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I’m breaking a personal promise today by mentioning sport’s biggest bore, Anthony Mundine, in the same article as my favourite sport, rugby league.
Several years ago, about the time this loathsome cowboy cost St George-Illawarra a premiership with a solo act of greed, I told myself Mundine was an impostor of the highest order and that league would be far better off without him.
It was time to impose a personal ban on “The Man” and his motormouth and up to this day, I have not weakened.
The constant string of shameless self-promotion, his constant sledging of accomplished footballers, and the outrageous, unchecked ego of an Australian sports ‘identity’ made me despise Mundine and all he stood for.
When he announced he was switching to boxing, I thought of the old saying, “Good riddance to bad rubbish (and I’ll come to that later).”
In the sport in which his father, Tony, excelled, Mundine has shown considerable skills from time to time but the fraud squad should have been summoned long ago after he entered the ring to face a graveyard of stiffs, under the tattered banner of a professional sport.
His outrageous verbal efforts towards microphones, reporters’ pens and television cameras have become nothing more than trash. I am not going to run through them all here – people can readily recite his list of monumental stuff-ups and gaffes from his September 11 diatribe through to Daniel Geale.
At the weekend, Mundine was interviewed by The Sunday Telegraph and brazenly declared he could “quite possibly” have ended up as one of rugby league’s immortals if he had stayed in the game.
What? Could anyone seriously consider Mundine completing what was, at best, a modest league career and being spoken of in the same breath as true legends Churchill, Raper, Langlands, Gasnier, Fulton, Beetson, Lewis or Johns?
Take a long, hard look at what the above-mentioned league men achieved during their long and highly successful careers. They earned and richly deserve the immortals tag that was bestowed upon them. To put yourself in their ball park is the act of an imbecile.
Get your hand off it, Mr Mundine. You are literally way out of your league here and such drivel masquerading as opinion has no place in our newspapers, the airwaves or even within earshot.
Such gibberish should remain in the ring of your chosen sport. For too long, they have somehow tolerated trash talkers there.
Everybody knows that Mundine will say or do almost anything to snare a headline – his scrapbook is crammed with boorish, irresponsible examples. Seriously, I would applaud if the media put a blanket ban on Mundine from now until the end of the year.
I am eagerly awaiting January 2013 when Mundine faces the impressive Geale, a thoroughly decent Australian with an ever-growing boxing portfolio.
January is when boxing will be rid of the megalomaniac that is Mundine. That’s the month the garbage is taken out and there will be no recycling.
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