The best team lost Origin I. There won’t be another miracle

The best team on the night was not NSW. Our blokes were outclassed for most of that match. Queensland were faster, stronger, better, and far and away more skilled. That win really was a miracle. But that is why you have a series to decide the winner and not just a single match. The chances of two miracle wins out of three are pretty slim, I’d reckon.

Queensland will win this series. You heard it here first.

And if that doesn’t get the Blues over the line, nothing will.

A mug’s Games

The “Enhanced Games”? Please. Who gives a flying ruck?

Sport is a test of skill and will. When it comes to a contest between juice monkeys with flecks of urine in their drugs, who the hell cares?

Particularly when their times have, by and large, failed to make a dent on those of the best clean athletes. The whole thing is just one big infomercial to sell pharmaceuticals, by using sport as bait, and that’s it.

Southern discomfort

“That bloke,” the old gag goes, “likes both kinds of music: country and western.”

And good luck to them. I, for one, still love Slim Dusty’s stuff. But while Slim’s songs were indeed country music, they were done with his broad Australian accent. The problem in the modern day is that a lot of Australian country music singers sound like they are from southern Alabama. Having grown up consuming and singing everything on the American charts, I guess that is inevitable.

The problem is when you invite one of them to sing the Australian national anthem before State of Origin I, the result is … let’s face it, a disaster. Now the singer, Robbie Mortimer is – I gather – highly accomplished and hugely successful in his field. I repeat: good luck to him! But when the starting point is an anthem that is a dreadful dirge in the first place, and it is sung in pure Alabaman, it was a dog’s breakfast. And I am not alone in this view. When I put it on X, I was overwhelmed with responses.

“Barry Crocker.”

“I thought it was joke. The NRL’s attempt at humour? Insulting.”

“A terrible song. I’m gurted. Shades of putting lipstick on a pig.”

“It was a shocker, it sounded like some Yank yokel on helium.”

“It was the NRL’s Meatloaf moment.”

“The dude singing the national anthem should have been the one sent off – not Ponga.”

You get the drift. And those were the nice responses!

Forty years on, I still love this joint

Thank you, thank you all!

It was 40 years ago today that I was first published in the Herald, and an entirely new life began.

If yers care like my editor does, I’d just got back from my first year of playing rugby in France after a season playing in Italy. In that last week of May 1986, my university friend Kathy Elrington told me she was to be published in a reader’s column called “Relations” on Thursday, May 29.

But hang on, back at Wesley College, Kathy and I had shared a dream of working at the Herald together? I even had a wonderfully encouraging letter from the great Herald journalist Evan Whitton, who I’d met at a rugby dinner at the Hilton Hotel in 1983, encouraging me to submit some columns. And she was to be published before me? It didn’t seem right.

But her revelation finally prompted me to get moving. The Italian rugby team had just arrived in Australia, so why not write an amusing and insightful piece on what it was like to play there?

I took two days off from my job labouring with my friend landscaper Angus Reid – shovelling fowl manure at the nascent Belrose Retirement Village on the Wakehurst Parkway – and over the next 30 hours, sitting at my sister’s kitchen table in Glebe, wrote and rewrote 800 words on endlessly screwed up bits of butcher’s paper.

Late on the Tuesday afternoon, I finally got the polished piece to my friend Greg Growden, the Herald‘s rugby writer who, with great kindness, typed it out and put it into the computer system of the sports department. Back at work on Wednesday, I volunteered to get the pies with ’maty sauce for the morning tea break, so I could get the paper. With feverish hand, I turned to the back pages. Nothing. Stone-cold, motherless, nothing.

Next day, the same. Not a syllable. But Kathy’s article wasn’t in either, so that was something, I guess.

By the Friday morning, my hope was waning, but I went down anyway. I turned to the back page. And there it was! TOP OF THE BACK PAGE.

Every word, just as I wrote it. “By Peter FitzSimons”. I nigh fainted with pleasure. Whatever else might happen to me in my life, I had once been published in the mighty Herald, which I had grown up reading.

That morning, I knew my mum and dad would be reading it in our farmhouse. My uncle Mac, too. Everyone I’d been to school and uni with, and all my rugby mates. Whitton himself sent me a letter of congratulations saying he really liked what I had written.

In short order I was installed in the SMH sports department. Growden was doing rugby, Mike Cockerill was on Aussie rules, Phil Wilkins on cricket and Louise Evans was doing athletics. Single-handedly, I pioneered an entirely new three-pronged round and started writing on “Me, my life and what I think about things”.

And here I am, 40 years later, never having lost that sense of pleasure and privilege to be here.

I could say, I guess, “I gave my life to the Herald.” But I didn’t. It has been quite the reverse, as I have got so much wonderful life from this paper. I love this joint with a passion, these people I work with and the integrity of the Herald‘s journalism. And yes, I counted no fewer than seven “Is” in the previous paragraph.

Cue Richard Glover at an SMH Christmas party circa 1991: “And we’ve had terrible budget cuts at the Herald this year. Things were so grim, they had to remove all letters bar the letter ‘I’ from FitzSimons’ keyboard. The worst thing is, he hasn’t noticed yet …”

It has been an honour and a privilege, and over the years, I’ve come to know hundreds, if not thousands, of Herald readers. Allow me to say, you’re a great mob – smart, opinionated, informed. Love yers, and thank you.

What they said

Kalyn Ponga on his send-off for Queensland, allowing NSW to steal a victory that appeared long gone: “It’s something that I’m not proud of, but shit happens …”

Peter V’landys on Andrew Abdo’s new travel schedule as Tennis Australia chief executive: “It’s an international competition. He gets to travel to Wimbledon, New York, where else is it, Paris? I mean, I can offer him Manly and Papua New Guinea.”

PVL on who can replace Abdo as NRL chief executive: “He’s irreplaceable. I mean, his conscientiousness, his professionalism, his loyalty, his mass intelligence … we’re going to need Superman and Jesus added together.” I thought you’d never ask, Peter!

James Magnussen returning serve to fellow Aussie swimmer Cam McEvoy who rightfully criticised his participation in the Enhanced Games:“Cam’s sitting at home talking about us. We’re not talking about Cam.” Nor are we feeling sorry for Cam. What the hell are you THINKING, James?

Enhanced CEO Max Martin: “For the last three days, Enhanced took over the internet. Enhanced is culture. And now people can also get enhanced and be the best they have ever been. We arrived in mainstream culture; we are here to stay.” Nup, you’re a minor cyclone of toxic farting somewhere on a lost sea and will soon blow out.

Tennis player Yuliia Starodubtseva after her win at the French Open: “I’ll tell you a funny thing, actually, my boyfriend is my coach, and he told me if I break through top 50, he’ll propose.”

Naomi Osaka on her French Open outfit: “Sometimes people say athletes are in show business or entertainers or whatever. For me, grand slam walk-ons are the only time that I possibly feel like I’m an entertainer.”

Essendon president Andrew Welsh on April 14: “We’re of absolute belief that Brad [Scott] will be our next premiership coach. There’s no reason for us to think otherwise.” Scott was sacked this week.

Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo after defeating the Storm following a lean patch: “As much as we say we try to block it out, it’s hard to ignore all of it. Not just the outside noise, the rumours that circulate and the bullshit that gets made up.”

Gold Coast Titans coach Josh Hannay after their narrow loss: “I feel like we’re being challenged by the footy gods.”

Geelong’s Bailey Smith after their win over the Swans: “I’m separating my identity from who I am and what I do, and distinguishing Bailey the footballer and Bailey the person … Bailey the person is different to the player.” It might just be me, Bailey x 2, but they both sound a bit up themselves speaking about themselves in the third person.

Waratahs coach Dan McKellar after they missed out on the finals again: “I think we’ve made huge progress, a lot of which the public can’t see. It’s within the four walls of the building.” I repeat: this is not working.

Spelling Bee supercoach Scott Remer: “This is really about the love of language and the love of the competition. Part of it is once you’re stung by the bee, there’s kind of no going back. I’m not going to deny that it pays well, because it does. But I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with that.”

Blayke Brailey on his NSW teammate Addin Fonua-Blake: “He’s a very good ping pong player. He’s always on the tables, and if he wins, he lets you know about it. He could have had a career in ping pong had footy not worked out.”

Team of the week

NSW women’s State of Origin team. Delivered the clean sweep, 3-0. Meantime, the NSW men’s Origin side won Origin 22-20, after being down 20-6 with 25 minutes to go.

Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. If anyone else hit 97 from 29 balls in a T20 match – including three successive sixes from the bowling of Pat Cummins – you’d be impressed. When that person has just turned 15, he’s got serious credentials to be this decade’s “next Bradman”.

Brad Scott. Fired as Essendon Bombers coach with 29 wins from 80 games and just one win from the last 24 matches. Things are crook in Tallarook.

Auckland FC. Won the A-League Men championship title with a 1-0 grand final win over Sydney FC. I know. Things seem very quiet these days. But the World Cup is about to start, and that will put you soccer haters back in ya bloody box for a bit.

Socceroos. Already in World Cup mode with a friendly tomorrow against Mexico.

GWS Giants. Took the Brisbane Lions to the cleaners, and then sent them the bill.

Neale Daniher. The famous Aussie rules player and coach passed away this week, aged 65, after a long and courageous battle with motor neurone disease.