Nine-inch nails

Power. Control. Composure. Parramatta. You read that right. Drop an Eel in the middle of Auckland and it turns into a Cowboy. I suppose it makes sense that a club with the reputation of finding it hard to stay the distance has made the short form of the game its own, and Mr Batsy says Mr Norman perhaps takes opposing teams out for a night on the town the day before a match, but let’s not be snide. It’s a new year, a new game, everyone looks as bright as a new penny under the Auckland sunshine (?) like it’s the first day of school. New clothes, new shoes, new haircuts, everyone looks a bit “different” after the holidays - older or fresher? a different training regime? or nothing more than the new haircut? I will have to stop calling Clint Gutherson “Hipster Boy”, for example, as I now believe “a Trendy” is the more correct term. Then there’s the one who you realise isn’t just different but actually a new boy. He came to Parramatta because the burden of having to introduce himself as the I Luv CoffeeBurleigh Bears Co-Captain had become intolerable.

The future, and the Auckland sun (I’ll say it again, ?) was so bright
I had to draw the lounge room curtains against the glare so my eyes could adjust to the new order and ease in to the rhythms and flows of the winter code. I’d made the effort of course for a look in on He Who Must Not be Named, who didn’t feature much in the end, grubbering one to the Trendy for a try instead of grubbering it to himself, and leaving the big run to How Much Can a Burleigh Bear. I had a whole $4 on a Parramatta win (against the Dragons, this whole thing was against the Dragons by the way), the dregs of my 2016 investment in the NRL season, now a magnificent $6.53. I imagine my final winnings will be a play off between compound betting and shortening odds, but I’m all in.

Outrageous fortune

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.