We mose well take up aerial pingpong

As I was saying last time, true league fans, the Craig Gower and Brad Fittler incidents were two of the darkest days in the history of this once-proud game.
Two of the game's finest being put through the disciplinary mincer for minor indiscretions - one being too pissed, the other showing too much of his pisser - had me and my mate Blue shaking our heads in dumb-founded amazement. We almost swore to give up the turps for a day over where the politically correct, bed-wetting puppets at the NRL and ARL are taking the once greatest game of all for their faceless pay-TV masters.
Add that to the current crackdown on on-field violence and the modern batch of league players may as well shrink their footy shorts to the extent that the veins on their niagras stand out like a map of the Queensland Rail network and take up that nancy-boy game, aerial ping-pong.
"I'm sorry, Charles, I hope I wasn't too rough during that shepherd in the forward pocket just then."
"Umpire, that man there not only just thumbed his nose at me but compounded it with a grade-2 "nah nah naaah na naaaah nah" complication.
"Boy, you hurt me then when we all went up for that mark. What the heck, let's play-wrestle for 20 seconds and risk a week's suspension."
Does the game they play in hell have to come to that?
No! Because me mate Blue, ever the voice of reason in a crisis, came up with the solution to the decline and fall of our once proud game.
Blue reckons rugby league players need to declare themselves a sub-cultural group!
Yes, true league fans, a registered sub-cultural group, with our multicultural nation duty bound, both in the spirit (rum, vodka, whatever) and the letter of the law, to protect - nay, honour - their sub-cultural practices.
I admit that when Blue first came up with this plan over three 4-litre casks of Golden Gate sauvignon-plonk-claret, I was struggling to grasp its merits. Blue quickly grabbed an empty cask, ripped it apart and started jotting notes on the plain inside cardboard.
"Let's see those bloody-minded wowsers from the ARL squirm before the Human Rights Commission if they ever breech any of the 10 sacred covenants that govern the day-to-day activities of the league players' sub-cultural activities."
"Ten?"
Blue started to scribble so quickly he surprised me. I didn't even know he could write, let alone owned a pen.
Ten minutes later, he flung himself back onto his beanbag, exhausted. He got up again a second later, punched a hole in the top of our last cask and poured a half-bottle of dry gin inside. "Using me brain's thirsty work," he explained.
And now, true league fans, fans of the way the game used to be played when the claret flowed freely on the field as well, here are Blue's 10 sacred tablets of behaviour for the league sub-cultural group (registration and trade mark pending).
1. Removing any items of clothing, unwanted for whatever reason at any particular time in no particular place.
2. Drawing attention to any body appendage - whether normally visible or not without straining - at any time of their choosing and especially while engaged in practice 1.
3. Tastefully redecorating hotel/motel rooms with living sculpture in the form of yeast, vomit, faeces etc that commemorates and pays tribute to sub-cultural mores and ideals.
4. Urinating on the contents of their team mates' travel cases and sportsbags, and sometimes just their teammates.
5. Defecating in women's fashion accessories, preferable those of your own or your mates' wives or girlfriends.
6. Exposing of anuses from both moving and stationary vehicles, preferable in the presence of school children or novitiates.
7. Snotting loud-mouthed shitheads in nightclubs just before dawn.
8. Telling lies to the media, such as a broken ankle is only a slight strain and claiming their fuck-brained coach has taught them a lot.
9. Participating in prawn and pawn nights to enhance bonding among sub-cultural group members.
10. Being highly-paid outside the game for work not performed in a don't-bother-to-turn-up-we-know-you've-got training PR or used car dealership type profession.
Now, I ask you, true league fans, let's get moving on making these practices an integral part of the league sub-cultural group before that arse-wipe Neil Whitlacker and his miserable pack of bastards takes all the fun out of a rugby league scrum.
As Blue so aptly put it the following day when we were celebrating the drafting of the sub-culture's practices over a cold one at our local tittie bar: "Love, if nipples were gold, you'd have a lovely doubloon."

Cop-u-lata,

The BASH