I need an off season from my pre-season…
Is it just me or has this preseason been more hectic than usual? On the field we’ve had more action than ever before with the return of the All Stars game, the Auckland Nines and the expanded World Club Series, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed.
And off-field it’s been just as hectic with the rumours of Inglis heading to rugby, Hayne actually heading to NFL and a bunch of Titans heading to the Magistrate’s Court.
Through all this it hasn’t been easy to prepare for the NRLCEO season, but I’ve tried.
The biggest challenge surrounding my comp’s Draft Day was not who to pick, but when to hold it. Work, kids and any number of other distractions never seemed to be a problem when we started this league back at uni.
Even when we narrowed down the dates to either the Friday or Tuesday before Round 1, Aaron ‘Azz’ Thomas finally chimed in with his preference saying he could do Monday.
Wait.. what? That wasn’t an option.
Playing in a keeper league meant finalising my 10 keepers from last season and finally facing the fact that it was time to let go of Jarryd Hayne. Hayne has been on my list of keepers since he first burst onto the scene. Last year I toyed with the notion of leaving one spot vacant in the hopes his NFL dreams would be crushed and he’d return to rugby league sooner rather than later.
When it was time to submit my 10, Hayne was set to sign a futures contract with an NFL side with even media in America picking up the story. Unfortunately this press included the bugbear of all rugby league fans by describing Hayne as a ‘rugby star’ and a ‘rugby MVP’. Ugh!
At first it annoyed me. How hard is it to educate yourself on the game and how people differentiate it from rugby union?
Then it dawned on me that it’s not really the journalist’s fault. It’s the acronyms that are messing it up.
To an American, calling someone from the NRL (National Rugby League) a ‘rugby league player’ would be like referring to someone from the NFL (National Football League) as a ‘football league player’. They don’t, they just call them football players. So it would be logical to call someone like Jarryd Hayne a ‘rugby player’ sans the league bit. To them the term ‘league’ is a reference to the competition not the sport.
NHL legend Wayne Gretzky (sorry that’s the only ice hockey player I know) is a ‘hockey player’ not a ‘hockey league player’. Same goes for baseball and soccer, the term ‘league’ in the acronyms MLB and MLS have nothing to do with the sport but rather the competition.
So next time you start to get enraged when someone refers to it as rugby, relax and be happy that they’re taking an interest in the sport at all.
The rest of the world doesn’t give a shit.
Back to NRLCEO and there was one other problem that came up, Chris ‘Ivo’ Iverson was out. A participant since the beginning, Ivo cited, well I don’t know what he cited as the reason for leaving but with the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission on a tear at the moment, perhaps he felt it was time to step away from the game.
I’m only joking, Ivo is a fine upstanding citizen who has success stamped all over him. His fantasy team on the other hand, not so much. Sadly the Ivonators never scaled any great heights. Their greatest achievement was making the 2005 Grand Final.
Led by Luke Burt, who I once drunkenly proclaimed, and still maintain was pound for pound the strongest man to ever play the game, the Ivonators narrowly went down to the Rodsquad.
In more recent years the Ivonators have boasted some of the biggest names in the NRL including Johnathan Thurston, Greg Inglis, the Morris twins and Sonny Bill Williams. Unfortunately in a competition where workhorse tries matter, their forward pack has been rubbish which meant they rarely saw finals football. Vale the Ivonators.
As is tradition in our league, when one person drops out it presents an opportunity for someone new to come in and take over their squad and reinvigorate the franchise.
Taking over from Ivo is another UC Ressies Alumni, Adrian Santolin. When ‘Santo’ isn’t cheering on his beloved Bulldogs or tuning into the round ball game, he’s busy being one of Australia’s hottest young winemakers.
In fact I thought his winemaking background might inspire a name for his fantasy team, something like the ‘Grapepickers’ or the ‘Crushers’ but instead it was the 1998 movie ‘Half Baked’ that stuck a chord. Welcome to the Squirrel Master G RLFC. Santo is clearly sending a message to the league that he intends to make each of us his bitch.
When Draft Day did finally arrive, the drama continued but I’ll save that for ‘the release of the new trailder for NRLCEO Draft Day: The Movie’.
Geoff Adams
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