So it’s Thursday night and I can’t think of anything for this damnable column so I turn on the TV and the show says Queenslanders Only.
I change the channel and wonder if there was a show that was for ‘Jews Only’ or ‘Muslims Only’ would people kick up a stink, I reckon they would.
Ha! Anyhoo!
Now, yes, yes, obviously, everyone be cool, Queenslanders Only is just a funny bit of schtick and only in Australia, and of course Queensland, a singular place, and I’m going there Tuesday to play golf and watch Origin at Noosa Surf Club, it should be good.
So! I’m tooling about with the remote and there’s nothing else on the hundred other bloody channels, a hundred and forty bucks a month for a couple of sports shows and Game of Thrones, I query the wisdom of my subscription, Thursday night a veritable wasteland.
And thus I’m still no closer to anything for the damnable exercise in outrage that this column is so I thought stuff it – I’m going to watch the Queenslander show and live blog it, like people do games.
Eureka! I’ll sit there, write about it as it happens, see how we go. That can’t have been done, at least not often. Probably for good reason.
(AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
So I turn it back onto the Queenslander show to find Robert ‘Crash’ Craddock thanking the hat-wearing folk of Townsville, and seems I’ve missed it.
Not to worry, there’s a heap of footy shows on Thursdays, and the next one up is NRL Tonight, so I’ll live blog that, and… well, who knows.
So the credits, or whatever they are, go up and we learn the show is sponsored by some betting agency, which is a bid to ingratiate the corporate gambling behemoth with the people, punters, and ‘punters’, the poor sucked in saps who pour billions into said agency’s coffers and pay for their Audi Q7s and houses near the water in Bellevue Hill.
Soon enough we’re into NRL Tonight which is a newsy bit of kit with Matt Shirvo in a suit leading off with the NRL’s latest betting scandal.
Fancy freakin’ that, allegedly some rugby league players love a bet as much as the betting mob, the ubiquitous sponsor of rugby league.
And so we throw to journalist James Hooper who gets into it, looking heavy, and gives us the scoop on the betting brouhaha engulfing rugby league.
“Hoops, what can you tell us about this tonight?” asks Shirvo.
“The NRL Integrity Unit will look at it. The NSW Police will continue to investigate. But where it all lands, Shirvo, I’m not sure. I get the feeling it may be nowhere”, replies Hoops.
So there you go.
Josh Reynolds comes on with ‘RLPA’ on his hat, as it was on the hats of the Blues and Maroons in various hat-showing opportunities, the players displaying solidarity with one another over their demands for a legislated, regulated, percentage slice of the pie.
Hard to know why the NRL wouldn’t give it to them other than they want to keep the money and do something else with it, or they don’t think 29 per cent is an equitable amount of money to give to players.
I don’t know. Chances are you don’t know. And I’ve spoken to a couple players and they don’t know either. And the NRL won’t tell them, or anyone. Heard anything from the NRL lately?
They’re keeping mum, the suits. All the quotes are coming from players.
And so Hoops and Blocky Roach knock out some gibber about being locked out of the Blues training session, and they pump the tyres of the upcoming deciding Origin match, it should be a beauty.
(AAP Image/Dan Peled)
Roosters man Robbo comes on and has a crack at the NRL over the vexed old beastie called ‘scheduling’ given his club’s biggest game, the derby with Souths, is on in the largely talent-free black hole of Friday before Origin, the man can make a case.
But they can’t fix this stuff unless Origin’s on a standalone weekend, we’ve been down this path, it might never be fixed to suit everyone, pass the beer nuts.
And so Jaimee Rogers and her gleaming white teeth comes on to give us TAB’s odds, as if it’s part of the show, which of course it is, never before in the history of sports television does it seem an advertiser has had such clout that it can pay to be involved in the actual editorial of the show.
The money must be unbelievable.
And that was the end of NRL Tonight.
And so it’s on to old mate the Professor’s Second Year Syndrome show with old mate Finchy and Matty Johns’ mate Pagey from the radio, and a crowd full of rollicking yahoos who one would suggest have been fairly well lubricated in the crowd version of the green room beforehand.
And it’s pretty funny without being the Paul Hogan Show of 1981.
Actually, it’s quite good.
The end.
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