There was a quintessentially “rugby league” moment early in Channel Nine’s State of Origin telecast on Wednesday night. Though his pay grade probably dictates at least familiarisation with basic communication technology, the former league star turned TV pundit Andrew Johns wore an expression verging on panic as he juggled the duel responsibilities of saying something enlightening to millions of viewers while also controlling a highlight video via a giant flatscreen TV rigged up to work like an iPad.
Joey wasn’t fumbling away at any old piece of tat, it was “the Bundaberg Rum touchscreen”.
But the game needs heroes and Johns wasn’t elevated to the status of “immortal” for nothing. Unlike us, well, mortals, he was somehow able to effectively combine alcohol and technology and still come out on top. He cleared his throat, probably made a mental note to read the instruction manual for his demented new toy, and disabused the nation of such wayward ideas as “scoring a try is bad” and “losing is good”. But, sadly, Johns’ thunder was stolen as the greatest of bon mot of all was soon relayed by his offsider Billy Slater, perhaps himself thinking longingly of the Bundaberg range: “Origin throws up something every year.”
And so it has proven, though unfortunately this year the most talked-about item it threw up it didn’t happen to be the game, which was something of a humourless grind, but afterwards, when the Maroons veteran Sam Thaiday stepped up to the microphone in a post-game interview and summed the dour struggle up thus: “It was a bit like losing your virginity – it wasn’t very nice but we got the job done.”
It was, I thought, at worst unfunny and at best a more accurate take on the game than we were able to get via the Bundaberg Rum touchscreen. Yet, in the space of 24 hours, it has been labelled “divisive” and, in the case of the Huffington Post’s first missive on the matter, “the most tasteless sport thing ever”, which I suppose disqualified items including but not limited to Geoffrey Edelsten’s Brownlow medal appearances, David Warner’s moustache and the fact that the most viable new franchise in the NRL would be a prison team.
And I wonder, too, where it would even rank in the top 5,000 sleazy things that have ever happened in and around professional sport, if at all. Remember we live in times when men who dress female mannequins up in lingerie on live TV still have viable, lucrative media careers and when the primary, match-day role of women in the NRL is to strip down and pull out their pom-poms.
What is also galling here is that by channelling so much fury at what is actually a quite innocuous, if oafish statement, we run the risk of creating a climate of debate around sport that admonishes everything even slightly controversial at the expense of the due scorn that comes when somebody steps egregiously out of line.
The person whose opinion on the matter I might have listened to, to be totally honest, was someone sitting front and centre in the broadcast booth. Because a little lost in all of the frothing over Thaiday’s supposed grave offence against the little boys and girls at home was the fact that, for the first time in Origin history, Nine’s telecast was helmed by a woman – Yvonne Sampson. And I’ll be damned if a few of those young girls weren’t a little inspired seeing her smash it straight out of the park.
