The season of Rugby League ends tonight with a Sharknado (Sharks + Storm, boom tish), so it is a fitting time for me to reflect on my recent addition of a winter sport to my repertoire.
My team is Parramatta, a legacy of growing up in Eastwood in
the 1970s. I hadn’t paid much attention to them until a few years ago when I
took up with someone who also happened to be a Parramatta supporter. It was
2012 – not the best time to start paying attention, nor for that matter the years after. In
2015 they crowned their solid record of losing from a leading position by
showing there was no lead so great they could not lose it. Thirty-nil up
against the Cowboys (the Cowboys!) at half time, in the second half it turned
out the Cowboys had just been trying to make things a bit interesting for
themselves. It was a plummet so steep it broke records. Not just disappointing
but champions at disappointing.
The
heartbreak of supporting a losing team is well-known,
but what I hadn’t counted on was the heartbreak of losing individual
players. When
a Parramatta player starts to look gifted, useful, or charming I hear
the
rumble of distant thunder. It started with Jarryd Hayne, a player so
good he had
to not just leave Parramatta but code and country. Chrissy Sandow, a
delight to
everyone but his coach: also deported. Reece Robinson, a pleasure to
watch and
indeed simply look at: allowed to stay in the country, but obliged to
switch
codes. When Phil Gould said Semi Radradra was the best winger in the
competition, I held my breath and waited for the terrible sigh. With
Jarryd I have now experienced the pain of seeing a player return to
another team, mitigated by the belated realisation that he is much
better seen than heard and that, once heard, one doesn't want to see him
either.
Most of that has been about the slings and arrows of the game
itself but in this season of course the levees well and truly broke.
In the Herald on Friday, Andrew Webster conducted his own
review of the past season and its exceptionally high level of “sinuendo”,
starting with Mitchell Pearce in January.
Since then, the off-field melodrama has degenerated into a blur of match-fixing investigations, salary cap shenanigans, players consorting with bikies and brothel owners and being pinged for drug possession, sex tapes leaked through social media and whatever Sharks bad boy Andrew Fifita might do next.
He is politely non-specific, but it won’t escape anyone’s
attention that between the bookends of a Rooster and a Shark is a nest of Eels.
People were saying “How much more can Parramatta take?” back in the halcyon
days of Corey Norman being busted with ecstasy. They eventually stopped saying
it, because a) you get bored of saying the same thing over and over again and
b) their question was answered: a lot, lot more. Bring it on: champion
disappointers breed champion stoics.
The irony of course is that at the same time as the
off-field shit has hit the fan, Parramatta
has had a really good season on the field, certainly the best since I’ve been paying attention (though that
is not hard). Without the 12-point strip, Parramatta would have made it into
the finals. And the numerous departures of players, whether in nominious or ignominious
fashion, have allowed an influx of some remarkable talents. One of these has
been so tear-inducingly prodigious and joyful that I both can’t bear to mention
his name – such is the fear of the distant rumble – and can’t bear not to. The
nays have it, I won’t. I couldn’t bear the responsibility.
Maxwell
Henry Norman Walker
I met Max Walker once. It was at the inaugural “Festival of
Cricket” at Bradman Oval. I boarded the train to Bowral, a self-styled
lady reporter complete with pen, notebook and camera. I had booked myself in for a
whole day of panel sessions with various people on the cricket sidelines -
selectors, writers, groundskeepers, artists - and was seated alone at a table
in the marquee with my notebook out when Mr Walker came and sat next to me.
“Taking notes?” he said, and chatted about the “mind-map” note-taking technique
he’d picked up studying architecture. He was friendly and avuncular and it was nice. I believe Dean Jones’ when he said that Max Walker could talk to literally anyone. I’m not just anyone of
course (of course!), but certainly anyone enough. In the days between autographs and selfies
you (I) took photos of famous people. Do people look more like their
caricatures as they get older? I mean that nicely: smiley, horsey,
smiley again. I might read one of his books.
