Round 23 - The Thinning of the Herd

Hello reader!

Has the endlessly optimistic drip drip drip talk of the top eight so unstabilised your judgement that you actually began to believe those poxy teams who have played poorly all year would burst through the ladder’s log jam and assume their rightful spot in the eight?

Ho! I suppose you thought Mark Latham could be prime minister back in 2004, too, DIDN’T YOU? I don’t blame you. I can’t. I believed in Latham too. What can I say; it’s easy to get caught up.

You get caught up, you get let down. This is the way the world works. It’s physics, or such is my understanding of physics. Of course, getting caught up inevitably leads to heartbreak. Oh well. What doesn’t? You follow a team. You feel their struggle. Know their pain. Invest in their future. Watch them fall. Tough shit to you.            

Life is a series of vile disappointments and injustices. Supporters of middling to terrible teams understand this instinctively. Raider fans, for example, do not need explained to them the annual slow dawning of disappointment that descends with a slow blackness and makes you feel hollow, bereft.

Well reader, perhaps this weekend has cleared up any questions you may have had, snuffed out any lingering, candle-in-the-wind hopes you may have held? Let’s hope so.

For the Roosters, the Warriors and the Dragons, certain rude truths have become crashingly apparent. The Panthers and the Eels are engaged in a titillating ‘avoid the wooden spoon’ dance down in the bottom-of-the-ladder bin-juice. The Titans and the Tigers and the Raiders and the Knights are tussling for the top eight. It feels futile, but the same futility must scratch at the heart of every malcontent every morning and more on Mondays the world over, what can you do? You go on. You go on, you beat on, boats against the current.

I don’t know what Jay Gatsby would have made of rugby league but he believed in that green light at the end of Daisy’s dock and so must we all.