by H. G. Nelson
Sadly, the exacting COVID protocols of late 2020 prevented a glittering presentation of this great gong for his international achievement. FLOTUS Melania was booked to do the honour of hooking the bauble around ‘Get a Go’s neck on the lawn in front of the White House, beneath a flyover of USAF Hornets trailing green and gold smoke as the twenty-one gun salute was blown off in the Rose Garden, before the ‘Rhiannon’ gang, Fleetwood Mac, swung into a selection of Aussie classics, including the GWS Giants club song, ‘What’s My Team?’ by the Hoodoo Gurus, John Farnham’s ‘Sadie the Cleaning Lady’ and Cold Chisel’s ‘Ita’, featuring the Nathan Cleary TikTok dancers, finishing up with the Sharks song, ‘ Up, Up Cronulla!’ Fleetwood Mac were a good get for the ceremony as Tina Arena was booked at Tradies in Gymea.
Morning tea was to be served on the White House South Lawn after festivities. It was a traditional Aussie spread of sliders, party pies, chips, chocolate cake, lamingtons, Margaret River chardonnay and a selection of West End or XXXX beer.
A pity we never got to see Melania pour the tea.
RUGBY LEAGUE IS WAR
The game is only happy when it has a cause. It is even happier when it is something that it is not – that is, trench warfare!
THE GAME IS OFTEN referred to as war with boots on. At celebratory and commemorative occasions through the year, hacks, TV shows and the wide world of digital media cannot resist the comparison between the heroic deeds of Australians during our great wartime conflicts in far-off places and the fearless feats of players on the rugby league paddock.
Headline writers in hard-working sports departments knock up copy that includes wartime references like ‘the opening minutes will feature a salvo of bombs’ and ‘after a traditional softening-up period the battle between these two sides settled down into a war of attrition in the trenches’. This enduring media line and length suggests that in both war and league there are horrendous injuries.
The Grand Final is a high-stakes battle ground, and players know that trouble lurks with every step. But for the NRL Grand Final media build-up, it is always important to produce a dramatic despatch from the front line with a forensic focus on facial rearrangement stories.
A recent NRL pre–big watusi spray featured an extensive player profile suggesting that Josh Mansour, the Penrith Panthers winger, would waddle out into the rugby league big polka knowing it may be the last thing he ever does. That is the best promotion league can get. A fit, young Australian prepared to die on the biggest battlefield in the greatest game of all.
Josh sustained terrible facial injuries playing against the Titans in 2018. The surgeon who picked up the pieces of his skull and stitched them back into place declared that in his entire career, he had only treated a dozen patients as smashed up as Josh. The injuries to the bonce the doc’s sickly twelve received were the result of head-on car prangs and IED bomb blasts in war.
Josh’s scone demolition suggested that rugby league was now a far tougher experience than the front line of war. The Grand Final foxtrot was elevated to the status of one of Australia’s great modern campaigns in Iraq or Afghanistan. This is exactly what the rugby league cheer squad had always known. A comment from the Head of Army confirmed what the league had been saying for decades.
The doc, once he had found all the pieces, postponed Josh’s trip to surgery for two weeks to allow the swelling to go down. When the highly skilled team got to work under the bright lights in the operating theatre, they were on the job for seven hours. The scrubbed team put Josh’s head back together with three plates and eighteen screws. It was a very fine jigsawing display on the bonce in bone from the world’s best practitioners.
In the recovery stage the doc who applied the bandaids and bolts worried that any further knocks to the plucky Panther’s melon playing league could spell curtains. It was a fine line. If the worst happened, the medical staff could be calling for the screens in the first half and signalling the long goodbye at the final hooter. The medicos stressed that rugby league could cost Josh his life. Luckily, on the day there was no need for the screens.
In 2010 the rugby league playing ranks were bolstered when burly British prop Sam Burgess began a rampaging run in the Rabbitohs jumper. Sam was the senior member of a quartet of Burgess brothers who played in fur in the flag-winning season of 2014.
In the big mambo that year the bad news arrived express delivery for Sam. The Big Burgess bopper was caught out of position for the kick-off and suddenly the ball was headed straight for him.
It was the first hit-up in the brouhaha and it was all down to Sam. What was he supposed to do? What he did became rugby league folklore. It was carved into the rock of Grand Final heroics. He ran back with the Steeden tucked under the arm. Ball security was all he could think about. Opposition prop Bulldog James Graham (one half of the polar bear front row combo), who was also willing to die for the league, saw him coming and did not miss. It was a clash of hard nuts, a sickening collision of cement forehead on tough-as-teak cheek.
Sam copped a shattering whack to the noodle, instantly fracturing his eye socket and jaw. He was in a ‘fair bit of trouble’. Nothing new for Sam; he played on, punching out a best-on-ground performance.
It was a clash of hard nuts, a sickening collision of cement forehead on tough-as-teak cheek.
League lovers wondered how he did it. People began to talk. After six years of silence on the incident Sam opened up about the night of nut in the popular league podcast Head Damage Hurts hosted by Zoster ‘Big Knox’ Fox. The England international began a five-hour deep dive quietly enough:
Knoxie, it was the sort of clash that happens five times in every game. Jimmy ‘Ice Block’ Graham came up out of the Bulldogs line, I didn’t see him until after the whack. He was a crumpled in a heap at my feet. But he caught me right on the soft spot of the socket. It was A-grade nut work.
But Knoxie. I know you played the game. Many top players would have been proud of his quality handiwork. I certainly applauded it. I knew how good it was and I was on the receiving end!
During a long league career, I have been hit by elbows, knees, foreheads, wrists, adjustable spanners, rifle butts and ball pein hammers while playing, but this was something very special. I can’t remember a thing about it. And remember James’s work was unforgettable! They don’t call him ‘The Tungsten Tow Bar’ for nothing.
Now Zoster, you have met that Rabbits medico Doc ‘Jangles’ Sprague. He is quick on his feet. He did not hang about. He got me into the rooms, but I was too revved to listen to anything sensible like a diagnosis. I said, ‘Jangles, I need to get out there. I need to feel the game! I have to be on the sideline! I need to talk to coach Madge Maguire. Tell me, am I OK? Can I play?’ I look back now and find that behaviour embarrassing.
Jangles is a gentle giant. He has a very calm bedside manner. He swung the stethoscope and gave me two pieces of advice. At this stage nerves were getting the better of me; I don’t mind telling you, I was shit scared. Stains were everywhere. Rabbits don’t get many chances to win a Figtree Foxtrot. This might have been my only go!
‘Sam, if you go back on and take another Tow Bar whack to your scone, you could lose your sight.’ Obviously, I ignored that advice. After all, I play rugby league.
The other advice, and this surprised me, was don’t blow your nose. This was easier to deal with: for the rest of the Redfern rhumba, if I felt a blow coming up from the lower depths, I swallowed the phlegm and moved on, unless I could use it to the Rabbits’ advantage.
Remember these were days when no one cared about concussions or damage to the brain or a lifetime of not knowing who you were or what you were eating. I ran back to the sideline. I decided to take my chances. Whenever I took the ball up and hit the Bulldogs line or had to defend, I was clobbered by their second rowers in hard defensive tackles. I could feel the bones in my face bouncing around.
My eyesight on the side of the initial smack was affected. It was weird at the start. I managed the pain with mi
nd control, focusing on the colourful history of Rabbitohs v Roosters feuds and how important a cooked chicken sponsorship is to any player signing with a new club. Ideas like that can keep the pain at bay for days.
At one stage our try-scoring winger Lote T. plunged over for a try in the corner. I was Johnny-on-the-spot for the try-time celebrations. Rabbits came from everywhere. I gave T a hug. At the same time our superstar Greg Inglis jumped on my back and his skull whacked into the back of my loaf, which in turn collided with Lote’s crumpet in a chain reaction.
It was just one of those things that happen in footy after you have put the ball down for four points.
The rough and tumble of the celebration clinches hit right on the fracture on the busted side of my nut. But the force from behind wedged the jaw, the cheek bone and eye socket back together. It was a miracle!
Knoxie, my face was a four-thousand piece jigsaw puzzle of the Opera House. Lote’s try was called back and disallowed, but at least the scone up top felt a whole lot better. After the post-try pile-on, the loose bones in my lamington did not bounce around as much. They were sort of jammed into place.
But K-man, the Bulldogs obviously had a chat at half-time. In the second half scrums, the Dogs’ front row had a red-hot go at adding to the damage upstairs. I stayed calm. I could see what they were up to. The Rabbits stuck together, pushed the score out to 30 to 6 and snared both the chocolates and cheese.
Sam finished the match, winning the 2014 Clive Churchill Medal for best on the park, and the South Sydney Rabbitohs grabbed their first flag in forty-three years.
The Rabbitoh head clash brought back memories of other great big square dance efforts, including Souths great John Sattler and Knights champion Andrew Johns overcoming a broken jaw and punctured lungs respectively to triumph in the final. In playing on and triumphing over adversity, these greats encouraged hundreds of young Australians to think about sticking their head into a scrum and playing rugby league.
The code today is far more worried about health and safety issues, especially the effects of concussion in later life once a player has said the long goodbye and retired. In Johnny Sattler’s day the understanding of concussion was primitive. The main tool in the medico’s concussion sideline black bag were three challenging questions:
In playing on and triumphing over adversity, these greats encouraged hundreds of young Australians to think about sticking their head into a scrum and playing rugby league.
What’s your name?
What are you doing?
Who is Australia’s Prime Minister?
If a player got two out of three right, they were passed fit and rushed back into the match to have another go.
Today there are evolving Head Injury Assessment (HIA) protocols, which probe the nuts and bolts of those tricky circuits in the brain box. Concussed players come off and wait twenty minutes. They are assessed by a fully qualified professional in club colours using the latest sophisticated HIA tools. Doctors assess the players’ ability to know what is going on before allowing a return to the paddock for the next fortnight.
Given the game has been slack, since that bell was rung in 1908, about the damage to players with head-high contact, big legal issues and great payouts are lurking for players whose lives have been ruined by being allowed to play on when caution and rest would have been a far better course of action.
There have been many gruesome injuries in the history of rugby league and there have been deaths while playing the game. But 2019 university surveys across all states revealed that among right-thinking Australians, if they were stuck in the trenches during a ferocious battle overseas, nine out of ten would want a ticketed rugby league front-rower or hooker alongside them. When probed further in focus groups, the survey’s respondents all said they wanted rugby league players there for their emotional, physical and spiritual safety.
With the Australia–China relationship on the rocks once again and all the talk about war between the two great nations, a platoon of registered rugby league players ready to do on the battlefield what they do on the weekends could be just the ticket Australia needs to swing the odds in our favour. The players certainly would not let us down.
Rugby league promotion: The sound of success!
Since 1908, promotion of the game has been crucial to its success. The game has fended off attacks from the AFL, the world game and its archenemy, rugby union, since its birth.
The perpetual flame of league controversy consumes a lot of fuel. Hullabaloo, scandal and gossip have been the fuel on the fire. It is a fire that requires continuous stoking. It is so easy, in the off-season, when racing, cricket and tennis capture the sporting headlines and monopolise media space, to forget that rugby league, the greatest game of all, is played from the middle of March to the first weekend in October.
The perpetual flame of league controversy consumes a lot of fuel.
Supporters during the long hot summer are desperate for any snippet of league news or any chitchat about the players’ harmless holiday high jinks. Hopefully the high-jinks news can be accompanied by nude happy snaps taken with a very long lens from behind a sandhill two beaches away. The bulk of off-season sensational coverage, social media pile-ons and tabloid front pages are created by the players. Registered players have traditionally come to the aid of the game at this tricky holiday time before the pre-season kicks off and the mind of the nation focuses once again on the looming league season. They are prepared to get their hands dirty and do the heavy promotional lifting. They get no thanks for keeping the caper in the summer media spotlight. Their invention of space-filling copy is only limited by the players having imaginations.
In the modern media landscape, there are many ways to attract attention, whether it’s trolling, TikTok posts, inappropriate Twitter comments, online spats, WAGs getting involved, an exchange of rancid emails, or contemporary Fans Only sites where football stars are snapped at home nude in front of the mirror. Then there are tried-and-true japes, like urinating on a restaurant window in full view of diners inside or falling asleep at the wheel of a car as it rolls across an intersection at 3.30 am or snapped doing a bubbler, as in a drink from a leak. These are always good for a front page and followed by a week of unexamined public outrage.
Pun-filled headlines shout the latest offences. The fallout continues for months. There is a follow-on parade of players in suits on the courthouse steps as the off-season legal cases titillate. Appearances before beaks keep the roaring bushfires of league promotion alight.
The public is easily outraged. Mad Monday scandals often linger throughout the whole of the cricket season. Having been off the turps for the whole season, many stars are desperate to make up for lost time – with sensational results. Mercifully, full-on riots fuelled by excessive consumption of alcohol have been largely consigned to club best and fairest nights and retold in the pages of tell-all footy biographies.
Bonding over a few beers with mates rounds off the season that has just been cracked, boxed and buried. A few jars in October can clear the way for the battles looming when the new season rises over the horizon. As well as beers, Mad Monday often involves nudity and dressing as women and babies – oldies but goodies. Most of the Australian public are tolerant of these end-of-year rituals. Many sensitive patrons will do the right thing and vacate the club premises or the local league watering hole once the club secretary has announced on the in-house PA:
Ladies and gentlemen, Wally Cistern, Club Secretary here, now a large number of rugby league players, celebrating the end of the season, are now on the premises. Patrons would be wise to finish up their beers and leave without using the club’s toilets! Portable toilets are available for use in the car park. Thanks very much.
Things in league-land can go seriously silly and stupid. The rugby league crime space is groaning with legendary characters and bizarre criminal enterprise. Characters who have cooked up pranks and larks over a few too many beers. The league has its hands full worrying ab
out how to police wilder, wilful wrong-doing.
The league’s task in this area would be improved if an authority figure, like a serving state police commissioner, was added to the Rugby League Board. With the commission representative attending every meeting, the distance between rugby league crime, rugby league penalty and jail (as a last resort) would be substantially reduced. The legal process has to be transparent so the ultimate goal, that of rugby league redemption, can be achieved as quickly as possible. With the commish in place at board level the game could reduce the whole process to a few hours.
The range of league criminality that the commissioner would pass judgement on is extraordinary. For instance, not every player can bring the date-hunting skills that the great rugby league amateur proctologist John Hopoate brought to the table. Hoppa’s was a unique contribution to the G.G.A. He created a tackle that required just one finger. It was all his own work, a simple routine that generated worldwide attention for the league. How could anyone except a representative from the highest level of our law enforcement community assess and pass judgement on such a complex case?
There is an upside to league crime: kids everywhere love going to the games to see the player who was in the headlines all week. The player who was caught iPhone filming a love tryst in a public toilet cubicle or stuck outside the motel room in the nude at 3.20 am, simply because he was busting for a slash and thought the door he was opening was the door to the bathroom and not the door of his motel unit. Suddenly he found himself naked outside in the corridor with people staring. That is a very easy mistake to make. It could happen to anyone after they had put away a slab of beer and a bottle of vintage Corio rum at a lively post-match function. Remember, winning a rugby league Grand Final or Origin decider can reduce the ability of the mind to operate within society’s normal rhythms and inhibitions. What sobering challenges these cases would be for any police supremo who is more used to dealing with people speeding while talking on their mobile phones.
