State of disinterest

Origin 1 was on last night. The most hyped match of handegg football this side of the Superbowl: state against state, mate against mate, date against date, as the great HG Nelson once put it. An unmatched spectacle. An unmissable contest.

Didn't watch. Couldn't be arsed.

 

Apparently NSW won, which is a surprise, and Paul Gallen punched someone, which isn't. All very lovely and presumably reason to keep the Origin franchise alive for further sequels. As a Souths fan my chief concern was the return of the players we'd reluctantly lent to the Maroons intact and in full working order. Souths are leading the comp. LEADING THE COMP, FUCKERS. And yet... I haven't watched any of their games this year either. I tend not to watch them live, calling it a superstition, but the reality is... I just don't enjoy watching rugby league any more.

As with all things in league, it started with Origin.

For much of the '90s I was a casual fan of league. At club level, Souths were shite and my backup team (Parra, given the legal obligation of every kid who grew up in the '80s to back either Parra or Canterbury) were even more shite. Ironically, it was the Super League War which got me interested in club-level league again, through the intense conviction that what Murdoch and his mercenaries were up to was nothing short of abject rancid cuntery. But I still watched Origin every year. Hung on every play as Back Door Benny and the Unmade Bed and About To Cut Loose and the King of the Kids led the NSW charge against the unwashed Maroon hordes.


But then, around the middle of the '00s, I lost interest. Partly because I moved to NZ, although never underestimate how 'into' Origin the Kiwis are, even for a 10pm kickoff on a school night. But mostly because Roy and HG stopped calling the games.
And watching Channel 9's ludicrous and cretinous coverage made me realise something: This is actually really, really stupid. Not just the coverage, the concept. It's obnoxious, and pointless, and counterproductive for the code (to have the 'highest level' of the game a provincial dustup rather than international competition), and actually... quite unpleasant to be part of. I don't enjoy watching Origin games. It brings out the absolute worst in people on both sides of the Tweed, unearths all the chippiest and snottiest grudges and grievances Queensland has about NSW. And for what? It's a concept that only works if Queensland wins. Three series wins in a row for NSW, as per the early Noughties, and ratings dive, crowds wane and plaintive media bleating ensues re the death of Origin.

Not only did I realise I don't enjoy watching Origin games, I realised I don't enjoy hating Queenslanders. It's like picking on the special needs kid who's good at sports. It's all they have, let the poor fuckers be. They've got cyclones and floods and Campbell Fucking Newman firing everyone and giving jobs to his mates and beer is too expensive and it's hot and sticky as Satan's own ballbag nine months a year. It's a fucking horrible place and you have to be mentally bereft to live there. All they have is Origin. Just declare them eternal Origin champions, mint them a perpetual trophy from a cast of Wally Lewis' cock and let them be happy. Sure, Can-Do will probably try and sell the fucking trophy, but that's their concern since they voted for the arch-cunt.

Then, this year, I realised I didn't actually enjoy watching league at all. Whether it was Tom Wankerface or Ray Hadley on the internationally-syndicated Nine coverage, or Cronulla's drug cheats, or Melbourne's salary cheats, or Manly's sheer existence, or various players' inability to keep it trousered en masse in the presence of ladies, somehow the rugby league is just a cocking bag of rancid arsedags. Last night, I realised I was more interested in the looming Lions tour than Origin. Or the NBA finals. Or the NHL finals. Or le Tour. Or le Dauphine. Or the Ashes. Or even the Champions Trophy cricket that no bastard alive gives a fuck about, least of all the Australian top order. In fact, there's barely another sporting event scheduled for June-July of 2013 which I'm not more interested in than the 2013 Holden State Of Origin. And that, somehow, is a relief to admit.

So, yeah. Origin 1 was on last night, and I didn't watch. The opening game of the Lions tour was on at the same time, the Western Force hosting the pride (geddit) of the Home Nations in the first match of their twelve-yearly visit to Australia. You don't get a Lions tour every year, and you don't get Phil Gould foaming and fapping over them in the prematch, both of which are reason enough to savour. In betrayal of my rural public school roots, I'd rather watch union (at least union played by NZ teams who throw it and run) than league these days. And given Roy and HG are planning to call the Lions tests rather than Origin this year, it seems the feeling is shared.

I didn't watch the Lions game either.

I watched highlights from the Isle of Man TT, the first Superbike and Supersport races of TT week. Amazing, compelling, thrilling stuff. Dancing on the very limit of adhesion, the very edge of physics, the very precipice of what is possible to attempt on a motorcycle. At 180mph while threading between rockwalls and lampposts. None of your acres-of-painted-runoff from your identikit Tilke autodromes here. Some motorsports - even if you're a racing nerd like me from childhood - you watch hoping, just a little, for crashes. 'Real roads' racing, you watch with your heart in your mouth hoping for anything but. You watch to see what someone can try and get away with on a bike. And, amazingly, they almost always do.

Long live the TT.

The Doctor is OUT.