Opinion
I am a little bit bored with this NRL off-season.
Usually by this time of the year, the entire rugby league community is shamefully skulking along with its head down as the NRL staggers from one disgraceful off-field episode to another.
I will resist the urge to sift through the ashes of historic disgraces in detail but suffice to say usually by now the outrage train has left the station.
The social commentators are in raptures and the offending players have been wheeled out the front of their respective clubs for the requisite tearful apology as they borrow from the script provided by their manager or club media liaison, full of cliches about letting their family and the fans down and how this experience will somehow make them a better person. Running down the list of available options, based on the severity of the offence.
Public nudity? Off the booze for the season.
More serious crime? Do some community work.
Egregious crime that involves injury to persons or animals? Off to rehab you go.
Perhaps what has heightened the disappointment is that the off-season started with great promise. It hadn’t even begun when one of the off-season’s most reliable performers, Adam Elliot, teamed up Millie Boyle for the ubiquitous toilet tryst. Well done for bringing the NRLW into the action early, nice touch that.
After that, a new face chimed in. Reece Walsh offered up a superb apology after a Gold Coast nightclub incident. At this point, the off-season looked like it could be one for the ages. March was looking a long, long way off.
Reliable veterans Brandon Smith and Cameron Munster kept momentum going with great chemistry before Brandon pushed ahead with a colourful podcast all his own.
Perhaps the players peaked too soon? Was the pressure of expectation too much? Christmas and New Year came and went and nothing. The only headline I can recall through all of January was that the Bromwich brothers had bought into a nice over-35s lifestyle community on the coast somewhere north of Brisbane. At this stage even the cricket was boring.
Australia Day is a special day in the rugby league calendar. I suspect it’s the last sanctioned ‘bottoms up’ before the players are locked away in pre-season camps ahead of trial games. It is usually a hectic day that delivers in spades. Surprisingly, Australia Day 2022 came and went without an NRL headline.
So, here we are, mid-February, counting down the days to March 10 and Round 1 of the NRL premiership. I don’t know what happened to this off-season, but it has been one of the quietest and least controversial in memory.
To change gears, though, how nice is it? How nice is it, when the most interesting story rugby league currently has to offer is that Latrell Mitchell’s brother has lost 57 kilograms and been plucked from obscurity to play in the All Stars game? The fact that I know it is 57kg without looking it up is testament to how boring rugby league is at the moment.
To whoever is responsible, I say thank you. The clubs, maybe. The players, I hope so. Thank you. It is nice to be able to walk around as a rugby league fan in February with my head held high (touch wood).
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