Your guide to the confused gibbering of grand final week

Grand final week is often described by overexcited footballers as akin to a Seinfeld marathon, a bucks session or time at home alone while the missus is away. Simply put, it’s the greatest week of your life.

With all the humdrum the week brings such as the additional stimuli, breakfasts and microphones, the 34 lucky players chosen to take part spend the days waiting for kickoff in a total state of rhapsodic fuzz.

Combine this with too many arvo naps and weights and an engrossing sense of accomplishment, and it tends to muddle the brain.

So when it comes time to feed the hungry media’s want for big-game filler, what results is a titanic struggle for the modern footballer to produce anything coherent and factual.

They’re fighting against a mind influenced by euphoria, and when you’re a beast already known to be somewhat unreliable with the rigours of speech, it can produce some real palaver.

The trained eyes of footy fandom can spot a bloke speaking in the moment or out of his arse as he approaches the biggest game of his life, but what about the novices and the gullible among us?

For those, here’s a guide to some of the familiar spin you’ll hear this week and how much of your credence they each deserve.

“This is the most tight-knit bunch of blokes I’ve ever played with”
This is a common one. If the grand finalist’s thoughts are true, then the growth of goodwill and solidarity between a group of footballers reaches its zenith in the week leading up to the final match of the year.

Yep, a big game can cause treasured memories of coffees, Playstation and nightclub melees made with scores of other team environments to be tossed to the side.

The rose-coloured glasses of a winning workplace renders all others in the past as dysfunctional Bundy-esque hellholes, as this group right here has the best camaraderie and bum-taps ever – until the player’s contract isn’t renewed.

GF week BS rating: Unless the player in question has transferred from the Sea Eagles, take this with a grain of salt.

“An honesty session turned our season around”
Usually held in Kiama, Terrigal or weekly on Saturday nights in Kings Cross, the famed honesty session has been attributed to some of the greatest revivals in rugby league history, and it always gets a mention in grand final week.

It’s not hard work and performance-enhancing drugs that can turn a team’s season around when they are languishing at 0-10. The secret sauce to a championship drive is a night of pizza, Coronas and group censure.

As ham and pineapple is dispatched, all players will look each other dead in the eye and ‘make a pact to go all the way’. At this point, all are obligated under the terms of their verbal contract to deliver the crown, lest be left vulnerable to litigation from the sharp legal minds that exist within the group. Cup secured.

GF week BS rating: No footballer is honest, but they do like beer and pizza, so this is partially accurate.

“This club is heading in the right direction”
After qualifying for the granny, the over-aroused footballer is always confident that his club is now in clean territory for eternity. After all, this is rugby league, where memories are short and all clubs have chequered pasts of rorts and indiscretions, so it only takes one small window of success at the right time of year to rid a joint of all its ails.

Word to the wise, the chances of this statement being heard boost markedly with any grand final team that has a five-year plan and/or has recently but the broom through the boardroom, or if said player has just signed a contract extension.

GF week BS rating: Mildly true. While the club may currently be on the right track, it only takes one bubbler for a derailment.

“We won’t underestimate our opposition”
Like the coach says, don’t give your adversaries something to pin on the wall of the dressing shed by saying something inflammatory. To combat this, the grand finalist employs hyper-intensified obviousness and switches in to gross complimentary mode to get through the week unscathed, resulting in pearlers like this.

It’s a complex insight in to the gameplan, and it usually comes in a box set with other classics such as ‘they’re a big mobile pack – possibly the biggest in the comp’ and ‘they’re built for finals football’.

GF week BS rating: I’m sure there won’t be complacency, but I refuse to believe this player has weighed every scrum in the league.

“(No frills player with no chance of selection) deserves rep selection”
The grand finalist loves to talk up his teammates at the best of times, but due to the fervour of the week controlling a skyrocketing approval rating for all and sundry proves rather difficult.

This means that the lower lights, the journeymen and the unheralded engine room all come in for some manic promotion, resulting in some ill-thought endorsements that I’m sure will be regretted by the giddy advocate when he wakes up in a horse suit the morning after Mad Weekday.

Sure, it’s nice of him to think of the undervalued, but it would take an extended Roo Tour squad of history-breaking size to fit guys like Shane Perry and Jeff Robson on the plane.

GF week BS rating: Unless the player is referring to selection in the PM’s XIII, this is textbook arse talk.

Roarers. Step up and give full credit to the boys. What’s your favourite 110 percenter when it comes to the melange of rambling dribble and crossbred cliches of grand final week?