Manly and Collingwood

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Richard Tsukamasa Green

The two finals for the oval ball codes do not just share a weekend this year. Two of the finalists – Collingwood in the AFL and Manly in the NRL – have the undisputed status of being “the team everyone likes to hate” in their respective leagues. Yet they are far from similar clubs and the root of this hate is a striking contrast.

The source of hatred for Manly is easy to understand. Manly are “silvertails”, a moniker popularised by Roy Masters whilst coaching Western Suburbs in the late 1970s. Wests were then based in Lidcombe and Masters developed a mythology of class resentment for his under resourced team of “fibros”. It managed to inspire a brutal theatre for audiences, but ultimately failed on two counts – they didn’t win a premiership and rather than inspiring a siege mentality against all of Wests’ opponents, it instead inspired a league wide hatred of the prosperous, well resourced, player stealing team ensconced on the insular peninsular. The ultimate beneficiary was Newcastle in 1997. This folklore still inspires documentaries today.

Collingwood - Stereotyped

The hatred of Collingwood is less easily encapsulated. Occasionally someone will suggest it is due to resentment of the team’s early 20th century success, which seems unlikely. Was dislike transmitted by geriatric fans that could actually remember Collingwood success? And why did the same resentment fall on teams like St George or South Sydney whom had similar periods of dominance in league? Over the years I’ve asked people, and searched internet forums and when one got past vague generalisations that could apply to any team, certain imagery made a habit of reappearing . Of “rats”, of “tatts”, of “flanno” and “missing teeth” [fn1] and of “Winnie Reds up sleeves”. Or I could just browse the facebook page devoted to asking “Why are Collingwood supporters roaming the streets? Shouldn’t they be in jail?”, or this one, or this one…. Hmm….

When the Western Suburbs Magpies consciously adopted proletarian semiotics, their Emmanuel Goldstein drew everyone else’s hate. When these semiotics are applied to the Collingwood Magpies, they became Goldstein.

Why this difference? It’s unlikely to be a root difference in the culture of the cities that form the core of each competition given Sydney and Melbourne are as alike as any two large cities in the world (the narcissism of small differences notwithstanding). Topography does make class differences more apparent in Sydney, but how would this explain this observed difference? Continue reading →

The truly national footie code?

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Ken Parish

I grew up playing rugby union and rugby league in northern beaches Sydney. But you couldn’t call rugby (union) Australia’s national game, especially after tonight’s depressing tryless loss by the Wallabies to Ireland. A top class rugby game exhibits all the skills, as we saw in the last Bledisloe Cup fixture where Australia actually beat the ABs. But the current rules of rugby mean that the majority of games are boring, grinding affairs fascinating only to boofhead afficionadoes (any suggestion that I’m thinking of Chris Sheil is emphatically if unconvincingly denied). Moreover, in Australia at least, rugby is an elitist game for private school self-appointed toffs, whose administrators made little or no effort to broaden the game’s appeal in the wake of previous lucrative World Cup successes.

Soccer doesn’t cut the mustard either, despite having far more players at junior level than any other code. At senior level it still doesn’t seem to have severed the noxious ethnic allegiances that have always blighted the code. And a sport that thinks it’s a great idea to pin its fortunes to the signing of a geriatric self-obsessed superstar like Harry Kewell has truly lost its way, even leaving aside the sleaze and dodginess of the Frank Lowy-inspired dual World Cup bid dissected in last week’s Four Corners program. Moreover, at international level most soccer games exhibit all the excitement, tension and blood and guts of a chess game (no offence Nicholas). The most exciting thing about most soccer games is judging which player pulled off the most convincing if spurious Dying Swan Act in or near the penalty box.

For Australians at least, the award for most truly national footie code comes down to a contest between rugby league and Australian Rules, and this weekend’s sudden death finals highlight just how close that contest really is. In rugby league, last night’s match where the NZ Warriors overhauled Benji Marshall’s Wests Tigers with a fluky try with only a couple of minutes to go, and then tonight’s game where retiring superstar Darren Lockyer won the game for Brisbane against last year’s premiers St George Illawarra with a wobbly field goal in extra time, both showed NRL at its best.

On the other hand, in AFL Sydney Swans left their run too late against Hawthorn last night and then, when it seemed a crippled Adam Goodes might nevertheless conjure a miracle, an equally crippled Buddy Franklin saved the Hawks’ feathers at least for another week. In a sense, tonight’s sudden death final was almost a carbon copy, with the Weagles looking like relatively comfortable winners for most of the night until a late surge from Carlton got them within three points at the death.

You can make a plausible case that the makeup of the final four makes NRL more truly national (deeming New Zealand to be part of greater Oz – which may be the least depressing way to look at the rugby World Cup after tonight’s game). The Weagles is the only non-Melbourne club left in the Aussie Rules finals race. By contrast, Brisbane, NZ Warriors and Melbourne Storm are all still in the NRL contest with Manly Sea Eagles the sole contender holding up Sydney’s honour as the home of rugby league. Will the rest of Sydney swing in behind the team once known as the “Silvertails” until they spent all their cash reserves loyally fighting to save rugby league from the Murdoch Anti-Christ? Don’t count on it.

Despite growing up with the rugby codes, I can’t help concluding after an intensive weekend of footie watching that Aussie Rules is a better game to watch than rugby league, with a wider range of skills regularly on display. Even so, I’ll be watching the remaining finals in both codes with equal fascination, and hoping against hope that the Wallabies stop reading their own publicity and start playing consistently to their potential. Go Manly! Go Geelong! Go Wallabies!

Of billionaires and sporting superstars

Posted on March 13, 2011 by Ken Parish

I was contemplating writing a post about an ignorant, self-interested op-ed by billionaire mining heiress Gina Reinhardt until I asked myself the question: what’s the point? It’s a question whose answer increasingly constrains my blogging output after almost 9 years at the game.

However, one of Reinhardt’s particularly stupid “cookie-cutter” RWDB observations was this:

Our crime record is unacceptable: we should all be able to live safely in our homes and suburbs …

In fact, with the noteworthy exception of non-sexual assaults, crime rates in Australia have mostly fallen significantly over the last decade or so. Moreover, as far as one can tell (international crime rates for most categories aren’t comparable because they’re compiled on radically different bases in different countries) Australia’s crime rates are not high by world standards; about the same as Canada, Japan and the European Union but significantly lower than the US.

I was going to muse about the reasons for the anomalously increasing assault rate. Experts think it’s partly an artefact of changing collation methods (domestic violence is now classed as an assault whereas police didn’t previously classify those offences as assaults!), and partly a result of increasing binge alcohol and party drug consumption by young pub and club-goers.

However, I can’t help wondering whether another reason might be an increasing trend for police to simply charge people with assault without any exercise of commonsense discretion, where previously no such charges would have been laid. What aroused my suspicion was the apparent facts surrounding rugby league superstar Benji Marshall’s alleged early morning assault of a loud-mouthed yob:

Continue reading →

Why is the individual talent premium so much higher in the AFL than the NRL?

Posted on September 26, 2010 by Richard Tsukamasa Green

After a year of reading about relative salaries in different sports, salary cap breaches, player unrest and defections in the NSW press, I only just learned that the salary cap in the AFL is $7950000 compared to the NRL’s $4100000. This set a little bell off in my head. This might explain the huge AFL salaries which the NRL players were coveting, but I thought AFL teams were huge.

So I ran some back of the envelope calculations (if anyone can improve the data, please do so).

The AFL has a cap of $7.95M on TPP for the clubs top 40 players (excluding “veteran” players – rookie list players who are discounted I’ve excluded for simplicity). This gives a mean salary of $198750.

The NRL has a cap of $4.1M for the top 25 players. This gives a mean salary of $164000. The differential isn’t surprising considering the better administration of AFL over the past 20 years, the lack of a split in the 90s, the lack of a controlling party who buys TV rights and simple greater popularity – they all result in greater revenue.

But what has really got the NRL players going is the likes of the $1.5M being dolled out to Israel Folau. Granted this is a trophy buy by a club with looser cap restraints, but Chris Judd is still paid a reported $1.2 million a season. To the best of my knowledge (here I hope for correction) the best paid NRL player is Darren Lockyer at $660000 a season. If not him or this amount, it is very close.

To put it another way, the top NRL player is being paid 3.43 times the mean salary. The top AFL player is being paid 6.04 times the mean salary. The premium for being better than average is far greater in the AFL than in the NRL.[fn1]

This is quite strange on first impressions. An AFL player is only one amongst 18 on the field. An NRL player is one among 13, so the influence of any one player at a given time should be more. Moreover, rugby league play tends to channel through a few positions more than other, with the hooker, halves and fullback registering far more touches than any other positions, which would imply securing talent in these positions is worth enough to bid up the price of talent here instead of maximising average talent accross the team. Lastly, other codes and another league in Britain are willing to bid up the price of leadingNRL players where (apart from a couple of NFL punters) no such option exists for the AFL players.

They’re both team sports. Why does individual brilliance get deemed by clubs to be so much more important in Aussie Rules than in Rugby League? Continue reading →

Shaking and Stirring, the basket weavers strike back

Posted on December 8, 2009 by Tony Harris

Balmain is not just the city of basket weavers it is also a place to find thinking drinkers and binge thinkers. Put this in your list of favorites.

Shaken and Stirred, the brainchild of Parnell McGuinness and Leonie Phillips, is a space for the free exchange of opinions without fear, favour or rancour. It is a moveable feast of ideas, usually associated with food and drink (well, why not?).

Modelled on the great Parisian salons of the enlightenment, Shaken and Stirred events gypsy throughout metropolitan Sydney presenting unusual speakers on provocative ideas. By deliberately seating ideological opponents adjacent, the events encourage thinkers from all perspectives to challenge their own ideas and those of others.

See the Shaken and Stirred Facebook page for previous events.

League ’08 preview. Lyon the key

Posted on October 3, 2008 by Tony Harris

Getting back to the basic things that really matter.

If the Manly Seaeagles are to fulfull their promise as the favorites for this event, and defeat the reigning champions, the Melbourne Storm, the Manly pivot Jamie Lyon holds the key due to his responsibilities in both defence and attack.

Lyon, a simple country lad, came to notice in 2001 as a portly but amazingly mobile and talented centre for Parramatta where he teamed with an unknown young kiwi Vialecki to form the best centre partnership in the comp by the end of the year. With a fair share of the luck on the big day that Parramatta side would have won the premiership and everyone agreed that the team of young stars only had to turn up in 2002 to go all the way. History records that they missed their best chance because representative duties, injuries and suspensions caught up in the following years. Lyon played for Australia and achieved the status of best centre in the game, but dropped out of the game and went back to Woop Woop for unexplained reasons , then he returned via a spell in England to the unlikely seaside location.

Getting back to his defence and attack.
Continue reading →

Sonny Bill and the fiendish frogs

Posted on July 31, 2008 by Ken Parish

What a lot of nonsense has been talked about the defection to French rugby of rugby league star Bobby Sue Billy Jo Sonny Bill Williams!

First, the NRL isn’t going to succeed in getting an injunction to restrain Sonny Bill’s defection, still less get a French court to enforce it. Injunctions generally aren’t granted to enforce contracts of personal service (employment contracts) nor where money damages would be an adequate remedy (as they certainly would be here).

Nor is Sonny Bill likely to be able to successfully challenge the NRL salary cap system. It’s just an empty threat. ¹1. KP: What is really in prospect, despite all the hot air, is a common law damages action for breach of contract by Sonny Bill. Canterbury Bulldogs will certainly win, but Sonny Bill presumably calculates that he stands to make much more in France even after subtracting the damages and costs Canterbury will certainly get awarded. Once everyone gets their legal advice to that effect, the dispute will probably settle before trial. [↩] First, the Trade Practice Act isn’t available because its relevant competition/restrictive practices provisions don’t cover “contracts of service” or employment contracts (as opposed to “contracts for services” or independent contractor arrangements). Common law action seeking a declaration that the salary cap is an unreasonable restraint of trade is slightly more likely. Way back in 1971 Balmain player Dennis Tutty successfully challenged the then RL transfer fee system on that basis, while more recently Penrith player Phil Adamson successfully challenged the then internal draft system in 1991, and in other sports various courts have ruled that zoning and residential rules, and restrictions on transfers within a league and between leagues were all unreasonable restraints of trade.