There currently exists a class system within the football codes in Australia that would have Karl Marx furiously trying to book himself onto a Fanatics tour if he was still alive today. Like most class systems, this one has been born out of tradition, favouritism, as well as a healthy dose of ill-feeling, and is worth a deeper analysis.
Let us first take a look at the lower class, the working class.
That is, the local park sportsman Daveo who fits in two training sessions and a game a week on a boggy windswept oval in between a full-time job as a banker or backhoe driver.
Whilst the working class player is often ridiculed for his less than model looks and casual brutality from the upper echelons he is admired in equal parts for his bravery and honesty in which he plays the game.
Whereas the rewards for a player such as Daveo may be limited to a photo in the Dubbo Daily and a $50 Gift Voucher at Dorahy Meats he is forced to share the costs of his highly lauded brethren.
It is humbling experience to see a group of park footballers with bad haircuts and shirt tans risking knees, shoulders, ankles and possibly jobs all for the glory of a jug of beer at the club and suburban bragging rights.
At the other end of the spectrum we have the professional footballer, a man who makes his living from the game. A lean ball of muscle polished up and wiped down with some slick tattoos, the pro lives a life of fame, fans and…well, football.
When he’s not training, playing or eating he’s probably in an ice bath sleeping off a weights session or updating his twitter account.
Like the floppy haired hipsters on Masterchef, he’s determined to wrench every last second out of his 15min and hopefully nab himself a cushy media gig or at very least some Storm financial shares.
Whilst it is as easy to differentiate the part-time park player and the professional as it is Dapto Showground and the MCG (hint: Dapto is the one were the old bloke with 3 teeth yells at you for stepping on the dog track) we start to enter an area greyer than Gus Gould’s new hairdo when we look at footy’s growing middle class, the semi-professional.
The semi-professional is a man caught in limbo. On the fringes of a footballing career, he is treated with contempt by the pro and with caution by the park player.
In effect, he has the worst of both worlds.
The part-timer is expected to train like the professional, but work like the park player. The stage he plays on is largely devoid of attention; he hasn’t the fanatical fame of the pro nor can he achieve the local hero status of the park player.
Much like societies’ middle class he strives to breach the defences of the upper class, all the while fearing the premature slide back into the park footy world from which he rose.
Perhaps the best example of the semi-pro’s plight is rugby league’s NSW Cup; the much derided second tier competition for NSW NRL teams that seems to change names more often than Cronulla’s home ground.
Unlike the Queensland Cup (nee BRL), SAFL, WAFL, rugby union and association football state competitions, which all have a strong histories as standalone competitions, the NSW cup is the bastardised version of reserve grade.
It is home to a mismatch of traditional clubs, NRL clubs lower grades, some local teams in outsourcing feeder arrangements and some totally made up teams.
It’s hard not to empathise with the NSW cup player. After busting your butt at training all week and working motivating dumpy housewives as a part-time personal trainer, you find out on Tuesday that you’re not playing at a packed Parramatta stadium.
Instead, you’ll be playing in front of some impatient wannabe-texting-WAGS and the strappers’ kids at Ringrose park against a bunch of eager rookies and ruddy faced journeymen, all hogging the ball like under 9’s in an attempt to impress the first grade assistant coach.
To top off your misery only twelve months ago you were being jetted around like a rock star in the under 20’s and you’ve just picked up the paper to find out Reece Simmonds has been selected in first grade for the Dragons.
Yes, that’s right, the team coming top of the NRL ladder is doing so without a NSW cup team, having its excess first graders run around in the local Illawarra competition.
It’s said that pre-Steeler days (mainly by old blokes in Thirroul Butcher spray jackets) that the Illawarra comp was like the Queensland Cup, and a quick look through the line-ups sees that one team alone in Helensburgh (home of Neil Pinncinelli and many huntsman spiders) has Brent Sherwin, Russell Aitken and Ian Donnelly on their roster- all blokes who would walk into Q-Cup sides.
With Origin commitments stealing players, the Dragons plucked Wests Illawarra player and long time NRL retired Simmonds to stand on the wing against the Titans, much to the relief of Ben Westblade and the Corrimal Cougars who were facing their own Origin shortfalls due to their arrangements with the Dragons.
Sure, Simmonds looked a little rusty to start with, but considering he had been pulling night shifts at the local mine and expecting to run out in front of a fraction of the crowd at Ziems Park he seemed to acquit himself rather well.
Following the game he would have had downed a green Staminade or two and returned back to his workplace and his local club a legend, ready for next week’s big game against the Dapto Canaries all without having to suffer the ignominy of running around in a slap-dash competition sticky taped together by Geoff Carr because the NRL can’t spare a buck to fund a proper reserve grade comp.
Unfortunately just like the middle child, NSW rugby league’s middle tier is doomed to be ignored as it fails in its attempt to straddle the lines of pro and park leaving in its wake jaded fringe first graders… and some excellent local footballers.
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