Major Todd To Ground Control

It's a funny thing. Toddy getting the sack kind of feels like I got the sack too. Is this my narcissistic personality disorder rearing it's golden head? Probably. Anyway, It's been terribly destabilising for me, all this business. I can only imagine Toddy's turmoil - is it any wonder he's fratenising with Lara Bingle? HOWEVER. Soon as he's spotted mixing it with Kyle Sandilands we will know that rock bottom has been reached and from there the only thing to be done is to call his mother - for the love of all that is good and holy won't somebody CALL LEANNE!

In the interim, I just feel terrible for Toddy. My anguish is not even eased by the obvious and kind of awesome assumption that someone, somewhere, throughout the course of all this slowly unraveling unpleasantness, uttered the words "we need to talk about Todd". Word, bitches, word.

Toddy, you is my favourite rebel, second only to Lil Wayne. Sorry, but he's got you beat. Anyone who leaves jail looking like this (y'know, as opposed to looking like Johnny Spit or a version thereof - see below)

and rolls up to court looking like this (see below) is okay with me. And by 'okay' I mean 'god', obviously.

The renegade attitude can take a person a long way. To court and to jail, yes, and all the way to France, even. Maybe.

Do most people still think he needs a punch in the dick? I'm a trifle out of touch down here in Victoria. People philosophise about the Pies and the Cats round these parts and have only the vaguest of understanding of NRL. This understanding extends to the loose acknowledgement that league players are very big, very violent and very stupid. The first two are givens, and the latter I can only assume is due to the relentless forward motion of the line in NRL, which I guess can appear a touch simplistic to the typically dim witted AFL afficionado. I mean, there can't be any other reason why they'd think league players are damned fools, so...

It has also come to my attention that the rural AFL fans around here think NRL is kind of ,well, gay. It's the scrum thing. They can't get past it. It captures their imaginations like nothing else. Time and time again I have found myself defending the scrum as a legitimate way of restarting the game to some semi-demented, homophobic hayseed - and I don't even entirely understand the purpose of the scrum myself, other than appearing to provide a convienient platform for refs to rouse on players who are getting under their skin over the course of the game.

Anyways. Precisely what constitutes a failure is a nebulous and elusive thing - unless of course you're Matt Orford, in which case shit is crystal - but even going down in flames Toddy is just as boss as ever, isn't he?

I just find him sweetly absurd and endlessly endearing. I can't understand people who huff and froth in self-righteous indignation about his various misdemeanors and indiscretions. Don't they remember when they too found out everything they had learnt about life thus far made them totally unsuited to cope with it? Have they forgotten their own dark nights of the soul?

Life can be terribly unkind. People too. 

Where's a merciful, forgiving God when you need one? No, not Nick Politis - he's busy taking sun in Mykonos. Not Noyce, either, he's busy being a dumbshit. And Gallop? He's too tied up with engineering the Stewart brothers' downfall (according to the Stewart brothers) to fulfil any duty of care toward our wayward Toddy.

With a mind like his, were the Roosters a good club for Toddy? He appears not to have been too happy there - but he appears not to have been too happy anywhere. I know the feeling. It comes from pain, damnation and the impossible. It gnaws and eats and you shove against it if you can. And when you can't? You go to ground, you ride it out. Alternatively, you follow up a trip to a tattoo parlour with a night of dedicated public drinking with two teammates during an alcohol-ban. Hey, whatever it takes. Pity about the photograhers, though.

Look, I don't buy the whole 'he's out of control' school of thought. I'm more down with the 'he's doing what every young Aussie guy does - he just happens to have a media profile' angle. He's young and handsome-hot, he has plenty of money and he lives in the city - he is the very quintessence of your typical early twenties type guy. In fact, I wager that he has a more wholesome sway than most. He's country, ya'll. (Remember that was Britney's defense when she was caught driving in LA with her baby on her lap - "I'm from Louisiana - I'm country, ya'll"? I mean, no further questions, your honour.)

What the fuck are your early twenties for if not lurching from crisis to crisis and reeling around in Hungry Jacks outlets at 5am?

Okay, so he may have something of a vacuum where his conscience ought to be but this is a trifling matter between him, his conscience and his Roosters teammates. Braith Anasta wanting to horsewhip him? By all means.

But the screeds of rage and invective insult from much of the media? It upsets me. I meet it with a short, sharp and succinct "get fucked". And Toddy? I welcome him back to the sweet milky bosom of an uncertain future with weary fatalism, rum, and rohypnol.