I cried, just a little bit, and other stuff!
This is what I’ve been upta since Saturday night’s game:
- Howled at the moon;
- Finished a uni assignment;
- Dominated my nine-year-old son in beach touch footy;
- Burned and/or threw out anything lime/emerald green;
- Watched some AFL;
- Took a photo of my bare arse and emailed it to my rellies in Ireland;
- Refused to answer any international calls on my home landline or open any emails from Eire;
- Howled at the moon;
- Dominated my son in beach cricket;
- Punched a toy leprechaun in Noosa Big W;
- Been asked to leave Noosa Big W; and
- Then cried, just a little bit!
Foc il leat Shamrock! (LOL)
What an uggo!
OK, let’s get the emotion out of the discussion. Faaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrk! OK, sorted. Now, some points from last Saturday’s loss to Shamrock.
No doubt this search for TBJ (The Big Jug) is going to highlight all that is good and bad with the game of rugby. The good will be its true diversity (in countries that play the game and in ways of playing it), its power, its true reach, its true beauty and controlled brutality. The bad’ll be tooooooo mucha stuff. Too mucha stuff like influence from the refs, shots at goal from 40–50 out, field goals, (obstructive) rolling mauls, and scrum resets.
Well, last Saturday night had ‘em all, in abundance. If we examine Saturday night’s product — the spectacle that was created and televised around the globe — and not the result, it wasn’t pretty. It was like a perfect poo-poo-storm of all that requires fixing in the game of rugby. Scrum re-ets, drop goals and shots at goal from 40 metres out. It was really awful footy. Dingo-ugly stuff.
Remember that the RWC should be the code’s single best promotional tool. It should sit out and up there in the marketplace and scream an awesome message to two markets: those that have an emotional attachment to the game, and those that do not. To the converted, it should make us feel proud to be involved, and reinforce the good stuff. And for the unconverted or unknowing, it should scream ‘how good is this caper! You’ve gotta get on this baby’!
It’s kinda like being invited to the birth of a friend’s baby. Ya get all excited-n-stuff to witness the creation of something magical. You know, something to talk about around the water cooler at work. We get all dressed up in the kit-n-stuff, have the camera out-n-all-ready-ta-go, and out pops an uggo! Such a let-down!
Unfortunately for rugby in this country, a country that has the mostest toughest and mostest competitive sports market, it was a missed opportunity. A free-flowing and brutally-beautiful contest (especially won by the good guys) shown on free-to-air and subscription TV, would have been such a positive result for the code.
But we got uggo — and a losing uggo, at that.
Tragic, real-world consequences
There are tragic, real-world consequences to a lot of the negative stuff that can dominate our great game. He’s a few consequences from the search for TBJ that many people don’t realise actually occur:
- Every time a field goal is attempted in the search for TBJ, a fluffy puppy dies.
- Every time a maul is formed in the search for TBJ, a supermodel involuntarily farts.
- Every time a penalty is taken from 40 or further out in the search for TBJ, the tooth fairy loses five bucks from his bank account.
- Every time the attacking team gets penalised at the breakdown in the search for TBJ, Santa loses a reindeer.
- Every time a scrum repacks in the search for TBJ, an angel dies in heaven.
All is not lost for the Wallabies, people
All is not lost for the Wallabies, and us punters just yet, people.
How good will it be when we beat Yarpie, then the sheep-shaggers and then the soap-dodgers? How good will it be? It’ll be ‘king awesome!
Caaaaaaaarn the Wallabies!
