James Graham Grinding on an Old Lady

There is nothing more terrible than the NRL season yielding to another filthy and relentless Australian summer. Well, some things maybe. Being tasered to death by fucking cops when you’re just a Brazilian boy on acid.  And cops in general, the cunts. Tussling with the Kafkaesque qualities of Telstra. The faces of people in food courts. A guy I work with who I blather to about what cars I see myself owning in the future telling me he’s started pissing blood. Watching my littlest cat Gepeto crying and writhing on the carpet after an apparent but unfounded snake bite and thinking he was about to die right while I was watching Intervention (Michael, meth addict) last night. These things are terrible too.

Anyway. Summer is a horizon-less wasteland. People seem to enjoy it. I don’t understand this but I have also never understood people in fact I pretty much hate them uniformly.

Wanda – I can’t stand people. I hate them. Do you hate them?

Henry – No. But I seem to feel better when they’re not around.

-Barfly

Still, it’s not like there’s nothing going on. Just yesterday I say photos of the Kangaroos. In training shirts. With necks and shoulders spilling out of every outlet. JT, and Billy. Good stuff, this. But insubstantial. Not enough.

I also saw photos of a gathering Tigers  Sharks coach Shane Flanagan had orchestrated; a meet, greet and get elegantly soused in the yacht club event to welcome the entire Tigers team minus Robbie Benji and Lote all the incoming recruits. And Todd Carney and Luke Lewis were seated together looking fucking lewd and generally bringing credit to their entire species just by sitting there. They can’t help it. They just have a seedy air of salaciousness about them that renders them automatically awesome.

(My brother took a long range punt on a Sharks Bulldogs grand final next year, with Bulldogs for the win. If they make it to the grand final it will totally inspire me to go out and get a commemorative neck tattoo. I don’t go for them or anything but they’re that kind of team. A team to, I don’t know; bring you to your happy place just by having a go.)     

And naturally the Bulldogs Mad Monday fallout bullshit continues. I say ‘continues’ but I mean ‘is now being perpetuated by radio stations and the like who in admirable attempts to really get to the crux of the sensitive and contentious issues at hand have started asking highly qualified media commentators and social analysts LIKE LAURYN EAGLE to comment on said issues and then immediately reporting on her comments and having others pass comment on her comments and reporting dutifully on that and so on and so forth seemingly forevermore until suck me off you dumb dog becomes, like, this decade’s Carpe Diem or whatever’. I don’t know. It’s cannibalistic and unseemly. I love it. (Not really, though.)

Probably what really happened at Belmore version #1

& #2

Things have strayed into Woodward and Bernstein territory what with talk of tapes and recordings and allegations of highly sophisticated spy equipment and meticulously researched revelations like did you know there is a 91 second YouTube video of that fiend James Graham grinding on a very old woman in the lounge area of a northern English pub that culminates in the very old woman putting her hands down his pants and going the grope and that the Bulldogs are attempting to argue that the whole Mad Monday incident was a misunderstanding stemming from this video whereby a player who is recounted as  saying “There are some ladies here to stick their heads in your pants” actually said “There’s no old ladies here to stick their hands in your pants”???

I didn’t know this. Did Channel 9 know this? Did it really happen like that or are the Bulldogs attempting to create an entirely new version of reality? Does it even matter now?

I do not have the answers to these questions but I too grapple with the underlying issues of truth and reality on a daily basis and understand the elusive nature of both. For example, today I finished one squeeze-bottle of sauce and opened a fresh one and the old one was labelled 40% lower in sugar and salt but I hadn’t know that when I bought it otherwise I never would have bought it because I love sugar and think very highly of salt too I mean for much of human history the pursuit of salt drove men to every edge of the world and anyway I hadn’t thought the reduced sugar and salt sauce tasted particularly different or particularly offensive until I opened the regular sauce and holy fuck it tasted amazing it was sweet it was salty it was altogether delicious and in that moment I knew that the sugar and salt reduced sauce had been a lie and  that I had lived that lie but hadn’t known it was a lie until I tasted the truth. 

Anyway. I don’t see the sense in asking Todd Carney’s girlfriend (Lauryn Eagle that is) what she thinks about women’s role in society, even if she is an ex-waterski champion. Personally, I would have approached Kochie’s Angels for comment long before asking for Eagle’s opinion. You know, step off Catherine Lumby and Eva Cox.    

I understand though, all of this inanity. It’s the off season, after all. The Daily Tele sports section seems to be experiencing a slump similar to the one currently over/underwhelming me. This is why they did a full page article on balls. Nuts, I mean. Not, like, Steedens and Sherrins and the teeny tiny child fingers that stitch them in unlit and unregulated hives of exploitative labour all over India in an appalling but all too common example of fat first world manufacturing industry’s reliance on and exploitation of developing nations and their heinous role in perpetuating global inequality and repression.

No.

“League star proves he’s one tough nut.”

Well, shit. You don’t buy a meat pie for the meat. Nor do you buy the Daily Tele for the (metaphoric) meat.

As it happens I think balls are great in both a general and specific sense so an entire and alarmingly graphic article all about them and the injuries they are evidently able to withstand was and remains very pleasing. Some of my favourite phrases and sentiments are as follows:

 “When trainers performed an X-ray on Livers, they found his testicle had ‘shattered like a light bulb’”

“…had his scrotum ripped open”

 “…had his scrotum torn”

“…leaving one testicle hanging free”

“…after being rucked viciously by a Frenchman”

“…had the physio stitch up his scrotum, then returned to the field before he was concussed by a blow to the head. Shelford does not recall any of that game”

“…was struck by a knee to his groin and his testicle exploded”

 “Surgery was performed to remove his right testicle”

“He returned to the rink two days later to the chant of ‘Balls of Steel’’  

“…his scrotum swelled up so badly he could not run properly”

“Livers recovered to father two children”

The Humanity and The Meth Trash

This is an age of disappointment. Most of us want our sport to reflect what is good in humanity. We want it to lift us from the mundane and the everyday. We want it to provide us with an understanding of the human condition.

I want all this. I also want sport to provide visuals such as this, and plenty of them:

Here is a closer look at the human condition, NRL-style.

From what I understand, the fact that Jarryd Hayne went grocery shopping instead of attending the Eels Manly game as supportive injured spectator was deemed by the Eels board to be an affront so rank that it was grounds to finally can coach Kearney.  Seems a little extreme, but he had only won nine games out of a fucking hundred or so…  

Anyway, who could blame Hayne for not wanting to watch his stinking team play? I have no emotional investment in the Eels whatsoever and watching Chris Sandow ‘play’ makes me writhe in discomfort, I can only imagine Hayne’s reluctance to do the same. In public. At Brookvale. Trying to hide your private despair from public scrutiny is THE WORST.

“I’m just barracking for Braith tonight. He has a new haircut” – text to my brother, re. the Roosters Rabbits game.

Personal hair care is clearly a very high priority for Braith. I would find this offensive in, say, a Rabbitoh, but it’s Braith, so it’s charming. Last week, in that Sharks game, Braith had “an infected face” and did not play. This was bad news for me. For Braith too, I imagine.

Braith’s complicated face is one of my five favourites in the NRL. I searched it this week for lesions and when I actually saw one I experienced photo-sensitive-epilepsy type flashes of Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, which was an occurrence I found unsettling.

To steady the nerves I reminded myself of that time Braith hollered ‘AW YOU’RE OFF YER HEAD!!” at some hapless ref. This was an occurrence I found awesome. Poor Braith. It must blow being the captain of the most penalised club in the competition. Not to mention being coached by that croaky halfwit Brian Smith. He is a shrunken straw-man. Under no circumstances should he be coaching. He should be tonging sausages outside Bunnings of a weekend.

The Roosters are still persisting with that inane practice of slapping each other’s backs and hands after an error. Of which there are many. I can’t help feeling that this weird charade is symptomatic of some of the deeper problems at the Roosters. Of which there are many.  Like Brian Smith being a total shonk. As tactics go I prefer Mitchell Pearce’s last week against the Sharks when the Roosters were packing a scrum with nine seconds on the clock. He screamed “NO FUCKIN PENALTIES!!!” and it appeared to work because they didn’t concede any penalties, and god knows they are partial to a penalty or twelve. In the event, the game went into golden point the three dozen or so attempts at field goal addled my mind and dazzled my eye so much that I can’t remember who eventually even won the goddamn game. *Oh, right. It was a draw.

I think Mitchell Pearce is experiencing some hiccups in employee relations at the Roosters. I believe this is true in the same way I believe that that creepy father totally felt up his cretinous daughter during that limo ride home from the airport on The Shire last week. Some things you just know.

I’ve spent this whole season squinting at Adam Reynolds, trying to work out where I’ve seen him before. Now I know that every time I’ve caught a train to or from Bomaderry HE’S BEEN ON IT. He’s the guy nipping off at Minamurra and Thirroul to suck down a few sneaky durry drags on the platform. He’s also the guy wearing athletic snap-pants. Because nothing better signifies a disdain for societal norms than athletic snap-pants. Last time I rode this train there was a guy, to avoid confusion let’s just call him ‘Adam Reynolds’, talking explosively to someone whose acquaintance he had just made, telling them about his neighbours in Sanctuary Point. “Cunts on one side, cunts on the other.”

Incidentally, this blog has been receiving a substantial amount of traffic off of the key search words ‘how to get rid of meth trash’.

Luke Lewis. He is perfect for Cronulla. Cronulla is perfect for him. You know he would say “my dog barks at Asian people”. He was spotted last week buying a pie in Cronulla. This was early evidence of his plans to sign with the Sharks, certainly, but it was also confirmation that footballers can perform ordinary individual acts, completely unsupervised, such as basic pie consumption.

I was hoping dimly that he would come to Canberra. You wouldn’t though, would you? Not if you’re in form, not if you’re in possession of your wits. Lewis has sharp bleached blue eyes suffused with a strange Bunsen burner flame like vitality. He’d also most likely be one to bite his beer bottles open. He is basically a VB ad come to life. He knows what’s up.

Anyway, it’s heartening to know that he chose Cronulla because he wants to see out his career being captained by Gal. It’s like when Josh Dugan said he wanted to stay at Canberra to play alongside Terry Campese. Except that Campese ended up out injured for the season for a second year running, damnation. The only upside of this, by the by, is that Terry’s long stretches off the field give him plenty of time to impregnate his wife and expand the Campese dynasty. I want the whole Queanbeyan and Jerromberah area crawling with Campese babies in the next five years. See to it, Terry.

I’m also happy for Gallan. Greg Bird’s inglorious departure tore their ‘Bruise Brothers’ alliance asunder. Having Lewis alongside him to pummel bodies into barely identifiable hunks of meat will be good for him.

“Hi, I’m Sonny Bill. You may remember me from four years ago, when I committed the greatest act of treachery in the game’s history.”

Sonny Bill’s departure from the NRL was spectacular. I understand that his re-entry in 2013 will cause something of a sensation too. Sonny Bill is ridiculous. The Roosters are ridiculous. This situation where they’re letting him carouse all off-season and then piloting him in twenty minutes before kick off in round one is ridiculous. Where is the time for team bonding – running up sand hills and roofy-ing and getting shit tattoos - during the summer months? It tells everybody everything they need to know about the Roosters ethos, in case anyone missed it over the last hundred odd years. There is no fairness in it. There is no fairness in life. Sad.

Something else that is sad: Nathan Hindmarsh having to wrap up his career surrounded by dysfunction and incompetence. Did everyone see him go back and pick up the last esky for the groundskeepers after everyone else had left last weekend? His shorts were loose and sagging and his Eels had just beaten the Storm from last position and he’d scored his first try of 2012 and he was rolling this enormous esky off the field, WHAT A GUY. Age shall not weary him.

Elvis was so clapped out by the end of his career that he couldn’t have shifted an esky if he’d tried.

This Steve Price guy, who the fuck is he? Whoever he is, he is not cut out for this coaching gig he’s found himself in. No man with such an alarmingly sloping chin should be in an authoritative and public position. He is limp and surly and petulant and evasive, which is exactly what the world expects of a weak-chinned man. Fittingly, he defended that dirty little hamster Jamie Soward when he marched off at Bruce without shaking hands with a single Raider. I think he even encouraged people to forget it, get over it. Not on my watch Soward. Lest we forget.

Speaking of dirty little hamsters, the fact that Chris Sandow gets to be coached by Ricky Stuart next year resonates with me in a very painful fashion. It sticks in my craw. All the speculation and conjecture about him signing on to coach Canberra, all that fucking ‘strong mail’ that sports writers like to reference to bolster their hopelessly ill-informed stories, all of it has ended in disillusion.

Show me something that doesn’t.

((Minutes after writing this I find myself grinning inadvertently at an inane Suzuki ad featuring Slater Smith and Ryles - a terrible transgression, on all of our parts.))

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.

Muscular Menace...Luke Lewis

A hot and savage wind roared through my house yesterday and dislodged three Todd Carney pictures I had hanging in the kitchen. I found two on the floor and one in my cats' water dish. Coincidence? Or something more suggestive, perhaps -  the terrible truth that perhaps Toddy lacks moral substance and fortitude? I mean, I have pictures of several others - Dugan, and Joel Monaghan, and Braith Anasta with his brain about to leak out of his face - and they didn't blow down at the slightest hint of a change in the weather, did they*?


*Upon closer inspection and a degree of overnight reflection, that was well out of order. Forgive me my vague air of futility, Toddy, and go forth on your journey toward a higher realm. It's just...it can get tiring, this business of supporting you. Lonely. too. *Reassembles public face*...  Don't mind me and my psychic strain.

So. Moving right along, Luke Lewis, that big blonde behemoth, said the other day that he would welcome Toddy "with open arms". So would I, Luke, so would I.

I can't be sure but I assume he was talking about the possibility of Toddy going to the Panthers. Sweet baby Jesus. Wouldn't that be something. I don't think I much like the idea. I can't imagine Gus Gould would either, thankfully. No, Penrith is no place for the likes of Toddy. It's a fucking no-man's land out there; a veritable wasteland - even by my not-exactly-lofty standards. One doesn't want to be too much of a cultural chauvinist but, honestly, Penrith is no place for a ressurection. It's a place for Everlast athletic gear and corned beef sandwiches and enormous leagues clubs that warrant their own postcodes. The best thing for Toddy to do now is to get aboard the Cronulla train and ride it hard, all stops to redemption. YES. DO THAT.

Still, what a lovely sentiment from Luke Lewis. Further proof that men who bite their beer bottles open are far more capable of warm hearted sentiment than your garden-variety quiche eating nancy.

Luke Lewis has that disconcerting blend of menace and charm about him. It's indefinable, which makes it all the more arresting. Alls I can say is that he carries a perpetual aura of faintly muscular menace. I think it's hotter than a Saigon summer, but you're welcome to draw your own conclusions.

Also, I think I once described him on here as the type of man who would spend his downtime sprawled on patio furniture with one nut hanging out of his shorts. Or did I just think that? I can't be sure; such is the blurring of the lines. Anyway as it happens he has a very well dressed and stylish wife. She was my pick for best dressed at the Dally M's. That's right, Jodi Gordon, not you - you heard. Inexpicably, there is no photo of her from this year. Last year, yes. Close enough.

He looked both sun scorched and sweetly absurd in his suit - show me a footballer who doesn't - but she was lovely and languid and cool as a cold drink in a tall glass on a hot day. Despite this, I still stand by my earlier assertion in regards to her husband, and the vivid image I conjured up for myself - oddly pleasing to my mind's nasty eye.

Wait, what? I intended this to be a retrospective look at Toddy's time at the Roosters, what is this westerly direction I have veered in and why do I kind of like it out here? L'Obscuritee! Christ. Ima stay here among the weed strewn backblocks until I sufficiently pull myself together enough to return for that Roosters retrospective, although to what end one can now only shudder to imagine.........

Round 21: the Rabbitohs Rob the Raiders

August and September? Not.A.Fan. Maybe if I was a Storm supporter I would feel differently - wait, no. If I was a Storm fan I would have to like at least one of either Cameron Smith or Billy Slater, right? Forget it.

They say this is when things get exciting. I beg to differ. Tell me what's exciting about your team languishing in the bin-juices at the bottom of the ladder with the Roosers and the Eels for company and thanking god for the abominable consistency of the cellar-dwelling Titans.

This 'feeling grateful for the Titans' thing doesn't sit well with me. I don't like being indebted to teams like the Titans, it makes me feel unclean. Poor Scott Prince, though. I mean, honestly. Shit is dire. I don't even dream about David Gallop ordering the demolition of his illegal house these days. No. That would make me really, really mean. Months ago he was wearing a look more commonly seen in forced labour camps, and now it's spread to and deadened his once-twinkly eyes. Normally I'd offer advice along the lines of 'the way out is through'. Not this time. The stench of defeat that surrounds him is far too strong, and as such I spurn him in the same way that I spurn the advances of Nickleback enthusiasts, i.e. with extreme prejudice and occasional violence.

No, August and September are not for me. I much prefer the sense of potential and promise and POSSIBILITY that pervades the NRL air throughout May and June. You know, before things go all awry? Before things go to shit? Yes, better days. Happier days.

Still. It's not like I'm mired in misery. I said weeks ago that I looked forward to the Raiders; unencumbered by pesky top eight expectations or responsibilities, getting loose and lairy and playing some exciting, flamboyant footy. A backline of Josh Dugan, Blake Ferguson and Daniel-'I'm back bitches'-Vidot is an exciting prospect if youthful exuberance is your thing. I want to see them throwing it around with wild abandon and unbridled enthusiasm. Y'know, like they're onstage at Mooseheads loaded up on stilnox and whiskey sours? But no. All quiet on the baby Raider backline.

Speaking of throwing it around, how is the flaming intensity of Johnathan Thurston's sideline manner? I know, he's injured, which means that I'm supposed to be hoping he makes it back into his hot-hiding headgear and onto the field asap, right? Forget it. JT's maniacal behaviour at the Cowboys' games has been the highlight of my NRL week now for three weeks straight. Don't go hurrying back now, JT. Steady as she goes.

Now, I would find a cardboard cutout of JT endearing and alluring and endlessly charming. Note my use of 'would'. Not 'do'.. *eyes dart shiftily*.  Obviously, then, Thurston on the sidelines, dressed in tidy civilian clothes and emoting like an audience member at an Oprah taping is a sight to behold. Bitch goes bananas! The highs! The lows! JT rides them like he would a burning clutch in a stolen Datsun180b. Hard, in other words.

So, there's JT sideline and monitoring the Cowboys' every play with the ruthless intensity of a pimp. At least we have that. But, sans Paul Gallan and Micheal Ennis, well, there's a VOID now, no? Not just in the teams - it's not like I give a damn what's happening to the team dynamics of the Dogs or the Sharks, just quietly - but in the general fabric of the game.

It's not like it's a veritable snoozefest, by any means. Exciting things are afoot. I think I'm just fatigued. Burnt out. It's tough, this business of fandom. Tougher than even I knew.

I got right onboard with the Roosters and Bulldogs game last weekend, the one where both teams, but particularly the Roosters, did away with defence altogether? That was a treat. Refreshing as a mint julep served on a Southern porch. Otherwise? Aside from Luke Lewis creeping up on Alan Tongue in the 'Face Like a Smashed Crab' stakes, I'm officially on the nod.

Now. One last thing - and may I recommend reading this with gritted teeth since that's how I wrote it - I found the Bunnies' audacious comeback from 20 -0 against the Dragons to be both a personal affront to me, as a Bunny hater, and, worse, an insult to my delicate sensibilities as a Raider fan. I mean, way to overshadow our 80th minute pressure-play demolition of the Dragons last Monday! I know, I know, the Rabbits have so little, I hear you say, how can I deny them this victorious moment given their status as a team full of failed potential who have only made the finals once in the last TEN years? Well, it's because I am an irrepressible bitch, that's how. And because they stole our thunder, goddamnit. Now it looks like any old shitkicker team can come out and beat the Dragons on their day. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Raider fans were meant to marinate in the juices of that win until at least the end of the year, and Dragons fans were meant to feel the burn of unexpected defeat for many weeks to come.

The Rabbits have rendered this redundant. Thanks a bunch, Rabbitohs. RETRIBUTION AWAITS.
Right after I take this nap.

Johnathan Thurston's Dark Appetites

It may have been the round for the ladies but for me this weekend was very much about the mans. More of that later, though, because this was also the weekend where rugby league went bi-coastal. That's coast to coast, bitches: East meets West!

In case you missed the Friday night game in Perth - and if you did, take a look at yourself and sort that shit out - this is how it looked, for eighty awesome minutes.

It was without a doubt one of the more astonishing and captivating games I've seen. Bizarre, too, because for reasons which will never be clear, at least to me, the Bunnies seemed to play pretty much their best footy of the season in the worst conditions of the season. In a pond, essentially. What's that about? Greg Inglis is obviously a natural mudder, because he had a bit of a blinder up against Justin Hodges and also looked to be enjoying himself - I know, I didn't think it was possible either - but what of the other Bunnies, what's doing there? Frankly, they are too mystifying and enigmatic a team for me to ever get a hold on, so they don't bear thinking about. Next.

Perth was pandemonium, anyway. The ball was squirting all over the place, Rhys Wesser scored an outlandish try on the back of the ball coming to a dead stop in the swamp at the Broncos' end, Dave Taylor looked like nothing so much as a great white shark who had found himself washed up into shallow waters and everyone's shorts came loose at one time or another. Also, Darren Lockyer made several extravagant wet weather-type errors, which I applauded. I don't know what it says about my character but I enjoy seeing the Greats get a bit sloppy every now and again. Especially if they're Maroons, that really blows my hair back.

There was a loose, festive atmosphere over there; among the players, obviously, because the game just looked like mad fun for all, but among the spectators as well. Bear in mind that all fifteen thousand of them were unencumbered by umbrellas, which - so much for the last frontier - are outlawed in their stadium. Still, I think what that rule really in essence allows for is extra hands to hold extra cans. From the footage I saw, the West Australians have a good grasp on the way this seemingly stupid rule ultimately balances out in their favour. This is the state that gave us Ben Cousins, after all.

If the game had been on the East Coast in that kind of monsoonal weather I imagine there would have been a kind of grim, gothic, slaugherhouse vibe to proceedings, but apparently the good people of Perth are untroubled by inclement weather, and why wouldn't they be? I'd be light of heart and largely carefree too if I lived over there in the land of milk and honey and huge holes in the ground, I'm sure of it. I'd have a ute, it'd be awesome.

I was so fixated on the game that at the end I actually thought my eyes or - more likely - my mind was malfunctioning when I saw John Lang launch into a belly slide through a huge puddle post-game. I blinked in that way you do when you're snapping out of a micro-sleep and find your car to be running off the road and need to get on top of the situation in a hurry. And here I was all this time thinking John Lang was a lousy,dour old coot. Think again! He is obviously just as wild and reckless a ratbag as those hooligans he coaches. This realisation raised for me the very real possibility that he also has 'my brother's keeper'  stenciled on his person somewhere under that Driza-Bone.

Sam Burgess, out for the season with a yeast infection or something and obviously bone-idle, added to the vaudeville vibe by having a crack at some sideline commentary. This pleased me. I appreciate Channel Nine continuing their affiliation with completely incoherent but endlessly endearing sideline commentators ('sup Freddie!) Not counting Joey here, obviously. He strings insightful observations together into sentences like it's nobody's business.

So did this weekend have it all or what? The concept of 'wet-weather football' was spectacularly redefined, the Panthers wore pink and made the Cowboys their bitches, Billy Slater crashed painfully into fence railings while playing the Warriors, the Roosters continued their entertaining slide down to the cellar, and of course the Mighty Raiders got a win, taking their tally to four wins for the year. Go you good Raiders. Hold your applause, though, as this deserves a stand-alone post. Also, I have a personal apology to Josh McCrone pending. Gird your loins for that one, godknows I am.

What else? Well, Paul Gallan continued to win at life, and Scott Prince continued to suck at life, basically. This was all neatly illustrated when the Sharks met and dismenmbered the Titans on Saturday. They set upon them like a pack of hyenas tearing into a carcass, which is to say with remorseless enthusiasm and a good deal of savagery. It was great stuff, if somewhat obscene at times.

Poor Prince. He has a look about him lately that someone might wear when a ship is going down. I think the only thing that could make him look any more dazed and dejected right now would be if David Gallop were to suddenly order an audit on the Titans. Can you imagine? In effect, what would happen here is that Gallop and his cronies would huff and puff and blow down that allegedly illegal house that the Titans allegedly built for Prince.

I occasionally visualise this actually happening - I know, sometimes I think of all the constructive things I could be doing too, but not for long, not when I have such a rich vein of NRL related absurdities to tap - and, if I substitute the haystack house for some palatial pile on an artificial canal or whatever it is those rort-happy Titans knocked up for him, this is exactly the vision I get:

My advice to Scott Prince is this: wait until you wake up one day and see a wrecking ball coming through your pool room, Princey, because then and only then will that ship-going-down look be warranted.

In the meantime, and speaking of sinking ships, I have the Roosters to turn my attentions to.
The Roosters, being a team in free-fall and all, continued to make things difficult for themselves yesterday. Trifling matters like staying onside seem not to trouble lately, and they are also locked into an untidy habit whereby should they manage to score they inevitably cock-up the next set. On tackle one, usually. You could set your watch to it.

None of this worries me though, not with Todd Carney back and fresh to death. Ineffectual in terms of play, maybe, but details, details. After all, if the Roosters care not for details why should I? Anyway, it pleases me to see him back on the burning deck and representing for the Women in League round, because we all know he and Leanne are the tightest mother-son unit in the league - possibly the world - and that he would be totally wearing the pink six just for her. And damn if the boy doesn't wear it well. Know what else he'd wear well? Me. Just sayin'.

Okay. Given that I've started in on the sexual objesctification of football players, it's only natural that I now turn my gimlet eye to the Penrith Panthers. The what-now?! I know, that is not a sentence I ever expected to write either.

I am of the opinion that the Panthers are one of the uglier teams in the league. Unless you're rudely superficial, as I am, this is neither here nor there; if anything I suppose you could argue it actually enhances their mountain-man image. If I had my way I'd have them expand on this image exponentially - I'd consign them to shacks in the hills during the week, lash dead deer to the bonnets of their cars and have them brew moonshine on the side. Gus Gould, pay attention.

Anyway, they may not be pretty but they wear pink with dead set panache. No wonder they ran rings around the Cowboys, dressed like that how could they possibly lose? Johnathan Thurston was totally the Jan to Luke Lewis' Marcia Brady out there at Penrith yesterday, and I am as astonished by this as anybody else with eyes, believe you me.

Thurston is outrageously good looking. Let's be real, he is. I like his eyes, they're shiny and they have a bit of a feral look to them. This gives the impression that he is a man of many appetites, some healthier than others.

Last year when he was thrown out of that Brisbane casino for allegedly "harrassing partons with his crutch"? My instantaneous and absolutely instinctive first thought upon hearing that quote was "he could harrass me with that crotch anytime". I know, I know, stop that sniggering up the back. Anyway, my point is that he is unmistakably, insanely hot.

However. LUKE LEWIS. Now, Luke Lewis is nothing if not a towering meathead with an unusually heavy eyebrow ridge. Essentially, he strikes me as the type who would spend the majority of his downtime lolling on patio furniture with one testicle hanging out of his shorts. There is nothing inherently wrong with this; actually there is plenty to like about such a scenario. It's just that prior to Origin Two I never really noticed the guy. The reasons for this oversight are obvious: men like Johnathan Thurston and Matt Cooper who prowl the field like they're big cats patrolling the perimetres of their own personal pieces of savannah. Bitches need to step off from time to time.

With Luke Lewis out there all pretty in pink I paid far less attention to JT, except for when he deliberately headed the ball forward and looked for a moment like he was about to lay into the ref when scolded with "it's not soccer Johnathan", that sure caught my interest. And, really, so did all the times when he showed that crazy instinct that allows him to know exactly where the ball is, exactly where it's going to go and exactly where he needs to be -which is basically his game for the entire eighty, now that I think about it.

Still, all the Panthers looked great, even the dog-ugly annonymous ones, of which there are - correction: were, prior to yesterday - several. Even that elusive, once-sighted and unidentified Panther who had the longest, stringiest ratstail I have ever seen attached to a football player hanging out the back of his jersey, even he looked distinguished. So, you know, something there for everyone over the weekend.

And the moral of this small story? There is no moral, fool, this is football.