From Fat to Fletch: The evolution of NRL's golden era of comedy

Footy. It’s the leisure activity of the working class with its foundations built on the kind of grimy toilers you see in Hilux adverts.

You know the types. The ones that wear cement powder as cologne and spend 18 hours per day lifting trucks before heading off for nine hours of training on a paddock of hot coals.

Yep, my fellow cobbers, rugby league is blue collar to the bloody bone marrow, and besides giving us some of the toughest collisions and craniums we’re ever likely to see, do you know what else these brawny origins give us as league fans?

That’s right, loads and loads of that blokey and uncouth wit we all publicly claim to loathe but secretly treasure. Yep, I’m talking about that larrikin-style humour so bluely churned out on manual labour worksites, eight days a week.

Over the last 30 years, with the marriage between rugby league and its wonderful income stream – television – growing stronger, we now get these guffaws by the truckload. Why is it so?

Because like any good marriage where there is nurturing and commitment, both parties tend to give more to each other. In this case, it’s blocks of open broadcast hours from the networks and streams of time-filling pap from the game.

Outside of the broadcasted minutes of actual matches and the hours of interviewed players saying ‘y’ know’, a part of this time is saved for affable boofheads to whack on their wife’s dress and take us on a walk through the demented workings of their inner mind.

As you will see, the modern era’s style of comedy has ebbed and flowed with external factors over time. Society’s standards have shifted and the coarse edge of the players has softened with every chest wax. Nevertheless, whether from a player sans pants or a serious injury on A League of their Own, chuckles have always been the mainstay.

So in conjunction with the good people at Pointless Research Inc, I have plotted this golden era and have discovered that its mazy, naked journey runs through four major checkpoints. Enjoy!

The Nineties – The Vautin Era
Footy horseplay kicked off with the advent of The Footy Show on Channel Nine primetime. Inconceivably, the hosting abilities were somehow deemed as pre-midnight safe in the hands of Paul ‘Fatty’ Vautin.

With ‘The Fat’ as ringmaster for two hours of live television piloted by complete amateurs, repeated sexual innuendo relating to his nickname and head wobbling was de rigueur for the first 45 minutes. Then came reams of Vautin look-alikes ranging from fat red-headed schoolgirls to fat red-headed cross-dressers and tabby cats in between, before the audience was sunk in to unbearable hysterics with anything big-nosed and bald shown in a split screen next to Peter Sterling.

Then someone would wear a dress before 30 minutes was spent mocking Mario Fenech.

The Noughties – The Johns Years
Using The Footy Show as his launchpad, Matty Johns took over from Vautin as league’s master class clown. His bread and butter? Character comedy and jokes about his brother’s arse.

In the initial stages, Johns never strayed from the program’s fundamental satirical principles of bawdy schoolboy humour. These were seen best in his alter egos of Trent the camp flight attendant and the chauvinistic throwback of Reg Reagan. However he was forced to amend his style when stood down from duties after being embroiled in a sex scandal from his playing days.

Upon his return to television, he was employed by Channel Seven and given his own program on the proviso that he kept it relatively clean. He followed this directive stringently by steering clear of his former methods, preferring to garner laughs from the frustrated sexual situation of his offsider, the reborn virgin Jason Stevens.

The early 2010s – The Ryan Age
Again spawning from the Saturday Night Live of league buffoonery, Beau Ryan took up from where Johns left off and was given creative licence to extract the Mello-Yello out of any player or layperson he saw fit on the Thursday night free-for-all.

Beginning in the standard apprentice role as an exponent of street talk, he won over Nine bosses with his delicate mix of approachable charm and underhanded insults and was promptly promoted to a spot on the panel, despite his limited playing experience and complete lack of WAG and/or Burgess qualities.

It was at this point that he flourished with his cliché-sodden alter ego DJ Yallah (you are framing yourself and yelling ‘Doggies’ as you read this, aren’t you?), his weekly segment Beau Knows and the lampooning of some of the game’s biggest names, with the latter possibly contributing to his mashed neck and subsequent retirement.

The present day – The Fletcher and Hindmarsh generation begins?
While it’s tough to define an era when in it’s midst, one can only feel that Bryan Fletcher and Nathan Hindmarsh are beginning to stake a claim to Ryan’s stronghold on the 2010 era of telecast carry-on.

The pair are breaking the jester’s mould on Foxtel’s Monday Night with Matty Johns with a surreal style that is prospering in the chaos-encouraged working environment of subscription television.

While their topless racing and oil wrestling may just be the kind of homo-erotic shtick that the commercial executives love on their footy programming, it’s their freshly abstract work like the Nepalese Donkeys and their free-reign commentary rights (debuting this Saturday in the Roosters versus Knights clash) that should ensure this duo never sees any time on a free-to-air network outside of a news story involving their Identikit photos.

So Roarers, who have I left out along this journey? Is it the self-deprecating cuddliness of Darryl Brohman? The reluctant blouse work of Steve ‘Blocker’ Roach? Or the semi-reformed punk Brett Finch? Help contribute below!