Canberra Raiders 2014: Die Harder

My friend supports the Broncos. This automatically renders him incapable of understanding the slaughterhouse of the soul struggle of supporting a second-tier team. He is also a Queenslander. Frankly, seeing these sentiments strung together on a screen like this is making me question how we are friends at all. Thin ice!

Anyways, because no discussion of the Raiders is complete without reference to the astonishingly innovative ways in which they hemorrhage young talent, and because I still look back on said hemorrhaged talent with a honey-glazed glow I guess I was moaning some wretched sentiment regarding Carney or Monaghan or Ferguson or possibly, depending on the extent to which he had already inflamed me with his airy upper-echelon assuredness, Travis Waddell. I can’t remember the details exactly. It was only two days ago but my mind has a tendency to slip a gear when it comes to the Raiders. Mental health experts would have me believe that this, much like my night terrors, is a side effect from suffering under the sustained weight of terminal failure and disappointment.

 ‘Oh,’ he said, with the inane breeziness common to breakfast TV presenters, ‘you should be used to it by now.’ Of course, this is exactly the type of innately annoying and unsympathetic thing a Bronco supporter would say. Storm fans too, tenfold. The Gina Reinharts of the NRL. Totally out of touch.

Anyway. I told him it never stops hurting. Because it doesn’t. But I enjoyed the sound and sensation of saying something as arresting as this so I added an apocalyptic, cinema-trailer-narrator-type element to my delivery – IT NEVER. STOPS. HURTING.  

Because just like life in general, there is always another punishment, another casual outrage, another loss.
Well, so what. We die harder.

 

Cameron Smith's Catastrophic Plan

It started off so innocently. Tell me something that doesn’t.

First it was Horse Weyman, for reasons which are still unclear, but, okay. He seems harmless, you let it slide, you’ve made a life out of ‘letting it slide’, after all.   

Next, G.I. Well, you can understand it; I’m coming from a place of respect, he’s a leading proponent of devastation and now that he no longer looks like Precious he has a certain sleek allure and has anyone actually ever made a successful tackle on him I mean one that he didn’t casually reel out of? I think not.

Now, though, Cameron Smith? If I keep this up there will be no one left to loath. Where the fuck will it END? What, with me liking Jamie Soward?? That is the last frontier. As far as I am concerned, if I cross that terrible threshold it’s finished I’m finished this blog is finished and I will surrender myself via voluntary admission to the nearest locked ward for some electroshock therapy and Vaseline-related violations. And that would not do. That wouldn’t do at all. Vaseline is vile stuff. 

I’ve always enjoyed detesting Cameron Smith. Now that I don’t, it feels like a loss.

The son of a bitch made a clean sweep this year. Captaining the Storm to a premiership, a seventh straight Origin series and 2 from 2 Kangaroo victories over the Kiwis. The only other players to achieve this are Lockyer and Langer and they’re Broncos and if there’s one team that annoys me more than the Storm the Rabbitohs and the Tigers it’s the Broncos.

Once I started empathising with him it was all over. It always is. Empathy is an irritatingly powerful tool for dismantling prejudice, ill-will and irrational dislike. The empathising began when I started watching him closely. I can’t remember when, or why, I started doing this. I can’t remember when the sight of poplar trees dropping their leaves started setting off my preoccupation with time and death that has come out of nowhere in the last two years. I can’t remember when I vowed to never read Ulysses because to read it is to condone it, or when I decided it was ethically okay to eat Hungry Jacks but not McDonalds. You just do stuff and say stuff until gradually and then suddenly it’s entangled within you and then it is you.

So I watch him, doing work, going about his terrible business all calm and laser-like and perfect and I know I FUCKING KNOW what is going on in his head with every play every tackle every kick every run every metre and most of all with every idiot opponent he encounters and the song lyric equivalent of this is that they are all, to paraphrase, microscopic cogs in his catastrophic plan designed and directed by his red right hand and also Craig Bellamy.

Cameron Smith Making Me Say Wow Now

The Storm.

Sons of bitches know how to win a grand final.

What the hell kind of performance was that?

I don’t know. And critiquing high-caliber, clinical playing is not my forte what with the Raiders thing, you know…but I liked it, I loved it.  

It felt like a grand final. Last year’s was such an interminable affair that the only thing I can recall is Steve Matai’s bison- like head getting opened up right above the eye, a big scoop-n-split that sent blood flowing artfully down his face. Other than that I got nothing and I’m none the poorer for it. Let’s move on. Back to Sunday. To headier times.

To Joey Johns THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE RUGBY LEAGUE WORLD behaving adorably even when ESPECIALLY WHEN being dispatched from a Blackhawk helicopter, fleeing from the Apocalypse Now-esque blade situation and fighting his way through the hurricane-strength wind that looked for all the world like it was going to tear away his suit pants and jacket in a spectacular wardrobe malfunction.

Speaking of tear-away pants how is this seedy photo of Channing Tatum from back when he was a stripper?

Anyway, the game.   

There was a good stink that caused Gus Gould to employ the words ‘brouhaha’, ‘melee’ and ‘fracas’, as well as the phrases ‘an allegation of biting’ and ‘they’re not exchanging Christmas cards’.

What he didn’t say was words to the effect of

“Allow me to give you a brief lesson in the human condition. Humans are about 70% water, and the rest is all guts, bone and minerals. But, although we are a highly evolved animal, we sometimes experience slippage and revert to raw savagery. James Graham appears to have suffered such a lapse by appearing to catch hold of Billy Slater’s ear with his teeth and appearing to tug at it with a good amount of force and barbarism.”

He didn’t have to say it. The implication was clearly there.   

There was the Storm being as clinical and cold of heart as ever. It would have been a harrowing, harrowing experience for Dogs supporters. They just didn’t get a goddam look in. Ever. It even depressed me for twenty minutes or so before I pulled myself together enough to revel in the splendour of the Storm and the stricken looks of the blue-and-white-wearing crowd as the experience became increasingly unbearable. Poor bastards. In football we try to grasp a feeling outside of ourselves and our tarnished existences. This is preposterous because very few of us, proportionally, follow a winning team. In reality, football, like life itself, is mostly about endurance and suffering.

Aside from or in spite of the cruel and awful nature of existence from which there is no escape outside of death my wish-list from a previous post was pretty well fulfilled. I take satisfaction from this, because if not this then what?..

1.Craig Bellamy got the Gatorade dumped on him. From behind. He shook his fist and grinned and looked a.) a bit like Mickey Rourke and b.) like he wanted to crash-tackle the culprits and grind them playfully into the ground. He looks so fun, what with his air of salaciousness. I would love to get loaded with him.  

- ‘Insiders’ who were at the Novotel after the game reported that Bellamy “was merrier” than any time they could remember, and that Billy Slater had “forgotten the bitten ear”.

2.Cameron Smith looked happy and relieved and gave a rousing, statesman-like speech. How can he be so laconic and so slick at the same time? He’s terribly talented. Authentic, too. This is where Cooper Cronk is lacking. His Clive Churchill medal acceptance speech sounded totally computer generated. When he addressed the team with a stilted “and to the playing group – you are my mates” it sounded exactly like those drooling aliens on The Simpsons when they had designs on becoming president and tried to talk as earthlings would.    

Anyway, Cameron Smith impressed me deeply and I really haven’t shaken off the sensation and it’s a little disconcerting but really, how good is he? Very, is the inevitable and undeniable answer. Very.

“I’ve been asked a few times whether this one would be sweeter,” Smith said after the game. “I guess there’s a small spot that says yes.”

The Dogs are Having a Party! And Bellamy is Invited!

One more game, the Big One, and then the fall of civilisation i.e. THE OFF SEASON. Again. Christ. Cultural bankruptcy beckons.

Well, in the meantime, I hope it’s not rational opinion, objective analysis and up to the minute betting odds you’re here for. If it is, you are clearly lost. You are probably one of those dickheads who are not only inept navigators but are also unable under any circumstances to ask for directions due to your overinflated ego in which case I will offer unsolicited directions STRAIGHT TO COOPER CRONK’S WEBSITE coopercronk.com. Douches will find it informative and inspiring. Everyone else will find it squirmy-funny and unsettling on a sliding scale. Exactly how unsettling you find it will depend on your tolerance levels for new age rhetoric and raging narcissism. Mine, as it turns out, are low. Lower than Clint Eastwood’s balls, if you will.

I look forward to the day when I can invest emotionally in a grand final. Hoo boy won’t that be something? In the meantime, we have the Bulldogs playing the Storm. And while it’s a shame the Raiders or the Sharks didn’t get through (and what a final that would have been and one day will be god willing please god), it’s fantastic the Rabbits and the Broncos didn’t make it either. One hand washes the other, and so forth.

In any case, I’m not too concerned with who wins. I see pros and cons for each outcome.

For example, on the one hand I would love to see Craig Bellamy getting a giant bucket of Gatorade dumped over his head. Which indicates I would like the Storm to win.

On the other hand, I would love to see confetti and shredded raffle tickets mashed with glitter and whatever other garish pulpy matter they void onto the field and the heads of the victors from the air above rain down all over Michael Ennis. He does such a good job, not only playing a vigorous and antagonistic brand of football and captaining a team but in keeping track of what make and model of car every player from every other club drives so that he can cut any opponents brake lines at only a moment’s notice. That’s a real one-percenter. Take note, aspiring sociopaths. I would like to see him holding that big trophy thing aloft while grinning toothily and I would like  knowing that all the while the hamster wheel inside his head was still turning, turning….

If this is indeed the outcome, let it be known that the real reason for the Bulldogs’ hot blaze of glory has little to do with Des Hasler’s scientific and analytical style of coaching and penchant for making players ingest imported calf-blood milkshakes and everything to do with the fact that HE CREATED A NEW TEAM SONG PARTWAY THROUGH THE YEAR TO ‘MAKE IT RELEVANT’ AND WHEN THE PLAYERS, WHO ALL COLLABORATED ON THE LYRICS (AS IS EVIDENT) BELT IT OUT THEY ARE LED BY FRANK PRITCHARD ON GUITAR. It climaxes with the following:

“The Dogs are having a party,

The Dogs are having a party,

And (insert defeated team) are in the bin!”

Well, we’ll see about that. Literally. On Sunday.

Anyway, continuing with the one hand washes the other theme, I’d also love to see Cameron Smith really inconsolably upset, stricken, ashen, bereft, but, by the same token, I’d quite like to see him pleased and at peace too. I like to despise him and enjoy despising him but every time I see him on panel shows and hear him give his lucid analysis I end up thinking he’s great and admiring him for the obvious ice that runs through his veins. Is he going to make a great coach one day OR WHAT? It is my personal dream (not the only one, but one of several) that he coach the Raiders one day. To September glory, obviously. It is important to have long-range goals and dreams. That’s what the professionals tell me. The ones with framed qualifications hanging on their walls. But I digress. The other thing that impresses me about Cameron Smith, aside from him being very cool and very controlled and thus the ultimate big game player is that he is a great lover of history. I understand this to mean that he spends his free time on elaborate civil war reenactments and listening to Wagner’s operas at very high volume. Blake Ferguson and Sandor Earl spend theirs at Time Zone. Playing Guitar Hero.

Actually, I don’t really need to see Cameron Smith happy at all. I just remembered all those Origins. I’ve seen quite enough. Too much, as it were.  

This brings me back to Bellamy. Everything about the Storm brings me back to Bellamy. He’s the only thing I actually like about the entire outfit, including but not limited to the playing roster past and present, the shady fiscal history of the club and their associated moral transgressions, their colours, their mascot, their name, the name of their home ground, their wrestling skills and subsequent talent for slowing the ruck down to a slow benzodiazepine crawl, their staunch structure and their annoying and frequent habit of winning games with ease. What’s to like?

Well, Bellamy.

Bellamy coiled like a reptile in the coaching box.

Bellamy radiating a barely suppressed rage.

Bellamy contorting his elasto-silicone face into all manner of gruesome and painful expressions.

Bellamy inflicting irreparable damage on Mount Franklin bottles.

Bellamy rolling his eyes in their 360-degree-gyro-reticulated sockets.

Bellamy extending his telescopic hyper-stalk neck to full height.

Bellamy conveying the impression of a man perpetually on the edge of violent explosion.

Bellamy actually exploding violently.

Bellamy.

Recently Bellamy said that, retrospectively, he finds his behavior in the coaches box “quite embarrassing at times. [But] not all the time.”

“I don’t particularly worry about it too much but I don’t like it when they see me going off and saying the things I shouldn’t be saying. It is embarrassing for me and a little alarming for people at home watching.”

It’s not alarming, Craig. It’s awesome. Don’t change.

The Raiders Rattle The Storm.

The inner flutterings of my intuition told me the Raiders were going to win this game. I texted my brother, I told him “I predict an upset, same as last year!” “Not me” he wrote back. My hold on the real world has always been slight at best, but something tells me I am right and he is wrong and I serenely ignore his suggestion, and everyone else’s (except, I imagine, the lovely and ever-loyal Laurie Daley) that the Raiders will be badly beaten.

The game starts but I am making custard in the kitchen. I don’t know what I miss but it probably involves Cooper Cronk rushing around being authoritative and yappy.

Raiders post the first points, ten minutes in. Blake Ferguson does sensational athletic things under the high ball, comes up with it, slams it down, leaps up and slams the ball away. Huzzah. Croker converts. 6-0.

Ferguson is playing with two spectacular black eyes. I note with interest that he has never looked better. He looks less like a half-formed amphibian and more Tyler Durden.

Reece Robinson gets a ball to Sandor Earl and Earl gets over. It’s pronounced “Shannnndor”. Is that Celtic? Those stars on his thighs don’t look very Celtic. I remember sitting in Bruce Stadium in 2010, when he was on the wing for Penrith, staring at that star-spangled thigh and thinking it was one of the more horrendous assemblages of tattoos I had seen. This was back when Joel Monaghan was on the wing for the Raiders. It was a good time, 2010. You sat right down close to the sideline so you could hear the hits and the things that people called out to Monaghan – nice things, because Monaghan was nice – and often Monaghan, because he was right there, would turn and look and acknowledge the shout-out. Usually it was just “HEY MONAGHS!!!” but once it was “HEY MONAGHS YOU’RE A FUNNY FUCK!!” which was astute, because he was, and didn’t that sense of humour prove to be his ultimate undoing - which, as the (my) theory goes, marked the general decline in morale and cohesion at the Raiders, the results of which we are still seeing, circa 2012. But I digress.

Cameras cut to Mal Meninga sitting broodily in some lofty box. The commentators announce he has been in the Raiders dressing rooms. Doing what, I wonder? I have no time and no appetite for Mal Meninga. I would rather hear that Ricky Stuart had been in the dressing room, frankly. Croker’s conversion fails; he sends a large lump of grass a good way up into the air though. 10-0.

Play resumes and Croker gets a flick-pass away. Several seconds later Brandy Alexander says words to the effect of “Croker raced up and made first contact.” This is all very, very strange. Unfamiliar.

Fifteen minutes in the Storm get their first real chance to post points. The Storm post points. This, this is familiar. Momentum shifts and swings towards the Storm. Doom-tinged doubt creeps in to my mind. This is exactly what these Raiders cannot handle. Defensive tests unnerve them, they unravel. Earl, who has just been tossed into touch a moment prior, gets up out of the line to shut things down for Melbourne on the fifth. I exhale. Relief. After defending their own line Canberra have a good set of six. My god. Also, they’re offloading. I’ve never seen the Raiders offload en masse like this. Twenty five minutes in and their completion rate is 9 from 10. My god in heaven.

The Storm make an error. Reece Robinson passes long to Eddrick Lee, who juggles, re-gathers and crosses for a try in the corner. Croker, gaping like a hooked fish, misses by a mile. 14-6.

Next thing, while I’m occupying myself wondering whether the Raiders can get through a solid set after posting points, they are occupying themselves by immediately going ahead and posting some more points. Quick hands from Josh McCrone to Ferguson, who busts a tackle, fends like T-Rex and links with Earl – TRY!

Next, Anthony Quinn knees Ferguson in the head. It flattens him. Eventually he wobbles to his feet.

In the 39^th minute Justin O’Neil gets a second try for the Storm, on Canberra’s left side. The problem side. Fun fact that is really no fun at all: Canberra has conceded 34 tries through their left hand side this year. Their left hand side defense gapes like a ripped circus tent, basically.

Halftime, 20-12. As they run off Mark Gasnier looms up and opines of Canberra “they’re actually doing a Melbourne Storm on the Melbourne Storm!” He gets this out without fucking it up and is clearly very pleased with himself. It still astonishes me that anyone would give Mark Gasnier a microphone, but at this time I’m feeling generous and find myself murmuring something like “good on you Gaz”, which is neither a sentence nor a sentiment I am familiar with. This is an unusual night all round.

Still, I’m not comfortable. To be a Raiders fan is to be in a perpetual state of discomfort. They can’t be trusted. They are famously unreliable. Also, the Storm are irritatingly reliable. And they love a strong second half. I picture them in the dressing room, being re-programmed with Bellamy’s exclusive and secret ‘retreat, evaluate, recalibrate’ software. The thought makes me feel extremely edgy.

The second half starts. A ball from McCrone leaves the Storm looking a long way short in defense and gets Eddrick Lee over for his second try. Lee was on track to becoming a basketball superstar until advice from an uncle swayed him towards football. He’s fucking massive; a big, lanky, loose assemblage of limbs and circuitry. Croker misses the conversion. No offence, but can’t someone else do it? Actually, offence. He stinks. 24-12.

Cronk kicks a 40/20. This is not good. This is very, very bad.

The Raiders hold the Storm back, but only barely. They get the ball back and advance it up the field with an ease and aptitude that I have never seen.

With 56 minutes gone Croker scores a try from a Joel Thompson one-arm offload, much to the distress of Cronk, who is screaming maniacally at Strom players to slide across, slide across! The Storm are ruffled! Less surprisingly, so is the terminally inept Mark Gasnier. He interjects to observe that “three repeat sex – pardon me – sets - for the Raiders here…” I get up to light some incense.

Next, McCrone throws a long looping ball out to Earl. Another try! Another missed conversion.

Shaun Fensom makes a bust and sets off down the field like a great thundering bison.

Robinson gets a ball to Lee, who makes it a hat trick of tries, which in turn makes a lump form in my throat. Croker, who looks like he has a perpetual lump in his throat, makes the conversion. This takes it to 40-12, the largest margin the Storm have ever been beaten by at AAMI Park. Audacious. We really have no business beating the Storm at all, let alone at their home ground, and by a record breaking margin. I relax and begin to revel in this unaccustomed brilliance.

The siren goes. David Furner winks at some unseen person from the coaching box. Such is my mood that I find this rakishly charming. Alluring, even. Winning throws a golden glow over what would otherwise be a sleazy and lowbrow gesture from a man as flinty as Furner. Ferguson and Earl do a special handshake, one with twitching fingers and pumping motions. This is also charming.

Gasnier, chatting amiably to a peevish Jason Ryles, says that the Storm were ‘uncharacteristical.’ This is not the first time I have heard Gasnier use this non-word. I can’t help but feel that the leap from leaving an absurdist 4 a.m. voicemail message to sideline commentary has been something of a stretch for Gasnier. He is far better suited to the former, I feel. I’m no expert, but surely that must be the greatest voicemail message in Australian history. The flashes of lewd, Wild-like wit are unparalleled in their excellence.

Finally, cameras cut to the Raiders dressing sheds. They’re all in a big circle clapping and hoo-haa-ing and belting out the team song and then Eddrick Lee breaks ranks, moves into the centre of the circle, drops to the floor and STARTS DOING THE WORM.

Run Ben Barba Run!

Yeah Nah The Boys..

Making a really negative blog post is great. It relieves me of my many stresses. Kicking someone repeatedly in the head while wearing a pair of jack boots probably has the same effect. Or so I imagine. I don't know. I'm a pacifist. The Von Trapp to your Nazi. And if the Von Trapps taught us anything it is that Nazis can be thwarted by girls in pinafores. The End.  

With this in my more relaxed and at ease mind I can now turn my attention to several highlights of round 16.  

The second greatest thing this week was Ben Barba’s man of the match performance in Mackay.

The best thing was that there was a game in Mackay, between the top two teams. I have spent a lot of time in Mackay and the surrounding hinterlands. It’s one of those sensational places that manages to be both offensive and charming, albeit charming in an abrasive, amphetamine-edged way. It’s rude and rough and full of mean looking men who work in the mines and their mean looking dogs and women.

Once I spent a night in a rainforest shack getting wasted on rotgut wine with Scott Prince’s mother. CD’s of Guido Hatzis’ greatest radio moments boomed on continuous loop all night, at her insistence. Not my thing, but Guido Hatzis is a lifestyle choice.  

Anyway, Mackay is Ben Barba’s hometown, and the place he referenced in 2011 when he said that as a youth he developed his step by running from cops. He is now, according to every section of the media, an official “excitement machine”. I think the last person to be labeled an excitement machine was Josh Dugan. He's busted a lot nowadays. He still makes me coo like a dove though, which is nice.

Ben Barba has excitement up the wazoo. He was awesome in Mackay against the Storm, he whipped the crowd into frenzy, and he blew kisses and waggled his finger like G.I. used to do and afterwards he said the whole experience was “the best thing besides my kids being born.”

Elsewhere, in a game preceded by Mad Dog McDougal waving a wooden spoon around obnoxiously on the sideline (Matty Johns, later – “What’s happened to McDougal, has he got stuck in a dryer or something – he’s Benjamin Button – he’s shrinking!”) Nathan Hindmarsh pretty much single-handedly steered the Eels to a victory. Now there’s a sentence I’ve written never. Hindy was Paul Gallen-esque. AND it went down to golden point and we have all seen far too many heartbreaking scenes of a heartbroken Hindy after far too many golden point losses, I really didn’t know how many more he could take before he went on a shooting spree or something. The situation at Parramatta these last few years have pummeled a once robust and irreverent Hindy into an apologetic, barely identifiable corpse. On the weekend he rose up from the ashes of his faded glory and fucking flew. Here’s what he said about his man of the match performance: “I just thought bugger it I’m just gonna enjoy meself”. He’s a true treasure.

Another standout event was the courts stripping Josh Dugan of his driving license. We’ve been through this before. We will probably go through this again.  He is in the middle of a vivid and impressionable youth, after all – surely he is entitled to scatter witches hats at roadwork sites and speed through school zones extravagantly? (I’m not saying he did this. What I am saying though is that I would do this (below) if he were to pass me in the street.)

After his court appearance he said that he is much smarter for it. Footballers say the stupidest things. Where do they learn these phrases? At what point in their careers are they taught not to make unconstructive remarks? Around the same time they are taught to preface every remark – particularly if they are responding to a compliment relating to their existence as an individual – with “the boys”,  and preferably with “yeah nah the boys…”

Here’s how it works: (Picture a post-match sideline interview, and prepare to gain no insight whatsoever into the interviewed footballer’s mind.)

“Ben Barba that was an outstanding length of the field run you pulled off there in the 76^th minute, you slipped past at least five Storm tacklers and chasers, some would say you’re slippery as a greased pig and twice as fast..”

“Yeh nah the boys put in a real solid effort we trained well all week and we’re just happy to come away with the win.”

There are three components to this sentence that basically constitute everything a footballer has to say in interviews, ever, no matter how hard the interviewer tries to get the player to say something interesting or expansive about themselves. And because the interviewers are invariably box headed ex-player buffoons - Gasnier, Tallis, Fitler, KIMMORLEY - who spent their playing careers making the same evasive comments they never try particularly hard anyways. Also, they are all invariably dim-witted. Michael Parkinson, your job is safe.

Let’s break it down.

1.       “Yeh nah the boys”. This negates any suggestion of individual effort, excellence or indeed existence. It just shuts it right the fuck down. Next! 

2.      “We trained well all week”. This is like me saying “I looked at Facebook well all week”. Of course they train well. They’re professionals. It’s what they do. In the same way, of course I look at Facebook well. I’m between jobs. What else would I do?

3.      “We’re just happy to come away with the win”. This one is readily interchanged with “We’re just happy to get the two points”, or “We’ll take the two”. Usage usually depends on the nature of the win. If it was an ugly, hardscrabble, or offensive match or one that the victors had no business winning but somehow did, they’ll go the “We’ll take the two” route – see: Paramatta Eels. “We’re just happy to come away with the win” is used after a confident, decisive or spectacular victory, such as Manly’s 38 point thrashing of the Roosters on Sunday. “We’re just happy to get the two points” lies somewhere in the middle of these two. Usage is suggestive of inconsistent, erratic, thrilling or outlandish passages of play and a score that seesaws extravagantly and unpredictably over the eighty minutes - see: Wests Tigers, South Sydney Rabbitohs.

Anyways, moving on from the assertion that footballers are robotic, witless and mentally slow on most fronts, let’s now return to Josh Dugan, who is obviously none of these things (coochie-coo!!)

Here is an actual visual image of what went down when I was there to watch him walk out of the courthouse in Canberra after he lost his license in 2010, bearing in mind, of course, that I am the Hoda to his Beyonce.

He is becoming as thickset as a steer now. This is sad, but inevitable. The NRL: Turning fawns to fat necked steers since 1909.

Now, turning from steers to snakes: 

Obviously I still think Brett Snake Stewart needs to pull his head in and get a hold of himself before further mental disintegration and hair loss occurs. But that article in Good Weekend about his accuser’s father and family background had the unwelcome effect of making me feel great sympathy for him.

Which is annoying.

In my experience sympathy leads to empathy and from there it’s a slippery slope that usually leads to eventual feelings of warmth good will and camaraderie.

When it comes to Brett Stewart, none of these are feelings that I need to feel.   

This one time I found out all this stuff that this girl I had not been able to handle for years had been going through with her wayward miscreant of a boyfriend and baby daddy. The sort of galling, how DARE he stuff that would make you want to throw things against walls. (As it happened, she did throw things against a wall – and by ‘things’ I mean ‘him’. I know. How awesome. Go girl.) Anyway, all this had the strange effect of making me feel great sympathy and a good deal of tenderness and good will toward her. It was a strange sensation. Unfamiliar. I waited for it to pass but it didn’t.

Is this now what I have to look forward to with Brett Stewart? Fuck. Football is supposed to be simple. Love the Raiders, hate the Rabbitohs, respect the Storm. END OF FUCKING STORY.