The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

Drafts, draws, drugs and dropkicks: Summer footy's gone mad

Expert
18th December, 2014
22

There was a time when footy in summer was alien. It didn’t belong in the papers, it was off-topic over barbecue powwow, and if you showed up to the park with anything oval, it would be ruthlessly deflated with a stump and fed to the dog.

Now this is no longer so. With the advent of 24-hour news cycles and the need to keep A-League football at an arm’s length, our winter behemoths have shouldered in on cricket in an attempt to swallow the calendar like the gluttonous Jabba the Huts they are.

In recent years, it’s the AFL that have led the market as the gurus of year-round media domination. Using their spin on the Ludovico technique, they’ve ‘treated’ the sporting public to an unbroken stream of content that attacks from all vantage points and ceases only for toilet breaks.

Outside of a season proper that has arguably contributed to the nation’s high divorce rate, they hit us with an oversupply of factory extras like drafts, trades, internationals and combines, and to fill any remaining gaps, they employ Eddie McGuire to float in the order and pinch-hit.

What results is an ice-cold block of non-stop minutia that’s delivered in a perfect arrangement so you’ve always got Sherrin on your lips. The public’s vision is bricked up, and judging by the AFL’s state of health and the smugly satisfied look on a CEO who’s straight from a Hugo Boss advert, it seems to be working.

Up north, the NRL have attempted to mimic their southern rivals in recent years with their own version of the never-ending story. This is mainly because it’s a wonderfully grouse idea, and partially because their business acumen is a Pie Face to the AFL’s Bank of China and they’re too short of enterprise to create their own strategy.

Nevertheless, despite still being somewhat off the red hot pace set by their rivals, league has made some inroads in recent times by dotting their off-season with exhibition matches, draw announcements and jersey launches, all complemented with the grandstanding of talent being flung back and forth across the seaboard in the name of trading.

While for the mungo game this isn’t the analytical gushing over rookie data and broadcasting of balls being inflated like their counterparts, the fact is that they’re still slowly moving in on summer too. Combine their commando work with the AFL’s trojan horsing, and soon we’ll be living in a fascist footy state.

Advertisement

However, in the textbook style of a dictatorship that is expanding too rapidly for its own good as it becomes increasingly drunk on power and sunrays, these two organisations have recently taken their eye off the ball and stumbled on their own cretinism.

Despite accruing an impressive property portfolio of column space using the good things about their games – bar Eddie McGuire – hard work has been undone with gutter-height affairs. Now leading the charge on their off-season spotlights are stories that throw shade on the codes and cause the blokes at the top to have kittens.

I’m talking about the ASADA debacle for the AFL, and the latter-day boost in embarrassing criminal activity from the NRL and its employees.

To those AFL fans looking for peachy keen summertime yarns?

Where there once was club fatsos setting new love handle records on the caliper test after Christmas, or electric time trial efforts at altitude by your club’s gut-busting superstar, or even the humorous news of a cruel delisting, there’s now just needles and lawyers.

And for NRL fans, well, it goes a little more like this:

“Later in the show, we’ll give you everything you need to know on All Stars tickets and your club’s new signing right after we show you footage of a club captain going tinkle on the fuzz. But right now, here’s a local second-rower burning the national flag and abusing war veterans while he drink-drives with no pants on.”

Advertisement

Fair dinkum, these stories are drowning the drip-fed propaganda in controversial peepee, not to mention the game as a whole. At least in the season proper we can watch a game and forget about these ails, but how long will they continue to saturate the game while there’s no actual footy being played to distract us?

Hopefully ASADA should finish soon, or at least when James Hird finds a new hobby. As for feral transgressions, they’ll always have a fighting chance while ever rugby league exists. So we’re probably stuffed for the mean time.

It seemed crazy to have the hibernation period infiltrated with soft-sell stories on footy, but it was acceptable nonetheless. An A for effort from the authorities.

But now with the intolerable and interminable tales of controversy that bury the feel-good angles, I’m wishing I could just feed the whole off-season to the dog.

Any publicity is good publicity? In a footy summer, I reckon no news is good news. Wake me up in March.

close