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The biggest bad-ass games call for the biggest bad-ass forecasts, so here’s a dicey boomer to whet your appetite for this weekend’s all-consuming NRL grand final. Let us all be prepared, as it may blow your mind and my credibility.
With my proverbials firmly on the line, I float this suggestion for the masses: is Bulldog Big Sauce James Graham – the vanilla Godzilla with the Origami touch – one more barnstorming game away from being the most valuable rugby league player on the planet?
Now before you send the white coats in my direction, I would like to make a few acknowledgements that will plant some asterisks on this poser, thus insuring these precious proverbials of mine.
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So, if you will, please hold that call to the clinic for just a tick.
Firstly, there is a smidge of bias to disclose – I am a card-carrying stalky fanboy of the brutish Brit.
Besides frequently cycling past his house and picking through his garbage, I’ve already pumped him up as the best Brit this season when I stated that he was challenging Sam Burgess’s crown. Put simply, I love the way the big fella goes about it. Additionally, I’m also expecting an AVO in the post anytime soon.
Secondly, there are a couple of itsy-bitsy conditions that require fulfilling before elevation.
Graham and his fellow Bulldogs must produce an all-time boilover on Sunday night to roll a rampant South Sydney side, and he has to play a major hand in doing so, preferably including a solid outpointing of a devil-possessed Burgess in the process. Just to ram it home.
It’s not much to ask, but if this win for the ages somehow eventuates and Graham’s fingerprints are all over it – and really, he’s rarely outside his team’s top-three performers in every game he plays – then he will be the most prized and prominent player in the world’s best club side at that point in time. See where I’m going with this?
The big prop has the most influence in his team’s systems, he plays the most roles within the machine, and his leadership qualities are second-to-none. Take him out of the side and you have a different team, while the opposition grows a leg and possibly half an ear. You get what I’m saying – the bloke’s rather important.
So it’s simple. If the Bulldogs earn the keys to the land of milk and honey on the weekend, it most likely will be because of Graham. Does that make him the world’s most valuable footballer at that point in time?
I’ll let you decide.
Okay, so using this theory to thrust him above the rest of 2014’s best is a crudely basic coronation, but it’s hardly a snap crowning when you consider what the burly Englishman has produced up to now.
Graham is the Dally M prop of the year and his form has been world class for some time now, with it going to an extra-rowdy level in his team’s mythical finals run. He’s redefined play for the big boppers with his hybrid style of vicious and delicious, and his hunger for success is so ravenous that I thought he was going to swallow Mitch Brown’s scone at one stage.
If the Bulldog prop can end his current six-game losing streak in grand finals to become an NRL champion on Sunday night, this all adds up to a reasonable case for election. But being rugby league, where we tend to move on quickly, it may be a leadership that is only fleeting.
Within a couple of weeks, when Australia start crushing everyone in the Four Nations tournament, we will give the yellow jersey back to someone like a rampant Johnathan Thurston or class-coated Cameron Smith as the footy world’s short attention-span turns to the next dominating display. And that’s fair enough.
But until then, let’s live like common bohemians in the here and now. Can we go against all tradition and grant the top title to someone other than a playmaker or a highlight reel? Maybe it’s time the tradies were given some time in the spotlight, and in this case, Graham is the tradie of the moment, who takes on the work of many a man while rarely stopping for smoko, and he soon could be a premiership player to boot.
If the Dogs can do it – and that’s a massive ‘if’ – then this Big Sauce has to be acknowledged as league’s number one flavour of the month.
So let’s discuss.
Roarers. I told you it was going to be a big-ass call, but do you agree that Graham could be considered as the world’s most valuable player should his Doggies outfit consign Souths to further bleakness? Or should I stop inhaling garbage fumes?