The All-Time Greatest Team (2005)

I know the heading implies a topic that’s been more overdone than a Craig McLachlan dog-humping joke, but this article is a bit different. Anyone struggling for ideas can come up with their opinion of the greatest line up ever for their club. I’m not doing that. What I am providing is a line-up of the greatest supporters. So let’s strap on the stupid wigs, buy some exorbitantly priced food, consume far too much amber fluid in pathetically sized plastic … things, and relax.

Starting at fullback, you need someone safe and cautious, but also explosive at the right time. This person happens to be the mother of the five children, who are all running around like a mob of inmates who just broke out of jail. She is calm and lets them play for a while, but out of nowhere she snaps! Children are bawling, scared and even more bloody annoying than you thought possible when they were walking all over the seats and obstructing your view of the game.

On the wings, speed is the quality required primarily. This would come in the form of the drunken yobbo’s up the back of the stadium, whose comments are so quick witted and brilliant, however, had they said them half an hour ago when the incident they’re referring to actually happened, then they would have been far more entertaining, possibly verging on funny. The man on the other wing is the one who says the same thing all day long, from the kick-off of the under 7’s, to the final whistle in first grade. That one thing is usually “They’ve been doin’ it all day!”

Centres require good defence and attack. These would clearly be the inconsiderate people who push in front of you in queues for food, or to go to the one toilet cubicle the stadium has available. These people have an inane ability to agitate the tiring and unaware defences of the rest of the general public with their robust runs and strong odour.

Five-eighth requires a playmaker, a ball player, a thinker. This is none other than the little scrawny drunken dork who thinks he is Arnold Swarzenegger. He stands up at the most exciting and important moment of the match, and yells something ludicrously baffling towards no one in particular, then laughs it up. Suddenly he has people hurling abuse at him and telling him rather bluntly to sit down, to which this soup brained nimrod retorts with some more incoherent drunken rambling. The ‘to and fro-ing’ continues until a team scores a try, which everyone misses because they were all distracted by the inebriated idiot.

Halfback: the general. He who controls all. He is the man mentioned in the above who tells others to sit down and shut up. He is usually the size of the whole front row in a scrum. He never stands up to express his hatred for abovementioned idiots standing in his view of the game. He knows that if he did stand up, many more people would be irritated at him blocking their view. This man is very intelligent.

Now we move onto the forwards. These players are big and seem much tougher and powerful when combined with the rest of the forward pack. This six-pack of fat, stupid derelicts, usually have the best seats in the house, arrived at the game drunk, make up extremely irritating, incoherent chants that don’t make sense, aren’t very entertaining and generally taunt the team that played last week. However, it’s this pathetic behaviour that gets the other team members pumped up and performing in their own special ways.

This team has a lot of negative attributes, however their commitment is exceptional. The larger the crowd, the bigger their performances, although they still manage to put on a great showing in the substantially smaller crowds.

It’s hard to surpass this awesome line-up. The only team that could pose a decent challenge would be the great “English Soccer fans” team, which has been performing brilliantly for many years now.

So maybe in a year or two we could issue a challenge to the Poms. All we need is some leniency at customs, a truckload of beer, a referee, a stadium, a heap of power-crazy security officers and some idiots with air-horns and flares, and we have ourselves a spectacle that could possibly be the greatest ever.

Bring it on!