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If you’re on a wild soiree and the barkeep tells you there’s fifteen minutes until closing time, do you steadily finish your refreshment, throw your stilettos over your shoulder and leave like a sap?
Unless you’re a responsible human being with class, of course you wouldn’t.
Like any prudent fellow who’s imbibed to the stage of wearing a mini-skirt, you would stumble up to the well in your pumps and fill every spare pocket on your outfit with pre-mixers before chugging as many you can before time runs out.
Not only is this responsible drinking, it’s an inherent human behaviour. Always make the most of something before it’s gone.
With Roger Tuivasa-Sheck and James Maloney leaving at season’s end, such eleventh-hour gluttony should be on the minds of the Roosters as they close in on September.
With half of the side’s offensive core being somewhere else in 2016, I’m calling last drinks on their current premiership window, even despite their laundered playing list and Mensa-calibre coach.
For the sake of nobody except themselves and their fans, it’s imperative the Bondi club wins a premiership this year. They need it more than anyone else in the league.
Not only would it be a fairytale win for the battlers, it would also cap off a stellar period of prosperity and place them near other famous mind-numbing premiership dominations of yesteryear such as Tim Sheens’ Canberra, Des Hasler’s Manly and the Wayne Bennett decades at Brisbane.
Season 2015 presents a juicy opportunity for the Roosters. If they let it slip, they may not have another chance until Nick Politis seeks restitution from Jarryd Hayne for hire car costs, and that could be months away.
With no obvious blue-chip replacements, can the staff briskly unearth some gems- or lure someone else’s- to replace the gaping holes left in the spine by Tuivasa-Sheck and Maloney? Or is there a string of moderate sixth-place finishes on the horizon for the club?
Whatever happens, the Roosters predicament proves The Premiership Window is now a real thing in modern rugby league.
For the uninitiated, The Premiership Window is a term relentlessly bandied around in the AFL’s 24/7 news cycle, yet is only just catching on in the NRL world as the game’s media gradually moves from court reporting to covering issues about rugby league.
Bookended by rebuilds and clean-outs, The Window is a restricted period of time when a club’s core group of players hit a unified high for the first time somewhere other than a nightclub.
Signed long-term, free of tomfoolery and focused by fatherhood, it is a collective crescendo that provides the best chance at a premiership, or on the flipside, a lifetime of ridicule from unfulfilled club members.
The key to The Window is making it count. Like the cash grab machine on The Price is Right and those pesky closing bars, the idea is to get as much as you can while can get it, because inevitably you’ll be burgled by the equalising powers of the salary cap or hamstrung by an inter-group sex scandal.
When a club really takes advantage of a Window, that’s when you get St George 1956-66. When you don’t, that’s when you get the 2000-2004 Roosters and the anger management issues of Ricky Stuart.
See why it’s important? Nobody wants forehead wrinkles like Rick’s.
So after arguably picking one up ahead of schedule in 2013, can the Roosters close off a premiership window in 2015 with something special? Can this greedy bunch of gluttons grab a final handful before closing time?
I know most of you would be disgusted by such a notion, but I’ve got my mini-skirt full of UDLs at the ready.