So I go away on holidays and miss the very public meltdown of Ricky Stuart. Great! I’ve been waiting for that for years and then the very moment I turn my back, something goes snap and Stuart goes from the code’s self-proclaimed thinker to having the mental stability of a shirtless man screaming at passing traffic about the upcoming Armageddon.
‘Stuart goes absolutely berko’ was hardly the sort of headline you’d never thought you’d read. But I couldn’t help but feel partly responsible for it.
Funny how, though, after weeks of press coverage, the actual change in language is fairly small. It goes from ‘Ricky Stuart is committed’ to being ‘Ricky Stuart should be committed.’
Having watching Channel Nine’s coverage of rugby league over the past few years, I have been witness to the very open testing of a man’s grip on reality. I started worrying that had I not tuned in, Nine might have taken a more hands off approach to save this man’s dignity.
Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
No other coach had the camera rammed in his face as they scowled on the sideline. But then again, no coach turned their water bottle into a bubbling mass of boiling liquid through the intensity of their grip after 34 seconds of match play or started kicking chairs if a player didn’t run a decoy down the blindside on the third play of the match.
You knew Stuart was combustible, if not deranged, but you couldn’t help watch.
Sometimes you’d finish a game feeling like you’ve just witnessed a re-enactment of the film SAW, such was the torture Stuart’s men put him through as they played out their eighty minutes.
No wonder his players sometimes looked like they were heading to the gallows rather than a half time orange.
But surely none of this was a clue to the fact that within eighty minutes, a man would go from a job for life to raving about conspiracy theories. I almost expected him to attend his mea culpa briefing wearing a hat fashioned of aluminum foil to stop his enemies reading his mind.
However, in an era of “alcohol fuelled incidents” there was almost something sweet about a man snapping merely from the pressure of his own mind rather than that of a carton of throw downs with bourbon chasers.
But as a word of warning: I don’t think anyone should allow Stuart near a Sudoku puzzle and heavy firearms until he is given a full bill of health.
I wonder where Stuart will go from here: will be get all new age, never wear shoes and leave team selection down to his collection of coloured crystals? Or will simply up the ante and start taking players’ families hostage until victory is secured?
Either way, I hope it is just as entertaining. We could well be seeing the creation of rugby league’s own David Icke.
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