The three Rs – referees, rules and rural recession
– are rooting rugby league.
Riting wise, that might read like having more Rs than class.
But the game is having a shocker and unless something is done,
the next whistle you hear will be full time – on the sport
of rugby league.
Before you go saying, true league fans, that the game has survived
dickhead referees and idiotic laws for decades, cast your mind
back to the recent Penrith-Parramatta clash.
That was when Stuffup Clark decided to attack both attacking sides
for playing the ball incorrectly. That game was the low point
so far – and I stress so far – in Stuffup’s career.
It was worse than last year’s debacle when he sent players
to the sin bin for making the spot-on call that he was, is and
ever will be an out-an-out fuckwit.
Blue and I watched that Penrith-Parramatta clash in that great
Australian institution, the Don’t Know Rubbity. (Don’t
know how we got here; don’t know how we got home!).
After the fifth penalty against the attacking side, Blue said:
“This is fucked, Bash. You can’t go dashing people’s
expectations. When their side is attacking, the punters won’t
stand for it."
I got Blue to admit he’d been reading the psychostew in those
women’s magazines again instead of just looking at the lingerie
ads like he’s supposed to. But he was right, for Stuffup
was blowing harder than a hooker when the Seventh Fleet's in town.
The NRL and the referees’ mob defended themselves by saying
that the coaches knew about the crackdown. And that the players
knew about the crackdown.
What was left unsaid was that someone might have had the decency
to tell the punters who pay for oiling the cranky rugby league
machine. Then they could have stayed at home.
The NRL reckoned that the coaches actually suggested the crackdown.
Yeah, sure. That’s like asking an undertaker how to fix the
public hospital system.
All 12 of the 14 coaches care about is trying to stop Brisbane
or Melbourne from winning the comp.
What you average league fan wants is for someone in a more or
less upright position to play the ball more or less square to
the goalline with his foot more or less touching the ball. The
game, like the booze at the Don't Know Rubbity, should flow freely.
Now, true league fans, you may say the Bash is over-reacting.
That Stuffup Clark and his mates only police the rules for a couple
of weeks and then forget about it.
That only makes it worse. You never know when the rule is going
to be enforced or whether getting the shove for swearing is going
to return. Or, for that mater, any of the other crappy rules in
a rule book that is too fat by half.
There is so much debate over rule changes that when a real stinker
comes along, it’s not treated with the uproar it deserves.
You see, it doesn’t matter a fig whether they keep that rule
about having your foot over the deadball or tough line and grounding
the ball to get a 25-metre restart. St George proved a few weeks
back that you can still stuff it up and give the attacking side
a try.
Stripping in a two-man tackle is a good rule. If an attacker wants
to abuse the rule by letting go of the ball, it does so at his
own risk.
Getting around the rules in rugby league is, as in life, a wonderful
tradition. If a referee like Harrigan decides to turn his blinder
eye to players being a metre off-side, who gives a fuck.
The 10 metre rule itself is stupid, so if we’ve got a defacto
nine-metres, all the better in the Bash’s book.
But what is unforgivable is that, week in, week out, the home
side gets more penalties than the away side.
So a true league fan is expected to travel all the way to an opposition
ground, part with the missus’s hard-earned, just to see their
team dudded by a referee with one ear on the baying home crowd.
Poor crowds will continue until they fix that up.
As for the third "r", where does the rugby league expect
to get its players of the future. Apart from the odd copper and
bank johnny – an endangered species in anyone’s book
– players have traditionally come from the factories and
the bush.
It may sound silly, but that’s why league thrived. You sent
out your local hero from the machine shop or the cow paddock to
represent all your other stiffs who couldn’t make it.
Yet no matter how many bush or suburban administrators tell the
NRL that league is dying, all they can say is what a great eight-team
finals series we are going to have.
Sure, you can have a bunch of super athletes being traded between
clubs and the game will continue to make huge physical improvements.
But club loyalty and the passion of fans will continue to wither.
Without that loyalty, rugby league is no better a contest than
union, Aussie rules or soccer.
***
The Bash is waiting for the half of Australia that hates Anthony
Mundine to rediscover him as the new Lionel Rose of our time.
Sure, if Mundine met that Welsh git Joe Calzagne tomorrow, The
Man would be praising Allah from the bloody floor of the ring.
But take the Bash's tip. In 12 months time, Mundine’s image
will be whiter than God-bothering jockey Darren Beadman. It will
take more than a bunch of dickhead selectors to keep him out of
an Australian guernsey and, who knows, maybe a world title.
***
Have you ever seen anything dumber, true league fans, than the
video judge throwing back the decision for a ref’s call.
It’s like going to the VD clinic and having the doctor say:
“We don’t know whether you’ve got the clap. Why
don’t you go back and ask your girlfriend?"
Yet no one in the NRL seems remotely interested in getting rid
of a rule so fucked it’s on a planet of its own.
***
Those 1970s post cards telling us to live one day at a time have
a lot to answer for. Two weeks ago, every pisspot poofta bimbo
sports journo was telling us the final eight was decided.
The St George/Illawarra/Batesmans Bay Dragoons and the West Tuggers
were gone, they said.
Yet with only four rounds to go, it’s pretty bleeding obvious
that only the Brumbies are certainties for the eight, with only
the Roosters, Knights and Storm the only other teams looking close
to good things.
For what it’s worth, The Bash reckons the Canberra Rodents
and West Tuggers will miss the cut. But I’m not opening me
trap too loud – unlike those bedwetters in the media who
write on trivial things rather than sport.
***
Every paper you pick up, every TV show you watch, told us the
GST was a fizzer like the Y2K Bug.
Holy snapping Buddha bile, Batman! Before the GST is done, there
will be carnage in John Howard's FJLand.
Keep those newspaper headlines of how well the GST came in for
three months’ time, true GST fans.
The Bash's bet is that Howard is gong to be about as popular as
Peter Reith at a wharfies picnic.
Little Johnny and the GST are going to pong to high heaven –
even more than they do now.
Sadly, because of Johnny's GST that no one in Australia wanted,
when Anthony Mundine becomes champeen of the whole wide world,
most of Redfern won’t know because they won’t have been
able to afford to get their broke TVs fixed.
Cop-u-lata,
The BASH
