Andrew Fifita's starring State Of Origin role highlights sometimes awkward position of fans
ANALYSIS
By Offsiders columnist
Richard Hinds
Posted about 9 hours ago
For those who hope to admire both the athletic feats of their sporting heroes and their human qualities, or that semblance of "humanity" portrayed by all forms of media, there is a constant conundrum.
Back in the day, when TV lenses were focused only on the games and sportswriters applied a code of confidentiality to bar-room conversations and late-night 'antics', should we have been told more about the foibles and failings of our heroes?
Or now, in an age when facts are often replaced by speculation and opinion, while social media grossly inflates even the most risible observations, do we (think we) know far too much?
On Wednesday night, New South Wales front-rower Andrew Fifita should have applied marinade rather than liniment before trotting onto a seething Lang Park. As the anointed villain in the loathed Blues line-up, he was to be the main course in Australia's sporting coliseum.
Accordingly, guests have arrived at a Trump costume party dressed as Angela Merkel and received warmer welcomes than the one Fifita got from a local crowd so intimidating even the poor guy singing the national anthem choked.
Yet the 27-year-old prop embraced this test of courage and character with such focused ferocity that he emerged, even in the grudging eyes of his Maroon tormentors, as the hero of a famous and potentially dynasty-destroying 28-4 victory.
What made Fifita's performance so compelling was that he stood out to even the untrained eye in a game of rare and relentless excellence.
As one set after another was completed with mathematical precision, Fifita broke the game's metronomic rhythm and busted the play open time and time again. Such was his sheer physical impact on an otherwise measured game, it was as if everyone else had a calculator and Fifita had a sledge hammer.
Fifita's reputation as a big-game player should have been assured after last year's NRL grand final. Yet, even as he carried Cronulla to its first premiership and scored the winning try, we remained more focused on his rap sheet than his stats sheet.
There was the road-rage incident, his intimidation of a junior referee and, most recently, his public support for one-punch killer Kieran Loveridge that inevitably resulted in his exclusion from the Kangaroos tour of England.
This Wiki page list was routinely reproduced in every Fifita story (yes, as it has been in this one). When accompanied by pictures of this 194-centimetre, 120-kilogram mural of menace, the image of an intimidating, even malevolent figure was ingrained.
So much so that when team-mate Luke Lewis was awarded the Clive Churchill Medal as best player in the grand final instead of Fifita, many felt this was appropriate punishment rather than an administrative outrage.
But because we think we know so much about professional athletes, we often find we don't know much at all. Fifita, we were told, suffered depression and even once attempted suicide.
After his incredible Origin performance, Fifita said: "This is what you live for, big games like these."
Knowing his personal history, those words drip with poignancy.
Yet the cycle of speculation and innuendo is relentless. So we still wonder if Fifita's mental anguish was caused by the public reaction to his anti-social behaviour.
Or, even more cruelly, whether the publicity of his problems was an attention-deflecting grab for public sympathy.
Do we know anything? Do we know too much? Would it better to know only what we see on the field?
