Archives, eh
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# A couple of days ago, we were all Australian
Sports. Yeah.
Disappointed with the last Test in India. I can’t stand Peter Roebuck, but I begrudgingly agree with him; Ponting blinked and didn’t push the advantage Krezya had somehow managed to engineer for him. Was he mindful of a personal suspension because of the slow over rates? Ehhh; I don’t know. I am mystified by the last session of India’s second innings though.
On the other hand, Australia vs New Zealand. The first Australia vs New Zealand, in Hong Kong, made me query the multiverse in general and William in particular why Australia was even allowed to play rugby. Watching the All Blacks wink and reveal that they’ve been in third gear all along is starting to get really really depressing. I didn’t get to see the test in Twickenham – and yes, I do just like to see them lose – which I regret beyond the telling given that by all reports we beat them by beating their scrum. And by kicking a lot of penalties. So we showed them how to play like an English team. Hah!
It is raining in Brisbane. Hope it stops tomorrow because the First Test against New Zealand starts at the Gabba on Thursday. We’ve already played one game la mode Anglais and that had the charm of laughing at them while doing it. What, we’re going to laugh at the English while we play The Shire? Doesn’t seem much point, really.
Um…yeah, that about wraps up the games between Australia and New Zealand. I mean, assuming there’s no netball games on at the moment.
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# Finals
I get asked, as men are at this time of the year1 when other men are around and there is a degree of unfamiliarity, I get asked What team I go for. Who is my team? Is my team in the finals? If not, which team will I lend my grudging and temporary support? Who’s going to win.
Yeah, that’s right. It’s a sports post. I figured it was time since I had selfishly not blogged the State of Origin games. I had this pointed out to me a couple of months ago. Never before have I felt the burdens of my readership of -10 people – I need a natural 20 just to be read! – so keenly as I did then when I realised I had let the side down so by not babbling for 7 ½ paragraphs about the magnificence that was seeing The Grub, Paul Gallen, give Queensland so many gift penalties. What a shithead.
I find that question uncomfortable to answer. Not necessarily because I have to confess to supporting a team that is irredeemably crap – say, Souths – or because I am supporting a team that is traditionally disliked, but because I am not a True Fan. That is, I am not someone who bleeds the colours of a particular team. I do not have team flags, team jerseys2, know the names of the top 25 players in both first and reserve grades, have children named after members of the team’s All Star roster, or any of that. I just don’t have that intensity of passion. I have too many eyes. What I do have is a surplus of middling support which I dole out to a number of teams. Six in fact. Out of fifteen.
Obviously I support all three Queensland-based teams. That’s just common sense. You have to support fellow Queenslanders as they enter the field of battle, competing against the hardest, toughest, least sentimental, and greates cheats in the entire world. I refer, of course, to the National Rugby League organisation. A cartel of NSW ex-players and officials, resentful of the fearsome natural talent of Queensland’s teams who set out each year to ensure that eye-gougers from Sydney get off scotfree while a congratulatory handshake from a Queensland-based player will earn him three weeks on the sideline.
And since I am going for Queenslanders, I might as well go for Melbourne as well, since they are practically a Queensland team anyway. Their best players play for Queensland, their feeder clubs are Queensland-based. They are another target of whinging, moaning and maligning accusations from the moral midgets at the farrago of duplicity and lies otherwise known as the Daily Telegraph, NRL judiciary and Sydney-base clubs.
I support Wests Tigers because, well, technically they are the local team. They play three of their thirteen home games in Campbelltown; I live in the Campbelltown area. There’s a latin phrasem I’d like to use here – because it’d make me look clever – that translates to “Support your local team because you look like an arsehole if you don’t”, but unfortunately such a phrase doesn’t exist. Or at least it hasn’t come down the ages to us in the pages of Tacitus or Livy. What a shame; it’d be quite useful to round off this paragraph, an amusing way to disguise the lack of ironic one-eyed victimhood.
And finally, there is Easts. I like to tell people I’ve been going for Easts since before there was a Queensland team in the national comp; before there was even a national competition, back in the day when it was the NSWRL. That would be a lie. I didn’t really even follow the league until after the first Queensland teams entered the competition. No, the real story is that…I betrayed Queensland by disliking the Brisbane Broncos. I know; the dangers I am undertaking, admitting it here in the face of the threat of legal remonstration. I think though that the statue of limitations has passed so I am safe. Also, I think my reasoning would, now that time has passed and passions have ebbed, would get me off even if I was dragged before a court of equity. I couldn’t support Brisbane after what they done to King Wally. So I had to pick another team. Easts were, at the time, captained by a New Zealander, so I figured I could support them and assuage my guilt by telling myself that they weren’t completely tainted by NSWishness. And after he left? Well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions; or in my case, Kiwi halfbacks.
To offset my overflowing cup of support, I have another aspect to my sporting character; every game has one team that everybody but their fans hates. The New England Patriots, for example, in the NFL. In the NRL it is the Manly Sea Eagles. Well, yeah, I hate them as well. I hate them for all the right reasons, none of which are even remotely relevant to reality at any time after 1986. They’re arrogant. They’re the rich silvertails. They swoop in with their sense of entitlement and steal away the cram of the playing crop. I seethe with unbridled contempt for them and cheer when they lose. I just also feel the same way about St George as well. And Parramatta.
And the Bulldogs.
My dislike of Cronulla is different though. While I may dislike certain players in the aforementioned Four Teams of the Apocalypse – Mark Gasnier, Brett Stewart, Jarred Hayne…I’m sure there is someone at Belmore – there aren’t really any players I would cheer to see hurt. I would cheer, loudly, to see Paul Gallen and Greg Bird of the Cronulla Sharks hurt. One is merely a grub on the field. The other is a grub off the field and seems to have just enough good timing to get his big hits in a split second before they are deemed late and fouls.
It is the semi-finals this week. Manly and Cronulla are playing in separate games, against Auckland and Melbourne respectively. It is my opinion that they will end up playing the Grand Final against each other. And thus, I am torn. There will be two teams I hate playing for the premiership. Who do I support? I have to support someone or else what is the point of watching? I can’t just support the game because no matter what happens, one of those teams will be lifting the trophy at the end of the game and thus clearly, rugby league is the loser regardless of whose thuggish mitts are lofting it skyward. I think, on the balance of things, it is going to have to be Manly who I grudgingly direct my lukewarm cheers towards. Because at least I can look forward to a week of wailing and sobbing and hate from Cronulla because even when they get to the grand finals, they still can’t win a premiership. Forty-two More Years should be the rallying call for everyone on this side of the Captain Cook Bridge.
Also, go the Cats. I’m obligated to say that because all of my co-workers, the ones I talk to every day anyway, support Hawthorn.
1 In March as well.
2 I do have one jumper in team colours, but it is a jumper, not a replica jersey3.
3 The exception is Queensland, of course. I have a Queensland origin jersey that gets worn precisely three times a year and has never in eight years been washed. Queensland is the exception though, they are a rep team and it is mandatory for Queenslanders to support them rabidly. It’s the law.
