After Parramatta’s 1981 grand-final win over Newtown, a Granville schoolteacher stood at the door of the Parramatta Leagues Club auditorium.
On surveying the all-singing, all-dancing Eels fans, drunk on alcohol and the atmosphere, he said, “This is the real triumph of the working class.”
That was the significance of Parramatta’s first premiership after 34 years of disappointments.
Sport can transcend itself and unite and lift an extended community.
Parramatta had provided the definitive example. Had – past tense.
Now South Sydney have superseded it.
Redfern isn’t so working class these days, however. Not unless its members live in housing-commission blocks or have inherited long-standing family homes. It takes a million to buy a trendy terrace in the once-battler suburb.
The class-based insult ‘like a kid from Surry Hills’ is heard no more, either – it takes a million to live there too.
But Rabbitoh fans form the biggest diaspora of all fans. They reach well beyond Redfern, beyond the immediate Souths district, and they’ve all now spiritually come home.
In winning the grand final, Souths proved a sport, a team, can transcendent and unify.
Their example goes beyond Sam Burgess’ courage and skill, already passed into legend.
It goes beyond individual performances, like Greg Inglis’ final try; the exclamation mark his matchless talents and the game deserved.
It goes beyond other giants like George Piggins, the first saviour in this second coming. Decades-long supporters said thanks to ‘St George’ as they waited to enter Redfern Oval on Monday.
Souths’ win showed rugby league has a unique quality.
It can be punched, kicked, kneed, gouged, head-butted, poisoned, shot at, bombed, suffer any scandal, be dragged down by any administration, suffer any attack from without or within. And it will survive. It has metaphorically suffered the lot.
It was only right that Souths, the club they tried to kill, suffered and survived to give the greatest demonstration of them all.
Triumph of the working class? It was a bit more than that. It was a triumph of the masses.
For counterpoint and contrast, there was James Hird and his decision to appeal to a higher court as the ASADA-Essendon-AFL drugs controversy-melee-brouhaha continues.
Still the designated Essendon coach, Hird may be 200 per cent innocent, 500 per cent mistreated. May be. But in pursuing his course, Hird has placed himself above his players, his club and his game.
There can be no way forward for Essendon, it can only be a club divided as long as Hird, referred to as St Jimmy when a player, remains.
Uncertainty will remain, some players will go, as might assistant coach Mark ‘Bomber’ Thompson (and Thompson has received insufficient credit for taking Essendon to the top eight this season; one of the great coaching performances, given the turmoil).
Hird has diminished himself, a great club and a game.
Souths have expanded a mere game in collective imaginations.
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