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Has this been the biggest week for Australian sport since Captain Cook was competing at the World Youth Sailing championships?
It’s hard to think of many to rival it.
It started with a Grand Prix win for Daniel Ricciardo, then Tim Cahill joined the likes of Maradona, Ronaldo, Michel Platini and David Beckham by scoring at a third consecutive World Cup; Patty Mills and Aron Baynes got NBA championship rings playing for San Antonio; The Kookaburras thrashed the Netherlands in the World Cup hockey final at The Hague, following a silver medal effort from the Hockeyroos against the Dutch women’s team the night before; Caroline Buchanan won the BMX Supercross World Cup event in Germany, The Wallabies took an unbeatable lead in the series against France, and Marinko Matosevic smacked down both Andy Murray and Amelie Mauresmo at the Queens club in London.
Well sure, that last one was not so much a sporting result, but a big victory for some press conference troll, who probably still can’t believe someone rose to the bait.
But for a lot of sports fans, me included, tonight and the early hours of tomorrow morning offers a double that’s hard to match.
State of Origin Game 2 2014 in rugby league and then, about four hours after that finishes, Australia take on the Netherlands at the football World Cup in Brazil.
Some fans.
There will be others who are still so busy deep in the trenches fighting the codes wars they’ll refuse to appreciate anything from a code other than the one of their choice.
But the truth is, the most well-worn snarky comments fired off at rugby league and football from the partisan code warriors do actually define issues that desperately need addressing in both codes.
Let’s start with the most hackneyed complaint about football. I noticed this one doing the rounds on my Facebook timeline against this morning: it a game “full of histrionics,” “guys being stretchered off because they’ve stubbed a toe”, “falling over in mock pain as if they’ve been shot”.
It’s the diving divas theme that comes up every time.
And it’s true. It is embarrassing watching some players milk free kicks and penalties and it is against the rules.
Officially it’s called “simulation” – a fancy pants way of saying pretending to be hurt or knocked over or impeded from having a play on the ball, but it is clearly one of the least implemented rules in the world game. (On the field, that is. Don’t get me started on FIFA and the whole other style of simulation they’ve got going on.)
The Socceroos, who have a reputation for playing physically (and that doesn’t help) were again on the end of what seemed to be some rough calls from the ref against Chile on Saturday morning when lightly-brushed opponents made the most of minimal contact and free kicks were awarded. The Socceroos, who generally tend not to flop and writhe in pain, seem to have illegal contact of them overlooked quite regularly.
Good referees will often just ignore the pathetic penalty-seeking pantomine actors but far too rarely actually award a penalty against simulation. So the diving divas just keep it up until they get a result. Basically, until there is more sense of taking a risk by taking a dive, the plague on the world game will continue.
Of course, the referees don’t have the benefit of multiple angle replays that often show there was minimal contact, or none at all. I can appreciate FIFA not wanting to go down the track of using replays during a game, but why at least players who engage in simulation can’t be suspended on a post-game review of the incident I don’t know.
On the positive side, while football is perhaps a little overzealous at times in protecting the physical wellbeing of it’s skilful players, it does make sense that they want them on the park as much as possible. It also means skill almost always trumps size and aggression, and I like that.
Rugby league, on the other hand, seems to glory in the gory. As irritating as it is seeing players diving in football, I’m not that crazy about seeing blokes belting the living daylights out of each other, bleeding, punching on and staggering around concussed either.
So, if it’s that bullocking brutishness that you like about rugby league and you’re taking the piss out of footballers at the World Cup, give yourself an uppercut, as they say in the rugby league classics, because it’s not sustainable.
Legally it’s going to be a long term problem as more research is done into later life health issues caused by this sort of caper. Upping the ante on players in the gladiatorial setting of State of Origin is becoming less and less acceptable to players and clubs. It might look spectacular, but if we’re damaging the stars of the game and the bread and butter of the code in Australia, the NRL, it will eventually cost too much.
Unlike football, rugby league is a collision sport, and its players are trained and coached to withstand physical contact. That takes a lot of preparation and a lot of courage.
Having worked at an NRL club some years back, I can only say that Monday morning post match was like watching a fleet of dodgem cars dragged into the workshop to have the damage assessed and repair work started. Almost everyone is hurt after every game, and that’s from the legal stuff.
Whenever I hear fans bemoan the game becoming “soft” because players aren’t allowed to play on with concussion, or shoulder charge or stand toe-to-toe punching I think it just shows how little they appreciate how hard the game really is.
Worse still, it makes me wonder whether we overvalue the grunt work and under-appreciate the skills of the truly gifted players. And that would be rugby league playing into the hands of its critics. Critics of the game say it’s full of big boofheads who do nothing but run into one another; they say there is no skill or strategy involved whatsoever.
Of course, that’s not true. But it does worry me when league enthusiasts revel in describing their showpiece game as “brutal”. Is it wrong to hope that tomorrow’s rugby league headlines, whatever the result, would make some allusion to the skilful elements?
Tomorrow’s World Cup headline is most likely not going to refer to a brilliant Socceroos victory (I’d be absolutely delighted to be wrong) but you can be sure it won’t be about the Socceroos outmuscling The Netherlands. That doesn’t mean the Socceroos can’t be courageous. You don’t need to be playing with a broken jaw, or taking a physical beating to show courage.
I respect both rugby league and soccer and neither game really deserves to be pilloried as it is by its critics. But the critics do point to what are real issues, and there’s no point pretending they don’t.
There’s plenty to love about both games, and it’s somewhere in there, between the sooks and the brutes!
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