It's cool to hate

I hate the jocks and I hate the geeks
I hate the trendies but I also hate the freaks
I hate your band and I hate TV
I'm only happy when I'm in my misery
- 'Cool To Hate', The Offspring, 1997

I hate the Offspring - well anything they've done since the '90s anyway - but the point remains: it's cool to hate. Or cool to be hated, in sporting terms, at least. Last night the two most broadly despised teams in the two premier Australian football codes, Manly and Collingwood, both won their way to their respective Grand Finals after out-hating opposition teams that would on an average day be the neutral observer's punching bag of choice - the hated-south-of-the-Tweed Brisbane Broncos and the hated-because-of-Jeff-fucking-Kennett Hawthorn Hawks. Meanwhile, across the ditch, the Wallabies saw off both a plucky-but-clueless Septic rugger side and a hometown Kiwi crowd who paid very good money to turn up in hastily-smeared red-white-and-blue and boo the shit out of their ANZAC brethren. Which brings us to our point of order: how much is too much when you're on the death-riding bandwagon?

For it seems to Your Correspondent that the modern sporting universe takes more pleasure in watching a despised team fail than seeing their own team succeed. Being a South Sydney supporter I have no frame of reference for the latter, obviously (although being a Souths supporter means one actually has a legitimate reason to hate Manly, for 40 years and counting of being absolute pricks... Johnny Sattler's jaw in the GF, strip-mining all the talent from the 1971 and 1989 teams, yada yada yada.) But Souths fans don't have a moratorium on hating Manly, just like no AFL team has exclusive rights to death-riding the Pies - even those with little to no interest in AFL know from birth to hate the Pies with their legion of toothless fucktard supporters and their ubiquitous shiny fuckface of a president. Just like the number of Man United fans worldwide are dwarfed by the number of Anyone But United fans. Baseball? Anyone but the Yankees. Doesn't even need to be a team sport. Tiger Woods in golf. Schumacher in F1. You don't need to be particularly knowledgeable or even interested in a sport to know who you're meant to hate. And given they're usually the successful 'franchises', the chances of them being up the pointy end at podium time is probably better than for whichever other outfit you've sellotaped your affections to, so they'll be there or thereabouts in the finals, ready and waiting to be hated.

Why all of this is the case - what underlies the deep-seated psychological issue at work which drives us down the path of schadefreude for our sporting jolls - is beyond the scope of this discussion. My question is just this - at what point is it just a little bit sad? I dislike Manly a lot. I hate the Broncos, for that matter. But I wouldn't cross a busy street to watch either of them play - just to hang shit on them from the sideline, laugh at Lockyer's misshapen head or sledge AVO Watmough for being special needs. Let alone shell out a couple hundy for me and mine to go to the game in oppo-team-colours-du-jour and bellow my ring out for whoever they were playing, just for shits and giggles. My question is, would you? Which brings us back to Westpac Wellington Regional Stadium last night, where most of the punters who'd paid the price of admission were very evidently backing the Septics - which is entirely their right and privilege, and if they've got that sort of disposable cash available the NZ economy must be doing alright. Although had the dearly beloved Sons of Uncle Sam turned up at the docks on the deck of a nuclear-armed aircraft carrier signing up enlistments for the War on Trrrrr, one wonders if they'd have been so warmly received by the New Zealand people.

Probably, as long as they didn't have Quade fucking Cooper playing for them.

The Doctor is OUT.