Jono1987
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It's a Provan fact - tradition and old-fashioned values still count for a lot at the Dragons and with their long-suffering red and white army of faithful fans, writes Roy Masters.
If you are disillusioned by the cold, corporate hand of business on sport or appalled at reports of match-fixing in cricket, journey to Kogarah on Sunday, join a crowd of 18,000 fans and inhale the spring air, ripe with the sweet smell of possibility.
Witness the pre-game sideline antics, the innocent pageantry that still exists in sport. The grand old ground will shake and rattle like a 1960s Valiant if St George Illawarra prevail over the Sea Eagles, initiating a wild ride which fans pray won't end until grand final day, October 3.
Hope will be highest in the hearts on the Kogarah hill, those aged 30 and under who have not seen a captain in a red and white jumper lift the premiership trophy.
Former players will assemble on ''Stoney's Slab'' at Jubilee Oval, a square of concrete named after premiership-winning prop Robert Stone, who succumbed to brain cancer a few years ago. Afterwards, ''the Skinny Coach'', Wayne Bennett, or ''Old Man Winner'' as I prefer to call him, may allow himself a slight smile at his decision to leave Queensland and take another title ride into the sunset.
Then he will stroll to a media conference, temper expectations and create the impression he loves the experience about as much as a tax audit. The fans - probably the most knowledgeable in the NRL - will flood across to the leagues club or stream up to the Royal Hotel, Carlton, and bathe in the after-glow of the match.
Well, the truth is you won't be able to join them at Jubilee Oval unless you snapped up a ticket on Tuesday after Red V members were given first opportunity. The home club chooses the venue for the first finals match, while the NRL retains the revenue. That's a ''no-brainer'' for the Dragons, who opted to reward their tribe, meaning many can walk to the game, as their grandparents once did.
Last year, St George Illawarra rejected a $250,000 offer from the NRL to move the same match to ANZ Stadium. Across all sports there is a growing gap between the fan and the athlete, as ticket prices rise to pay the salaries of sportspeople who resent being role models and loathe the scrutiny of an increasingly intrusive media. St George Illawarra have always been highly sensitive to the expectations of their fans, and while playing at their citadel gives the players more unity and energy, it's also a thank-you to the club's support base.
They are principally middle-class, the AB demographic after which editors of broadsheet newspapers and glossy magazines lust.
George Foster, professor of business management at Stanford University in the US, was raised in Kogarah, where his father was the principal of James Cook High School. Foster, who has not missed a rugby league grand final in 20 years, has been asked to deliver the oration at the October 1 ceremony for the US Ambassador to Australia. If the Dragons make the season decider, he plans to be there by kick-off.
When the Swans - also red and white - came to Sydney in 1982, many of them settled in the St George district. They have subsequently moved to the eastern suburbs, nearer their Centennial Park home and a view of the sea. Nor will the players of the AFL's GWS expansion team live at Blacktown. The AFL is being deceitful in promoting the image it wants to convert Sydney's working class west. It covets an upper-middle class corridor along Pennant Hills, Castle Hill and Baulkham Hills within easy access of its new NSW Government-funded home of Sydney Showground at Homebush.
The sweep of red-roofed houses along the Princes Highway to Tom Ugly's Bridge is a bulwark against other codes. Rugby league is the main religion, and St George the principal denomination.
Rugby league's origin and ethos are working class but in the 21st century this image is a myth. The code has never made much of its upwardly mobile climb to the so-called superior suburbs over the past 30 years.
The Dragons' opponents on Sunday enjoy being called ''Silvertails'', and Liberal leader Tony Abbott's final photo opportunity on the day before he faced the people in the polls was to drop in at Brookvale Oval in his electorate and pull on a Sea Eagles jumper and run some drills. Sure, Abbott prefers rugby union, as do some of the inhabitants of Blakehurst and Kyle Bay, who will pay $500 for a ticket to the Bledisloe Cup match between the Wallabies and All Blacks at ANZ Stadium on Saturday night. Some of their neighbours will fly to Melbourne to watch the Swans play the Western Bulldogs. But south of Tempe is Dragons land, and it turns red and white again, after you pass Cronulla and head to Wollongong.
The older Dragons fans like their players to be a decent, respectful reflection of themselves.
This is why the club would rather lose a premiership than risk a major scandal, such as the NRL Hiroshima that struck the Storm.
The need to nurture the image began in 1956 with the first of St George's 11 straight premierships. The mid-20th century was the pivot on which sport turned, leaving noble amateurs, such as Dr Roger Bannister, the first man to break the four minute mile, and Sir Edmund Hillary, the first to climb Mt Everest, as rearguards to the past.
Amateurism was in retreat. The tradition of paying athletes and swimmers in trinkets and trophies, as if their glory was somehow devalued by something as base as money, was disappearing.
Golf, tennis and rugby union were the bastions against a fast-fading amateurism, replaced by a hypocritical shamatuerism, which embraced boot money for the rugby lads. Rugby league has never made any pretence its players were paid. Nor have the Dragons denied they retained star players on the poker machine revenue of its ''Taj Mahal'', although many have stayed for a contract two-thirds the value of what they could have received elsewhere.
Two of the original four ''Immortals'' came from St George - John Raper and Reg Gasnier - and another, Graeme Langlands, was soon added. All completed their careers as one-club men.
The best adjective I have heard applied to rugby league came from former prime minister Paul Keating, who described it to me as ''earthy''. He didn't mean dirty, although that was a label applied in the 1970s when punch-ups were common and the ''phantom biter'' lurked. Nor did he mean soiled, although cases of sexual assault and salary cap rorts stained the code.
He wasn't referring to the two mud-caked captains, St George's Norm Provan and Wests' Arthur Summons, who left the saturated SCG in 1963, arm in arm. A photograph taken by Fairfax's John O'Gready is the model for the premiership trophy. No, Keating used the word in reference to its honest toil. The players most regarded in the code are those who perform the self-sacrificial tasks of diving on a loose ball, charging down a kick, backing up on every play with little prospect of receiving the ball.
Bennett has instilled these skills in the Dragons after they lost their way for a while. He has also varied the attack, meaning the team is less reliant on tries from kicks. He also recruited the New Zealand hooker, Nathan Fien, midway through last year. Fien broke his leg in the opening round this year but has returned to provide much-needed variety around the rucks. All clubs need an X factor in the play-offs. Fien is the Dragons' X factor.
Watching a Bennett-coached team click is akin to hearing music played right for the first time, or studying a flight of birds in perfect formation. His best teams hum.
Remember the swift passage of the ball to Steve Renouf when the Bennett-coached Broncos won two premierships against the Dragons in 1992 and 1993.
It didn't help that a former St George junior, Chris Johns, fed Renouf the ball and Bennett manufactured a game plan that itemised the Broncos' weaknesses and then told his players it was prepared by Dragons coach Brian Smith.
But if the Dragons claim the premiership, he will be forgiven. After all, it's been a long wait. Thirteen premierships in 24 years, then none in the next 30 years, with five losing grand finals in between.
St George football is like a drink that makes you laugh then weep, then gibber. Hope springs eternal at Kogarah. It sometimes springs insane. Watch the crowd in the top deck of the grandstand on Sunday if the TV cameras take you there. If anxiety has a sound, you will detect its groaning rumble before kick-off.
If the Dragons fire ahead - which they should against the injury-depleted Sea Eagles - listen to the shivering roar. Watch the season ticket-holders chatter and cheer.
Their exhilaration and camaraderie will be inspiring, transporting.
The joy they share will be akin to sneaking a blanket over your head when you were a child. The troubled world goes away, and nothing outside that delicious, sacred space seems to matter.
http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/...-fervour-to-end-long-wait-20100908-151fn.html
Fantastic read. This type of stuff gets the blood boiling.
If you are disillusioned by the cold, corporate hand of business on sport or appalled at reports of match-fixing in cricket, journey to Kogarah on Sunday, join a crowd of 18,000 fans and inhale the spring air, ripe with the sweet smell of possibility.
Witness the pre-game sideline antics, the innocent pageantry that still exists in sport. The grand old ground will shake and rattle like a 1960s Valiant if St George Illawarra prevail over the Sea Eagles, initiating a wild ride which fans pray won't end until grand final day, October 3.
Hope will be highest in the hearts on the Kogarah hill, those aged 30 and under who have not seen a captain in a red and white jumper lift the premiership trophy.
Former players will assemble on ''Stoney's Slab'' at Jubilee Oval, a square of concrete named after premiership-winning prop Robert Stone, who succumbed to brain cancer a few years ago. Afterwards, ''the Skinny Coach'', Wayne Bennett, or ''Old Man Winner'' as I prefer to call him, may allow himself a slight smile at his decision to leave Queensland and take another title ride into the sunset.
Then he will stroll to a media conference, temper expectations and create the impression he loves the experience about as much as a tax audit. The fans - probably the most knowledgeable in the NRL - will flood across to the leagues club or stream up to the Royal Hotel, Carlton, and bathe in the after-glow of the match.
Well, the truth is you won't be able to join them at Jubilee Oval unless you snapped up a ticket on Tuesday after Red V members were given first opportunity. The home club chooses the venue for the first finals match, while the NRL retains the revenue. That's a ''no-brainer'' for the Dragons, who opted to reward their tribe, meaning many can walk to the game, as their grandparents once did.
Last year, St George Illawarra rejected a $250,000 offer from the NRL to move the same match to ANZ Stadium. Across all sports there is a growing gap between the fan and the athlete, as ticket prices rise to pay the salaries of sportspeople who resent being role models and loathe the scrutiny of an increasingly intrusive media. St George Illawarra have always been highly sensitive to the expectations of their fans, and while playing at their citadel gives the players more unity and energy, it's also a thank-you to the club's support base.
They are principally middle-class, the AB demographic after which editors of broadsheet newspapers and glossy magazines lust.
George Foster, professor of business management at Stanford University in the US, was raised in Kogarah, where his father was the principal of James Cook High School. Foster, who has not missed a rugby league grand final in 20 years, has been asked to deliver the oration at the October 1 ceremony for the US Ambassador to Australia. If the Dragons make the season decider, he plans to be there by kick-off.
When the Swans - also red and white - came to Sydney in 1982, many of them settled in the St George district. They have subsequently moved to the eastern suburbs, nearer their Centennial Park home and a view of the sea. Nor will the players of the AFL's GWS expansion team live at Blacktown. The AFL is being deceitful in promoting the image it wants to convert Sydney's working class west. It covets an upper-middle class corridor along Pennant Hills, Castle Hill and Baulkham Hills within easy access of its new NSW Government-funded home of Sydney Showground at Homebush.
The sweep of red-roofed houses along the Princes Highway to Tom Ugly's Bridge is a bulwark against other codes. Rugby league is the main religion, and St George the principal denomination.
Rugby league's origin and ethos are working class but in the 21st century this image is a myth. The code has never made much of its upwardly mobile climb to the so-called superior suburbs over the past 30 years.
The Dragons' opponents on Sunday enjoy being called ''Silvertails'', and Liberal leader Tony Abbott's final photo opportunity on the day before he faced the people in the polls was to drop in at Brookvale Oval in his electorate and pull on a Sea Eagles jumper and run some drills. Sure, Abbott prefers rugby union, as do some of the inhabitants of Blakehurst and Kyle Bay, who will pay $500 for a ticket to the Bledisloe Cup match between the Wallabies and All Blacks at ANZ Stadium on Saturday night. Some of their neighbours will fly to Melbourne to watch the Swans play the Western Bulldogs. But south of Tempe is Dragons land, and it turns red and white again, after you pass Cronulla and head to Wollongong.
The older Dragons fans like their players to be a decent, respectful reflection of themselves.
This is why the club would rather lose a premiership than risk a major scandal, such as the NRL Hiroshima that struck the Storm.
The need to nurture the image began in 1956 with the first of St George's 11 straight premierships. The mid-20th century was the pivot on which sport turned, leaving noble amateurs, such as Dr Roger Bannister, the first man to break the four minute mile, and Sir Edmund Hillary, the first to climb Mt Everest, as rearguards to the past.
Amateurism was in retreat. The tradition of paying athletes and swimmers in trinkets and trophies, as if their glory was somehow devalued by something as base as money, was disappearing.
Golf, tennis and rugby union were the bastions against a fast-fading amateurism, replaced by a hypocritical shamatuerism, which embraced boot money for the rugby lads. Rugby league has never made any pretence its players were paid. Nor have the Dragons denied they retained star players on the poker machine revenue of its ''Taj Mahal'', although many have stayed for a contract two-thirds the value of what they could have received elsewhere.
Two of the original four ''Immortals'' came from St George - John Raper and Reg Gasnier - and another, Graeme Langlands, was soon added. All completed their careers as one-club men.
The best adjective I have heard applied to rugby league came from former prime minister Paul Keating, who described it to me as ''earthy''. He didn't mean dirty, although that was a label applied in the 1970s when punch-ups were common and the ''phantom biter'' lurked. Nor did he mean soiled, although cases of sexual assault and salary cap rorts stained the code.
He wasn't referring to the two mud-caked captains, St George's Norm Provan and Wests' Arthur Summons, who left the saturated SCG in 1963, arm in arm. A photograph taken by Fairfax's John O'Gready is the model for the premiership trophy. No, Keating used the word in reference to its honest toil. The players most regarded in the code are those who perform the self-sacrificial tasks of diving on a loose ball, charging down a kick, backing up on every play with little prospect of receiving the ball.
Bennett has instilled these skills in the Dragons after they lost their way for a while. He has also varied the attack, meaning the team is less reliant on tries from kicks. He also recruited the New Zealand hooker, Nathan Fien, midway through last year. Fien broke his leg in the opening round this year but has returned to provide much-needed variety around the rucks. All clubs need an X factor in the play-offs. Fien is the Dragons' X factor.
Watching a Bennett-coached team click is akin to hearing music played right for the first time, or studying a flight of birds in perfect formation. His best teams hum.
Remember the swift passage of the ball to Steve Renouf when the Bennett-coached Broncos won two premierships against the Dragons in 1992 and 1993.
It didn't help that a former St George junior, Chris Johns, fed Renouf the ball and Bennett manufactured a game plan that itemised the Broncos' weaknesses and then told his players it was prepared by Dragons coach Brian Smith.
But if the Dragons claim the premiership, he will be forgiven. After all, it's been a long wait. Thirteen premierships in 24 years, then none in the next 30 years, with five losing grand finals in between.
St George football is like a drink that makes you laugh then weep, then gibber. Hope springs eternal at Kogarah. It sometimes springs insane. Watch the crowd in the top deck of the grandstand on Sunday if the TV cameras take you there. If anxiety has a sound, you will detect its groaning rumble before kick-off.
If the Dragons fire ahead - which they should against the injury-depleted Sea Eagles - listen to the shivering roar. Watch the season ticket-holders chatter and cheer.
Their exhilaration and camaraderie will be inspiring, transporting.
The joy they share will be akin to sneaking a blanket over your head when you were a child. The troubled world goes away, and nothing outside that delicious, sacred space seems to matter.
http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/...-fervour-to-end-long-wait-20100908-151fn.html
Fantastic read. This type of stuff gets the blood boiling.
![[FKN-SIK]](/data/avatars/m/13/13251.jpg?1239671989){kind=avatar}
