Do you ever read the sports pages, see what various players and ex-players and coaches are saying about current events, and think, “Jesus, why don’t you all just shut up you pack of whining sissies”?
I do, and I think this phenomenon, although certainly present when reading about the Australian cricket team, or NRL coaches bitching about referees, is at its most pronounced when the subject of AFL football is raised: in particular the subject of the rules of AFL.
Every few months it erupts again, some ‘controversy’ over some rule change, or interpretation change, and the news is suddenly full of members of the footballing community scratching their pointy heads and positioning themselves along a spectrum of outrage ranging from ‘it’s just so confusing for the players’ to ‘the game’s gone bloody soft’.
Well, you know who I think has gone soft? All of you bitching Betties, that’s who.
The current kerfuffle is over the rules of the marking contest. Apparently the confusion has arisen because the relevant rule says you’re not allowed to push your opponent in a marking contest, and the clubs are having difficulty reconciling this with the umpires telling them they’re not allowed to push their opponents in marking contests.
And so we get men like Brad Scott and Nathan Buckley suddenly acting like Alice in Wonderland.
“Oh my, whatever is going on?” they wail, baffled by this startling turn of events.
“No pushing? What does it all mean?” they stammer, wide-eyed. “Am I dreaming? Why is there a dormouse in the kettle?”
And we get players blathering all over the place too, like Brent Macaffer, bemoaning their ‘confusion’.
Oh it’s hard to be an AFL footballer, isn’t it, where one week they’re telling you you can’t push a player out of a marking contest, and the next week they’re telling you if you push a player out of a marking contest, you can’t.
How is a poor stupid young man to navigate through this maddening labyrinth of cryptic conundrums?
And most of all we get the likes of Glenn Archer bellowing about how they “can’t even watch the game anymore”, because it’s become such a namby-pamby, wussy-pussy, lace-doily, schoolgirls’-bloomers cross between under-6 netball and lesbian sex and is nothing like the man’s game that used to be played.
And my answer to all of these people is: shut up.
Seriously. Knock back an ice-cold can of Get Over It and have a good hard look at yourself. Then have a look at one of the games played this weekend. Then have a look at a video of a game from 30 years ago.
Note the discrepancy between the breakneck, end-to-end spectacle put on by finely-calibrated super-athletes of today, and the rolling series of shin-hacks, fumbles and slow-motion target-missing floaters on display by the hairy shambling overweight dinosaurs and pencil-necked toothpick dolls of the ‘golden age’.
Then have another look at yourself. Then shut up.
And when it’s time for you to open your mouth again, maybe it could be to tell us honestly what you really want: everyone to bash everyone else.
Let’s drop the talk about ‘confusion’ and how hard it is for poor primitive footballing brains to grasp the concept of a fair marking contest.
Let’s admit what we’re really on about is how much we’d love to see Stephen Silvagni in an intimate embrace with a full-forward, before tossing him bodily into the crowd. We want to see Tony Lockett elbowing fullbacks in the face.
We want, essentially, no rules.
It’s the same when rugby league types complain about the banning of the shoulder charge, or Phil Gould protesting a State of Origin referee has been officiating according to the rules of the game.
What they’re on about is that it was better in the 60s, when referees would generally turn a blind eye unless you murdered your direct opponent in a particularly unfair way.
So let’s have those who complain every time they see a free kick given for no good reason other than a breach of the rules man up and confess what they want is blood and brawling and broken bones.
Then we can have a calm, mature discussion about whether we can introduce some kind of concession, like a five-minute ‘power play’ in each quarter, where you’re allowed to punch anyone you like, or a designated whipping boy on each team who may be assaulted with impunity by any member of the opposition.
Then maybe we can get on with discussing what’s really important in sport: drugs.
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