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The Roar

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It's time to start expecting less from rugby league

26th February, 2015
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Rugby league fights in Origin are much rarer these days. (AAP Image/Action Photographics, Grant Trouville)
Expert
26th February, 2015
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2214 Reads

It’s been a polarising week of prominent dudes done wrong. A hairy and half-naked Merv Hughes offended campers in the African jungle, John Travolta creeped out Hollywood with his slinky hands and weird uncle kisses, and Glenn McGrath’s gun love was embarrassingly laid bare.

Their conduct sparked varying degrees of debate. Where does their behaviour fit in this label-dependent modern world? Is it the work of harmless weirdos in need of a moral software upgrade? Or is it the anachronistic practices of a couple of dinosaurs still existing in the olden times? So many questions.

After deep introspection, we eventually left it to the experts. In the end though, I believe we all agreed on one thing: these were the actions of three jokers who simply haven’t moved with the times.

Scale up the wrongs of Hughes, Travolta and McGrath by a thousand, and you have another popular entity that hasn’t grasped the new values of the modern world – rugby league. After another week of terrifically-timed turmoil, it’s proven again that while it’s a game with grand visions and good intentions, it is still prone to farting in front of strangers, making inappropriate advances and shooting shit in its spare time.

Fortunately for throwback cricketers and eccentric thespians, they can reform, subdue, or at least use the outlet of sledging or the stage role of an aggressive alcoholic. However, rugby league can not call on these things, and it has no control over itself at all, and may never. This is not good for rugby league.

As we know, the game is on a relentless pursuit for perfection, but with every spectacular self-sabotaging faux pas it produces, it becomes apparent that it possesses too many flaws to ultimately reach its dream. Why does it hate itself so much?

A popular theory is that the game is in a perpetual struggle to transition in to the professional era. They say it’s still entrenched in the behaviours of the cash-injected golden ’90s, when the pay was finally tops but the scrutiny acceptable.

This truly was a time of league nirvana, the game was flying on the paddock, the inept governance still existent from the ’80s could be supported, plus an honest footballer could still make a dirty extra-curricular buck and usually get away with it. They were the good old days to which the game is still addicted.

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Nowadays, with code wars, big TV deals and unfamiliar morals, the party’s over. Times have changed.

While enjoying an on-field product that’s as high-octane as ever, the game is wrangling with itself. It’s desperate to throw off its blue-collar roots to become a sparkling product of polished professionalism, but it can’t seem to evolve. Every time it makes progress, it bursts in to a room of dignitaries off its face, shampooing its back and telling the nearest female to ‘shut up, woman’.

This week, it was more bullets in the foot, this time in Queensland – a cocaine scandal on the party strip involving a financial struggler. The only way it could be more Goldie is if it involved an outlaw motorcycle gang, a dodgy tennis coach and Warwick Capper as Dr Evil. It still may.

When this Titans furore broke on season’s eve, it disrupted the summer like a calm flight spoiled upon landing. As we do, we all assumed the familiar emergency brace position, wailed as the details came to hand and then decried another step back for rugby league.

If it’s any consolation though, this week’s incident is not the worst on a bulging wrap sheet that is pretty much indefensible. (Not a consolation).

If you were asked 10 years ago to write a list of the most absurd controversies that could occur in the game, would your wildest imagination have ever dreamt of a Joel Monaghan, Nate Myles or Todd Carney style story? If it did, please see a GP.

Now think of what might happen in the coming 10 years? Does your database of filth stretch that far? We might need some internet or World Movies to create that kinda whack.

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Aahhhh, rugby league. I will always love you and want what’s best for you. But you’ve got to help yourself, and I know you won’t. Who in their right mind can deny that the game is a junkie for controversy, a beast cannibalising itself as it instinctively searches for a destructive high to outdo the last?

It is gravely apparent that bringing the game in to disrepute is embedded in the DNA and will never go away, regardless of intervention, education or punishment. So maybe we should put our arm around it and accept it for what it is?

Maybe we should stop expecting so much. Perhaps it’s time for the game to know its limitations. Is it forever destined to be consigned to its strongholds? Should we accept the majority of mums will not want their children to play the game? That the game will never be the international superpower we dream it could? That there will always be basketcase clubs, financial foolery, corrupt administrators and urine parabolas that give the game ironic global exposure and erode the good work of the do-gooding 99 per cent?

In today’s modern society, the goalposts have shifted for rugby league, but it’s not budging. I want to believe in its potential, but I doubt it will ever put on a shirt, stop making creepy eyes at the girls and just act normal.

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