, and knowing who's liable to do what in any given situation. Josh Dugan took this far too far last season. How many times do we gotta see him doubled over and clutching at a colt-like leg or limping from the field, grimacing so hard that his face looks like an old man's knee? How many times, Lord? His constant injuries resonated with me in a painful fashion. Usually I'm a fan of a little painful resolution, but not in these many instances. It fucking blew. On a vaguely related and similarly painful note, the Raiders receieved ten percent of the vote in Rugby League Week's readers' poll for the 'club that won't win another premiership in the next ten years' category. Sad.

-Todd Carney drinking himself out of another club. You gotta love him. Whatever he does he gives it his goddamn ALL. And we will know him by his trail of empties.

- Paul Gallan's audacious performance in Origin II. Gal played out of position at front row and for the whole eighty minutes. What a warrior. He should be stuffed and mounted in a glass case and hung on the wall over my fireplace.

-Terry Campese's seven minute season. Yes, Campese played for approximately seven minutes, for the entire season. On the upside, this gave him time to knock his wife up again about five minutes after she had their first baby, which is nice.

-Jarryd Hayne. He saved someone from drowning in the sea and then spent the rest of the season headbutting people with simple-minded merriment and considerable panache. Players, punters, whoever. He's brilliant. Such is his charm that everybody loves him all the more for his bursts of violence. Plus he rocks rosary beads like nobody else, with the possible exeption of Madonna circa 1986.

-The words 'he's just a grub.' Post game press conferences can be painful to watch. The air is often thick with unreality. Players and coaches (discounting Tim Sheens) habitually squander the opportunity to judge, slander and insult opposing teams, coaches, referees, fellow teammates and the people who set the prices for the stadium snack bars. This is a damn shame. A grim-faced Nathan Hindmarsh did his bit to rectify this when he capped off a spiteful Eels Bulldogs game by refusing to elaborate on Michael Ennis beyond these four words, forced from between gritted teeth: "he's just a grub." Excellent. More, please.

-Michael Ennis being voted the game's 'Biggest Grub' by fifty one percent of the RWL poll. Legend. He compounded this by extending his scope and burning the shit out of Brendan Cowell on the League Lounge with a derogatory comment about his cardigan. Bless.

-JT watching QLD celebrate their sixth straight Origin series from a wheelchair with his head lolling around like a bladder on a stick. This was actually a terrible sight, but JT is so cool that he can carry off wheelchair-bound weeping while loaded on pain-killing drugs and still look like Harry Callahan.

-Benji Marshall belting someone who yelled out "hey Benji, Lockyer's better than you!" outside McDonalds on George Street and being found not guilty. Good to see that his nifty sidestep also applies to matters of the law.

-Ricky Stuart losing his fucking mind in the coaching box when the Blues won Origin II and unleashing a frenzied flurry of punches into assistant coach Gavin Wood's ribcage.

-Jamal Idris rag-dolling the nippy but not nippy enough Nathan Gardner by lifting him up by his ripped-down shorts, like a piece of carry-on luggage, and tossing him around, bare-assed, for a good thirty seconds. Mark Geyer compounded the hilarity later by pointing out that "you could see his junk" You could, and we did.

-The Battle of Brookvale. Awesome. This was an explosion of violence so glorious that it should have been italicised with a burst of surging trumpets. Anybody who watched any of the three thousand replays of this charmingly retro incident without miming uppercuts in their living room has no business watching league and should switch codes immediately.

-The Rabbitohs Broncos game played in Perth on the world's worst-draining surface, ie. a lake. It was wild, as all things in the West should rightly be. Senior-cit Bunies coach John Lang launching into a celebratory, 'arthritis-be-damned' belly slide through a puddle afterwards was a lovely and altogether unexpected final flourish.

-Billy Slater holding up play, and David Williams' badly injured neck, after a tackle went bad. Billy Slater is no paragon of virtue - fact is I can't stand the prick - but this just struck me as very sweet and sporting. However, I also remember roaring my approval when Paul Gallan stomped, with undisguised savagery, on an opposing player's neck as he lay twitching on the grass post-tackle, so it's all relative.

-Reni Matuai and his at once attractive and repellant reptile eyes making their NRL return after a two year ban for drug use. He's hot, and he has a bankrupt-soul spookiness about him. Like I said: hot.

-Darren Lockyer kicking the field goal to get the Broncos to the qualifying round with a grotesquely fractured cheekbone. Bonus points for the fact that this put the Dragons out of contention for the season.

-Micheal Jennings handing out two thousand free tickets to fans from his own pocket as punishment for showing up to a training session blind drunk. That'll learn him.


So that's the champions. Now, to turn my attention to the fuckwits and fools.

-Brett Stewart breaking into a  ' giddy-up gallop' to celebrate the club try-scoring record at Manly in a stupid swipe at David Gallop for suspending him for four weeks in 2009.

-Brett Stewart telling David Gallop he owed him an apology when collecting his premiership ring. In the absence of hard proof and the ability to read lips, I can only assume that Gallop's response was somewhere along the lines of "boo-fucken-hoo."

-Brett Stewart becoming increasingly erratic, delusional and paranoid.

-Brett Stewart in general. Just a massively unpleasant person.

-Ryan Tandy. He poured ill-repute on the game like gravel off a fucking dump truck all year long.

-Mark Gasnier announcing his retirement and cutting short his comeback contract by two seasons, allowing him more time to squirt the sauce. Presumably.

-Isaac Luke's incessant canonballing. Small man syndrome. How else to explain his obsession with getting all up in David Shillington's grill (not literally - he only reaches Shilly's waist) on an annual basis in Four Nations games?

-William Hopoate quitting NRL to become a Mormon missionary. Just what God needs: another Hopoate on his hands. This is an exercise in industrial-scale pointlessness that only Ned Flanders could possibly approve of.

-Robert Lui. Ugh.

-Mal Meninga penning that inane column after the Origin series win calling elements of NSW rugby league 'filthy rats', among other things. About as novel as an SBS program with the words 'Nazi Germany' in the title.

-Matt Orford. What a disaster. This nuggety little fuck caused me and every other Raider fan (assumed) a considerable amount of pain early in the season, and as such I don't blame whoever it was that keyed his car at Bruce stadium in what was obviously a well-founded fit of maniacal resentment. His ineptitude was very hard to take, okay? That Titans Raiders game back in April? Where he inexpicably lost the ball in a scrum feed and pushed the game into golden point and then let some only slightly less inept Titan (Greg Bird, I think) cross to snatch the game? Dreadful. A defeat dished up in the incapable hands of the Titans was an especially low-point in a season littered with low points, the key one being that the Raiders suffered their longest ever losing streak. Historic horror.

-The disconcerting trend of players getting their surname inked on their body. No comment necessary.

-John Sutton. When he's not being incompetent on the field, he likes to spend his spare time being a Bra Boy. Deep though my respect is for all things Bra Boy, this guy just cannot fucking play. He's awful, it's fantastic. Watching Souths play disastrous football is one of life's great pleasures. It fires my core.

-Daly Cherry-Evans coming home from the Kangaroo tour with a massive hickey on his neck and being met at the airport by his girlfriend. The Tele provided breathless coverage of the issue as it unfolded, which remarkably did nothing to spoil his aura of apple-pie wholesomeness. (He said one of his 'teammates' gave it to him. Along with the crabs, ringworm and rickets.)

-The increasingly fickle and disposable nature of the whole NRL business. There was a dull sense of agitation and fatigue in the air this season. Players and coaches were shuffled, traded and shunted relentlessly. It was distracting. It's also an irritating and unwelcome reminder that the game is no game at all. We know this is the case, of course, but rude and ill-timed reminders (see: Manly one week after winning premiership, the poor bastards) detract from the joy of the game. We have so little opportunity for unadulterated escapism as it is, is there no place where we can retreat from this shit?

So that there is 2011 as I remember it. This has restored in me a sense that I am in charge of things - meaning my faculties, mostly, but also that all my grudges, obsessions and irritations are in order. This is comforting. It doesn't go so far as to suggests that my eye for the 2012 season will be infused with Sphinx-like focus and cathedral-like calm, but I imagine that kind of simple serenity would fucking suck.

Off Season:Off Rocker - join the dots.

Greetings, friends. Welcome to the abyss. That certain haunted quality you see in the eyes around you and, worse, the two reflected in the mirror? This is what comes of looking into the face of something horrible - THIS IS WHAT THE OFF-SEASON LOOKS LIKE. Don't be alarmed. Stick with me, and together we will familiarise ourselves with some of the symptoms and sensations you are likely to experience. For those of you who already know not of what I speak of, I hate you. I also demand that you leave and go be functional someplace else. ToddBlog is no place for the well-adjusted.

Okay. Lets proceed.

You may now be recognising the grinding monotony of life without football, i.e. life devoid of weekly displays of heaving, unbridled masculinity punctuated by explosions of violence - and finding it completely unacceptable. I know you are, honey, I know you are.

You may be finding yourself bereft of a sense of purpose. Aimless, loose-ended, potentially lethal. You're not alone. We will know each other by the yellows of our eyes and the whites of our knuckles.

You may be reflecting retrospectively on your team's season with a roughly 70/30 ratio of artery-swelling, throat-gulping pride and simmering dissatisfaction and resentment - bearing in mind that this is a sliding scale that very much takes into account ladder position, off-field and back-room shenanigans, coaching ineptitude (hey Furner, whatup fool?) season-spanning injuries (Terry Campese, word) and the like. Brace yourself. This can be a long and complicated process spanning the entire summer. Fortify your rage - because there will be rage - with a series of stiff drinks. This will allow you to take charge of your grievances as they arise; then master them, lay them to rest and move on. Ideally. Individual results may vary.

You may be shuffling around saying "bum a light?" to strangers in the streets and you don't even smoke. You may still be subject to unannounced and aneurism-inducing flashbacks of Paul Gallan's Origin heroics at the most unlikely and inappropriate of times - and if you're not then your behaviour troubles me, frankly. You may be contemplating the long run of gloom known as the off-season and thinking that perhaps a boyfriend could be a good way to fill the next few months. You may be feeling very fragmented and irritable and when people call you out on this you may be liable to bark "LOOK I'M GOING THROUGH A PERIOD OF SERIOUS MENTAL READJUSTMENT OKAY?!" into their faces from very close range.

You should be thinking of all the exotic and unknowable promise that next season holds, and reveling in the romance of the slight rushes of blood to the head and heart that this inevitably triggers. When it gets especially grim you should roll a little reel in your head of Johnathan Thurston laughing that remarkable, full-faced laugh of his, or go one better and remind yourself of his eyes and the bad things they do to you. You may find yourself investing heavily in the Australian Open. This is perfectly acceptable. Fact: Male tennis players are really, really good looking nowadays. Embrace it.

You may now find yourself unwittingly taking your problems back to their actual source, and consequently finding that the source is usually yourself. After spending many months blaming, say, Matt Orford for all the ills of the world this can be distressingly confronting. Ride it out. The off-season has long been the time when our weaknesses and deprivations are starkly revealed. To what end is entirely up to you.

Of course, there is also the very real possibility that you may not be going through any of this. I've heard rumours that well-balanced individuals whose highly capable and rational minds don't snag on and then give themselves over entirely to certain thoughts or things or themes actually do exist. Well, good for them. And by 'good for them' obviously I mean 'those bastards will get theirs soon enough'.

Ultimately, know that the football-shaped void within cannot be filled. Paper over it as best you can - barbeques, party drugs, summer fruits, the cricket, whatever works - and I'll see you on the Other Side. In other words, if anyone needs me prior to March 2012 I'll be in my bedroom, rocking.

Round 21: the Rabbitohs Rob the Raiders

August and September? Not.A.Fan. Maybe if I was a Storm supporter I would feel differently - wait, no. If I was a Storm fan I would have to like at least one of either Cameron Smith or Billy Slater, right? Forget it.

They say this is when things get exciting. I beg to differ. Tell me what's exciting about your team languishing in the bin-juices at the bottom of the ladder with the Roosers and the Eels for company and thanking god for the abominable consistency of the cellar-dwelling Titans.

This 'feeling grateful for the Titans' thing doesn't sit well with me. I don't like being indebted to teams like the Titans, it makes me feel unclean. Poor Scott Prince, though. I mean, honestly. Shit is dire. I don't even dream about David Gallop ordering the demolition of his illegal house these days. No. That would make me really, really mean. Months ago he was wearing a look more commonly seen in forced labour camps, and now it's spread to and deadened his once-twinkly eyes. Normally I'd offer advice along the lines of 'the way out is through'. Not this time. The stench of defeat that surrounds him is far too strong, and as such I spurn him in the same way that I spurn the advances of Nickleback enthusiasts, i.e. with extreme prejudice and occasional violence.

No, August and September are not for me. I much prefer the sense of potential and promise and POSSIBILITY that pervades the NRL air throughout May and June. You know, before things go all awry? Before things go to shit? Yes, better days. Happier days.

Still. It's not like I'm mired in misery. I said weeks ago that I looked forward to the Raiders; unencumbered by pesky top eight expectations or responsibilities, getting loose and lairy and playing some exciting, flamboyant footy. A backline of Josh Dugan, Blake Ferguson and Daniel-'I'm back bitches'-Vidot is an exciting prospect if youthful exuberance is your thing. I want to see them throwing it around with wild abandon and unbridled enthusiasm. Y'know, like they're onstage at Mooseheads loaded up on stilnox and whiskey sours? But no. All quiet on the baby Raider backline.

Speaking of throwing it around, how is the flaming intensity of Johnathan Thurston's sideline manner? I know, he's injured, which means that I'm supposed to be hoping he makes it back into his hot-hiding headgear and onto the field asap, right? Forget it. JT's maniacal behaviour at the Cowboys' games has been the highlight of my NRL week now for three weeks straight. Don't go hurrying back now, JT. Steady as she goes.

Now, I would find a cardboard cutout of JT endearing and alluring and endlessly charming. Note my use of 'would'. Not 'do'.. *eyes dart shiftily*.  Obviously, then, Thurston on the sidelines, dressed in tidy civilian clothes and emoting like an audience member at an Oprah taping is a sight to behold. Bitch goes bananas! The highs! The lows! JT rides them like he would a burning clutch in a stolen Datsun180b. Hard, in other words.

So, there's JT sideline and monitoring the Cowboys' every play with the ruthless intensity of a pimp. At least we have that. But, sans Paul Gallan and Micheal Ennis, well, there's a VOID now, no? Not just in the teams - it's not like I give a damn what's happening to the team dynamics of the Dogs or the Sharks, just quietly - but in the general fabric of the game.

It's not like it's a veritable snoozefest, by any means. Exciting things are afoot. I think I'm just fatigued. Burnt out. It's tough, this business of fandom. Tougher than even I knew.

I got right onboard with the Roosters and Bulldogs game last weekend, the one where both teams, but particularly the Roosters, did away with defence altogether? That was a treat. Refreshing as a mint julep served on a Southern porch. Otherwise? Aside from Luke Lewis creeping up on Alan Tongue in the 'Face Like a Smashed Crab' stakes, I'm officially on the nod.

Now. One last thing - and may I recommend reading this with gritted teeth since that's how I wrote it - I found the Bunnies' audacious comeback from 20 -0 against the Dragons to be both a personal affront to me, as a Bunny hater, and, worse, an insult to my delicate sensibilities as a Raider fan. I mean, way to overshadow our 80th minute pressure-play demolition of the Dragons last Monday! I know, I know, the Rabbits have so little, I hear you say, how can I deny them this victorious moment given their status as a team full of failed potential who have only made the finals once in the last TEN years? Well, it's because I am an irrepressible bitch, that's how. And because they stole our thunder, goddamnit. Now it looks like any old shitkicker team can come out and beat the Dragons on their day. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Raider fans were meant to marinate in the juices of that win until at least the end of the year, and Dragons fans were meant to feel the burn of unexpected defeat for many weeks to come.

The Rabbits have rendered this redundant. Thanks a bunch, Rabbitohs. RETRIBUTION AWAITS.
Right after I take this nap.