So Rickety Stewheart from the Canberra Rodents wants to check-out his balls and play elsewhere. All because they took the captaincy off him in favour of Laurie in La La Land Daley.
Elsewhere in this evershifting some-parts sandy land of ours, Glen Lazarus plans to rise again in Melbourne Town, if they will toss the captaincy into the ring they have already adequately filled for the man of motion.
Shit a Brick. Which true league player gives a rat's arse about being captain? In my 25 year adult playing career - 10 years from age 17 to 26, six years from age 27 to 30 and nine years from 31 to 34 - I was never once offered the captaincy. And I did not give a rat's arse.
I mean I was even invited to referee one match. I was having a bit of a run-in with one of the pack of clowns they get to ref league matches. Nothing unusual about that, but this particular blob of pigeon-shit in white turned sarcastic on me and said: "You wanna referee this game, Brown?"
Well, of course I declined. "It's only fair you blow the whistle,"
I conceded to him: "After the way your daughter blew me all last night."
That was another early shower for me, but that's the way I learned to play
the game: the referee is always right - a right turd.
But at least he has got the excuse of being the enemy - not supposedly on
your side. Your captain gets on your case for 80 minutes and you are supposed
to respect and admire the bastard. Fuck that.
It's one of the things I bring up when Blue sometimes asks me if I expect to be reincarnated as an ARL player chasing the big bucks. My general reply is that I an suspicious of reincarnation anyway. With my luck I will come back with the brains of Richard Wilkins and the looks of Barry Jones.
On a more specific point is the way I would hate to have to pretend I loves me coach, I worships me captain and I will lays down me life for every spittle-droolin' halfwit playing beside me.
Let's look at the sorts of blokes they make captains. Type A captain is your carrot juice sipping wowser. Your type A captain tries to lead by example, 25 tackles in a half, backs up the ball carrier all day, tries to catch a breakaway winger who can run 100 metres in less than 10 seconds. Type A does not scream at you, just gives you a withering look every time you go to have a bludge. No matter how well you play, Type A will always manage to make you feel like a bag of shit at one stage of the game.
Type B is you nippy inside back, half-back or five-eighth. Type B is
always scheming: how to fool the ref, how to fool the opposition. When what
pasases for his brain overheats two minute into a game, it often turns he's
scheming how to fool everyone including himself. There is a good type B
and a bad type B. The good type B is so busy plotting, he runs his own race
- all being a captain means getting a C beside your name in the program.
Good type B makes a lot of fans wonder why he is captain and makes almost
every player glad he is.
Bad type B gives you the shits. Running around yelling at you, pushing you,
telling you to get in the defensive line. Bad type B needs his mouthguard
washed in a 50% solution of Valium.
Type C is your big forward. The Bash would have been a type C, but I have never been a country member. You remember. Good. Type C gets in your face, as if to warn you that it's all the same to him whether he belts you or an opponent. After 10 minutes, you are feeling the same way. Type C is forever screaming: "Run off me, run off me." Never run off a type C. It's best that they get the crap beaten out of them. It's their destiny.
So there you have the captains of the football industry. Some say a necessary evil, like venereal disease. At least there is penicillin for VD. There is no known cure for addiction to captaincy. Just ask Rickety Stewheart.
No surprise to see Canberra take the opportunity to give an ageing Noa Nandruku the Kyber Pass, even though a Canberra beak found the truculent footballer blameless in going the knuckle on the missus and a couple of other sheilas. It was the piss wot dun it, or so it seems.
Now my own somewhat bitter relationship with the law has long been based on mutual misunderstanding. Now I find out that 30 years of uncontrollable lengthy flirtations with that trollop, Ms De Meaner, could have been shortened with a succinct series of: "Pissed, your honour."
What I am wondering is just how far the admirable defence of "Pissed
your honour" goes.
I am not sure what goes on in Canberra, but I do know that in more civilised
places like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, it is considered etiquette to
ply the trade of thieving while pissed. Perhaps it is considered only sporting
to give equally pissed coppers a fair chance of catching you.
Anyways, does the "Pissed your honour defence hold here."
Judge: "To steal a large sun of money while holding bank employees in fear of their lives is an intolerable crime against…"
Armed Robber: "Pissed, your honour."
Judge: "Oh, alright then, you can go. And you better take your rifle with you."
So there you are, true league fans. Three magic words mean a life of theft without a hope of being brought to account. Just three magic words: Nursing Home Owner.
Cop-u-lata
The Bash.
