Amadean wanders enthusiastically onto the field with 749 sweaty words below the bar
***********************
A much anticipated Origin
This week will welcome the first Origin match of 2013. If this was news to you, welcome to the forum and what the hell have you been doing with your life until now?
Over the past few years the lead-up to an Origin series has featured a great deal of
sturm und drang and very few surprises. Familiar headlines include: “Will NSW’s new halves pairing fire?” (no), “Can Queensland’s Cronk-Thurston-Slater ‘spine’ still deliver?” (yes), “Will the NSW young guns turn the tables in what is to be a grudge match of epic proportions?” (no) and that old chestnut “Will Gallen’s [abysmal] disciplinary record force [insert current unsuccessful NSW coach here]’s to name a backup captain?” (doesn’t matter).
No real surprises this year? Well, perhaps not so far as the game itself is concerned.
But, as far as the game is concerned, are surprises what we really want?
There is something warm and wonderfully comforting about Origin. We can settle down, season after season, and be assured of seeing hugely talented athletes run hard and fast at each other. We can trust in at least one brilliant, mouth-dropping, try per series. We know each game will be damn close.
Oh, and that Queensland will win.
And that’s all wonderful, it really is. That there exists an event, every year, for three glorious sets of 80 minutes, that will get my heart truly racing is just wonderful.
But this year, this week, is even more special. Because I’m back to being an ex-pat.
I spent a fair slice of the 2000’s [By the way, how good is it that the stupid bloody ‘naughties’ phrase never caught on? I would’ve hated to had to tell stories as an old, dodgy, uncle that began “now sonny, back in the naughties...” {shudder}] hanging around Nanjing, Singapore, Shanghai and Mumbai. The expatriate life was wonderful in many ways (cheap drinks, pretty girls, crazy travels) and utterly dire in others (fortnightly gastro, loneliness and how the hell is cold duck’s blood soup even a thing? {shudder}). One of the tougher parts of the Asia-wandering life was the absence of League. For those us living next to a Nanjing goatfield ‘Friday Night Football’ wasn’t an option. Not even close. And as for trying to get your favourite Colaba Causeway beer’n’chapati club to play even a re-run of last week’s Titans’ match, well, good luck with that. Let me know how it turns out.
It wasn’t that there weren’t enough Australians in whichever region I was in. [Seriously, we Aussies get everywhere in Asia. You can’t hurl a rock in Seoul without hitting three drunk Bondi backpackers, two boozy Brisvegas bankers and some halfwit Melbournian twenty-something who wants you to come to his next networking function.] No, the problem is one of coordination. As no-one seriously expects ‘Paddy O’Malley’s Irish Pub’ (conveniently located in B2 of the Jakarta Sheraton Four Seasons!) to be playing the Manly-Storm match, no-one goes there to watch it. As no-one goes there to watch it, the bar manager thinks there isn’t a demand for it. And we all miss out.
But Origin is a different story.
There seems to be some magic part of an Aussie bloke’s brain that lights up around Origin time. It sends mystical signals from the amygdalae, down through the hypothalamus and the cerebral cortex to the outlying regions. His body goes, seemingly of its own accord, to the nearest ‘sports bar’ (usually featuring NFL re-runs, bad hotdogs and waitresses-of-negotiable-affections). His mouth opens and demands for Origin broadcasts fly out. And because he is not alone, because all Aussie blokes receive the same impulses, these demands are met. And because he does this year after year [Hi Titanic! See you down BlueSky!] the bar managers start to put it on automatically.
And these nights are wonderful.
Imagine you’re some loud-mouthed Aussie kid, desperate for football with mates. Because you’re in some soul-dead Singapore hotel campus, or Shanghai housing district, or wherever, most months all you can get is bad beer and UK Premier League.
Until Game 1 of Origin.
On this most blessed of nights, the bar is full of people whose accents are so familiar it shocks you. People who don’t ask where your ‘hometown’ is, or whether you like cricket. They just talk League.
I’ve been living in Australia for the past three years. And Origin was brilliant.
But now I’m living in Tokyo. A lonely expat.
And Origin is special again.