Why are NRL clubs receiving government hand-outs?

Sorry, what?

The headline in the Tele said it all: $113m win for NRL clubs.

“Great!” I thought. New broadcasting deal? New sponsorship? Private equity deal? Ummm, no.

The “win” has come from you and me, the NSW taxpayer. The story goes on to detail how the NSW government will contribute funds for world-class rugby league training facilities to develop the stars of tomorrow at Belmore Sports Ground, the University of Wollongong and Kellyville Park, as part of an initiative to be unveiled in Tuesday’s state budget.

“The state government will spend $113m to support the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, St George Illawarra Dragons and Parramatta Eels in delivering three new centres of excellence to find and develop future male and female NRL and NRLW players . . .”

You get the drift. Different year. Same old shit.

One more time for the dummies. In a state where so many worthy causes are crying out for resources – think schools, hospitals, LISMORE – why on earth is the Perrottet government handing out huge chunks of taxpayer cash to these clubs?

Friends, this is not just madness, it is sustained madness. It comes from the same dynamic which gave us #StadiumSplurge. It is a decision with bugger-all consideration for what the people actually need. Make it stop!

Socceroos beat Peru … and shamans

Listen, I thought that the Socceroos’ effort against Peru was impressive, and so did you. Beating any team from Central or South America, anywhere, any time is impressive. But you need to know just how impressive it was. For not only were our blokes up against 11 fine Peruvians, but also some powerful spirits.

Just before the game, the BBC World Service revealed an extraordinary thing. No fewer than 13 Peruvian “shamans” – communers with the spirit world – had conducted a ceremony on a hillside in Lima which revolved around portraits of both the Peruvian and Australian teams. While the Peruvian team’s photo was bedecked in garlands of flowers, the images of our blokes got poked with swords while one shaman “blew a traditional wind instrument known as a pututo or caracola”.

It was a serious business.

“We have carried out a Peruvian victory ceremony,” one of the shamans told the BBC. “We have summoned all the shamans at a national level. There are 13 shamans because Peru plays Australia on the 13 June, and we have foreseen Peru passing to the next round. Peru will be in Qatar for the World Cup because we have seen people’s joy, after taking ayahuasca plants.”

Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic brew that shamans, or healers, in the Amazon have used for centuries for medicinal and spiritual purposes.

I know. I know.

We see your evil spirits, and we raise you one Grey Wiggle!

Peruvian shamans attempt to place a curse on the Socceroos before the big game. Credit:AP

Meantime though, a lot of you are sneering unpleasantly, feeling sooooooo superior. My question: why don’t you feel the same when priests offer prayers before games and players make the sign of the cross after scoring goals, tries and hitting winning sixes? Is it not all much of a muchness?

Game of percentages

You will recall, yes, the passing comments of Dale Lewis 20 odd years ago to the effect that “75 per cent of AFL players would have done illicit drugs” at some point in their career.

For his trouble he was – here’s your hat, what’s your hurry, don’t worry keep goin’! – run out of town, and told never to darken our towels again. The company line was he was totally wrong and, when it came to drugs, AFL players, with the odd troubling exceptions, were as pure as the driven snow.

And now? Well with the latest AFL player showing up on social media sniffing white powder – together with the scuttlebutt you hear – it is all pretty clear that Lewis was, likely, underestimating things.

Hammered from pillar to Post

Bring it in tight, sports fans, and more particularly fans of sports writing. Have a look at just how brilliant an opener is this, summing up one reporter’s view of the opening press conference of the golf tournament of the execrable Saudi mob, championed by our own disgraceful Greg Norman.

Take it away, Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post:

“Phil Mickelson looked like a fugitive from his own face as he cringed at questions inside his dirty new beard. Meanwhile, goons strong-armed the reporter who outed his gambling debts, and Greg Norman stood in the background … with a smile mirthless as Goldfinger’s. What a ‘fresh and fun’ new thing this LIV Golf tour is. You may think it’s just plutomania backed by a despotic murderer and sold by duckers and hucksters, but that’s because you haven’t thought as hard as Mickelson has about how to make the world a better place with Saudi-blood-money golf purses.”

More, Sally, more!

“You may have been tempted to shout at Mickelson and his fellow elopers to the Saudi tour: ‘Just say you want to be filthy rich! It’s so much more defensible than the tripe that you’re trotting out!’ But you misunderstand Mickelson’s motives: He’s not out there to grasp at nine-figure checks. He’s there in an ambassadorial role for the greater good of the game and his fellow man. Graeme McDowell and Dustin Johnson, too. If you have a problem with kicking bunker sand over the bloodstains left by crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, you simply don’t understand what a profoundly beneficent influence Saudi golf can have around the globe.

Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson at the first LIV tournament.Credit:Getty

“‘I don’t condone human rights violations at all,’ Mickelson said. … ‘Nobody here does, throughout the world … I’ve also seen the good that the game of golf has done throughout history’.”

And so it went. Brilliant writing, completely exposing all their bullshit blather for what it is – a half-hearted attempt to cover the fact that the Saudis have offered them so much money, they’ve taken it, and they will try to deal with how to remove the bloodstains later.

You don’t say, Peter

I am troubled. TFF ranted last week about the insanity of Isaah Yeo staying on the field in Origin I, when – to my amateur eyes – he appeared clearly concussed. Cameron Munster felt the same: “It wasn’t rocket science, you could see he wasn’t well,” Munster said. “It makes me sick [to see it] but someone’s got to put their hand up and take responsibility for it, ’cause it’s not on.”

Ultimate responsibility, of course, goes back to the chairman of the Australian Rugby League Commission, and this is what Peter V’Landys said about it this week: “I think [Isaah] should have come off. I’m not a doctor, but [the independent doctor in the bunker] immediately let the trainer know on the field, the trainer did do an assessment and he believed that he didn’t need to come off. But looking at the vision, it’s quite obvious that he should have come off in my view. But again, I am not a doctor.”

Fair enough. But can you spot the problem? It was bleeding obvious to all of you, me, Peter V’Landys, Cameron Munster and, it seems, the independent bunker doctor that Yeo needed to come off. But somehow the decision was left to the trainer? He is unlikely to have seen the footage that we all saw. The HIA is only to be given when there is any doubt whether a player is concussed.

Could anyone who saw the footage, or who, like Munster, was out there at the time, doubt it?

Correction … over-ruled

Listen, I was wrong to say I was wrong, ’cos I was actually right. After TFF penned a piece earlier this week on the Capital Moments of Australian sport – The Ball of the Century, The Try, The Goal, The Pass, etc, now joined by The Save, which saw the Socceroos get to the World Cup – a lot of readers said I should have included Steven Bradbury’s gold-medal win at the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Of course!

How could I have missed it? I duly apologised on Twitter and in the comments on my piece, but then I thought about it. Of course, I was right all along!

See, what I was after was really brilliant individual actions, rather than stunning events. And yes, I did include Cathy Freeman’s gold-medal victory in the 2000 Olympics. However, that was mostly because I couldn’t bear to leave it out, and it really did pass the primary Capitalisation test, as The Race – something Bradbury’s mighty effort couldn’t knock her off from, anyway. So there!

Andrew RedmayneCredit:John Shakespeare

What They Said

Andrew Redmayne’s wife Caitlin reveals that the face her husband pulled after “The Save” was all for their one-year-old: “That was a tribute to our little girl Poppy, that same face of his that he pulls, always lights up her face . . . that was pretty special.”

The 2020 US Open champion Bryson DeChambeau, who just a fortnight ago insisted he was sticking with the PGA Tour, on why he has decided to take Saudi blood money instead: “At the end of the day, it’s a business decision for my family’s future. And it gave me a lot more free time.” He is single, with no children.

Graeme McDowell on why he is playing in the Saudi golf thing, despite their bloodthirsty track record: “Speaking personally, I really feel that golf is a force of good in the world.” Sure you do, champ.

Charl Schwartzel on winning the first LIV Golf Tour event: “Where the money comes from is not something . . . that I’ve ever looked at playing in my 20 years career. I think if I start digging everywhere where we played, you could find fault in anything.” In the golf world, you’d be hard put to find 80 severed heads though, Schwartzel, anywhere but Saudi Arabia?

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan on the Saudi tour: “And I would ask any player that has left or any player that would consider leaving, have you ever had to apologise for being a member of the PGA Tour?” Fair point.

Socceroo winger Awer Mabil, who spent the first 10 years of his life in a refugee camp after his family fled the war in Sudan, on scoring a goal in the penalty shootout: “I knew I was going to score. It was the only way to say thank you to Australia, from me and my family. My family fled Sudan because of war, I was born in a hut. For Australia to take us in and resettle us, it gave me and my family a chance of life.”

Senator David Pocock, one-time Wallaby great, when his election as Senator for the ACT was officially confirmed: “For the first time, we have an independent voice representing our community in the federal parliament.”

Rory McIlroy on taking out the Canadian Open and winning one more time than he who shouldn’t be named: "I had extra motivation of what’s going on across the pond. The guy that’s spearheading that tour has 20 wins on the PGA Tour and I was tied with him and I wanted to get one ahead of him. And I did.”

Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge on the fate of Bailey Smith, their young superstar who is also tabloid fodder for everything from women to white powder: “He essentially almost needs a minder wherever he goes now [because of the attention he gets in public].”

Soccer commentator Andy Harper: “A queue of people waiting to take a baseball bat to the coach. And Redmayne saves the team, the campaign and now Australia is off to a fifth consecutive World Cup. People have got opinions on this and that and the other . . . but the fact of the matter is the team under Arnold prevailed; he guided the team to World Cup football, the biggest sporting event on the planet, and massive congratulations.”

Peru coach Ricardo Gareca made no criticism of Redmayne’s goalkeeping antics: “If what he did is legal then I have nothing to say.”

Team of the Week

Andrew Redmayne. Came on as the substitute goalie with a minute to go and pulled off the two saves in the penalty shootout that got the Socceroos the bickies, and on the plane to Qatar later in the year. From more anonymous than a wrong number to national hero, in a heartbeat!

Graham Arnold. Against all odds, the beleaguered coach’s Socceroos beat Peru and make it to the World Cup for the fifth time in a row!

Blues/Crusaders. Are contesting the Super Rugby final this weekend.

Canterbury Bulldogs. Pulled off the upset of the NRL season by slaying the Parramatta Eels 32-4 last Monday, in part courtesy of a splendid hat-trick of tries by winger Josh Addo-Carr.

Nick Kyrgios. Beat world No.6 Stefanos Tsitsipas in a warm-up event to Wimbledon – alas with the usual spat with the umpire.

NRLW. Four new teams to be added to the women’s rugby league comp for next season.

Twitter: @Peter_Fitz

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