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Can the limitless toxicity of this Origin series have ramifications on Kangaroos team harmony when they next meet for duty?
It’s a pertinent question that reaches further than the simple barge-and-fend of the field and the blokey laws that underpin it. It delves deep in to the emotions and allegiances of the modern footballer, and I believe it needs to be asked.
Looking back over the recent weeks, Origin 2015 has been a non-stop carnival of highly personal bile and ‘he said, she said’ finger-wagging with a spot of football dotted in between.
The conduct of both states has been the kind of skanky nitpicking usually reserved for base gossip pages, and I must say it disgusts me and I secretly love it, right up until I consider it’s potential to lower the national colours.
Even allowing for the usual toilet-papering and shit-bagging for this time of year, this series has been record setting for cactus-like activity between New South Wales and Queensland, and I’m backing the scars to endure right up until the time comes to collaborate again.
Sure, usually the collective macho of the footy team environment swiftly deals with any crappy interpersonal relationships it’s lumped with, but I can’t help but think that the septic barbs of this year will surely prove particularly weighty.
Why you may ask?
Because this Origin series seems to have a distinct personal edge with many slings directed purely at the individual, and it’s been no holds barred on how savagely they are delivered. Names have been named, specific incidents have been recalled and royalty has been called in to question. Swears have also been sweared. Bad ones.
After these various calls of arrogance and disrespect and evil angels, could you even possibly imagine the choice 17 from these two teams meshing as good ol’ Aussie cobbers any time in the next couple of weeks?
I’m betting it would be alpine conditions with the requirement for third party mediators just to pass the salt at the dinner table.
The wild nature of this year’s pantomime makes it seem these two sets of players have known that the next Test isn’t for donkey’s, so they’ve set about airing their filthiest laundry from the deepest reserves of the hamper, safe in the knowledge that it won’t need to be explained and apologised for in person anytime soon. Just like how you give your cousin from Canada a gobful every biannual Christmas that you see him.
As an Australian and someone with an irrational fear of awkwardness, I am thanking the Lord the band doesn’t get back together for another nine months or so. Hopefully it’s enough time for the tempestuous bitchiness to subside and for Hallmark to lop the forests required for the mass numbers of grovel cards it will sell across the eastern seaboard.
Personally, I’m not confident that it will all be completely forgotten by then. Footy players are people too, and just like you or me would, the cattiness would be stored in a spite file and saved for dealing with later on, most usually when next drunk.
To be honest, I’m just hoping it can be all avoided with a mass turnover of players before the next selection.
For those unaware, the usual annual baloney of questioning eligibility and proposals of affray from Tommy Raudonikis has been nothing more than the bread roll before the entree in this year’s festering feral fracas.
On top of the disgraceful new precedents set by the tabloids, everything came to a head when it was time for Game 2.
Paul Gallen launched proceedings with a volcanic pre-match press conference where he accused the Queenslanders of disrespect and arrogance before most notably describing their cluster of holier-than-thou angels of being anything but.
It wasn’t the usual two-headed stuff with an airy undertone of humour, it was pointed and personal and in some states, Bambi homicide of the highest order.
Then among the many spot-fires of a zesty affair at the MCG came the genteel crossing of swords between David Klemmer and Corey Parker.
Now I’m not totally au fait with the schoolyard sledge index these days, but I’m pretty sure being questioned by a grey statesman about respect sure carries more weight than the usual battlefield crossfire about your mum/sister/wife being a dirty hobo. It was thoughtful, personal and the kind of thing that makes eye contact awful the next time you meet.
Then to add further gas to the bonfire, Gallen has spent the weekend utilising his trademark transparency on FM radio to air some home truths, just to set the record straight while also helping clean off the ink of his ‘drug cheat’ headline that is still clearly fresh on his fingers.
To be honest, the Blues skipper is the man at the eye of the storm. He is speaking with the freedom of a man on death row. If he’s not finished at international level, I hope he’s got his certificate to work with explosives in a crawl space.
So will this all blow over? Will the boys look back and laugh over a bonding session awash with the sponsor’s product when they next meet?
Or could the uneasy truce reached after the ‘Yippy Yi Aye’ incident be cracked along party lines again? Has this series and the pressure it’s created far overriden the priority of the national cause?
I know in my heart of hearts that these players are professionals. They can work together, and they will. They need to now they are world’s second best. Plus they are in breach of contract if they don’t. Simples.
Plus we all know that what happens on the field stays on the yada yada yada. And that Australia has dealt with 35 years of mates punching each other in the Origin arena past without any issue. Because we’re good with stuff like that.
But with the high stakes nature of this series and a decider to tip the earth off its axis on the way, something tells me there will be serious reverb from this series for time yet, and I would hate to be at that first breakfast table in camp next year.
Anybody order a bowl of Frosties?