Recent Posts
The thousands of emails that flooded my inbox, almost beyond the point of recognition, made this post a necessity. And while this topic has piqued my interest considerably, I am aware of the ethical implications a partisan blog might have upon my readership. So it is solely for this reason that I have allowed the waves of discontent to quieten before offering my own take on the greatest rugby league off-field incident of the 21st Century. Now that the puritans, the fiends, the Germaine Greers and the Rebecca Wilsons of our world have all chomped heartily into the bit, it is time for SportingMind to offer a bit of clarity and poise to an issue that has escalated quicker than a Phuket bar mat prank.
Let us not forget the context. It was a chilly night in Christchurch. The Cronulla Sharks had just had a scratchy pre-season hit out against an under strength New Zealand Warriors outfit. Nevertheless, a win – nay, a road-trip win – calls for a few beverages. Matthew Johns was regaling a career’s worth of anecdotes to locals while his less articulate team-mates stood next to him, smirking, hoping to catch some of the leftover adoration and translate that into naughty late-night shenanigans.
Sure, this scene is no different to what happens on your average white collar stop-over in Singapore. For many years Australian businessmen, drunk on in-flight Johnnie Walker and their own sense of entitlement, have enjoyed the benefits of anonymity in a foreign town. Investment bankers homo-erotically high-fiving each other mid act, Maverick and Goose-style, as they defile someone’s (usually a pillar of the Singaporese community) daughter.
But demonisation has begun. No longer is there a positive public perception of the Rugby League Player. He is no longer an adorably grizzled veteran with a wife and three kids, who drives a Holden and battles a reasonably serious drinking problem. He, the modern League Player, is a highly sexed and hairless fiend, who drives a Mercedes with vanity plates and dresses exclusively in tight t-shirts with Spanish phrases on the front. He will, invariably, have a diamond earring in place and an 11 O’clock curfew, which he intends to break. The overwhelming synthesis of duty-free cologne and pheromones is something the best cougars can detect from 50 yards.
The argument made by many is this: Women throw themselves at footballers, so what’s the big deal? If these women are to make their bed, shouldn’t they lie in it? Well, no. Not unless they are previously aware that their bed will be surrounded by the most voracious, depraved and insecure footballers. Footballers who are convinced their latent homosexuality is masked by their totally hetero 12:1 gang-bang ratio. Then they can lie in it - in any position they like.
Footballers feel the need to conform. To stand out from the pack makes one a target for criticism; individuality is frowned upon. Indeed, as Socrates once said, “there is no ‘I’ in team”. And when the desire to conform is stronger than the desire to abide by common law, then we have a problem.
Why can’t footballers engage in typical team-building exercises? Like those at a typical workplace: mundane and sexless “icebreakers” devised and sanctioned by lame HR executives with no sense of irony. No, they must march out into the local village and not return until they have cornered a “willing participant”, subjected her to libidinal extremes and returned to the team hotel to be ready the next morning for a pool session. This is what binds mateship.
SportingMind is an unabashed Matthew Johns fan. SportingMind also believes the game of league has suffered enough over the past 15 years to last a lifetime. Let it not be destroyed by a poorly organised gang-bang.
-SportingMind
The time was the early 90s. Keating was still Treasurer and Bob Hawke was smashing schooners like they were soon to be unfashionable. Yeltsin was asserting his authority in a newly democratised Russia, with revolution having swept the Iron Curtain.
The internet was in its absolute infancy. Youth culture was evolving, with tattoos, piercing and heroin going hand-in-hand with the grunge aesthetic. Gangstas began to rap, which resulted in gangsta rap.
Vanilla Ice was cool, with his quick rhymes and predilection to dance front-on, a trait shared by MC Hammer. Enya was dominating the adult contemporary market and could be heard in every department store across Australia. Michael Hutchence was starting to get weird.
But most poignantly, Australian sport was never better. Not in terms of financial stability or performance-wise, but the intangible qualities that have since disappeared thanks to new business models. Let me run through some of the more lamentable changes.
An enduring image of the '90s
Rugby League and Cricket were still sponsored by cigarette companies. Parents were smoking while pregnant and no one cared. These were good times. Cricketers would slide, in an attempt to save a boundary, into the fence, which would often result in injury. The advent of the “rope boundary” has ruined this aspect of the game, just another of the many ridiculous OH&S rules that have swept the sporting landscape.
Australian men would drink VB as a rule. Low-carb beers with the obligatory ‘Blonde’ title were still at least a decade away. Beer advertisements were strictly of sweaty, hairy men cracking open a “cold one” after a lengthy day spent lifting concrete, slaughtering animals, or indeed any pastime or profession that screams masculinity. Nowadays, modern beer advertisements are so glossy and ambiguous they could just as easily be promoting tampons.
Retiring cricketers had testimonial matches that were broadcast on free-to-air television. Zoe Goss got Brian Lara out; Paul Vautin took a splendid outfield catch. These matches were designed to send the retirees out into the sunset, much like a funeral. A public forum. People can gather to pay their respects and, most importantly, to let go. These days sportsmen do not so much retire as enjoy a seamless transition to the “media”. Back only a decade or two, players would finish their playing career and attempt a trade. Generally, players would struggle to make the transition and end up bankrupt. This is how it should be. I don’t want to see Adam Gilchrist “popping” up in the form of an advertisement on a Fairfax website, spruiking some telecommunications company; hosting the irrelevant “Wide World of Sports” program; or churning out cricket puns for some oil company. I’d rather he faded away like most retirees do. Like your 70-year-old grandfather who worked all his life for the one company, only to settle for a one bedroom unit overlooking Surfers’ Paradise with enviable proximity to an RSL.
Rugby Union was a partially acceptable sport. Was. Campese, bless his soul, offered a semblance of personality to an otherwise soulless game. Bob Dwyer had, according to an AP Nielsen poll, an 85 per cent approval rating among Australians. Now, the average Australian would be hard pressed to tell you who is in charge, or which marsupial the team is named after.
The NBL was awesome. Dwayne “D-Train” McLean, “Leaping” Leroy Loggins, Ricky Grace and Mark Bradtke, not to mention the evergreen Steve Carfino. Kids would trade cards in the playground, knowing full well that a Shane Heal rookie card would fetch $6000 in only a few years time.
AFL was emerging in Sydney. I was the impressionable age of five, therefore, free of cynicism. To me, Warwick Capper was the embodiment of cool: a rock star footballer with attitude and six-pointers to boot. Cheerleaders were instructed to dance every time Sydney kicked a goal. While the AFL has dispensed with cheerleaders on the grounds that they demean women, cheerleaders remain in the less-female friendly NRL. The AFL needs to lighten the fuck up.
Soccer was "gay". No one cared about it. People would brandish the sport as a game for sissies and ethnic minorities. Ned Zelic was captain of Australia, with Terry Venables in charge. Now it is mandatory for every Australian to vehemently support an English Premier League team. One must scour the internet for results and brag about how their “team” performed, while offering plagiarised insight into possible transfers and relegation candidates. These people are, ironically, the same people who once proclaimed the sport to be homosexual. Supporting an EPL team gives one a certain social advantage: a wealth of knowledge should one be devoid of conversational skills and in a pub past 2 am – the time that football is aired in Australia. It also allows the unintelligent Australian to, absent-mindedly, learn some European geography that they otherwise wouldn’t know.
These are just some of the fond memories I have of the Australian sporting landscape during the early ‘90s. If only sport could return to the way it was, then perhaps SportingMind would update his blog more often.
-SportingMind
The North Melbourne AFL club has been the focus of intense media attention over the past two days, all because of a certain video that has made its way on YouTube. The video has been criticised for its negative depiction of women.
A still from the low-budget flick "The adventures of little Boris"...
Here is what David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz said on their TV show, At the Movies:
At the Movies Transcript:
David: Directors Adam Simpson and Daniel Pratt have perfectly captured the insecurities of the modern rooster in their critically acclaimed Adventures of Little Boris, a gritty drama that takes peer pressure to a whole new level.
The protagonist, Boris, a mid-20s rooster living in North Melbourne, is consumed by nasty masochistic thoughts. Growing up within a certain male culture has taught him that chickens are dispensable objects only good for two things: sex and stir-fry.
Struggling with his own masculinity, Boris attempts to win the approval of his brethren by repeatedly raping the one chicken he truly loves. Unfortunately, Boris is a high-profile rooster incapable of articulating his feelings in words; he gives little thought to the harm he is inflicting on his chicken and too much thought to how his mates back at the rooster coop will react.
The lovely chicken, played exquisitely by newcomer Lily Dale, embodies a heart-wrenching and tragic figure consumed by her love for Boris. The chicken is unable to defend herself against Boris's increasingly violent behaviour. Her raw sexuality is undeniable, with Boris falling head over heals for the gorgeous femme fatale.
The violent ending will shock some viewers, but I won't give anymore away. Margaret? (waits expectantly)
Margaret: Oh, David. I think this is a masterpiece. So evocative, so moving - just another example of what small-budget Australian films are truly capable of. Such an absurd, postmodern look at society...
David: And I must add that the musical score was inspired: Ludacris's "Move, Bitch" certainly adds to the overall uneasiness that the viewer feels.
Margaret: Oh, yes. It's incredible that a film like this can't actually get government funding from the major bodies.
David: Well, yes. I mean, there was some corporate backing for the film in the way of club sponsors, but Film Victoria should hang its head for not signing up for what could have been an epic.
Margaret: Oh certainly David. The Boris character is brilliant. I think we've all known a Boris in our lifetime, have we not?! The narcissist who truly believes they are not bound by civilian laws, I mean, the film could be a social comment on some sections of society. God, the way in which the directors use animals to demonstrate the failings of societyis almost Orwellian,.
David: I just think the Boris character is fabulously flawed. His own cathexis for the object of his affections is what drives him to such libidinal extremes. He simply does not understand his own affective mental functions.
Margaret: Well I believe it takes Baudrillardian notions of simulacra to an unexplored level. The connection between the real and the simulacra hasn't been explored in such depth since The Matrix, and I'd argue that The adventures of little Boris does it better. Simpson and Pratt are making the argument that the victim of rape no longer exists, simply because we no longer understand what rape is. Rape, particularly that involving chickens and high-profile roosters, is but an image, one to which we have been exposed too many times.
David: Fabulous analysis Margaret, although I thought I was the one who got to indulge in pretentious, unqualified academic posturing. It sounded a little bit like you just threw together a few postmodern terms that you remembered from your days at university, but hell, I dropped out of school in year ten...
Margaret: ...I mean, the film itself is frighteningly anti-feminist. But by confronting the problem, that being the oppressive self-righteous behaviour of roosters in general, the film alerts us to a systemic problem within the animal kingdom.
David: Yes, it takes a lot of the issues seen in The Lion King and builds on the notion of class division vs primal sexuality.
Margaret: And let's face it, it is rather funny in parts as well. I mean, I guffawed all the way through the four minute flick. (guffaws)
David: Yes, yes. It's funny how we can find humour in the darkest of places. Black humour can make us feel a little uneasy, but this uneasiness is counterbalanced by the social message the film manages to convey. Gobsmackingly brilliant.
Margaret: Well, I'm giving it five stars.
David: It's fantastic, four-and a half.
-SportingMind
Acutely aware that the "list" post is the blogospheric equivalent to that of a TV Christmas-special episode, I'll avoid the sugar coating and come clean with it: I'm doing this to keep the fans happy. You wanted it, I'm giving it to you. My spleen, proverbially vented for your benefit, on a platter.
Things I hate:
[ Click here to read more ]
Melbourne, the self-proclaimed sporting capital of the world, has a lot to answer for. You would never think, looking from the outside, that Melbourne is so socially stratified. Instead you would assume that, like all other Australian cities, Melbourne is an egalitarian paradise where all people are offered the same basic human rights and respect.
Enter the footballer. A relatively new phenomenon - circa the late 19th century - the footballer has taken over society as its most worshiped and revered member. The footballer is a different kind of "Untouchable". Not Untouchable in the way that Arundhati Roy described India's society - an abhorrent caste system based on inherent social perceptions - but Untouchable in the sense that they enjoy a symbiotic relationship with the public
[ Click here to read more ]
The N.R.L. simply cannot take a trick. Moments after unveiling an indulgent new ad campaign, the sport once again found itself embroiled in controversy. As such, it was only a matter of time before rugby league's greatest puritan, Phil Gould, stood-up and offered us a heavy serving of his rarely requested opinion. Chief rugby league reporter, SportingMind, caught up with Phil Gould last night for a three course dinner and in-depth discussion on the future of rugby league.
[ Click here to read more ]
Cricket is no longer safe from the threat of politics and violence, as a shooting attack on Sri Lanka's cricket team yesterday signalled the end of a 400-year peace agreement between criminal masterminds and cricketers.
This aggressive assault by unidentified masked attackers has relegated cricket alongside a list of other sports of which have fallen victim to terrorism
[ Click here to read more ]
Over the past two weeks we have been, unfortunately, witnesses to the greatest natural disaster in this country's history. Images of fire-ravaged communities have been plastered across our screens, interspersed with quotes by grieving families and solemn celebrities. Obviously, you know things are serious when Larry Emdur halts his usual "who, me?" posturing on Channel Seven's "Morning Show" in favour of a permanent hang-dog expression.
There have been moments of levity; indeed, sport can provide an outlet during a crisis. SportingMind can recall several moments in history when sport offered a beacon of light - indeed, hope - to a futile situation
[ Click here to read more ]
The one enduring memory of last year's AFL season is, without doubt, the fabulous left hook performed by Barry Hall upon Brent Staker. Unfortunately, Hall's crushing blow forced Staker from the field and earned the Swans forward a lengthy suspension. For some, the act was deemed abhorrent; whereas for others, including SportingMind, it was a feast for the senses. A split-second felony that one could not help but admire; one could almost, dare I say it, be aroused by such a flawless act. The footage belongs not in the forgotten archives of misdemeanours in football, but perhaps in the Museum of Contemporary Art, down by Sydney's Circular Quay.
Alas, such moments in sport happen rarely these days; our sports stars are becoming embarassingly white-bread. I do not refer to those well publicised off-field antics, for such events are plentiful. But it is the players, and often fans, who are willing to do implausibly stupid things on the field - these are the ones we must pay homage to
[ Click here to read more ]
If SportingMind had a dime for every time he wanted to walk away from the field of sports journalism, then suffice to say that he would be a rather wealthy individual. Even after converting these dimes into "greenbacks" and exchanging them for the weaker Australian dollar, I would still be confident in having enough money to support my weekly lust for soft cheeses. For sport can often be seen as a microcosm of society; albeit a society with a tremendous ratio of physical and sexual assaults per capita - similar in many ways to Queensland's Gold Coast. To appropriate a song by The Smiths: some sports are bigger than others. Cricket, AFL and Rugby League dominate our newspapers like an abusive husband, to the point where we, the consumer/wife, can feel saturated and violated. Sometimes sport can be predictable and bland; other times it may be spontaneous and magnetic. The latter, of course, is an apt description of the Men's Australian Open Final.
They say there are two certainties in life: death and taxes. SportingMind believes that this old adage no longer applies and should be replaced. Hell, Diego Maradona has shown that it is possible to cheat the both of them. But after a turbulent week in sport, SportingMind is confident that one cliche is here to stay - and that cliche is Rafael Nadal.
[ Click here to read more ]
|
|
|
Comments (2)
Add Comments
Read More
Comment by David Edwards
on An Unkindness of Footballers
Sporting Mind
Don't blame the cheerleaders. If it wasn't for them, rugby league games would be even more uncouth. I blame overzealous team mascots for the degeneration of the game.