Whiskey Oscar Whiskey = Origin.. Part II

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

What a win.

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

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




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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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