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SMH - Roy Masters - 23 March.
RUGBY league's 100th season in Australia has already seen some curses lifted. The great records in sport have a mathematical symmetry, and when they do fall, they choose a special time to do it.
Take the four-minute mile. Four minutes was a barrier that withstood decades of human desperation and desire. It was a figure so perfectly round it was as if it was posted by God as proof of order in a changing world. Four laps, four quarters, 4.00 minutes. Ditto the 100-metres sprint and the 10-second barrier.
So it is in the rugby codes. Rugby union went professional (officially) in its centenary year, while the Super League split in Australia occurred in 1995, 100 years after the game began in the north of England. Significantly, after only one week of rugby league's 100th season in Australia, a total attendance record was set and some hexes were broken.
The Dragons beat the Titans at Suncorp Stadium, a major breakthrough for a club which loses history-making matches and opening rounds. Consider the Dragons' results at new stadiums, or against new clubs:
■ Opening of Parramatta Stadium, round 2, 1986. Dragons beaten 36-6;
■ Opening of Telstra Stadium 1999. This was also the first game of the St George-Illawarra joint venture. Lost to Parramatta 20-10;
■ Western Reds' first game at the WACA Ground, Perth, 1995. Dragons beaten 28-16.
Nor do the Dragons usually win opening-round matches. Their round-one victory was only their second since the joint venture began eight years ago.
Maybe the late Johnny Warren, a lifelong Dragons supporter, has been busy on the other side. When the former Socceroos captain knew he was seriously ill with cancer, he promised to lift a curse imposed by a South American shaman. From the moment the jinx was applied, the Socceroos didn't qualify for a World Cup. Warren undertook to lift it when he reached the afterlife. Shortly after his death, the Socceroos qualified for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Maybe Warren has now turned to curse-lifting in rugby league.
On the first night of the return of Monday night football, South Sydney, a foundation club, also won. It was their first opening-round victory since 1999, the year they were punted from the NRL.
Newcastle won for the first time in 10 years without Andrew Johns and Danny Buderus. OK, their opponents, the Bulldogs, played with 12 men for 76 minutes in front of a parochial Newcastle crowd - but there was a shift in the team's attitude after new coach Brian Smith spoke at half-time.
But some curses remain. The Roosters, the only stand-alone foundation club that has played every first-grade season, are locked on 999 wins. The way they played against Souths, they may well be stuck on the upside-down devil's number for some time.
Manly and Canberra are facing a pair of nines: Wests Tigers, who play the Sea Eagles tomorrow night, have won nine of their past 10 games at Leichhardt, while the Storm have beaten the Raiders the past nine times they have played.
The most cursed of all clubs, North Sydney, also had a hex lifted mid-week at the launch of their Premier League season.
An Aboriginal elder named Uncle Max performed a smoking ceremony at North Sydney Oval to lift a curse imposed by the last of the Cammeraygal tribe in protest against white settlers driving his people from their land.
Allen Madden, from the Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council, who organised the curse-lifting, said: "A smoking ceremony is an Aboriginal welcome to the country. The white fellas might have been welcomed to this country by others, but not by Aboriginals."
Madden said Uncle Max was skilled at smoking ceremonies. "He smoked the Pope at Royal Randwick and he did it for the 2000 Sydney Olympics and at the birthday of the Harbour Bridge."
North Sydney's Greg Florimo said the lifting of the curse was overdue. "There were four seasons in the 1990s when we got to the penultimate game but not past it," he said. "If that's not an example of the curse, I don't know what is."
Asked what Uncle Max would do with the curse, Madden said, "He'll move it somewhere else."
Doubtless, Bears supporters believe Brookvale would be an ideal location.
RUGBY league's 100th season in Australia has already seen some curses lifted. The great records in sport have a mathematical symmetry, and when they do fall, they choose a special time to do it.
Take the four-minute mile. Four minutes was a barrier that withstood decades of human desperation and desire. It was a figure so perfectly round it was as if it was posted by God as proof of order in a changing world. Four laps, four quarters, 4.00 minutes. Ditto the 100-metres sprint and the 10-second barrier.
So it is in the rugby codes. Rugby union went professional (officially) in its centenary year, while the Super League split in Australia occurred in 1995, 100 years after the game began in the north of England. Significantly, after only one week of rugby league's 100th season in Australia, a total attendance record was set and some hexes were broken.
The Dragons beat the Titans at Suncorp Stadium, a major breakthrough for a club which loses history-making matches and opening rounds. Consider the Dragons' results at new stadiums, or against new clubs:
■ Opening of Parramatta Stadium, round 2, 1986. Dragons beaten 36-6;
■ Opening of Telstra Stadium 1999. This was also the first game of the St George-Illawarra joint venture. Lost to Parramatta 20-10;
■ Western Reds' first game at the WACA Ground, Perth, 1995. Dragons beaten 28-16.
Nor do the Dragons usually win opening-round matches. Their round-one victory was only their second since the joint venture began eight years ago.
Maybe the late Johnny Warren, a lifelong Dragons supporter, has been busy on the other side. When the former Socceroos captain knew he was seriously ill with cancer, he promised to lift a curse imposed by a South American shaman. From the moment the jinx was applied, the Socceroos didn't qualify for a World Cup. Warren undertook to lift it when he reached the afterlife. Shortly after his death, the Socceroos qualified for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Maybe Warren has now turned to curse-lifting in rugby league.
On the first night of the return of Monday night football, South Sydney, a foundation club, also won. It was their first opening-round victory since 1999, the year they were punted from the NRL.
Newcastle won for the first time in 10 years without Andrew Johns and Danny Buderus. OK, their opponents, the Bulldogs, played with 12 men for 76 minutes in front of a parochial Newcastle crowd - but there was a shift in the team's attitude after new coach Brian Smith spoke at half-time.
But some curses remain. The Roosters, the only stand-alone foundation club that has played every first-grade season, are locked on 999 wins. The way they played against Souths, they may well be stuck on the upside-down devil's number for some time.
Manly and Canberra are facing a pair of nines: Wests Tigers, who play the Sea Eagles tomorrow night, have won nine of their past 10 games at Leichhardt, while the Storm have beaten the Raiders the past nine times they have played.
The most cursed of all clubs, North Sydney, also had a hex lifted mid-week at the launch of their Premier League season.
An Aboriginal elder named Uncle Max performed a smoking ceremony at North Sydney Oval to lift a curse imposed by the last of the Cammeraygal tribe in protest against white settlers driving his people from their land.
Allen Madden, from the Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council, who organised the curse-lifting, said: "A smoking ceremony is an Aboriginal welcome to the country. The white fellas might have been welcomed to this country by others, but not by Aboriginals."
Madden said Uncle Max was skilled at smoking ceremonies. "He smoked the Pope at Royal Randwick and he did it for the 2000 Sydney Olympics and at the birthday of the Harbour Bridge."
North Sydney's Greg Florimo said the lifting of the curse was overdue. "There were four seasons in the 1990s when we got to the penultimate game but not past it," he said. "If that's not an example of the curse, I don't know what is."
Asked what Uncle Max would do with the curse, Madden said, "He'll move it somewhere else."
Doubtless, Bears supporters believe Brookvale would be an ideal location.
i have for yrs :lol:
