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Retro Round: Bring back the fat bloke

5th August, 2017
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The bulging belly of the baddest man in rugby league. Reckon VB regret having their logo splashed across it? HA! (AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)
Expert
5th August, 2017
24
1616 Reads

This nation is in the grip of a serious obesity problem. There is not enough fat footballers in the NRL.

The usual shtick for Retro Round is to fondly reminisce about the good old days when scrums were contested and Queensland clubs remained at home.

However, we must now use it as an opportunity to highlight the game’s dwindling numbers of sloppy rigs.

If you hark back to those conveniently biased memories, they’ll tell you the game was once overrun with the nimble pudge of the everyman.

It was the indefinable time of rugby league’s golden age when a heroic night was 45 tackles, 45 beers and a 45 BMI.

However, interest among the portly has waned since as the game has grown unfortunately athletic.

While theories abound, it is difficult to pinpoint when the demise began.

Some believe it was the Brett Plowman debate over the dangers of playing pregnant, while others say it was the people smuggling allegations against David Hosking after he trafficked Geoff Toovey in to The Ivanhoe up his top.

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Nevertheless, the game has slowly shed its edge as it shed cholesterol.

Now the game is under serious threat from its rivals, with the interest of larger men gradually shifting from league in to corporate mining.

This issue cannot be underestimated. The game is in a skinny healthy crisis.

How can it claim to be the accessible leisure pursuit for the people when it shuns Joe Sixpack and his double-D’s?

Unfortunately, the big guys of today’s professional scene are miserably failing at flying the flag of the flab.

Andrew Fifita of the Blues is tackled by Cameron Smith, Gavin Cooper and Justin O'Neill

(AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)

Trent Merrin has sadly faded away to a compact block of flats, while Nathan Brown’s work is devalued by his cricketing background, the least fattest sport of all time alongside gut-evacuating AFL and catwalk modelling.

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It all points to one outcome; the modern game is dominated by too many athletes and not enough carbs.

In light of this, I’m calling for a return to the treasured days of charming muffin tops.

Let’s see a return of those deft big men, the ones who could finesse the pill after years of juggling a plate of sandwiches three times a meal.

Give us the silky hands and the sexy verandah over the beltline of an Artie Beetson, Daryl Brohman or the grandiose George Rose.

Feed us someone who charges the line like it’s a buffet, one with a sensuous shape that contradicts those ugly forward packs of today resembling barcodes, really really ripped barcodes.

Let’s see the scene steamed up with another Mark Tookey, John Buttigieg, Bruce Gibbs or a pre-prison diet Danny Wicks.

So desperate for the bulge, I’ll even take anyone with the nickname ‘Fatty’, ironic or not.

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It’s time to body shame professional rugby league and call it for what it is- a game prejudice against the pudgy and condemning of John Public and his post-fatherhood overhang.

Enough of this slim efficiency and ‘fitness’, let’s fill those water bottles with ranch dressing and bring back the big man.

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