Woe is us! No North Shore team in the NRL next year? Now which table
knife do we slash our collective wrists with? Do we work from the outside
in or visa versa? The Bash was never all that crash hot on haute cutlery.
As the Parramatta Eels slip-slide their way relentlessly towards a much-deserved
and Bash pocket-lining 1999 grand final victory, those arrogant North Shore
ninnies, the Manly Girls and the Norths Bearly Make A Game of It, try to
bluff their way into the 2000 lineup.
Fuck 'em both, is the Bash's professional and medical advice.
I hear along the fermented grapevine that Manly have got such limited dosh
in the club piggybank that they've been using their players' worn-out silk
and embroidered jockstraps to replace the even-more-worn-out webbing on
the pocket of the even-more-worn-out-again full-sized billiard tables at
Manly Leagues Club.
Cut across to those genius bean-counters at Norths who have got a $20 million
piece of Central Coast real estate, useless except as a monument to their
demise.
That, plus a footie side that couldn't win a game in the Long Bay exercise
yard if they shut the prison gates to lock out the opposition.
Yet the two clubs are whingeing like stockbrokers forced to pay 1% tax on
their annual income.
Woe is us is they are left out in the cold where they belong! No more league
on the North Shore. Sob. Sob.
And we are supposed to bleed for these bed-wetters who could so easily have
gone down the Wests-Balmain road and frozen Souths out of the 14th spot
for 2000. God, just imagine it. No Souths. How would Julian O'Neill make
the shitloads of money he needs to carry on? ...
Ah, Wests-Balmain. Now isn't that a match made in heaven?
Picture this. The game's over and joint coaches Wayne Pearce and Tommy Raudonikis
are going through the positives of another narrow Western Tuggers loss,
say 44 points to 102.
Young Cliffie Lyons, a Tuggers recruit from the defunct Manly Girls, goes
up to the barbie. Junior hands him two lentil burgers. Tommy gives him a
bucket of beer to wash down the burgers. And an economy sized packer of
fags containing 100 cigarettes.After everyone's eaten, Junior takes half
the team horse riding. Tommy and the rest of the side bet on the race. Broken
Thumbs beats Busted Collarbones in a photo finish.
Towards dusk, Junior takes the backs for a winding-down Yoga and Buddhist
chanting session. Tommy has the forwards bash one another with house bricks
to unleash the Primal Scream.
It'll work, true league fans. So confident of this I'm thinking of becoming
a Western Tuggers fan myself.
...
Now, let's get back to reality.
Neil Whittlaker and his fellow NRL puppets will probably blink first - under
orders from the Dirty Digger, naturally - and give the Manly Girls and the
Bears another chance to kiss and join up.
And a Manly-Norths merger would never be sublime, but it could be good.
The Bug editor thinks the new outfit should be called the Manly Sea
Beagles, but then again he knows about as much about league as anything
else - and that's four fifths of two-thirds of three quarts of fuck all.
No, for mine, they'd have to be known as the Central Coast North Shore Nymphos.
Here's how it would work to everyone's benefit.
First, build a big fucking artificial lake south of Graeme Park in Gosford.
Put up a clubhouse on the North Shore of that lake - a really big and ugly
Spanish style villa, so that the former Manly and Bears players feel at
home - even though, naturally enough, they will still live on the real North
Shore where they belong.
Triple deadlock all the entrances, install surveillance cameras, 529 alarm
systems and electrified fences. Surround that with a dozen security guards
- all brain-damaged steroid addicts - carrying French made assault rifles.
The key here, of course, is to make sure that the Central Coast North Shore
Nymphos get off their bus, enter their deserted compound, run onto their
adopted field, get beaten as usual, trundle back into their empty clubhouse,
walk down the barbed-wire enclosed ramp again to their bus to be whisked
home back to where they belong, singing North Shore private school songs
as they go.
That way, the players would never venture out into the Central Coast proper
or mix with local people.
That area of Australia is too precious - and the people too pleasant - to
risk it all being spoiled.
...
Now, back to more serious matters. Parramatta has got the forward pack
to win this year's final in what is shaping up as a battle of the forwards.
How forwards have come to dominate high scoring games goes back to the perverse
results of the idiotic 10 metre rule.
The 10 metre rule was supposed to create open play. And it does, but only
in the second half.
What happens is this. In the first half, the monstrous but reasonably quick
forwards - albeit with the ball-playing skills of rhinos with leprosy -
charge at full pace towards the opposition's inside backs.
The 10 metre rule (policed at around 7 to 9 metres, depending on the ref
and the state of the game) lets these brutes get up a sufficient head of
steam to destroy any backline lacking in a counter tactic.
Of course, this is the opposite of open football, but we are supposed to
forget all that when the conquering team runs through an opposition backline
in disarray in the second half.
Unless we revert to a 7 to 8 metre rule (policed at around 4 to 6 metres,
depending on the ref and the state of the game), classic forward offloads
to another forward linking up with the backs is all but lost to the game.
But at least Parra can play within the confines of the modern game. And
come up with something different, every so often, to challenge the current
structure of the endless set pieces.
And provide The Bash with a decent economic windfall with their grand final
victory.
While the wowsers out there in Bugland can bemoan the human folly of gambling
and drinking, it's a weakness The Bash readily confesses to. Courtesy of
the punt - and juicy odds on Parra way back when - The Bash will soon be
on a weekness of piss himself.
And unlike Manly and Norths, when I sober up and come to my senses, I'll
have a home to go to.
Cop-u-lata,
The BASH
