Hug your friends. Let them cry on your shoulder. Tell them everything’s going to be OK.
Do it in public. Do it with confidence. Do it knowing it might inspire someone else in need of an ally.
Open yourself to holding your mate, like Billy Slater. Open yourself to being held, like Cameron Munster.
There was a lot to take away from this year’s State of Origin: Tom Dearden’s unfussy excellence, Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow’s adaptability, Nathan Cleary’s Kangaroos jersey. But it took until after the final siren of the third of the three full-blooded contests for the series-defining moment to occur.
After composing himself to deliver his immediate postmatch thoughts to Channel Nine, Munster, Queensland’s captain, turned and collapsed into the arms of Slater, Queensland’s coach. The younger man sobbed uncontrollably. Great shudders of his weary body, unburdening himself of grief. The older man held his friend close, tears streaming down his own face. The loss of both men’s fathers, six weeks of intense Origin stress, and the heightened pressure of recent days needed discharging.
The television camera that had been used to elicit Munster’s comments captured the embrace. Broadcasting to millions around the world it revealed the two men circled by photographers, who in turn were ringed by 80,000 spectators. Yet this unarguably public display of affection remained a private act.
In a world of scripted reality authenticity is powerful. Cameras were present, but this was not staged to be clipped for socials. It was raw human heartache, the kind that cannot be fabricated by a Rockhampton larrikin and an Innisfail roustabout.
The idiom goes that sport is the most important of the unimportant things in life. It highlights both the significance of sport in people’s lives, but also how that significance has a ceiling. It mattered that Munster had extended his captaincy record to two wins from two matches. And it mattered that Slater was vindicated in his controversial decision to drop Daly Cherry-Evans after a series-opening loss. It mattered more in the grand scheme of things that two friends could comfort one another in their shared sorrow.
Munster is still in the primal stage of grieving the death of his father. Within minutes of receiving the news on Sunday, Slater urged his captain to leave the team’s training camp and be with his family. He was on a flight north in a matter of minutes. Most of us, at some point in our lives have endured, or will endure, similar pain. May we all have friends like Slater nearby when it happens.
The pair were also the key protagonists before and during Origin 2. Queensland had lost three matches in a row. Playing stocks looked weak. Slater’s coaching was in the spotlight. It was close to the most serious low in an almost unfailingly glittering career, and the first professional test without his father, Ron, to call on for support. Ronnie Slater, a north Queensland rugby league icon in his own right, died in January.
Slater needed to pull a rabbit out of a hat. We know now that his decision to replace Cherry-Evans with Dearden and appoint Munster as captain was a masterstroke, but at the time these were decisions not applauded universally. He needed someone to have his back.
That man was Munster. He was steadfast in his defence of his coach, and demonstrated as much with a player of the match performance in Perth. Afterwards he said: “I don’t ever tell him, but I’m probably telling him now. I love him.”
Sport is often a proxy for authentic human connection. Especially for men; bloody big bloody tough bloody blokes. It allows us to pat each other’s bums in public then sing secret songs in private. It means performative masculinity and converting concussion and chronic traumatic encephalopathy into clicks. And we can do all of this without having to process our feelings or confront our fears.
Two of the hardest, most resilient figures in the toughest competition in the fiercest sport in the world have shown there’s another way. So hug your friends. Let them cry on your shoulder. Everything’s going to be OK.
