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Glasses raised please. A revolution of liberated free-balling is imminent, so let us toast this weekend’s grand finalists and all of the copycatting of their styles that will titillate us in the new year.
For too long now, rugby league has been quarantined inside a cell of tedium. Defensive strategies empowering big boombadas to take the fun out of everything have paralysed the game with paranoia, meaning entertaining games laden with holes and imagination have become the exception to the current day rule.
I don’t want to exaggerate, but going berko in attack and letting it sing was in a critical condition. In fact, it was tracking to become some quirky antique seen on Vossy’s Interesting Stuff, like suburban grounds and celebrated coat-hangers.
But thankfully not anymore.
Prepare yourself, as creative freedom is resurrecting. Once again, footy promises to be as ad-lib as cracking a frothie pre-noon on a Tuesday.
That’s right, sexy is back – and it’s all thanks to the Cowboys and the Broncos.
In 2015, Wayne Bennett and Paul Green have instilled their respective squads with a highly detailed one-point gameplan: to scintillate the public’s pants off. What’s resulted is lush and creamy offence and what’s more, it’s risen to the top, and we the people are the winners.
Living out the Gandhi-like vision of these luminaries are puppet masters like Johnathan Thurston and Michael Morgan for the Cowboys, and the irrepressible pairing of Ben Hunt and Anthony Milford at the Broncos.
With youth on their side, the halves combo from Brisbane stand as the faces of this revolution. They’re clean-cut, slippery and sashaying through a tiring set of front-rowers in your town soon.
Now please, standby while I puff the pipe of praise and gush like a prodigious poker-machine payout.
If I know a sporting metamorphosis like I think I do, these young Broncos will be the gleaming Biebers of ball-playing for the next decade, a poster-fresh duo combining the abracadabra of Chris Sandow and the spunkiness of Jason Martin, minus the nonfulfillment.
They are fantasy ball-carriers from the oldest of league fairytales, with Hunt unpredictably organised, while Milford just takes the field in an overcoat made of cactus.
The way this double-act rissoled the Roosters last Friday night was a sight to behold. It was like a fart leaving a glass intestine – you could see it happening, but it couldn’t be stopped. Such was their brightness, I still witnessed every moment despite my eyes barfing a deluge of loser tears.
While both have endured chequered pasts – Hunt is a one-time Under-20s MVP who has copped his fair share of shade in first grade and Milford was a resident of Canberra – they are now being loftily compared with a famous Broncos combination from yore.
In comparison to the Kevin Walters and Allan Langer show, the ruck teasing is uncanny. Milford mirrors the beguiling five-eighth whereas Ben Hunt is a dead ringer for Alf, just with pants.
With the drop in interchange next year, this pair of generals will be irresistible, even though they already are. I defy you to not enjoy their work, and I defy any coach not to copy their work, or at the very least, employ a gameplan that focusses unfairly on their ribs.
I reckon the suits at the NRL would make them the face of competition marketing next year if they were confident they could survive a stint in Supermax.
Once these two sides finish with each other on Sunday night, the rugby league world will need to collectively reach for a Winnie Red that will feel almost post-coital, such is the euphoric highs this game can potentially reach. It was only three weeks ago they played the game of the millennium, so what’s stopping it from happening again?
Then from here, the brains trust of every other team in the league will storm the App Store for two magical dwarves that can weave on the back of a platform laid by an aerobic pack, sparking a revolution and sending footy back to the way god intended it be played.