Overlooked in the hysteria surrounding State Of Origin Game II’s below-par officiating, Trent Merrin’s ‘brave stand’ and Mitchell Pearce’s previously unseen running game is the fact Wednesday night was the closest a Canberra team had come to Channel Nine’s rugby league coverage in 2013.
Fortunately for Ray Warren his services weren’t required to call the action, given he so rarely has to talk about any outfit from Canberra that he may have referred to the gutsy redhead making a farewell speech as Alan Tongue.
Rugby league fans across Australia were equally baffled by Wednesday night’s curtain raiser. Why were we experiencing an unfamiliar desire to witness a stirring Phil Gould soliloquy? Why was the well-lit tunnel from the dressing sheds to the field of play bereft of signs spruiking fairly average beer?
Why were all of the cheerleaders milling about outside fully clothed, clutching microphones and field recorders instead of pom poms? And why were some of them male?
It was a confusing night, but these are confusing times. Refugees are bad, unless they play cricket. Rugby league players can commit unspeakable acts of violence, unless they punch. Women can run the country, unless they knit.
And in the midst of all this excitement, Tom Waterhouse can somehow still trend on Twitter, like a smiling, diamond-coated cockroach scurrying through the fallout of two extinction-level nuclear blasts to plant his flag on a mountain of debris still glistening wet from punters’ tears.
It was the stuff that nocturnal emissions are made of for social media comedians and Twitter parody accounts, who were quickly joined by a chorus of status updaters taking the moral high ground against people talking football when there was something far more important at stake.
To which I’d retort that it’s pretty obvious to anyone of reasonable intelligence which way the result of the next federal election will go regardless of who’s leading the current title holders onto the paddock.
State Of Origin 2013, on the other hand could still go either way, especially now that we’ve got a decider in Game III, aka the sixth contender for the hotly-disputed Most Important Origin Game Of All Time™ title in the past three years.
If Queensland emerge victorious, look for Kevin Rudd to tap that mild-mannered accountant disguised as a chisel-jawed footballer known as Cam Smith on the shoulder. A snap-decision retirement to take up a seat in the (shadow) treasury makes sense, especially given his prior experience in workplaces with creative book-keeping skills.
Three weeks is a long time in politics, though, and an eternity in football. And the confusion shows no signs of abating as, in a strange case of art imitating life, the Canberra Raiders will be appearing on Channel Nine’s Friday Night Football for the first – and, as the draw currently stands, only – time in 2013.
And regardless of the result, this time around we’re assured that rugby league will be the winner on the night, especially if Rabs calls Joel Edwards as Alan Tongue.
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