Unleash The Fury (2008)

The game is full of sooks, wimps and fairies. The game needs to unleash some fury!

Once upon a time, Rugby League players played the game for fun and bugger all coin. They played with passion, they played for their suburb, they played with their hearts on their sleeves and they played for no more than two teams in their entire career. They were loyal. For all you NRL players, it’s in the dictionary, look it up!

These players had full time jobs away from the footy field, they trained for three minutes a week, they didn’t have weights or any sci-fi exercise equipment or hyperbarometric chambers, or whatever they’re called. They lived by the motto “Bones mend, injuries heal, pain goes away.”

Nowadays, the softies have to get clearance from sixteen marketing people and a further seven player managers, twelve advertising executives and of course, mum. That’s before they even run onto the field!

They put gel in their hair, they aren’t allowed to spear tackle, attack heads, fight, push in scrums, grab arms, nothing. It’s fast becoming a rough version of touch football. If anymore body contact rules are omitted the game will become AFL.

Back in the days when men played the game under man rules, one competition wasn’t enough. They’d have a pre-season or end of season competition as well as a mid-season competition, while playing sixteen interstate matches, tour games against touring nations, a country carnival, test matches, and every three or four years, a forty match tour of England which would last eight months. They’d get home just in time to do their three minutes training and run onto the field for round one in the pre-season cup.

What did they get paid? The equivalent of about forty eight cents a year, in comparison to today’s incomes. They played after serving their country at war for four years, carrying fragments of bullets and grenades inside their bodies throughout the rest of their lives.

These blokes were tough.

In comparison, the player today is wrapped in cotton wool, to ensure he doesn’t strain his neck while playing tonsil hockey with one of the seven lingerie models wallowing around in a hot tub with them. They get manicures, then sit in gyms for thirty hours a week to try and look bigger, better and stronger than their predecessors. No amount of weights and hair gel will give these wimps the heart the men of yesteryear played with.

This is the centenary year, this should be the year that Rugby League goes back to some old school rules. Referees should only be there to blow the whistle for kick off’s, to award tries, half time and full time. None of this video referee crap that caters to the sooking players who cry because someone trod on their little toe when scoring a try, which consequently impeded them from making an effective grope ... sorry ‘tackle’.

Interchange is another thing that should be removed. Between 1908 and 1950 only five players played from the bench, they replaced men who had died on the field after fighting off Japanese planes while trying to field a kick restart.

No more reserves. There’s no war near our country so there is no excuse for these ladies to require coming off the field prior to full time.

Get the five yard rule back in play as well. We’ll see just how great a player these modern ‘legends’ are when they have the forwards all over them like a dodgey vindaloo kebab all game.

No player deserves to be sent off or even sin binned. These guys are athletes, they’re big strong and athletic, if they can’t get out of the way of a swinging arm or misguided elbow, then they deserve to be hit.

How many players from the games past were male models? None. They had their noses splattered across their faces, ears chewed and ripped, teeth missing. These blokes had heads so ugly, they’d make Rebecca Wilson look cute.

That is proof enough how hard the game was, and how soft it is now.

The game needs an overhaul before it becomes a parody. The first step should be snipers around the ground. Any sign of a player acting like a sook will get shot in a limb, and forced to continue playing.

Otherwise we face the threat of becoming a game with less body contact than under 7’s netball.