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.   

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.  

Josh Dugan's Sweetness..& other stuff

Weird things are happening everywhere.

It’s a strange season. Cosmic aberrations abound.

Darius Boyd has taken to weeping in dressing sheds at half time, and probably at full time too, poor little pie.

Mitchell Pearce is picking up Pussy Cat Dolls and maybe (unsubstantiated) Nicki Minaj while on Blues training camp in Melbourne.

Luke Lewis has been stood down as captain; a masterstroke devised by Ivan Cleary and designed to simultaneously demoralise and galvanise while at the same time helping to keep Lewis’ self-esteem in check.

Des Hasler has nothing to maniacally rake his fingers through after shaving off his lion-like mane.

Krisnan Inu has abruptly been sold to the Bulldogs and may turn out to be coachable after all.

The Sharks have been winning games.

Jamal Idris has gained weight and grown so puffy that his edges resemble rising pizza dough that’s been set aside in a bowl on a windowsill. 

Todd Carney came down with a shocking case of the Yips during his Origin debut and made numerous strange and unhelpful contributions to the game.  

Brent Kite took over Billy Slater’s high-ball duties in Origin because Billy Slater couldn’t take one to save his life. His uncharacteristically tenuous command of a fairly simple skill was a welcome development. It was also totally disorientating.

The Bulldogs and the Eels have become my favourite teams to watch; for entirely different but equally rewarding reasons, including but not limited to Jarryd Hayne's lazy charm and Josh Reynolds' abrasive feistyness.

There are some unshakable certainties though.

Brett Stewart remains as aggressively petulant as ever.

Luke Lewis continues, despite his tribulations, to trail a vague air of menace and mongrel behind him.

Laurie Daly’s eyes still look like cornered rats.

The police have netted another Rooster in their wily civic net.

Chris Sandow continues to do his best imitation of somebody who can play.

Timana Tahu continues to do his best imitation of somebody who is not a psychopath.

Dane Tilse still looks like someone who is making good progress on his learn to read program but still has to move his lips to get through the longer words.

Queensland continues to win with a good amount of ease.

Josh Dugan’s sweetness and beauty continues to trouble the air around him.  

Cameron Smith is as irritating as ever.

Braith Anasta’s head is still magisterial and profound.

Dave Taylor’s head still looks like something on a spit.

Wayne Bennett’s press conference comments still have no chance of being mistaken for an author being interviewed on Radio National.

Daniel Vidot is proving to be just as much of a liability for the Dragons as he eventually became for the Raiders.

Hating on referees is now seen to be an even more legitimate and desirable pastime for players, ex-players, fans, coaches, journalists, children, livestock and judges on The Voice.

Willie Mason is still boss.

- All this is about all I ask out of life.

Kearney is a Country Song, Furner is a Fuckwit.

My brother texted me. You know how you can see the first line of text before you open it? Well the first line was ‘Furner has stood down’ –  four words that exude an undeniable romance, no? The rest of the text, not so much - ‘Dugan and Ferguson from Friday for being drunk. Another great decision’ – By ‘great decision’ I think he means to say that it was an act of startling originality and initiative that has left everyone gaping in admiration; acts which are typical of Furner.  

Fucking Furner. The man is a deadest moron. His contract should be terminated, effective immediately. Not only does he lack the moral fiber and intellectual rigour to be a first grade coach, he doesn’t even have the courtesy to conduct himself in the manner expected of struggling coaches. Stephen Kearney does this very, very well. He doesn’t just wear that look of burnt-out weariness, of sad exasperation, he fucking owns it. He looks like a man who is saddled with a losing team and all the woes of a country music song – behind in his rent, no health insurance, a car that won’t run, walks with a limp from a workplace injury, can’t afford to pay his therapist… He also always looks as if he wants a cigarette. This is all very effective. Acknowledging the looming voids elicits respect and sympathy. Matt Elliot pretended to hang himself via his tie in a Panthers press conference and we not only ate it up, we understood. Furner just becomes flintier of eye and sharper of tone as the pressure and criticism mounts. It’s all wrong.  Additionally, awfully, he looks like a cop. A tightly wound, head-kicking cop.  

Of course, Kearney doesn’t have the reassuring presence of his similarly blockheaded brother in the boardroom safeguarding his job. This means that he comes across as genuinely distressed and apologetic and frustrated. Furner just looks stupid, stubborn, smug and despotic.   

Has he confused the gurglings of his unconscious with the voice of God? It’s a common mistake.  The same thing happened to Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, to Silvio Berlusconi (BUNGA BUNGA!) and may have occurred inside the mind of Greg Inglis for a while there when he was referring to himself in the third person and flip-flopping on the Broncos and being fat and such. It happens. To wit: that pop-up weather guy from Prime, Daniel Gibson. He says the most random and bizarre things, in such an erratic fashion, and only ever fleetingly refers to either the weather or to what most of us would consider reality. He seems unhinged, but who cares? He’s a two-bit regional weatherman. Furner is a fucking coach. His idiocy and incompetence upsets a great deal of people. It’s not right.  

Daniel Gibson. Don't be fooled, he's fucking nuts.

The obvious validity of my grievances will be available for everyone to see tonight, when the rest of the Raiders (minus Dugan and Ferguson) play the Rabbitohs – who I look upon with a loathing that is slightly below bottomless. On free-to-air. In prime time. The Horror.

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.  

JoshDugan = Bambi II

That Michael Weyman statue in Moruya stirred something in me. Who knew a bronze rendering of an unattractive rugby league behemoth would speak of universal feelings and fiery passions?  It damn well stirred something in him too; did you see him go like a fucking bull at a gate to get first try in the opening minutes of last week’s game? He ran thirty metres! He looked like a moose! By the by, how the hell did I not know Weyman’s nickname was the Horse?? I found this out on the same day that I discovered there’s a Dulux paint colour called ‘Hog Bristle’. It’s the little things. It has to be, because the big things maul us to pieces. I wish his nickname had somehow been incorporated into his statue. Hooves, a mane, flared horsey nostrils, something.

So. I’ve been giving this commemorative statue issue some thought. So too have the Daily Tele. They’ve approached it from a slightly different angle, and arrived at a wildly different conclusion but, still. Nick Walshaw, I love you, you bogan. You are a top shelf sports writer. How’s this for a lead sentence: “A Nathan Hindmarsh statue would not be complete without a little bum crack showing.” Eels great Brett Kenny got involved. “You know that appearance Hindy has at the back end of games – exhausted, pants slipping down…mate, that’s him.”

The Tele also appears to have launched a campaign to give the idea traction. It’s called ‘Back the Crack’. They have, like, a logo and stuff.

I have no objection to this. Hindmarsh is a standup guy. Well, there was that time he called Michael Ennis a grub in a press conference last year, I didn’t much like that. It was unwarranted. Michael Ennis is a legend.  

Anyway, charming as this ‘Back the Crack’ business is, I like the idea of statues going up when players are still active and relevant. Plenty of time for retrospection later.  

This brings me to Josh Dugan. I think he warrants some kind of statue. Just because he’s got mad game, really. And he re-signed with the Raiders for another two years and gave playing alongside Terry Campese as one of his key reasons for staying. BALLER! He doesn’t have an animal alias, at least not in the public imagination. He does in mine, and he’s not the only one. Plenty of those rangy backs remind me of Dobermans, for example. Dobermans are fast and enjoy chasing people.

I’m thinking an interpretive rather than literal rendering could be the go – something capturing that ineffable essence – here are some of my ideas. Well, one idea, really – Dugan as deer. Behold!





In Loosely Tied Shorts We Trust. Tight Ones Too.

Rivalry round, bitches!  Gird those Loins!

I am a total whore for history. I think it's because I feel so profoundly uncomfortable and ill at ease in the here and now. The prospect of a sepia-tinged rivalry round never fails to stoke my imagination, even though I don't really buy what the NRL are selling here.


Apparently this round is meant to evoke ideas of bloodstained histories, proud heritages, simmering grudges and ongoing class divides. This is what we're supposed to believe, anyway. I don't know if any of it exists anymore, I really don't. But we allow meaning to be ascribed to things far more unbelievable than this, so I'm happy to play along and indulge in a little embellished imagining.

It would be immeasurably easier to do this if the NRL actually got into the spirit of things and abstained from blanketing the field with alcohol advertising, and maybe suspended forcing Centrebet plugs down our throats for a minute. That'd be nice, wouldn't it - imagine not being urged to have a punt FOR A WHOLE ROUND! What would they fill all the those extra minutes spent telling us the odds with, actual talk? That would be some heritage-listed shit right there. Pies in the sky, I know, I know.


Nevertheless. The Passion still rages. How else to explain these good folk?

So. I looked forward to the Roosters Rabbitohs game like some heavily armed zealot looks forward to Zion. I wanted to see if the Roosters could hold it together after last week, and, on the flipside, I really, really wanted to see the Rabbitohs come undone. Those were my two objectives. Both of these are entirely legitimate reasons to watch a game, of course. Is there a team in the NRL who are able to unravel with such spectaucular, theatrical flair as the Rabbitohs? No, no there isn't. When they are off, the Rabbitohs are operatic in their awfulness. It's a skill worth bottling.  Or baking into a cake. Mmmmm, the taste of Failure!

The Rabbitohs are that one team for me - the team that I loathe but love to watch. Not so much when they play well, but that hardly ever happens so I'm rarely troubled. The other teams I hate passionately I have no interest in watching - Broncos, Dragons, Titans, STORM, Manly - but this may be because, with the exception of the Titans, they're all highly competent and clinical sides who defend like fucking wolves in territorial takeover mode.

Just on that - this is the lowest scoring season since 1993 or some absurd date. I blame teams like those mentioned above grinding their opponents into the fucking ground with relentless, tedious tenacity. They make my eyes glaze over and my jaw lose all elasticity.


Anyway, here's what happened, according to me.

-Russell Crowe was there. I'm not gonna lie. Knowing he was on the premises definately added a certain frisson and a handful of stardust to proceedings, even if he was wearing a fug anorak. And having Todd Carney, Braith Anasta AND Russell Crowe under the same roof? Talk about star power, it nearly blew my superficial little starcrossed mind and I wasn't even there breathing their air and experiencing severe heart arrhythmia.

Crowe was in man-of-steel mode last night, meaning he did not emote freely and extravagantly as he has in the past.

-Mitchell Pearce did good from the get go. He threw a ball in the tenth minute that made me stop chewing my toasted cheese sandwich for at least twenty seconds. Sam Perrett lost it and got thrown into touch but no matter, no matter at all. Exquisite.

-Baby Burgess was out there for the Bunnies. I could tell it was him because his flanks were whiter than a water-logged corpse.

-The Bunnies started in on the bizarre play early in the piece, predictable as ever. Nathan Merritt let a Carney kick bounce in very curious circumstances. A minute later Eddy Pettybourne lost a loose ball and bellowed at - HOW DARE HE - my favourite ref Brett Suttor in frightening fashion. Audio picked up Suttor snapping peevishly at the other ref that "he's swearing at me and I don't appreciate it". Neither would I, Brett, neither would I.

-Things started going a little haywire from here on in. The Chooks repeatedly rip open the Rabbits like they're casually segmenting an orange. John Sutton does nothing much other than prowl around looking surly as hell. Ex-outlaw sandwich technician Jake Friend works like a maniac and wins my approval. The Roosters play some promising footy but fail to make anything of it. No-one seems at all interested in giving Greg Inglis the ball. He looks incredible, by the way. Staying well away from the white bread, by the look of it. I don't despise him nearly as much as I used to, I can't figure out why, and I worry briefly that this will knock on to the other players I hate - will I start feeling a dim affection for them too? This is not a line of thought I want to continue with, so I cease and desist.

Bra Boys represent.

Chris Sandow, represent.

Second Half.

-Braith ("It's Braith, Bitch") Anasta blows his stack and several fuses when the Bunnies score off a dubious pass that looks blatantly forward. Braith blowing up gives me an enormous sense of well being. I feel like he'd be the guy you'd want with you in a hospital emergency room or any place where the causing of a scene in order to get urgent attention is necessary. No wonder Jodi Gordan wants him to put a ring on it. WHO WOULDN'T? is my unanswerable question.

-A bit later, in the corner of the screen, Braith plays the ball and Chris Sandow gets up on his tippytoes and pushes his hand into Braith's head with what looks to be a fair bit of force. Braith makes a lunge and I get ready to start miming uppercuts. Nothing comes of it, sadly. That is a fight I would climb over my mother to see, trust.

-The 70s called Steve McQueen, they want their hairstyle back.

-The Roosters keep touching and hugging each other, it's hot.

-Shannon McPherson bangs heads with Frank Paul Nuasala and comes up with a massive crevass-like gash over his eye. He gets several metres of white bandage and an entire roll of electrical tape wrapped around it, and while that happens we are treated to at least four super slow-mo replays of the collision, from every conceivable angle.

-Souths sabotage themselves every time momentum swings their way. This falls squarely into the 'what I like to see' category.

-Sandow struggles out of a tackle and unloads into Shaun Kenny Dowell with tiny fists of fury. He is a runt, so he looks ridiculous and terrier-like. SKD, who is tall and lithe, appears untroubled by the flurry of punches being thrown somewhere below him, in the direction of his mid section. I once saw a Rooster fan with a sign that said SKD ROW. Brilliant.

Pearce & SKD & Carney have happyclappy times last year. This seems a long time ago.

-The Roosters respond to Sandow's inanity by taking the ball the length of the field to score in the next set. Cut to John Lang writhing in his sideline seat in obvious and unadulterated anguish. Doubley brilliant.

-Anthony Mitchell is finally injected into the game in the 68th minute. I approve of this because he's adorable and he looks awful pretty in his new Roosters colours. I thought when he left the Eels he might leave a gaping, handsome-man-sized hole in the team but Reni Matuia sailed right on in after his two year suspension and refilled the hot quota to capacity. Well played, coach Kearney, well played.

-Croker - I have no idea what his first name is - drives his whole head into Nate Myles' torso in a tackle. He gets flung back and hits the ground like a felled tree, flat on his back, lights extinguished. Everybody holds their breath, everybody wonders if he's broken his enormous neck ala Ben Ross. The medi-van arrives to ferry him off but he hauls himself to his feet like a bear recovering from a tranquilser-dart induced coma and lumbers off to the side. Everybody exhales.

-The game goes to golden point. Frenzied scenes in the stands.

-The awful pretty Anthony Mitchell gets KO'd and departs for Disneyland. When he makes it to his feet he reels and staggers drunkenly and a minute later, when he gets the ball from a scrum the effects of his concussion become clear because as well as his eyes being rolled well back in his head, he passes to Jason Ryles instead of, oh, say, Anasta or Carney, both of whom are waiting to receive the ball and win the game. Ryles is forced to try for field goal and throws up his hands in astonishment and disbelief the minute the ball leaves his boot. Mitchell remains serene, i.e. OUT.OF.IT.

-Chris Sandow brings Russell Crowe to his knees when he pots a 49 metre field goal. This is an unfortunate outcome, and one I wish to forget immediately.

I managed to do this because the good times kept coming. Was that a night for rugby league lovers OR WHAT? If Gus Gould had been commentating he would have melted down from the excitement of it all  - he would have seen me my heart arrhythmia and raised me a stroke, for reals.

Anyway, more golden point out at Penrith, more heart-in-mouth stuff.

Luke Lewis got caned and caused me to murmur "oohh, mein schatz" - 'my precious', in other (English) words, Jarryd Hayne had a blinder at five-eighth and Reni Matuia looked reptilian and scary and hot all at the same time. He has mad skills, does Reni. And cold snake eyes that burn, too.

Anyway, what happened was that Parramatta failed to rage against the dying of the light and Penrith snuffed them out and as a result Nathan Hindmarsh's smile after the game - his 300th - had a somewhat forced, 'fuck this shit' quality to it. This was a shame.

Still, he managed to maintain the tradition of repeatedly losing his loosely tied shorts and, for me, that was more historically significant than any rivalry round or anniversary occassion.