The book ‘How to Play Rugby League’ by Wally Lewis (currently $4.95 on eBay) contains a glossary where the reader can learn the definition of a ‘bomb,’ a ‘scrum’ and a ‘play the ball’. One term missing from King Wally’s list is ‘Mad Monday,’ this despite the fact that it’s one of the most commonly used sporting expressions between August and October.
To fill in this glaring admission, Mad Monday can be simply defined as: a traditional day of celebration by a sporting team following their elimination from competition.
Somewhat less simple is examining the place of a day where grown men will run around in women’s clothing, give each other terrible hair-dos and generally play up like second hand lawn mowers.
Sometimes alcohol is even involved.
For the local park footy team, the whole affair is pretty straight forward and is like a slightly better organised buck’s party that happens to occur on a weekday. Any general public they come across is likely to smile wryly, shake their heads, and give the bloke wielding the hair clippers a wide berth.
For your professional sports team, though, Mad Monday has undergone greater transformation than Cararra stadium.
Whilst players might still like to joke about non try scorers doing nude runs and players letting loose post-season, it’s more likely that they are sitting around an XBOX, nervously sipping a mid strength beer and taking turns to peek out the blinds to see if any paparazzi have got wind of their debaucheries.
This is actually a fairly recent phenomenon.
As last as the year 2000, I can recall walking home past the North Wollongong hotel at about 4pm when I noticed the shabbiest, sorriest looking bunch of blokes you’ve ever laid eyes on in various stages of undress sprawled out on the tables out the front.
Resisting the urge to cross to the other side of the road, I soon realised that it was in fact the St George Illawarra Dragons’ rapidly degenerating Mad Monday celebrations.
These days the done thing would be to take a couple of sly snaps on the phone and email them to footytrash.com. However, at the time, all I was worried about was how I was going to get the autographs from the passed-out blokes.
So what’s the reason behind this sudden dramatic decline in Mad Monday festivities? Well, no Seiko watch for guessing that it starts with an “M” and rhymes with “Wikipedia.”
Whilst the park footy player has nothing to worry about except the hangover on ‘Terrible Tuesday’ and explaining what happened to his eyebrows, the professional is one photo or Tweet away from being labelled a juvenile misogynistic degenerate alcoholic.
Which I’m going to go out on a limb and say is a bit tough.
If a player is done for boozing or playing up during the season, for sure, kick him up the bum, because unless they’re Johnny Raper, late nights and alcohol are not conductive to good athletic performance.
But after the season, for one day?
A Mad Monday is a footy players boozy work Christmas party, except that his work is under constant scrutiny, has zero job security and it’s likely a good chunk of his workmates are being moved on for next year.
It’s a double standard to besmirch them a little R and R, as anyone who has ever photocopied a body part would realise.
Even more of a double standard is how they’re treated in comparison to other athletes.
Following every Olympics/Commonwealth games the head news story reads something like “Australia’s bronzed Aussie role model legends let their hair down for a well deserved break after years of training and sacrifice”-accompanied by scenes of Olympians drunkenly singing and downing beers.
Following every footy season the story we get is “Footy’s Neanderthal Boofheads disgrace humanity the end is nigh” – accompanied by scenes of footy players drunkenly singing and downing beers.
Ever seen a room full of old footy players at a reunion? Chances are they’ll be banged up and dinged like an old Datsun. There will be blokes with bung knees, dodgy shoulders and fake hips. That’s what I call sacrifice.
Not that it’ll stop them from playing up like second hand lawnmowers, however.
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