
Issue No 3		05 March 1999

Sport

Mungoes Death Throes Won’t Be Pretty

By Peter Lewis

Rugby League is fast disappearing up its own orifice and the last rites will become increasingly unsavoury.

The image of overpaid wideboys smearing excrement on country hotel rooms is an almost poetic metaphor for the carnage reaped on this once-great game over the past five years.

Abused as a pawn in the pay-TV war, League has lost its working class charm with its unrealised pretensions at world domination, something that had never been necessary as the Bears battled the Bluebags for the wooden spoon through the 70s.

It has lost its innocence with the millions of dollars lavished on the young men who had once represented their district, but now represented only themselves; young men paid so much that they didn't need a job, yet left to themselves with too much time and money.

The only surprise is that the hedonism, arrogance and downright debauchery that this has fuelled should surprise anyone.

As the players begin to resemble extras on the set of Caligula, the game's administrators fight with the same self-interest to maintain their own feifdoms.

As season 1999 commences it is the Sydney-based clubs who are surviving and the expansion teams in WA and SA who have bitten the dust, perhaps the final proof that News Ltd's expansionist strategy has totally failed.

I would argue the problem is that the News Ltd investors got it wrong. This was not a product to launch on a world stage.

The game was rooted in a particular culture which has proved unsuitable for transfer outside its own small circle. What sustained Sydney's working class blue-collar support base was a no nonsense, grinding game which largely reflected their working lives.

In attempting this switch onto a broader stage it lost many of these baseline supporters, who could not embrace the glamour and the big money being lavished on anyone with a stake in the game.

Until we are stuck with today's sorry sight of a game which has become too garish for its traditional supporters and too drab for the rest of the world; a game which is contracting yet still throwing money around as if its conquering the world.

And in the years since the civil war began other sports have moved into the market: Aussie Rules and soccer, in particular, have gained a foothold by doing the simple things well.

No amount of Tom Kenneally poetry or similar gimmicks can reverse this slide. The damage has been done and it is irrevocable.

And even if they can fill the Olympic Stadium for one big game, those sky-blue empty seats will provide the backdrop for most of the club games this year (except in Brisbane where they've made the seats different colours to give the impression of a full crowd).

So you have overpaid, over-hyped players performing to empty houses, torn between the rock star lifestyle and the grim reality of their dying game.

And is it any surprise that in the emptiness of this existence, they turn to drugs and worse?

The ultimate irony is that the unsavoury rural incidents are the only things the dying game is providing to the News Ltd papers, the key agents of the game's demise.

The papers are the only one's who don't lose. The heroes they have created become villains and the headlines become even more salacious.

And desperate ploys like this week's open letter on the back page of the Telegraph from Souths President George Piggins to ignore the dirt and support the players won't wash because the faith has already been lost.

Dying empires are never pretty sights. And as the walls of Phillip Street continue to crumble, we should brace ourselves for more ugliness.

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Issue 3 contents

Interview: How Organising Works
The ACTU’s Sarah Kaine is part of a new breed of union organiser who help workers stand up for themselves.

Unions: Big Boys Bank on Mergers
Mergers of the big banks are back on the agenda, and the Finance Sector Union is leading the community campaign against them.

History: Commemorating Our Dear Departed Equal Pay Activists
Two women who deserve special recognition and commemoration as part of our Women's Day celebrations are Eileen Powell and Edna Ryan, both of who played a crucial role in the struggle for equal pay.

Legal: New Judge Announces Zero Tolerance Of Pay Inequity In NSW
The NSW Industrial Relations Commission is training its sights on industrial raw-deals for women, and targeting the traditional under-valuation of women's work.

Review: Keep the Australia in Australian Television.
Local content quotas for Australian television are under threat from our Kiwi cousins.

Campaign Diary: Radical Conservatives Raise Their Own Bar
This Monday writs are issued for the state election, The phoney campaign ends and the real one begins; and the issue of stability, the need for it and the lack of it, is set to dominate the next four weeks.

» Unions Win Virtual Access To The Workplace

» Shaw To Snip At Gender Pay Gaps

» Living Wage - Round One To Unions

» Workers Fight Hotel Chain's Contracts Push

» No Picnic, No Pay

» The Modern Day Tales Of Robin Hood

» Nothing Casual About Woolies Drivers

» Unionists Flex Muscles for a Gay Time