"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.