The cruelty of 'If' for Kurtley Beale

Would it have been worse because he’d done it before? Maybe if he hadn’t had those vivid memories of being the hero in South Africa with a kick even harder than this one, he wouldn’t have been so eager to take on the task this time.

He wasn’t supposed to, anyway. If Christian Lealiifano hadn’t had his brain rattled in the opening moments, he’d have been stepping up to win the game.

If his replacement Pat McCabe hadn’t had his neck cracked later on, the backline may not have patched up with a flanker in the centres, and the disarray that saw Alex Cuthbert cruise over for a try may not have come to pass, and that final kick may not have been needed.

If Beale had nailed the previous penalty, it wouldn’t have come down to the last kick of the game. If O’Connor hadn’t missed a couple of gettable shots earlier, it might have been different.

If he’d worn screw-ins instead of moulded soles, he might have nailed the long-range shot. Or he might have kept his feet and missed anyway. If he’d hit the sweet spot, he’d be a hero. People forget that he’d come on and played superbly in his reach for redemption.

If he’d kicked the goal, they might remember it even less, glory obscuring the truth even more effectively than devastation does.

If, if, if…we’ll never know, because it didn’t happen.

If Benny Elias’s drop-kick had been six inches more elevated in 1989, he and Garry Jack and Wayne Pearce and Paul Sironen and Steve Roach might be heroes of Balmain’s last premiership team instead of members of rugby league’s undeserving hard-luck club.

If Neville Glover had caught the ball in 1976, Parramatta diehards might talk about the legendary Eels of the 70s alongside those of the 80s.

We’ll never know, because it didn’t happen. Sport’s peculiar allure, that which makes it compelling entertainment and at the same time so much more than entertainment, is the gut-twisting ifs, the ghosts of missed opportunities and vanished possibilities lingering in the air after each contest, unanswered questions that can never be answered because fate stole them from us.

There is no script in sport, and no deleted scenes to tell us what might have been.  It’s all just if.

If Desmond Haynes’s 37-year-old reflexes had been half a second slower on Australia Day, 1993, Allan Border could have crowned a colossal career with the most elusive of all triumphs, a series victory over the West Indies.

If Craig McDermott had swayed out of the way of Courtney Walsh’s fizzing bouncer at the climax of the greatest innings the big man ever played…if Darrell Hair hadn’t been quite so convinced the ball had hit glove…if one of Tim May’s defensive shots had caught the edge and flown for four instead of being patted back down the pitch…if Curtly Ambrose had pulled a hamstring…it never ends.

Neither does it go only one way. If Ash McGrath’s booming kick from outside fifty on Sunday had sprayed off the side of his boot, the Brisbane Lions would remain an overlooked mediocrity at the unfashionable end of the ladder, and Geelong would still be congratulating itself on its ability to stave off opposition surges.

If Ian Healy’s audacious legside flick had connected a few centimetres higher up or higher down on the bat, the tale of South African cricket in the 90s may have been so different.

If Michael O’Connor’s sideline kick had floated wide as such a kick in driving rain had every right to do, Origin folklore would be rewritten. If any one of a dozen Maroons had faltered or fumbled in the thirty seconds before Mark Coyne crashed over the line, it would be rewritten again.

If David Campese had decided, “Just this once I’ll play it safe” on his own goal line in 1989, it might have been Nick Farr-Jones who went down in history as the man to lead the Wallabies to an epochal victory over the Lions, and John Eales simply as the man who continued a trend twelve years later.

If Cathy Freeman had slipped as Beale did, her very name would mean something completely different today.

If, if, if…every if is a moment that nobody can ever change, and a moment that somebody will never stop wishing to.

The illogical cruelty of the if saw Kurtley Beale crumple in despair after the goal that wasn’t.

Every run, every tackle, every step, every stumble, every kick, every pass, every ruck, every maul, every lineout, every scrum, every decision made by every player on the field in that test match altered the outcome: there may have been a hundred moments in that eighty minutes that in a parallel universe went the other way and led to a Wallabies win.

But it was only that last kick, that final disastrous forlorn hope, that can be pinned down as the moment, the one play with a binary outcome: kick it and we win; miss it and we lose. And so it was Beale’s mistake, not anyone else’s, that flooded the back page, and sent Australian heads drooping and British voices crowing.

It was Beale who will replay his mistake in his mind forever.

Sport is vicious and cold. The ifs will kill you. And that is exactly what we’re addicted to.

But sport is also kind. Because this weekend the Wallabies run out onto the field again, and fight the good fight, and hope the ifs fall their way. And Beale will have another chance to be a hero.

Don’t you love it?