80 minutes of pure boredom
October 5, 2005
Rachael Jacobs find herself offside with all football codes.
Call me a traitor to my upbringing, my home state of NSW or even my country, but I have no interest in football. I'm not even biased against any code in particular: I despise them all.
So it's no surprise these past two weekends have not been the highlight of my year.
Unfortunately my feelings weren't shared by my husband, who follows every code and competition known to humankind: rugby league, rugby union, Aussie rules, premier league soccer, European football, even Gaelic football.
For the record, I want to state that I'm not a sports hater. I love competitive sport. Or, more accurately, I love playing competitive sport. I've always believed that sport is something to experience, not watch. Certainly it isn't something to froth and shout like a maniac.
What's so great about watching a bunch of blokes you've never met run around passing a ball, all the while yelping "Pass it, you idiot!" or "Go! Go! Go!"? Footy fans, here's a newsflash: they can't hear you.
Last Sunday, rather than fight the obscenities-shouting crowd that had gathered in front of my TV, I decided to watch. To see if there was more to footy than I had thought.
The pre-game conversation only highlighted my disdain. "Wests Tigers will win, for sure," offered one sage lounge-room critic.
"That's great," I replied, "So why do we have to watch the game?" Not surprisingly, my comments were met with more boos and heckles than the pre-match entertainment.
It wasn't long before the mandatory cliched footy commentary cranked up, with Captain Bleeding Obvious in the starring role. "This is a game of two halves", "There are two teams in this game" and "The team that wins will be the one that scores the most tries" were just some of the pearls of wisdom that failed to capture my imagination.
Later, the source of my frustration with footy dawned on me when the cameras panned across the crowd. There was a mix of colours and jerseys and, guess what? None of them was current.
I was brought up in a footy household, so I do have a vague idea of how the game works. I'm probably showing my age now, but my father was a Newtown supporter. I briefly feigned an interest in Parramatta. A guy from my school played for Norths. So here's the problem: on Sunday I had no idea who these teams were. Wests Tigers? In my book, they're either Wests, as in Magpies, or they're Tigers. And Wests don't make it to grand finals. As for the Cowboys, to me they sound like a Yankee baseball team from the Deep South. Yee ha!
All this, peppered with advertising that insults the intelligence of even the Bundy bear, made for 80 minutes of pure boredom. I did, however, get 80 minutes to write this article and check my email, interrupted only by boofy people squeezing past me to get their paws on the portable cooler. Maybe football is good for something after all.
Readers are invited to apply wit to anything that makes the blood boil. Send 600 words, with day and evening phone numbers, to
heckler@smh.com.au. Submissions may be edited and published on the internet.
:lol:
