October 02, 2003
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,7431910%5E25377,00.html
By Greg Sheridan
This weekend the premier cultural event of Australian life takes place, an event that also signals our greatest foreign policy failure. I refer, of course, to the National Rugby League grand final between the Sydney Roosters and the Penrith Panthers.
The foreign policy failure is our surprising inability to export the single greatest Australian invention, modern rugby league.
Professional rugby league is the supreme athletic contest of the modern world. It partakes of combat, of epic drama, of the human tragedy in all its dimensions. It reigns supreme among all football codes and team sports in its unique combination of skill, strength and, above all, speed.
It is infinitely superior to AFL, which is a form of ethnic obscurantism celebrated primarily because of its extreme, narrow, ethnic eccentricity. AFL is an inherently lame and sloppy game. Unless you've been indoctrinated into it as a child it's ineffably dull to watch. Kick-and-catch, kick-and-catch, kick-and-catch; it's the sort of game you play with your little sister in the backyard because it makes no intellectual demands and paltry physical ones.
An AFL match embodies all the subtlety of a Simon Crean speech, mixed with the spontaneity of Philip Ruddock and the rollicking good times and wild, uproarious humour of Martin Ferguson.
And remember, the Khmer Rouge began with ethnic obscurantism.
But I digress.
Rugby league has few (nil?) defenders in the elite media in part because it's such a classically working-class game. In the two great league centres, Sydney and Brisbane, the toffs follow rugby union. Union is not a bad game but it's much slower than league at the elite level. There is really no comparison between the skill levels of the Wallabies - good chaps all - and the top 10 NRL sides.
League supporters embrace the legends of working-class solidarity. Thus everyone not a registered Roosters fan will support the Panthers. The Roosters are the contemporary version of Manly-Warringah of the 1970s, the silvertail team you love to hate. Who do you want to win? Your team or whoever's playing Manly. Now that applies to the Roosters, although of course - and this is part of league's charm - the Panthers' club is the richest in the League and Penrith is no longer working-class but solidly aspirational. If you spend any time in Penrith you notice the beautiful homes, the burgeoning private schools, the city centre with its performing arts centres and cappuccinos.
But I digress again. How do I justify the claim that league is aesthetically superior to all other football codes?
The first thing you have to recognise about league is that, like cricket, like American football, it is a very complex game. Like many traditional working-class pursuits, it is inherently cerebral. That means it is only satisfying to watch at the highest professional level. Lower-grade league, played or refereed poorly, can be tedious.
I am devoted to the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, the team robbed by cruel fate and malign, covert forces, of last year's premiership. (OK, maybe salary cap breaches had something to do with it, but the traditions of working-class solidarity allow for moaning about ill treatment by the bosses.)
Two incidents from recent Bulldogs games illustrate my point about league's skills.
In a finals game two weeks ago Steven Bell of Melbourne Storm had made an amazing, swirling, exuberant run down the middle of the park, dancing and pirouetting his way past flummoxed defenders. He was close to the tryline when the Dogs' winger, the miraculous Hazem El Masri (the only Muslim selected in a national Australian team - as a working-class sport, league is much played by newcomers) swept in on heels of fire from his wing and launched himself into Bell's back, wrapped his arms around Bell's torso, executed an extraordinary crocodile death roll and turned Bell onto his back and then somehow inserted his arm under that of Bell's and in perfect dynamic equilibrium held Bell's arm up so that he couldn't ground the ball and didn't get the try. This all happened at incredible speed and could only be fully appreciated in video replay.
Then, last weekend, in the game monstrously stolen from the Dogs by the Roosters (have I told you about the referee and forward pass rulings?), an incident occurred involving Braith Anasta, the Brad Pitt glamour boy of the team, and Matt Utai, the "pocket rocket" who is built like a small kitchen fridge.
Anasta put a huge kick into the air. Utai, whose centre of gravity is about 6cm from the earth, anticipated perfectly, leapt magnificently at speed, won possession of the ball high above the ground, then kept control of the ball, crashed back to terra firma and placed the ball down for a try.
League is a very manly sport in an old-fashioned way. It has always had trouble attracting women spectators, for league speaks ultimately to manly virtues. Its most brilliant promotion was the slyly self-mocking and typically good-humoured appearance of Tina Turner in television ads a few years back.
Its seeming eclipse by AFL is part of the culture wars waged against the genuine Aussie heritage. For league made us what we are.
Admittedly my own league career was short and astoundingly undistinguished, ended by a broken shoulder incurred in a tackle, at training, by a Christian Brother (the only abuse, I hasten to add, I ever suffered at the good brothers' hands).
But the sun never sets on league. We know the bastards are out to get us. It's Penrith to win this weekend, and the Dogs next year, when the gladiatorial combat - part ballet, part war game, part Shakespearian sonnet, part West Side Story, starts all over.
It's the greatest game of all.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,7431910%5E25377,00.html
By Greg Sheridan
This weekend the premier cultural event of Australian life takes place, an event that also signals our greatest foreign policy failure. I refer, of course, to the National Rugby League grand final between the Sydney Roosters and the Penrith Panthers.
The foreign policy failure is our surprising inability to export the single greatest Australian invention, modern rugby league.
Professional rugby league is the supreme athletic contest of the modern world. It partakes of combat, of epic drama, of the human tragedy in all its dimensions. It reigns supreme among all football codes and team sports in its unique combination of skill, strength and, above all, speed.
It is infinitely superior to AFL, which is a form of ethnic obscurantism celebrated primarily because of its extreme, narrow, ethnic eccentricity. AFL is an inherently lame and sloppy game. Unless you've been indoctrinated into it as a child it's ineffably dull to watch. Kick-and-catch, kick-and-catch, kick-and-catch; it's the sort of game you play with your little sister in the backyard because it makes no intellectual demands and paltry physical ones.
An AFL match embodies all the subtlety of a Simon Crean speech, mixed with the spontaneity of Philip Ruddock and the rollicking good times and wild, uproarious humour of Martin Ferguson.
And remember, the Khmer Rouge began with ethnic obscurantism.
But I digress.
Rugby league has few (nil?) defenders in the elite media in part because it's such a classically working-class game. In the two great league centres, Sydney and Brisbane, the toffs follow rugby union. Union is not a bad game but it's much slower than league at the elite level. There is really no comparison between the skill levels of the Wallabies - good chaps all - and the top 10 NRL sides.
League supporters embrace the legends of working-class solidarity. Thus everyone not a registered Roosters fan will support the Panthers. The Roosters are the contemporary version of Manly-Warringah of the 1970s, the silvertail team you love to hate. Who do you want to win? Your team or whoever's playing Manly. Now that applies to the Roosters, although of course - and this is part of league's charm - the Panthers' club is the richest in the League and Penrith is no longer working-class but solidly aspirational. If you spend any time in Penrith you notice the beautiful homes, the burgeoning private schools, the city centre with its performing arts centres and cappuccinos.
But I digress again. How do I justify the claim that league is aesthetically superior to all other football codes?
The first thing you have to recognise about league is that, like cricket, like American football, it is a very complex game. Like many traditional working-class pursuits, it is inherently cerebral. That means it is only satisfying to watch at the highest professional level. Lower-grade league, played or refereed poorly, can be tedious.
I am devoted to the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, the team robbed by cruel fate and malign, covert forces, of last year's premiership. (OK, maybe salary cap breaches had something to do with it, but the traditions of working-class solidarity allow for moaning about ill treatment by the bosses.)
Two incidents from recent Bulldogs games illustrate my point about league's skills.
In a finals game two weeks ago Steven Bell of Melbourne Storm had made an amazing, swirling, exuberant run down the middle of the park, dancing and pirouetting his way past flummoxed defenders. He was close to the tryline when the Dogs' winger, the miraculous Hazem El Masri (the only Muslim selected in a national Australian team - as a working-class sport, league is much played by newcomers) swept in on heels of fire from his wing and launched himself into Bell's back, wrapped his arms around Bell's torso, executed an extraordinary crocodile death roll and turned Bell onto his back and then somehow inserted his arm under that of Bell's and in perfect dynamic equilibrium held Bell's arm up so that he couldn't ground the ball and didn't get the try. This all happened at incredible speed and could only be fully appreciated in video replay.
Then, last weekend, in the game monstrously stolen from the Dogs by the Roosters (have I told you about the referee and forward pass rulings?), an incident occurred involving Braith Anasta, the Brad Pitt glamour boy of the team, and Matt Utai, the "pocket rocket" who is built like a small kitchen fridge.
Anasta put a huge kick into the air. Utai, whose centre of gravity is about 6cm from the earth, anticipated perfectly, leapt magnificently at speed, won possession of the ball high above the ground, then kept control of the ball, crashed back to terra firma and placed the ball down for a try.
League is a very manly sport in an old-fashioned way. It has always had trouble attracting women spectators, for league speaks ultimately to manly virtues. Its most brilliant promotion was the slyly self-mocking and typically good-humoured appearance of Tina Turner in television ads a few years back.
Its seeming eclipse by AFL is part of the culture wars waged against the genuine Aussie heritage. For league made us what we are.
Admittedly my own league career was short and astoundingly undistinguished, ended by a broken shoulder incurred in a tackle, at training, by a Christian Brother (the only abuse, I hasten to add, I ever suffered at the good brothers' hands).
But the sun never sets on league. We know the bastards are out to get us. It's Penrith to win this weekend, and the Dogs next year, when the gladiatorial combat - part ballet, part war game, part Shakespearian sonnet, part West Side Story, starts all over.
It's the greatest game of all.
