The hope that dare not speak its name

The most memorable quote from 1986’s underrated John Cleese vehicle Clockwise comes from Cleese’s character Brian Stimpson. “It’s not the despair,” says Stimpson. “I can handle the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.”

Funnily enough, screenwriter Michael Frayn wrote that line without having spent even a day of his life as a supporter of the New South Wales rugby league team. Yet somehow he condensed our unhappy existence most perfectly into those few words.

After all these years, we of the sky-blue are well used to despair: it is as much a part of us as our bones and sinews. But hope, that miserable trickster, that darkly smirking assassin: it is hope that comes time and again to thrust his stiletto between our third and fourth ribs and scurry off, laughing gleefully and high-fiving Paul Vautin.

My first experience of Origin Hope was Game 3 of 1988. I had only just become familiar with the game, and hadn’t watched the first two of that series, both of which Queensland had won. My father told me he expected NSW to win, and like a fool I believed him. But my father was a Queensland fan who approached every sporting event with staunch pessimism, staving off disappointment with subterranean expectations.

The Blues burst out of the blocks in that game, taking an early lead and playing with great panache. In the second half they were flattened by the maroon steamroller.

The next game was Game 1, 1989. A new coach in renowned genius Jack Gibson! A fresh new approach. Exciting youngsters like Laurie Daley and Brad Clyde! A new era, surely, where my burgeoning obsession with league would be rewarded with a powerful NSW side.

Early in that game, debutant Daley missed a penalty shot from directly in front. Things got much much worse from there. The Blues were annihilated. In Game 2, NSW seemed certain to win, playing with vim and vigour against a QLD side so beset with injuries they finished the game with twelve on the field.

Wally Lewis ran and ran and ran and ran and scored, and NSW lost. In Game Three, respect was set to be regained as the Blues once again took an early lead, and were once again stomped into the turf in the second half.

I was ten years old and I had already learnt my lesson: do not hope.

Do not hope when your team is leading at halftime. Do not hope when your team is leading at 60 minutes. Do not hope when your team is leading at 79 minutes, 50 seconds, because Queensland is going to go the length of the field and Ray Warren is going to have an orgasm. If they’ve got the ball, they’ll score from anywhere. If we’ve got the ball, we’ll find a way to give it to them.

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Do not hope because your team “looks good this year”. Do not hope because Queensland has “some crucial outs”. Do not hope because they have lost some of their best through retirement and you have the more in-form side.

And definitely, inarguably, indubitably, never, never, never hope when you’ve won the last game. Every NSW fan knows by now that winning an Origin game against Queensland is like shooting Mongo from Blazing Saddles: it’s only going to make them angry.

I remember 2015, when NSW won Game 2 in Melbourne. The first game had been desperately close. In the second, the Blues played superbly and felt like they’d had a major breakthrough. We all felt that we were on the up, and they were on the down.

In Game 3, Queensland set a new record for a winning margin, and we realised the safest way to approach the Queensland rugby league team was to curl into a ball and cry until it’s all over.

Yet here we are, in 2017, and Daley, now a seasoned coach, has brought out Andrew Fifita and James Tedesco and Jarryd Hayne and Nathan Peats and all the rest and asked us, once again, to believe. And dammit, I find myself tempted to do as he says.

This year feels even more full of blasted hope than 2014. That was a great series win, but a dour, grinding one, dependent on the individual brilliance of Jarryd Hayne and with a Game 3 coda that was ominous for the future – rightly so. It was blessed relief after eight years of subjugation, but there was little to suggest business as usual would not resume soon enough, particularly after Hayne got all gridiron-y.

(AAP Image/Dan Peled)

This year, everyone wants us to think that NSW is on the brink not just of a series win, but a dynasty. That victory in Brisbane was stunning, bewildering, magnificent. Daley’s men stormed over the top of Walters’s hapless maroons in irresistible waves. It was beautiful to watch.

Sure, Queensland were handicapped by the fact that John Thurston, Greg Inglis and matt Scott weren’t available, but then NSW was handicapped by the fact that Mitchell Pearce was, and they managed to overcome it wonderfully.

It was a brand of blue dominance unseen, undreamt of, for more than a decade. The last time Queensland were smashed like this the likes of Andrew Johns and Brad Fittler were conducting the on-field orchestra. Younger New South Welshpeople must have felt like country children seeing rain for the first time in their lives. After seeing a performance like that, it’s well-nigh impossible to head to Game 2 thinking anything but, “This must be our year”.

Hope has returned. But so has Thurston. So has Billy Slater. Yet despite those menacing names back on the park, I can’t help but feel optimistic. I don’t want to think that I’m likely to be smiling at 10pm on Wednesday night.

I don’t want to see anything in my mind’s eye but the numbness of defeat, so familiar now that it’s a member of my family. But God help me, I think the Blues might win.

And that’s the hope I can’t stand.