Raiders v. Dugan - Judgment Day

Spending more time than is probably healthy suckled up to the Dugan tit? You’ve come to the right place.

The problem with Josh Dugan and Canberra was that the Raiders demand low maintenance superstars who hum along quietly. As Dugan developed from raw housing commission colt to sleek thoroughbred his self-regard developed along with him, healthily at first, then not so healthily, until, finally, it became toxic.

 

Basically the Raiders are chronic underperformers and need to conduct themselves accordingly. This means behaving in a humble and gracious manner, and keeping the ostentatious off-field flourishes to a minimum. Dugan’s spirited accommodation of all things ostentatious defied this and, as he tells it, led to him being very cruelly cast out of Canberra and onto some crude scrapheap.

Well, what of it? I mean he’s not the first sports star to suffer under the staggering weight of Australia’s idiotic dislike of grossly-disproportionate-to-talent egotism.

 

Anyway. Tomorrow the Raiders play the Dragons in what is without a trace of hyperbole THEIR GAME OF THE YEAR. Because who among us doesn’t want to see Josh Dugan pay and pay dearly never minding the fact that this desire is pretty much redundant I mean it’s been   months since he was driven out of Canberra and forced to seek asylum with the Dragons and it doesn’t seem to have cost him much at all other than the small matter of his reputation and any lingering shreds of likeability that his increasing abrasiveness hadn’t corroded in the last 12 or so months at the Raiders anyway?

Whatever. Raider fans take what they can goddamn get.   

And as it is I’ve been struggling with this whole sordid trajectory since back when Dugan’s name was first getting mentioned for Origin:

It may help to think of Dugan as an ex. You know how you don’t want to see them reduced to a quivering gelatinous mess without you, but you don’t want the bastard/bitch soaring to lofty new heights since being rid of you either? It’s a fine line and one which Dugan has already overstepped with crude insensitivity.

Before this, even, there was that incident during his first game for the Dragons that constituted an irreparable defilement and has squatted toadishly in a dark recess of my mind ever since – the moment where DAVE DUGAN filled the big screen at Kogarah, wearing a Dragons jersey, grinning and waving and looking as proud and florid as any father ever could. Galling! All those years at the Raiders and the most I ever saw of Daddy Dugan was in the god-awful tattoo of Mr. and Mrs. Dugan on their wedding day that roams across the lower half of one of his son’s legs and stretches even my elastic boundaries of taste.

Let’s not spend a lot of time on this. He is just an asterisk now, and I’ve already exceeded the limits of both my magnanimity and medication on the son of a bitch these last few months. Alls I hope for, aside from an emphatic Raiders victory, is that he comes out of tomorrow’s game ravaged and stripped of swag, like he’s just been worked over by a pack of wild dogs.

It would be nice if I could say this with even a shred of certainty, but of course I can’t what with the Raiders being an inherently untrustworthy outfit prone to fluctuations in mood and manner that make the Greek government look stable. In any case, it’s been real and it’s about to get realer.

 

 

Bernard Tomic's Grim Odyssey

If I had a dollar for every time someone has told me that they can’t stand Bernard Tomic I’d have,like, 30 dollars.

It totally annoys me. I have long been of the opinion that only myself and Belinda Neal are authorised to express unfettered disdain toward total strangers. Who are all these other under-informed and over-opinionated imposters and why do they remind me of nothing so much as those dogs that bring discredit to their entire species by standing and barking witlessly at people and/or inanimate objects?   

Women handing me change from cash registers tell me they don’t like him. “Why can’t he just keep his mouth shut?’ they say.  They shift uneasily on their swollen ankles as my avian, specifically seagull stare penetrates their stinking souls. Their disapproval is without context, and they have ham-hock cankles. I reject their reality.

My mother tells me she doesn’t like him. ‘Why doesn’t he smile?’ she says. I do not tell her to look forward to being strapped upright and unattended in an unforgiving chair while pureed corn beef dribbles down her chin later in life because she’s heard it many times now and the threat is in danger of losing its potency so I just bark “HE DOES FUCKING SMILE: AFTER HE WINS MATCHES ON WITS AND GRIT AND WHILE HE IS BEING INTERVIEWED BY JIM COURIER AND JIM COURIER’S SPECTACULAR SWOOSH OF STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE HAIR HE FUCKING SMILES. BESIDES, HE’S OF EASTERN EUROPEAN DESCENT – THEY HAVE POOR DIETS MADE UP OF TERRIBLE CLAGGY FOODS AND WHILE OUR PEOPLE WERE CLEARING BUSH AND RELEASING CRATE LOADS OF RABBITS INTO WHAT WAS LEFT OF IT HIS PEOPLE WERE BEING ETHNICALLY CLEANSED AND RAPED BY COSSACKS WITH A GIDDY LUST FOR ATROCITIES, OR SUCH IS THE COMBINED TOTAL OF MY UNDERSTANDING OF AUSTRALIAN AND BALTIC HISTORY.”

Anyway, no matter. Now he lives the Kanye West version of The Good Life, splitting his time between the Gold Coast and Monte Carlo; but don’t worry, Old-Worlders, because his grim odyssey is not over yet - he supports the Titans in what is an obvious nod to ancient ancestral hardships and struggle, and long may it flourish.

Speaking of ancient struggles, over in Hollywood Dax Shepard is unhappy that Justin Beiber has moved into the mansion next to him - “The music and the parties and the paparazzi,” Dax reveals. “I mean, it’s like living in Lebanon now.”

A provocative claim, but perception is a curious thing. What might represent ‘reality’ to Dax Shepard (he dates Veronica Mars you know) is outright unrecognisable to, like, the less obnoxious and those of us who have the misfortune of not being, like, American.

I don’t know. Maybe Tomic’s various neighbours think the same thing, what with the 5:30am spa-bath based brawlings and the revving of high performance luxury cars and the crunch of jack-boots on gravel as police try to gain racially-motivated entry and the assumed explosions of Old Man Tomic because if there’s one thing years of tennis history has shown it is that it really helps to have a paranoid, delusional or manic father in your corner, and that it is best to hang fast to their principles, even to the detriment of your career.

Anyway, what a fucking baller -  I mean have you ever tried to even clamber out of a spa-bath when you’re out of your mind messy? Remember the attorney in the White Rabbit “I want a rising sound” bathtub scene in Fear and Loathing? It’s not easy, even for the lithe and spry, which you, reader, are probably not. Look at you, right now, wincing even as you shift in your ergonomic executive swivel chair, regretting that attempt at blow-drying your balls in the gym locker room earlier. Don’t you feel stupid!

Coping With Canberra - A Raiders Progress Report

For the football fan, summer is the soul’s winter.

For the footballers themselves, summer is the season in which to comfortingly return to character.  As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly: Proverbs 26, 11.

In Canberra, the Raiders are busily engaging in vivid and unrestrained off-field activities which cast an impression of quality living.

>>Quality living by Canberra standards I mean. Some other, non-geographically specific things which cast impressions of quality living: STD’s, rural road signs all shot up with bullet holes, getting bit by an animal while trying to get it stoned, ever using the word ‘repo’d’, seafood extender, painting unventilated rooms, ugly dogs hurling themselves against chain-link fences, trawling YouTube for footage of Flynn from Australian Idol’s rendition of Push Up! in morning’s earliest hours, tobacco-stained ceilings, managing to have both long hair and a sunburned scalp, throwing up in potted plants and any type of heaving be it dry or otherwise, threatening loved ones with shoes, staple guns or other unconventional weapons, having part of an eyebrow missing, petrol station pies, Lowes.  

It’s grim there you know. Faded, and with a weird melancholy. So while Bernard Tomic is brawling with his friend in a spa at 5:30am on the Gold Coast, which sounds hedonistic and hot, the Raiders are making the most of things in their own ways. Recent efforts have achieved some solid results, and ACT police have netted several Raiders in their wily civic web.

-         Jack Boom was thrown out of the Foreshore festival and into the drunk-tank for several hours. I read this in the Tele and then never heard a thing about it ever again but I totally buy it the boy is clearly a fiend anyone with a face as sweet as his is a certified fiend.

-         Blake Ferguson was ejected from the same festival for allegedly “spitting” “on” “several patrons”.

-         Joel Thompson has been interviewed about a bottle being thrown at a cyclist during a post-Foreshore party at his apartment. And there are non-existent reports that coach Furner was caught throwing a car battery through a senior player’s car windscreen.   

Well, shit. We liked Brando as Stanley Kowalski didn’t we, all mute surly attitude and explosions of raw seething brutality? What’s the goddamn difference?

Just as the game itself is an acquired taste, the occasionally unwholesome extracurricular activities of the most abhorrent members of society ie. football players are seen to be unpalatable by many also.  These are probably the same flat-pack people who have never slept with a second cousin more than once, never had a dark and savage night of the soul, and never sawed the roof off their car.      

So, whatever. Football is an acquired taste. My best friend told me her boyfriend regards with distaste footballers and the women who love them. He takes it to mean they’re rough or whatever.

But, Canberra. It’s weird there. As anyone who has lived there for any stretch of time will appreciate, the urge to throw bottles from balconies at cyclists is a powerful one which is not easily denied. I myself had to consciously keep two hands positioned on the steering wheel at all times when driving such was my urge to run cyclists down in my car. Nothing personal, you understand, it’s just that they somehow became a very visual and ever-present reminder of my culturally bankrupt and capitalist wasteland surrounds. This created an uneasy atmosphere of foreboding and also made driving something of an ordeal.

So I understand and sympathise with any bottle-throwing, spitting, heavy drinking, drug use, destruction of property and homicidal rampaging that goes on in Canberra. I actually endorse it. Distractions and delay tactics employed by those seeking to avoid the inevitable incursion of real life are a necessary component to coping with Canberra. If I wasn’t so burnt-out and unambitious I would run for office and seek subsidisation for it from Medicare myself.

((*not talking about J-Bo, Gav or Terry Campese anytime I talk about how fucked Canberra is. They all come from Queanbeyan, anyways, and besides which they are three of the best and most well-bred things – animal mineral vegetable or other - to come out of this stinking age we live in.))

Bogan to the Bone.

"I've only been with my guy for six months, but he has an annoying way of speaking. He says 'youse', and 'youse all' when he's referring to other people. I like him but I hate his bogan ways. Any advice?" Lindsay, via email.





The bogan this bitch Lindsay is seeing? He's a lightweight. At the moment I'm working by one of the best bogans ever. He's bogan to the bone. He's not a modern-day bogan either, he's an old-school bogan. The good kind. Old-school bogans tend to have a fairly honest way of dealing with the world. New bogans are generally uncharitable and fuck-witted; they're all about conspicuous consumption and trying to stand out by fitting in. Their households have more remote controls than they do books, and they have the bizarre tendency to refer to magazines as 'books'. All this is vastly different to the yobbo of yore.

Everything that this bogan at work says is pretty great, and he tends to speak in handy soundbites. Two samples:

"Fuck workin' this weekend I'm goin' to the fucken show mate - I'm puttin' three hundred bucks down in the beer tent and sittin' back and goin' 'yewwwwwwww!'"

"I'm outta fucken ciggas, I'm outta fucken drugs and I'm fucken leavin'! I'm out!" - Leaps into raucous hectic ute and roars away...

It lifts my heart to know that old-school bogans are still being bred. This one looks exactly like Jesse Pinkman. Same stature, same face, same hair, same beanie and same cold glitter in the eye. He doesn't pepper his sentences with 'yo' and 'bitch' - he favours 'mate', as per tradition - and I don't know about the whole meth lab thing either, that might be a bit beyond him, but these differences aside he is Jesse Pinkman. Jesse Pinkman, only rougher. He's just about rough enough to be called a rough-cunt. This is pretty rough. It denotes a long term and instinctual committment to full-throttle feral behaviour and the maintenance of a menacing demeanor, attitude and appearance. This bogan, let's call him Ben, since that's his name, has all these bases covered. Even ordinary acts, such as basic sandwich consumption, are touched with a trace of grim-faced menace. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, and plenty right with it. I mean, it seems to work for him; it it lends him a certain pungent charm, and it keeps me equal parts amused and edgy, even if some of his more lurid comments don't make me especially proud to be human.

I've detected a subtle shift in the way my boss sees and talks about Ben over the last fortnight or so. Back then, it was with a speculative, musing tone that he'd say to me

"I don't know if he gets on the drugs or not...."

and it was me who emitted an explosive

"Hohhhh!"

noise to express my certainty on the subject before barking rhetorically

"Have you seen him some mornings - he's operating at acompletely different velocity - he vibrates for fucks sake!"

to which he replied

"Yeah, he does seem a bit....rough, some mornings..." 

Now, in the last few days, circumstances - being that Ben became progressively wild-eyed and clenched and sweaty enough as to necessitate the draping of a towel around his neck with which to mop his streaming face - have dictated that the boss has arrived at his conclusion - being that Ben has confirmed his suspicions and most definately "gets on the drugs". Apropos of this development he has adjusted his tone and outlook accordingly. Now he says things like

"Geeeez, see his eyes yesterday - out on stalks they were - hanging halfway out of his head!"

 and

"He must be on the drugs again today if he's forgotten where he parked his bloody car!"

in an authoritative and not-entirely disapproving tone. It seems that it was not so much the savage and flagrant amphetamine abuse that had him rattled so much as it was the not knowing for certain what was going on. Now that he has him pegged he seems almost entirely satisfied with the situation as it now stands, and appears content with letting it play out of it's own natural and highly entertaining volition. This looseness and detatchment is also pleasing; it triggers a rush of love for all the men in the world and makes this an altogether happy story. Which is nice.

Here's where you can find Bogan Shire in New South Wales. That photo of the sign? I nearly burnt my brakes stopping to take it. Which is apt.

The Grand Final

Grand? Hardly. Final? Very.

Two teams:  the Warriors, who offend no one and endear themselves to many, and Manly. Manly are a team only a mother could love. Granted, there are plenty of Manly mothers, but still. Their very presence in the final soured my festive spirit and I'm not even talking about Brett Stewart specifically. Not yet, anyway. That bitch will get his later. I mean, Tony Abbott supports Manly. Hugh Jackman too, and I bet Baz Luhman does as well and I hate all three of these men and thus rest my case. Manly blow, in a word. Need I say more? No. But I will anyway.

The Highlight  

'Sup Steve Matai! Outstanding. His bloodied head, leaking profusely and later wrapped in bandages was a stirring sight and the standout image of the afternoon. Matai is a simple man. He is programed for violence and he delivers the goods. He plays with authority. I like this. He also plays like a creature accustomed to hunting down its meals. I love this.

Jamie Lyon also delivers the goods. He hunts pigs, did you know? In his down-time? He also has a face like a dropped pie. On grand final day it looked like a dropped pie all squirted with sauce because he too got all dinged up. I feel like I should find him really distasteful but find it impossible to do so. He may be about as interesting as a coffee table but I cannot hate a man who drives to training in a late 1980s Holden Rodeo ute with a rusted out tray. Impossible. Rough edges and extracurricular activities of the redneck variety are GO. Also, it amuses me to know that Manly has a redneck captain. The biggest redneck I can think of off the top of my head is Phil Anselmo from Pantera, so Lyon has a ways to go, but, still...

Oh yeah. Matai stuck two fingers up behind Joe Galuvao's head during the national anthem - you know, the bunny ears? Oh my god. This is proof that if you look like a bison you can get away with anything. A striking set of cornrows don't hurt the cause either. Unless of course you've been in Bali, in which case you're tragic and quite clearly fucked.

Now. After applying that creamy layer of approval to proceedings thus far it is with a heavy heart (this is bullshit, I clearly love it) that I turn my jaundiced eye to:

The Lowlight

- cue crashing cymbals and jeers and the hurling of soft food stuffs - because this is the part where I get to thunder BAD TIMING, BRETT and pretend through those three words that this is a real newspaper headline and not a two-bit blog. Maybe one day. In the meantime, MY GOD was that bad timing! My god! Fancy winning a grand final and only minutes later being unable or just dead-set unwilling to muster up the basic good manners to be gracious to David Gallop on a podium on a national stage. My god! Anyone else would have happily worn Gallop as a hat at that moment. Not Brett Stewart though, no. This makes the fact that he is a total fuckwit official.

I say fuckwit but I think if  I were limited to having only one word to describe Stewart in light of this latest episode it would be 'dick'. It's monosyballic nature endows it with a certain blunt irrefutability, and it's suitably broad while still being closely affiliated with generalised arrogance and stupidity and both pedestrian and specialised idiocy. Okay good. Now that I've settled that, let's review the situation.

Manly win the grand final. Mass celebration and flagrant emoting ensues. Confetti rains like Agent Orange. The world is a place of golden splendour, ANZ Stadium it's enormous racing heart. As the hysteria is taking hold, and moments before he gets a giant bucket of Gatorade dumped over his head coach Des Hasler, referring to Stewart's tumultuous few years, says happily "I think he's finally got some closure". Moments later again and there's Stewart up on the dais responding to the congratulations he receives by asking David Gallop if he had a daughter. Or words to that effect. Maybe. In any case, whatever was said may never be publically known because the NRL moved swiftly to have those who were within earshot banned from talking to the media. Call me cynical, but, smoke, fire, all that shit?

Apparently this much is clear. Stewart, in part, is said to have exclaimed "David, you owe me an apology" and Gallop, god love him, remained gloriously stony faced and responded "Well done". Gallop, goddamn! Later he said 'I'm being really careful with all this", which seems a classy and tactful way of saying "I think Brett Stewart's mind is malfunctioning and that he is on a fast track to becoming a drained, deluded and hollow husk of a man so let's all sit back and watch him unravel shall we, AND PASS THE PIZZA-SHAPES".

Suffice to say that if his intention all this time has been to recruit others to his version of rality then he is in need of urgent and intensive psychological attention. Or a series of beatings.

Such is my distaste for all things Stewart that his brother Glenn's theatrics left me cold. I mean, I suppose an audacious grubber from inside his own 20 that was scooped up by Michael Robinson to set up Daly Cherry-Evans' quickstepping series of dummies and sensational try in the next play only moments before halftime was something to behold, if you like that sort of thing. I don't. The piece of play that resulted in Cherry-Evans' pants being pulled down? Much more to my taste, as was the admiring accompanying commentary from either Gus or Rabbits: "They pants him AND THEY KEEP HIM DOWN!" It was probably Rabbits, now that I think of it. He has that lovely way of switching seamlessly from soft, tender admiration to overwrought bellowing and back again just as suddenly in a way that creates a lovely, edgy tension for the listener.

Now. Manu Vatuvei. He came, he bulldozed, he scored a try - we can ask nothing more of the Beast. He manages to be one of the most formidable bitches out there and at the same time always looks like he's getting great joy out of proceedings too. He has a 'Life of the party' vibe about him; none of this 'I'm only here for the free food and drinks' attitude that some players appear to have *cough - John Sutton - cough*...
 Anyway, I managed to lay my hands on a copy of Manu's daily schedule. Here it is.

David Williams, who seems to have carved a successful career out of being as charming and welcoming as a pie cooling on a windowsill dismissed talk of his disappointment at not being able to play due to that horrendous neck injury by saying he was just relieved not to be the one having to shape up against Manu. He seems a very sweet-tempered and glass-half-full type, doesn't he? As opposed to the egotistical and morally muddy type? Also, he's a bandit for a photo shoot. Let's review the evidence to take us out.

Todd Carney vs The Whole Horse-Meat World

"Terry, you keep fucking up. You can't drink when you are medicated, you know that. It would also be nice if you showed some remorse for those you brutalise. Including your mother."

- extract from a Bukowski letter, July 2, 1992*.

Toddy, honey, we need to talk. It's about the hat. That....flat cap....thing. It's not working for me. It's not working for you, either. I just saw some photos of you wearing it last week and I required a cold compress on my head for 45 minutes afterwards. Never mind the nocturnal pursuits that lure you into the streets, to my mind it is this diabolical cap that is your greatest fuck-up thus far. Here is a piece of sartorial advice that I urge all men to heed: unless you are in a Guy Richie film, or are Guy Richie himself, you should not be wearing a flat cap.

Moving on. That expression: "a loose cannon"? I believe Todd Carney is the literal, human embodiment of this term right now. Without a club to play for next season he has minimal earthly significance, no responsibilities and no one to tell him to pull his fool head in. Of course, the records show that Toddy hasn't done so well with the pesky 'responsibility' part of being in a team in the past. This is a problem, I suppose. Haywire brilliance is all well and good but team sports require a near total suppression of rebellious natures and acts. The NRL is no place for a lone wolf, and the world in general is a terribly cruel place for the chronically maladjusted. More specifically; Sydney's Eastern suburbs? Sweet Jesus, bitch is up against the blade - and for those of us up against the blade there's no winning - it's just a grim and trembling onward shove.

Richocheting around Sydney like a rogue, renegade cannon is a bad look, then. This much is clear. What club is going to hear about him getting into a fight in Double Bay on Wednesday or kicking the crap out of an apartment complex's garbage bins after a session in the Cross on Sunday and think "Fuck yeh, train wrecks are GO - we want someone who is singularly committed to blazing a drunken and destructive path - SIGN THAT SHIT UP." No. Not even teams with train wreck boards themselves ('sup Parra! Hola Dogs!) will want a piece of this particular brand of carnage. It's seen as unseemly, unfortunately. Wrong era, rah rah rah... Toddy, I'm trapped in the 21st Century too you know. The walls surround us both. We just gotta hold. Hold, hold, hold.

See what I've done here - insinuated myself squarely into Toddy's psychic strain? Like, it's Toddy and me holding steady versus the whole shifting tilting hostile horse-meat world??  Well, what the hell. Don't we spend our whole lives trying to recruit others to our version of reality? Existential angst shared is existential angst halved, or some such shit. Right? Right, Toddy?..... Toddy? I think I lost him at the hat. Did I ever even have him? So many questions, no easy answers...

*Now. Turning back to Buk. Later in his letter to Terry he says 

"I shouldn't lecture you. I don't particularly believe in morals but I do believe in kindness. It's a good thing."

This is a lovely and gentle thing to say, considering that in the following letter in the volume he writes to someone else

"Just wrote a friend at the violent ward of a Texas mental hospital. His latest is that he pulled the hair off of a blonde girl. But he writes asking if it is proper to use a comma after a parentheses. Says Norman Mailer does. I told him that it all depens upon the construction of the sentence. I hope that calms him somewhat."

Lockyer Breaks His Face, Nightingale Breaks His Shorts, I Break Down

When you don't believe in anything much it can be tough to find yourself a moving spectacle to indulge in. Emotional kicks? You learn to seize them wherever you can, and you learn to forget the source. Sometimes you cheapen yourself doing it. You learn not to care.

Darren Lockyer running out of the tunnel for the last time ever at Suncorp stadium to be greeted by 50,000 rabid Queenslanders dead-set losing their motherfucking MINDS? Yep, that'll do it.


Football! The direct emotional payoff! People pay good money for emotional explosions of this calibre!

So Locky fanned the flames of my emotional fires - made me cry, in other words. So, this was to be the first sign of trouble. I recognise this now.

As for Locky; well, you know that guy Jesus? And how he's rumoured to be returning any day now? Well that stadium full of people were going apeshit on a level that not even Jesus' much-talked-about return would garner. My mind is still subject to haunting, anueristic flashes of dozens of strobe-like images from the third Origin game and I expect they will stay with me for a good while yet - pain's funny like that - so I was unprepared for having my stuffing spilt all over the place and raked over by one Queenslander, let alone by 50,000 of the bastards going fucking bananas. The entire stadium was one big, heaving human seizure, such was their rapture. Obviously, since I enjoy the sight of of free and unadulterated public outpourings of football-based emotion, I found it to be a highly enjoyable and altogether satisfying spectacle. So much so that I joined in, as it were. From my couch. At 6:30 in the morning. And what a fine morning it was.

As the game wore on I grew terribly tense. This was curious. I have no emotional attachment to either team - unless you count actually disliking them both as emotional attachment, and I suppose there's a strong case for that - but in any case I was verging on the kind of mounting hysteria that causes good people to do bad things -  set fire to their bedrooms, for instance, or hurl a car battery through their neighbour's window - that kind of thing. Curious.

In terms of the actual game, three things happened.

The first was that Jason Nightingale lost his shorts. Like, had the elastic ripped clean out of them. When he recovered from the tackle he realised this soon enough - by which I mean he tried to gather them up only for them to fall straight down. It was very vaudeville; moreso even when he stepped out of them and discarded them - just tossed them over the sideline and stood there free and easy in his navy jocks. It was fabulous. The crowd certainly thought so, because they went fucking ballistic for it. If it had been Ben Hornby in those nasty-ass flesh coloured Spanx; or anyone else who considers modesty and/or the possibility of chaff to be of greater concern that we the public's amusement and/or perviness it wouldn't have been nearly as notable. As it was the whole incident was highly notable. The channel Nine camera crew obviously concured because we were treated to several lingering replays while a trainer scurried over with a fresh pair of fully-elasticised shorts. The whole incident was as refreshing as an autumnal walk in the countryside and left me considering compiling an index - a dossier if you will - of players who still wear jocks.

The second thing that happened was that towards the end of the game, when it was getting very intense and fierce, Justin Hodges ran in and put a tackle on Josh Morris as he lay inert and twitching on the grass with a broken ankle, surrounded by a posse of concerned Dragons who had gathered to bear witness to his pain. Morris had folded like a lawn chair, in other words. Nevermind. Hodges cares not for small matters of injury and decency. Which is nice.

The third thing was that Locky done did got his face all broked up about fifteen minutes out from the end and PAYED ON - INTO GOLDEN POINT NO LESS - AND BOOTED THE FIELD GOAL THAT WON THE BRONCOS THE GAME. Astonishing. I believe that it was a potent demonstration of those things they call guts and courage, although I can't be sure since terminal overuse of such terms has rendered them kind of null and void.

I've never received a flying knee to the face, but this one time I stubbed my toe and found the pain to be so great that I promptly passed out, which was foolish of me because if it was relief that my body was seeking it was unlikely to be found by striking the back of my head against a floor paved with river-rocks. In light of my inherent wimpiness I find the fact that Locky came to, waved away the trainers gathered over him with no small amount of irritation, clambered to his feet and kept playing - pausing periodically to push his loosely flapping and rapidly swelling jaw back up in the general direction of THE REST OF HIS FACE to be all the more astonishing.

More so afterwards; when I find out that he was whisked away to have three titanium plates put into his face, which by all accounts currently mirrors the appearance of a smashed crab. And even more so when I read that he has already pooh-poohed the medical advice warning him of the possibility of losing his eyesight by taking the field on Friday by declaring quote "I WILL PLAY" unquote.

That sound you hear right now, like an opera overture? That's Locky's performance gaining mythical proportions and going straight down into NRL folklore.  And that swelling in your throat? That's that direct emotional payoff I was talking about earlier - not bad, huh?

Wild Colonial Carney: SADDLE UP

Football, god love it, is a morality tale without the morality.

Just as the unnerving thought that Todd Carney may not be playing rugby league AT ALL next year was beginning to take hold there came the news this morning that the Cronulla Sharks are circling him. This is fantastic. The news excited me so much that I can't remember how I got to work. I assume I drove, but such was my elation that I have no recollection whatsoever. Goddamn you Toddy, see the hold you have over me? I told you, it's over. Release me from your kung fu grip!

Nobody is better (or worse, depending on how you choose to view it) suited to the Shire than Toddy. If he can't be in Canberra, shit, why not Cronulla? My entire family - ON BOTH SIDES - come from the Shire - most notably my renegade mother and her "Rules are for fools" father. He dropped dead of a heart attack upon exiting the water after smashing out a vigourous set of laps in one of Cronulla's sea baths right there on the beach, how's that for living and breathing the Shire?

I was having a hard time believing the line that the NRL were not fighting like dogs over the carcass of Carney's career. As it turns out, they are. Just, y'know, behind closed doors, which is where everything worthwhile and important takes place (except for Toddy's drinking and the machinations of Manly's board, apparently).

Anyway. Cronulla. This is a great fit for Toddy, great fit. Say what you will about them, those Eastern suburbs really do require a certain proclivity for pretension. This is a fundamental truth that even Greg Inglis recognised, and he's a knob from way back - he drove Choc Mundine's hummer home to Kempsey for Christmas last year for chrissakes! Even so, G.I. grasped this truth and moved away from Bondi as soon as he could - and if this was a strategic move to almost make me like him all I can say is well played G.I., well played. For extra points, get this: He moved into some kind of estate filled with cretinous people who know nothing of league and quickly became the neighbourhood go-to man for carrying out all minor household repairs for the weak, the elderly, the inept and the lazy. Way to expose and destabilise my increasingly irrational dislike for you G.I...prick.

Now. Paul Gallan as mentor, let's talk about that. He's lovely, isn't he? Hasn't he come into his own beautifully? Other than that small matter of stomping on someone's head a few months ago, which we will put down to him still being tired and emotional in the Origin aftermath and never speak of again, he has been a model of stolid, bovine obedience this season. Putting his meaty paw in the air (coz you just know that's how it went down at Sharks HQ) and offering to mentor Toddy just ices the cake in terms of his inherent awesomeness. Wait, is that last sentence too wimpy? I think so. Gal doesn't ice the cake; he puts his fist through the cake, he takes his clothes off and he shits on the cake, BITCH. Better?

It is for this reason (directly above) that I think Toddy will flourish under Gal's leadership. If anyone is going to be able to reign in the Wild Colonial Boy Carney while still allowing him to retain the semi-wild glint in his eye it's Gal. And there's something strangely affecting about Gal offering to shine a light into Toddy's dimmer parts. Gal gives me an inexplicably serene, tranquil feeling. I imagine he'd smell like fabric softener. In short, this is a man Toddy needs in his life.

Also, Toddy; pale blue, black and white will be way better against your complexion. You was way too ruddy for that red and navy, even when you weren't on the sauce. 

Saddle up, Toddy. Get 'em.

Carney: The Colt From Old Regret

Ok.

Now that we're all clear on the fact that my sudden sensitivity all comes down to the small matter of my FEELING LIKE SHIT BECAUSE I WAS BORN IN THE WRONG ERA we can maybe move on some. And by move on, yes, I do mean turn our gazes toward football and, speaking of being born in the wrong era - although he's only really twenty years out, which is small-fry compared to my five or six centuries -  to the Todd Carney topic.

I know, it's been so long. Nine days, at least! I can't remember what I wrote last time and I won't be going back to check because that picture of Todd on a ride on mower I included in the post? It Breaks.Me.Up.


Anyway, talking about being out of step with the world (as I was in my last post, keep the fuck up already!), Toddy is still a little off the pace isn't he? It's all very subtle, it's not like he's a husk of a man just yet. It's more that he seems to be merely content with going gently into the dark night this season. As opposed to, y'know, raging against the dying of the light and taking on the line and being awesome in general.

I guess if you're of an existential persuasion you could propose that Toddy's plight perfectly illustrates the haphazard and essentially cruel nature of existence. One minute you're up - the sun around which revolve lesser planets, the next minute you're down -  that kind of thing... On the other hand, those of a more realistic predisposition could speculate that his plight perfectly illustrates the tendency for alcohol to erode athletic brilliance, addle the mind and exacerbate dickheaded behaviour.

I'm going to say a little from column A and a little from column B.
Any way you cut it, adorable scenes of light-heartedness such as the ones below have been few and far between this year, which is unfortunate.

Given his virtuoso performance last year his 2011 season has been little more than a series of rude intrusions from that pesky thing called reality, punctuated by rueful post-court-appearance press-conferences. And on-field? Shit has been pretty dire. Even by my not-exactly-lofty standards. Waiting for Toddy to run and take on the line, to do anything much other than pass the ball, had been an exercise in futility. We may as well have been waiting for the colt from Old Regret to show up.

Toddy PHONE HOME.

Still, that bizarre Roosters Panthers game on Sunday? The one that started with the Chooks stringing together sequences of mistakes that were more surreal than what even a malfunctioning Raiders side can come up with? The one that saw the SFS inundated with, oh, at least thirty five passionate Rooster supporters? The one that had them finally score more than thirteen points and the one that FINALLY SAW THEM POST A WIN? Yeah, that game. It was terrible, of course, but fantastic too, because there's nothing quite as entertaining as watching a desperate team play with wild and reckless abandon. It was Last Chance Saloon footy, and goddamn if Carney didn't do pretty well.

He understands this 'last throw of the dice' concept better than most, of course, although I have to say he may still be lacking a firm grasp of its finer points. Nevertheless, I think I detected a slight spring to his step and a small twinkle in his eye. So, because an all-whips-cracking Carney is what I very much like to see, let's file this development under 'That's What I Like to See', shall we?