Tahu's List

Just a quick observation on tonight's SOO.  I just noticed that going up against the State of Origin tonight is Schindler's List on Channel Seven.  Anyone see what I see here?  Okay then, on one channel we have the story of Herr Schindler who made good on his conscience by rescuing a number of Jews from the Nazi murder machine, the most extreme exponent of killing based on race hate..  On the other channel we have a premier Rugby League match set against the backdrop of racism espoused by Andrew Johns, the (now ex) New South Wales assistant coach.  Apparently he'd been calling players "black cunt", "coon", "nigger" for a while now and Tahu said "Enough!" and walked out of the team in protest. Timmy didn't wait  to be rescued from the well of bigotry by someone else, he clambered out of it himself.  He wasn't doing it because Johns slurred him, he did it to back other players of various backgrounds whose skin colour afforded the ignorant and bigotted Johns the opportunity on a number of occasions to bring out his nasty racist streak. And Tahu named those who had been targetted by Johns. Basically he'd had enough of it and drew a huge fuck-off line in the sand by withdrawing himself from the NSW team for tonight's match.  Johns subsequently resigned from the coaching role and has also been sacked from club coaching roles and his media gigs with News Ltd.  Channel Nine, you there?  Something going here which you may need to address in one big fuckingg hurry or are you too caught up in the blokey atmosphere of the Footy Show coterie?
Will this change anything? Most likely the NRL will implement an education program along similar lines to that which tries to teach footballers how to deal with women as human beings and won't that be a long drawn out process, trying to teach 18 year old blockheads some values and morals which their parents thought weren't necessary.

For those who don't know what NRL or State of Origin is, here we go.  The NRL is the current body which runs the highest level of Rugby League in Australia, similar to the NFL.  State of Origin is a yearly three-match series played between the two Rugby League states, New South Wales and Queensland.  It came about because in previous years the New South Wales team consisted of the best players from the Sydney rugby league competition (the big money league) regardless of from where they originall hailed.  It used to burn the Queenslanders something fierce that their players would be a part of the inevitable whitewash of Queensland.  So the Queenslanders got their wish and now select players who first played rugby league in Queensland.  The spirit of the Queenslanders embodies a typical Australian attitude of "we been done wrong", an attitude which never diminisihes, becuase if it did, so would the driving force of Queensland State of Origin Rugby League and most likely the series would fade away.

So tonight its gonna be a traditional footy night.  Meat pies, beer and whatever other booze I have lying around.  Unfortunatley Roy and HG don't do the commentary anymore since they switched to thebig bucks of commerical radio so I have to put up with people who take their sommentary seriously, and that's a big shame.

Popping Back In

Well, its been a while since I wrote here, over a month.  I've been sorting out the mum stuff and its been hard.  We're all in it and I'm glad of the family. Its a strong and close group of siblings and it makes a difference.  I also seem to have run out of blogsteam.  Aside from jumping in at JB's blog and his BT blogs I've basically become a lurker.  Ain't that fucking creepy?   Now that I'm actually bashing these keys here I'll be popping in and leaving a pile of doos at some other places.

While I'm here I'd like to have a small rant about the whole World Cup brouhaha.  Hi everyone, I'm Therbs and I played soccer as a young 'un. I also gave Rugby League and, surprise surprise, Aussie Rules a go.  My fave to play was League.  It incorporated most of the skills and more anticipation than soccer and had the added bonus of affording me the opportunity of going in hard.  Aussie Rules seemed softer, they really hated full on tackling.  Soccer was soccer, basically a kicking and running game with a ball which would generally travel in a predictable way.  That's my opinion and you won't change it, but feel free to flame.

The World Cup is basically politics writ large.  It was expanded to 32 teams as a tip of the cap to "3rd World" soccer nations (e.g. Asia, the U.S., Africa and Oz) and a realisation that politicking for the right to host the World Cup was reaching an Olympic standard.  More countries who feel involved, the better chance of being able to manipulate the votes.  Politics is what counts in world soccer with the money a recognised constant.

So back to the games.  I watched the U.S. - England and Oz-Germany matches and will probably watch the Kiwis tonight unless I really want to see what Gibbs is up to in NCIS. After that I'll be sticking to watching the Oz matches, maybe the semi-finals and final and occasionally a match starting at 9.00 p.m.  But I'm not really into it this time around, didn't go into a tipping comp nor did I buy the SBS guide.  Its partly due to an aging cynical outlook but also a realisation that the best quality soccer matches are generally found in the EUFA competitions.  National teams rarely provide the concentration of talent seen in Man Utd, Milan, Barcelona, Chelsea etc.  So basically I'll be keeping an eye on Straya and cherry picking a few other games.  Hell, I may not even bother with the final if Brazil don't make it.  When's the cricket start again?