by H. G. Nelson
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.
Player-generated promotion of the code has saved the game billions over the years. There is no master plan. It is a spontaneous expression of how much fun and satisfaction playing rugby league generates. The playing publicists don’t get nearly enough credit for all their work.
Origin bonding camps were a source of publicity leading up to game one of any series. What could possibly go wrong? The team went to a five-star well-being retreat in the bush. The programme featured two weeks of living off the land with mates. They were given a Swiss army knife, a kilo of butter and a slab of the sponsor’s finest every day and sent on their way. When they gathered on the logs round the campfire at night, it was rugby league stories and tactics from dusk until dawn.
Sure, some players got lost, one or two fell into the campfire. They were fished out, hosed off and helicoptered to hospital. It was a tricky day when the horses were brought in for three days of riding. Whenever front-rowers who had never thrown a leg over in their lives clambered on board the Birdsville Express or the flighty Foxy Princess there was trouble. Falls occurred due to ineptitude in the saddle and horse fear. Cracked ribs ruled players out of the run-on side for game one. The injured had to sit on the sideline with a busted leg in plaster. It was annoying but was great promotion.
Finally, we come to the Freddie’s State of Origin revolution. Brad ‘Freddie’ Fittler is one of the game’s great thinkers, right up there with Canberra coach Ricky Stuart, aka ‘The Angry Ant’, aka ‘Sticky’, aka ‘Carlos Smearson’. Brad has overseen a revolution in the very soul of the game. Freddie has so many ideas running riot in the top paddock. His bare-foot earthing, shambling around the football field without boots on, has changed how Australia sees the game. Not sure what it does; maybe in some way it focuses the mind on the battle ahead. The pyramid work, the Hogs for the Homeless runs, the Metallica soundtrack in the rooms so as no one can hear what Brad has to say – all contribute to the new-look NSW culture of success. The jury is still out on whether the Fittler revolution works. His thesis is, ‘Blokes, be the best you can be!’
It shows again there is nothing rugby league players cannot do. In a time when the arts, across Australia, are struggling due to government indifference, it is great to see rugby league players keeping the flickering flame of fashion, art and the performing arts alive. Every player seems to have been working on a great range of fashion. Underpants are a speciality. Canberra prop Josh Papalii recently released his own special hand-painted briefs featuring an image of him ankle-tapping tearaway Titan half Jamal Fogarty. Talk about setting new standards in post-hooter bedroom apparel! Imagine the other half clocking Josh-branded Y-fronts gracing the groin when the trousers hit the planks and thinking, ‘This is a person I need to get close to!’
In a time when the arts, across Australia, are struggling due to government indifference, it is great to see rugby league players keeping the flickering flame of fashion, art and the performing arts alive.
So many great Australians with a connection to rugby league have moved on from league promotional activities to performance-based careers. With superstars like Russell Crowe heavily involved with South Sydney, so many great performers have emerged from the Rabbits’ playing ranks. Actors Ian Roberts and the four Burgess brothers recently thrilled jaded league lovers needing a new fashion horizon with the B4 fashion range of T-shirts, shorts and shoes.
Brother George, a keen actor, could tackle Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The man in tights with two minds about whether to become a South Sydney Rabbit or a Sydney Rooster? Drop anchor in the hutch or the fowl-house? Is it fur or feathers? Sure, it is a contemporary interpretation of the five acts about the past and future. But the play is a timeless classic with central themes that are pure rugby league – and will prepare all the players for war.
TONY ABBOTT: THE PUNCHING PRIME MINISTER
We were lucky to see him in action with the gloves on in the ring and on the spray in the Big House. Unlike others, this bloke held the hose.
TONY ABBOTT HAD SWAGGER, in the way he moved. He could swagger sitting down. He had kids everywhere shouting, ‘Hey Tony, where’s your hat?’ and ‘Tex, who’s holding the horse?’ He always waddled into a room as though he had just parked the hayburner alongside a hitching rail instead of arriving in a Comcar Holden Commodore.
Tony ‘Kid Cyclone’ Abbott was our Punching Prime Minister (2013–15). The Kid had an explosive speck of dynamite in each hand. He packed a trash-talking lip that flattened opponents at weigh-ins. His adversaries in heavyweight title flare-ups were often nervy and cactus before they clambered through the ropes and the referee touched the gloves and bellowed, ‘BOX!’
Ringside critics claimed his best unload was a solid right that came up from the feet into the fist. He reputedly put this scintillating whack through a partition in the SRC offices at Sydney University after losing a narrow vote. He claimed afterwards to the student newspaper’s senior fight correspondent, Bruce ‘Kevin’ Sheedy, in his award-winning, weekly column ‘On the Ropes’:
Yeah, no Kevin, it was a Warringah special. As you know I’ve modelled myself on Les Darcy. I trained hard for the election result. I did a lot of skipping, bag work, ran fifty kilometres a day and ate a dozen raw eggs for breakfast. But that punch, it was beautiful to watch. It was beautiful to throw. I saw that knuckle sandwich in my mind’s eye long before I let it go. Feet in the correct position. It came from the arse, up the back, down the arm, into the clenched paw of steel and straight through the lime-coloured gyprock behind the front desk. I could have smashed the whole wall to smithereens if I’d connected with a supporting stud.
Incidentally, Kevin was handy in the ring. In 1958, he won a University of Sydney Heavyweight belt with a TKO decision, after going seven rounds with Robert Hughes. This was a couple of years before ‘Bauhaus’ Bob packed his bags, went to New York and took up art criticism.
Kid Cyclone had a rowdy style, not classical but vigorous. He loved winning with a cheap shot. He would strike a sagging opponent when everyone else was looking at the ringside celebrities. Tony was feared for his work in close, in the clinches. After a barrage of short jabs and with the opponent going backwards, ‘The Kid’ stepped away and unleashed a barrage of heavy body hits. Once Tony had mastered this in/out technique he used it to great effect whether he was fighting for a regional title in the ring or in a tightly contested preselection battle in the back room of national politics. He loved operating in that tight space where he could smell the gastric reflux of an opponent’s breakfast.
Tony was feared for his work in close, in the clinches.
As a youngster, Tony scored a boxing Blue at Oxford. The details of his opponents on the way through to the big bauble are lost in the mists of time. A number of challengers were up-and-comers from the Cherwell-side campus. But he soon lifted the gaze and took on a sorry array of pillows in the large shorts from Cambridge University who were unable to go with the vim of The Kid over twelve three-minute rounds.
Tony always fought as a heavyweight. Although to look at him these days it is hard to tell if size mattered when he began his meteoric rise through the University sweet science ranks. He fought as a heavy so he could take on all comers, no matter what they weighed.
Knowledgeable ringside observers who hung out at fight central in the front bar at the Prince Patrick Hotel in North Melbourne said The Kid could have gone all the way to a major Australian title if only he stopped fiddling about with religion and politics. The thinking of the front bar was that these two distractions ended a very promising career in the squared circle.
The bout that had the Prince Patrick drinkers licking their lips in anticipation was the dream bout of Kid Cyclone Abbott v Aussie Joe Bugner.
This clash of these two heavies was the fight that never happened. A punch-starved nation was cruelly denied th
is intellect v brawn rumble of the decade. The well-credentialled Bugner had gone the distance with Mohammed Ali and was not in his prime when he returned to the ring for a fifth act. But Joe could still hold up an opponent over ten rounds hoping to get lucky with a points decision or have his wilting opponent stumble onto his formidable left hook. When he got the timing right, Joe’s left hook packed enough TNT to knock an opponent out cold, leaving him on the canvas with claret oozing from the upper lip – a sight that always thrilled ringside fight fans.
A punch-starved nation was cruelly denied this intellect v brawn rumble of the decade.
Tony was keen. But by this crucial stage of Joe’s career sanity had intervened. He moved on, tempted away from the ring by the alluring worlds of show business and hardware merchandise.
Kid Cyclone came to a similar conclusion, and with the fight years disappearing into the rear-vision mirror and the church looking elsewhere for talent he put away the gloves and went on to success taking his ringcraft style of politics to the rough house of Canberra. Where he rose to the very top of the tree.
Tony never forgot his sporting roots. While in Canberra he was always ready to pull on the shorts and make up the numbers in an intra-parliamentary rugby hit-out or plug a gap in lane seven in a politician v press swim meet.
He gave many days to his sporting charity work, especially his annual Pollie Pedal ride around rural and regional marginal seats. He was happy to throw a leg over the Trek Domane road bike for fitness, fellowship and fundraising.
On the Pedal, Tony rode the back roads on a listening tour of the nation where he bumped into his people, that elusive onion-munching community who believed ‘climate change was crap’ and ‘experts were wrong’. These were his Australians, the ones who loved his radical Aussie Dames and Knights concept.
The Pollie Pedal was an old-fashioned idea that had elements of trail-blazing across the golden west of America. Blokes on the road forming a peloton in brightly coloured lycra wearing the clunky shoes. Out in the wild blue yonder for days at a time in all weathers with rest breaks every forty minutes for a catch-up with the nation’s affairs and a chat with voters. For lunch, they would stop at a friendly pie shop for a chicken, mango and leek special, or a pork and fennel sausage roll with tomato sauce. Nothing fancy, nothing that screamed MKR’s Manu or Pete Evans.
What is not to like? With the wind in the hair and weekday worries shelved for the duration of the ride.
Tony would give Team Abbott a motivational spray round the campfire at night, once the day’s ride had been put to bed. He covered the big issues of men’s health, saddle soreness, tyre pressures and what’s for dinner, often finishing his spray with the heart-felt plea using the skills he had learnt in the pulpit. Tony returned to this theme on many occasions:
Yeah, no! Blokes, we are pushing our Treadleys around the joint for all Australians. Everyone thinks of politicians as a bunch of losers. But we can put something back with this ride, and who knows, when they dump us at the next election, we may all be out of a job and need a leg up and a leg over. Ha ha ha!
I believe the Pedalling Posse shows the nation that politicians are not just windbags who camp around the Canberra billabong, hanging out for a free feed, talking about bugger-all and doing even less. Yeah, no we are ordinary, fit Australians ready to do their fair share of heavy lifting.
After his spray, Tony would often open the Slim Dusty Song Book and get a sing-a-long going with songs like ‘A Pub with no Beer’ and ‘Duncan’, as the logs blazed away until the dawn light signalled it was time for bed.
It was incredible fun. The weather was often appalling, but after a hard day’s ride into the headwind and sleet, when the blokes gathered around the burning logs at night . . . well, the stories and the songs made it all worthwhile! And while the Pedal did raise money for charities, it appears that The Kid was one of the few on the bikes who claimed expenses.
In his political career Tony had a couple of vocal tics that served him well. He always said ‘NO!’ to begin any Q and A. He was the master of the ‘ignore, deny and pretend’ approach no matter what the topic or question. Once he got going, he loved filling space with repetition. This appeared to allow for thinking time. Although what followed showed no evidence of thought.
In an interview with a probing hack from a current affairs programme like the ABC’s 7.30, or with a top journalist in the News Limited stable, The Kid always repeated everything he said. It was a rule of threes. If something was worth saying, it was worth repeating twice more. If he found a line resonated with him, he didn’t let it go until it was literally sonic manure devoid of meaning.
He said this recently to Ingrid Fineline during an interview for a Sunday Times profile:
Politics is a pretty simple game. Ingrid, to be honest, I think I may have said ‘Climate change is crap!’ about 4.74 million times and ‘Who needs experts!’ at least 3.97 million times. It’s a winning technique. You can’t go wrong as long you say it with absolute conviction. Repetition indicates you have said something really important!
When Tony was back home in the Warringah electorate he was a very visible part of the community, holding down a prominent position in the Rural Fire Service. He loved holding a hose, and no one on the truck could burst into a blazing building like Tony. The Fire Service always came off second best.
He was a member of the Queenscliff Surf Life Saving Club where those never-forgotten Kid Cyclone skills came to the fore in a senior flags contest on the sand. He was seen paddling out on the longboard looking for an early morning and was often a starter on the front of the grid in any local marathon or triathlon event.
In fact, Tony was up to his buttocks in any event that called for the budgie smugglers to be worn. He arrived at the start line in those hard-to-fit smugglers that were two sizes too small. It was gear that pulled the ogling crowd.
Who can forget his tilt at the House of Representatives in the election of 2019? On the hustings Tony was never short of ideas to pull votes. After years representing the seat now, he knew his electorate and its needs. For his final countdown he ran on an attractive ‘More Dunnies for Manly’ ticket.
Tony had noticed in years of patrolling the beach, whether on official SLSC duties or crewing the RFS fire truck, or running marathons or triathlons, that there were very few places to take a leak, drop a load or slip into the smugglers along that fabulous stretch of Manly beaches.
With his great knack of focusing on the real issues affecting real people, he thought that by standing up for more dunnies that the electors would do the right thing and send him back to Canberra for another term in the big house.
His dunny policy was old school. Appealing to the older voter. A quote from his campaign flyers said it all:
There would be one door for Men and one door for Women. None of the same-sex latrine gibberish in God’s own country, thanks very much, Tiger!
Tony’s bold and innovative dunny platform planned a toilet every fifty metres along the Manly Corso and 400 metres between dump locations from Manly Wharf to Palm Beach. His toilet-led recovery plan, which was fully costed by Treasury, promised to create 6102 jobs in the construction phase and work for twenty-seven full-time cleaners once up and open for business. The scheme, dubbed Snowy 3.0, sadly did not capture the electorate’s imagination and the man who had given so much to Australia was suddenly flushed from the national stage.
Tony still had something to offer. He found willing employers in the post-Brexit British trade landscape where government ministers loved his ideas on trade and climate. He hooked up with old mates, the former Foreign Minister and party animal, Alexander Downer, and the former Attorney General and Sports Minister with an interest in accommodation for ballet students, George Brandis.
As the sun sets on the pandemic years, The Kid is still young and has always kept himself in great shape. It is not too late for a three-round comeback bout with one of Australia’s fighting footballers, like former All Black Sonny Bil
l Williams or the former Bronco and now Warrior Matthew ‘the Toast of New York’ Lodge, or one of the nation’s recently retired ring warriors like Anthony Mundine or Danny Green. Any one of them would give Tony a taste of what he has been missing. No need to put a title on the line. Promote the bout as a fun filled knockabout between mates for charity. There is a boxing donkey circuit that is providing meaningful bouts that would welcome Tony with open arms
As the sun sets on the pandemic years, The Kid is still young and has always kept himself in great shape. It is not too late for a three-round comeback bout.
Once Kid Cyclone squeezes between the ropes, lands that first uppercut and realises all the old skills are still there, who knows where a third act of the Abbott career could end. After all, the fight game is full of oldies and OAPs looking for a change of employment in retirement. At least it would be more satisfying than his last sporting venture, teaching seniors how to surf.
JACK BRABHAM: THE BEST OF THE LOT
Not bad for a kid from Hurstville who learnt to drive aged twelve.
JACK BRABHAM IS ONE of the greats of Australian sporting history. He was rightly dubbed the Don Bradman of speed in 1964 by a panel of government-appointed experts tasked with nominating those in the next generation who had achieved Don-like importance. The big raps did not stop there. Jack was knighted for his services to the speed shriek in 1979. On the Grand Prix circuit he snared fourteen wins, was on pole thirteen times and placed on the podium on thirty-one occasions.
