The Weak in Rugger

Rugby union. Beloved of New Zealanders, private schools, the English upper classes and other massively inbred populations, it's best characterized as 'The reason rugby league needed to be invented.' Which ain't saying much. As the following from the World of Bollocks' archives of Rugby Code Violations - fifteen or thirteen, you's gonna be hurteen - tends to illustrate...

HOLLOW FARCE
Force equals mass times acceleration, except in Perth, where Force equals all the guys who couldn't get a run at any of the other provinces times the likelihood of John Mitchell talking entirely in ludicrous management wankwords. I'm serious, if 'going forward' he 'talks to' the 'convergence' of his and the Force's 'journeys' one more fuckin' time, whether he has buyin from key stakeholders or not, I'm going to leverage HIS low-hanging fruit.

STAND UP AND BE KHUNTED
New Zealand-born New Zealander, Karmichael Hunt, has provoked a stir in the trans-Tasman media prior to the Anzac test by pledging his allegiance to the Australian Rugby League. Broncos fullback Hunt, newly nicknamed 'Yorak' by his former countrymen, spent his formative years in the Shakies (14 of same) before moving to Straya a couple of years ago. Despite the furore over his selection to play against the nation of his birth, Hunt was taken aback by the controwversy (thanks very much Rabs) surrounding his apparent betrayal of his Kiwi roots. It wasn't for glory, or a Maroons jersey, or a better chance at winning that he'd taken Australian citizenship. It was for the same reason, he explained, that any and every other New Zealander who comes to Australia does the same thing. It's the only way to get the dole.

Meanwhile Queensland league types are also up in arms over the selection of Hunt, but for another reason: by picking Hunt at fullback, the Australian selectors overlooked Cowboys and Maroons custodian Matt Bowen (pictured left, actual size). Given that Bowen is shorter than the working week at federal parliament, he's not hard to overlook.

Speaking of North Queensland's favourite garden gnome it's time to bow out on a high note with another installment of our ever-classy pictorial supplement...

MAN-LOVE MOMENT OF THE WEAK













Our suggested captions:
(a) Queenslandaaahhh!... ahh... aaahhhhh.....
(b) Reckon them city folk would notice if we lynch him rahht here, Cleetus?
(c) Call that a grapple tackle?
(d) _____________________ (the reader is invited to insert their own reference ref. Queenslanders being stupid, racist, inbred or all of the above)

To vote, press the red button on your Foxtel or Sky Digital remote. This will turn off your TV so you can get off your fat arse, go outside and get some exercise, you corpulent fuck.

RWC2007 PREVIEW: RUCK THE FRENCH
That puffing sound you may be able to hear in the background is the collective pride of New Zealand inflating itself to physiologically unsustainable proportions, which can only mean one thing - the All Blacks haven't choked yet. It's Rugby World Cup time again and that means another one of our potentially actionable previews (now with 95% less diligent research!)

The tournament
The Rugby World Cup is played each four years between whichever countries can be arsed sending a team. This is usually in direct proportion to the number of private schools per head in the leafier, more affluent, more heavily Volvo-infested suburbs of the larger cities. Though billing itself as a genuine World Cup, the RWC is at best the third most important of the major World Cup tournaments behind those of football and cricket. The RWC's status as the 'Third World Cup' is further emphasized by the third world nations which are permitted to compete, including Namibia, Romania, Tonga, Georgia and New Zealand.

Pool A: England, South Africa, Samoa, USA, Tonga
South Africa: Contenders however harmed by their failure to resolve debilitating team selection issues which, in fairness, are entirely black and white. The white being coach Jake White, no relation of either of the White Stripes, who appears to spend his entire life sitting in press conferences in an astonishingly gay blazer.
England: Slow, ponderous and stupid.
Samoa: Currently the most in-form of the Pacific Islands teams. Gave both the Pool A bigs a scare at RWC2003. May do again this time out, but probably not consistently enough to outlast the English for the second finals berth behind the Yaapies.
USA: American.
Tonga: Tune in for the war dance then flip channels.

Pool B: Australia, Wales, Fiji, Canada, Japan
Australia: Can be charitably described as a fucking horrible excuse for a rugby side. However, will win the group based on their being noone else less incompetent then them. Game plan will revolve around the pick-and-drive, long kicking, and hoping like the Jesus fuck that Latham doesn't get crocked again. In the absence of Wendy Sailor, will rely heavily on Lotsa Tequilas to provide the all-important aimlessly-running-sideways factor, random spear-tackling of opponents, a large chest to bounce perfectly-catchable short balls off, and of course the after-match entertainment.
Wales: Oooooo. Rugby, shit weather and sheep, it's the New Zealand of the north. Pity they're crap. Like New Zealand, they peaked equidistant between World Cups, winning the Six Nations in 2005, and have done bugger all since. Home games at the Millennium will help, but they'll be staying there at home once the tournament gets serious.
Fiji: Would be really good if the tournament was seven-a-side, kava skolling, or 'see who can have the most military coups between world cups'. It ain't. Might scare the Welsh for a half or so.
Canada: About as much use as Candida, but given they've turned up to every RWC since day 1, equally persistent.
Japan: Toire wa doko desu ka? It's out there on the field in stripey red uniforms; not even All Black legend John Kirwan on antidepressants can coach this lot into not being absolutely shithouse. Soo desu ne. (And with that, our entire stock of Year 7 Japanese is extinguished.)

Pool C: New Zealand, Scotland, Italy, Romania, Portugal
New Zealand: In light of their national compulsion towards falling over hopelessly in the semis of any international sporting tournament, the All Blacks™ have employed Gilbert Enoka, not a Kenyan marathon runner but a pudgy Kiwi shrink, as their 'mental skills coach'. Judging by recent press comments from senior players, his approach to preventing the All Blacks™ from choking in the semi is to instruct them to stick their fingers in their ears and go LALALALALA I'M NOT LISTENING whenever anyone brings the issue up. Predicted result: will choke in the semi. In order to avoid being lynched at Auckland Airport, the entire team will agree to be bought wholesale by Ernesto Bertarelli, and will go on to win the 2011 Rugby World Cup for Switzerland.
Scotland: Their moth-eaten new uniforms, like everyone else in Canterbury jerseys, look a total haggis. Despite playing like men who wear skirts as their national dress, will probably end up with the spare quarter-final berth after the All Blacks™ have finished defiling the still-warm carcasses of their pool-stage competitors. Team sponsor, the Famous Grouse, is in fact not really that famous and not really very grouse either.
Italy: Italians take to rugby about as well as cappuccinos after midday, organised traffic and uncorruptible football referees. Unsurprisingly most of their team are either Argies of Italian extraction, adopted Southern Hemisphere types, or lost.
Romania: Who? How? And more to the point, why?
Portugal: Divers. The lot of 'em.

Pool D: France, Ireland, Argentina, Georgia, Namibia
France: Oh dear. Despite neanderthal flanker Seb Chabal's boast that France had 'thirty Zinedine Zidanes' in their squad (useful only if things deteriorate into a nutting competition, surely?) the weight of expectation on the hosts has become plain to see, with coach Laporte coming out with increasingly lunatic claims about southern hemisphere drug testing and rule breaking (something about needing to change the rules because the All Blacks™ understand them properly?) and then collapsing in a screaming pile of number deux when the Argies asked a few tricky questions in the tournament opener. It's their party, and they'll cry if they want to: you would cry too if you failed to make the knockout stage, which they probably will.
Ireland: Irish. Best ranked of the Home Nations, though overly dependent in attack on New Zealand's favourite spear-tacklee Brian O'Driscoll, which is a bit of a pity as he's crocked. Entire team probably drunk right now.
Argentina: Tournament dark horses, even before creme brulee-ing the French on matchday one; have been in excellent form on their recent travels, having beaten England, Ireland and Italy. Most of their squad play for French clubs.
Georgia: Most of their squad play for French clubs too but it's not going to help them. Neither will fielding fifteen blokes with widows' peaks, heavy five o'clock shadow at two in the afternoon, and names ending in 'adze'.
Namibia: In the last world cup, they were beaten by 142 to nil, by a second-string Wallabies team 'boasting' the likes of Sludge Rogers and Lotsa Tequilas, in Adelaide. It doesn't really get more embarrassing than that, folks.

Nostrildramas busts out tha mad skillz once more with feeling:
Pool results:
(A) Saffers first, Poms squeak second
(B) The Wobbilies then the Welsh, boyo
(C) The All Blacks™, then daylight, then the Scots
(D) Argentina first, France second after some truly charitable hometown refereeing in the Ireland game, probably from Steve Walsh

It's A Knockout: (that's the name of the game, allegedly)
QF1, Oct 6 Marseilles: Australia def England
QF2, Oct 6 Cardiff: New Zealand def France
QF3, Oct 7 Marseilles: South Africa def Wales
QF4, Oct 7 St-Denis: Argentina def Scotland

SF1, Oct 13 St-Denis: Australia somehow def New Zeahhh.. can't breathe... throat constricting...
SF2, Oct 14 St-Denis: Argentina def South Africa, just for the hell of it

Kiss-yer-sister game, Oct 19 Paris: neither NZ nor RSA turns up having entered the Witness Protection Program to avoid being lynched by own rabid fans

Final, Oct 20 St-Denis: Argentina def Australia, after controversial match-winning try from Argentine number 10 who ascribes clear goal-line knock-on (missed by referee) to 'the Hand of God'

You read it here first. (Obviously, because no other bastard would bother plagiarising this rubbish and printing it elsewhere.)

ERM, HOW ABOUT THEM BRONCOS?
Now look, I don't want to tell Supercoach Wayne Bennett how to do his job - he's been doing it, crankily, for 25 years or more, since he was driving the Canberra bus in the late '80s - but maybe, just MAYBE, if Darren Lockyer and the rest of the Broncs were practising their tackling on something more robust than a fairly spindly-looking Swiss-born bar owner at stupid o'clock on Monday morning, maybe there wouldn't have been a two-man overlap on the wing in the last thirty seconds of the 2008 NRL sudden death semifinal... I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

And as for the Alhambra Lounge Three (or was it four?)... if someone can explain to me the fascination among male sporting teams with having sexual intercourse with a lady, consenting or otherwise, as a team bonding exercise, please do, because it absolutely fucking baffles me. From where I stand (well away from the gents, and understandably so) it just seems like latent man-love to me, but best ask the Broncos (or the Bulldogs.)

Still, it'd never happen in union... their players are usually too busy molesting quokkas or busting teammates' jaws for any of that sort of stuff.

The argument of alleged football intellect and professional dugong impersonator* Phil Gould that no NRL footballer ever signed up to be a role model and therefore is exempt from being one, is complete bollocks, as is Gould himself. If they just wanted to play football and nothing more, there's always the Lower Clarence Magpies in Group 1 of the NSW Country Rugby League. Match fees of half a carton of beer. Players' player gets a meat tray. (Not sure if that counts as permissable third-party payments under the salary cap. Fire-Up-Bitch Gasnier could probably advise on that one.)

All that said, if Boxhead Bruno Cullen is right and this sort of drunken one-in all-in behaviour is also acceptable among netballers, watch out next time the Qld Firebirds are having a team bonding exercise out on the turps. THAT would make the papers, I'd wager. If not YouTube.

Firebirds: hot

*Not many people know that professional dugong impersonator Phil Gould IS actually a dugong. He was found washed up in the Nepean River near Penrith's training ground in the late '70s, and they figured he looked slow, fat and stupid enough to play in the forwards for the Panthers. The Choccy Soldiers weren't going that well for frontline grunt and/or poke back in the day.

WORST JERSEYS EVER (Rugby Union): Australian Wallabies, 1997-98
























Welcome to professionalism, Rugby Union. Have a jersey that looks like an abortive SBS test pattern.

This was also the period of Wallaby history in which the technique was developed of predicting whether Matt Burke would miss shots at goal by determining whether his hair was in place or not, and furthermore which side he'd miss on by the direction his product-laden hair was pointing in. (He's going to slice this one right.) Burkey redefined the meaning of 'fringe player'.

WORST JERSEYS EVER (Rugby League): South Sydney Rabbitohs, 1908-2010
First, an admission... a statement of the bleeding convulsing haemorraghing obvious, in fact. This page bleeds coachwood and myrtle (or even red and green) and has done throughout its existence. But, of course, backing the Rabbitohs doesn't mean we're blind to the many and varied flaws and foibles that our favourite club struggles under. To be brief, they are two: a Narcissistic twat of an owner with a Jesus complex whose band has been compared to used food, unfavourably but accurately; and the fact we turn up to play looking like a series of Christmas baubles.

But it's not the traditional Souths jersey that's the problem here. Fuck no. When you look like thirteen of Santa's elves you need to play with more front than a Mack truck and more grit than a frosty mountain road. Google 'John Sattler broken jaw 1970 grand final' for a salutary tale of what happens when cheating silvertail mongrel scum (that'd be the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles for those playing at home) are stupid enough to underestimate the bravery and tenacity of the mighty Bunnies. And we beat the Christ out of you twunts near the end of last year, which makes us 2008 premiers by logical induction, so get fucked.

No, the traditional Souths jersey is, officially, tha shizzle. My nizzle.

But, given that no other team plays in the festive combination of lateral red and green stripes, largely because no other team would ever want to... what the fuck is the point of THIS?


















It's a Souths away jersey.
It's the 2009 one, apparently. And it's by no means the worst since the Bunnies were readmitted to the comp in '02.

The second worst, a piss-poor ripoff of the St George 'V' is one I admit to owning, in theory because it was the first shirt in which they won a game after readmission - round two, 2002, vs Canberra - but in reality because it was on special at Rebel Sport for fifty bucks because it's ugly as a hatful of arseholes. It has apparently been expurgated from the internet and for that we should be thankful.

The worst was the one at left, originally from a couple of years ago, then inflicted on the under 20s side in an act of bastardry bordering on child abuse.

So the new away jersey's not that bad. The fake Maori squigglings are a massive wank, but I guess there's a lot of Kiwi internationals plying their trade in the side and a lot of international Kiwis plying their trade in the local area (i.e. filling in dole forms), so it's a massive wank that has some vague justification.

But I return to the unanswered question: why the fuck does a team whose jersey can, by definition, clash with noone elses, need a fucking away jersey?

We managed to play Canberra at least twice a year for the best part of twenty years across the '80s and '90s without our boys and their boys getting confused as to who was who. And that included several seasons in which NRL Footy Show 'personality' and noted idiot, 'Test Match' Mario Fenech, was our captain. Who else are we going to play across the course of a year who there could possibly be a colour conflict with? Seriously, who the fuck are we going to clash with? Freddie Krueger?


















Freddie was a brutal front-row enforcer, but his ball handling skills were absolute crap

So the South Sydney away jersey wins our Shite Sports Shirts award, not because it's hideous to look at, but because it has no reason for being.

Dishonourable mention, worst jerseys ever: Super League. All of them.












WHOLE LOTE LOVE
So what the fuck did Wallabies and Waratards winger Lotsa Tequilas do THIS time to warrant the ARU finally giving him the arse? Given the anal retentiveness of the current ARU administration - where starting a food fight is tantamount to turning up at Glebe Police Station too drunk to remember your own name and being crowned 'the drunkest human being ever' by the Fuzzy Muff - it's anyone's guess. These are mine.

Take your pick from:

• sinking a few with Symmo
• powdering his nose with Dell
• punching on with Matt Henjak
  
• sharing a glass with Greg Bird
• sharing a hotel room with Blind Freddy Fittler
  
• going for a drive with Jake Friend
• taking a wander through the Cronulla shops with Brett Seymour
• wildlife tourism with the Western Force
  
• or sharing a bun with the Sharkies

Answers on a postcard to the usual address. Which won't get there cos this is the internerd and all, but anyhoo.

And finally:

FUCK THE MELBOURNE STORM
(written years ago, but strangely precient ref. their recently uncovered retention strategy for 'marquee' players)
Billy Slater was robbed. Robbed, I tell yuz! How dare he be rubbed out of a best-and-fairest competition on the basis of a couple of lazy uppercuts and a few weeks' holiday? Meanwhile, Rugby League is safe from cheese-eating surrender monkey rugby types with big chequebooks, because Greg Inglis, Queensland's favourite New South Welshmen since AB, has re-signed with Melbourne for the next 15 minutes (never mind about Benji, Sonny Bill and the Fire-Up Bitch merchant.) And Melbourne's attractive and engaging style of play - flop the entire scrum onto blokes in the tackle and try to remove their head like a twist-top stubby - is the greatest thing to revolutionise the game since Jack Gibson came back from his NFL study trip with a clipboard of wacky ideas in the '70s. Craig Bellamy is a genius, and everyone is just jealous.

Or so I understand from reading the News Limited papers. Amazing how much good press your team gets when you're owned by the publishers, yeah?

I hate the Melbourne Storm. I always have, and so should you. They are a venal, disreputable, unethical post-modern invention of money and greed which speaks directly to the soullessness, the corporatization and the disgusting cancerous avarice of modern sport. The Melbourne Storm are everything that is wrong with the world. Let's be unequivocal, and get to the crux of the matter: I would rather Manly won the comp. And that's not just because the jelly-wrestlers put 42 points on my Bunnies last week, whereas we gave the Seagles a touch-up last time we saw 'em, meaning we can claim prior precedence if they win (i.e. they won, we beat them, therefore we're champions. Worked in the schoolyard, can work again.)

The Storm owe their existence to Super League, Lachlan Murdoch, John Ribot and a host of other pestilences foist upon the world by Uncle Rupert and News Limited. They are the reason that the North Sydney Bears were chained to a rock and beaten to death, that the Magpies were eaten by the Tigers, that the Steelers were left to rust before St George sold the carcass for scrap, that the Rabbitohs went south - if only for a few years, and only ILLEGALLY. If it wasn't for the Storm, there wouldn't have needed to be ten years without a Gold Coast team in the NRL. The Gold Coast Giants, Seagulls and/or Chargers gave us Preston Campbell, Wally beating the Broncos after Benny had given him the arse, and most significantly of all, the great Peter Gill. The Melbourne Storm gave us Brett Kimmorley and the grapple tackle. They have no soul, no heart, no fanbase (certainly not one that will stick around when a Super 14 team rock into town - count the number of Kiwi faces in the crowd at the Dome this weekend, they're the munty ones) and no reason for existing, other than to make money for their media magnate overlords. Melbourne needs rugby league like a fish needs a bicycle, which you don't need Bono to tell you is NOT VERY FUCKING MUCH SONNY.

In conclusion, the Storm are arse, and I hope they die in a ditch like the scrotal fungus that they are.

The Doctor is OUT.