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Yesterday, Phil Gould’s article for the Sydney Morning Herald called for David Gallop to resign from his post as chief executive officer of the NRL, following his comparison of Melbourne Storm fans to terrorists.
Gus is right. And don’t you hate it when that happens? Gallop should resign – but only to preserve the last piece of quiet dignity he has tried to instill in a sport which views dignity as a personal attack.
The NRL desperately needs David Gallop, but it is also slowly killing him. How can you save something that refuses to save itself? Gallop has much to offer Australian society, but not with rugby league.
His comment that Melbourne fans were akin to terrorists was the reaction of a man who has spent the last 10 years being served up excrement sandwiches and then having to wipe his mouth and say thank you.
His comments were the weary call of an unflappable, stoic servant. His comments were rash, horribly timed, and 100 percent correct.
By way of introduction, it is important for me to state that I’m not exactly rugby league’s greatest fan. In keeping with the terrorist theme, I view rugby league a little bit like Osama Bin Laden. If I awoke one day to find it no longer existed, I don’t really believe the world would be a better or safer place, but nor would I lose much sleep.
By definition, rugby league aims for the middle. The very rules and nature of the game place a glass ceiling on spectacle.
It is stop-start by design, and while the sport requires the most exceptional athletes to play it – brave, strong, fast, skillful – it is a small pond.
The accolades are finite, the boundaries too close. There is no place for subtlety in league, and moments of brilliance are overshadowed by a constant, sledgehammer, repetitive approach. Millions will disagree with me (including many on The Roar), but isn’t that the fun?
Don’t get me wrong – I still swallow plenty of league. I will cheer as loudly as the next man during State of Origin, and have attended my obligatory Knights game for the year (here in Newcastle, they deport you to Stockton if you don’t).
But NRL has problems – which brings me to Gus.
Phil Gould is a huge problem for rugby league because he has no knowledge of self. There is a place for rugby league (and a hugely successful place at that), but there is no need to dress it up as ballet.
Whenever Phil Gould stands beneath the goalposts and tries to sound like T.S. Eliot while some exhausted cameraman runs around him in swooping circles trying to create some sort of dramatic, gladiatorial effect, I am reminded of the words of football manager Jorge Valdano.
A renowned student of the round-ball game, Valdano once famously (and controversially) criticised certain clubs for being lauded as brilliant when they were actually stifling the game. Stop me when this sounds familiar.
“Put a s**t hanging from a stick in the middle of this passionate, crazy stadium and there are people who will tell you it’s a work of art. It’s not: it’s a s**t hanging from a stick.”
And while Gus goes on telly and compares the players to warriors, the stadium to the Sistine Chapel and “this moment” to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, David Gallop waits by the phone for the next time one of these artists has his way with a dog or punches his girlfriend.
Then it is Gallop who has to go on television and apologise to children and fans, and the cameraman never, ever runs around him in circles to make it look more dramatic.
When the Melbourne Storm fans boo him because their single-minded passion and fervor have removed them from the realm of logic and fairness (much the mindsets of terrorists), they are forgetting that they were grossly betrayed by their own club.
Their jeers serve to brush over the fact that it was one of their own players who triggered the brawl against Manly and was deservedly banned from the finals.
Next time Phil Gould steps out in front of the Melbourne Storm fans for his pre-game reciting of the Crispin’s day speech from Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth, he will receive an almighty cheer.
He knew this when he wrote his article calling for Gallop’s head – but as discussed earlier, he has aimed for the middle. Lowest common denominator. S**t on a stick.
Gallop should quit, and join a political party – any of them – and I’ll vote for him.
Because if he has been able to imbue rugby league with even a modicum of respectability, running the country will be a doddle.
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