Passion

The very mention of this will get the hairs standing up on the back of all rugby league fans necks. Actually, that is an oxymoron because we all know rugby players have no necks so by reason then rubgy league fans probably have no necks. Well, it gets the hair standing up on the back of their hands then. Passion. It is the reason that this blog was started. It is the reason we bother to turn on the tele on the weekends hoping to catch a bit of footy between the Antique Roadshow and Funniest Home Idiots. Its the sort of thing that drives non-footy people mad, but is the reason that the AFL can consider a night grand final and be secure in the knowledge that 100k people will still turn up and every sane man and his kids will tune in. Utter passion and football in the same breath and people north east of Canberra will tell you State of Origin. They live for it. They breathe it. Every spare section of the Courier Mail year round is full of it. Between balls in the first over of the first test in Brisbane the bloke on the radio brings it up. Will Lockyer be fit? Will they pick Matty Bowen? How lame are NSW supporters? Little do they realise how futile all this is. They just don't see that they are actually playing the ultimate villain to the few amongst them that understand passion. That understand football. You see, ask a rugby league fan what they treasure most, State of Origin or grand final victories and 9/10 will respond "State of Origin mate, its all that matters eh". The other 1/10 are NSW supporters and who knows what they think! I'll tell you what passion is. Passion is when you are born and bred to live and breathe the colours and song and names of the team that your parents and grandparents and great grandparents barracked for and loved. That every person that you knew as a child followed either your team or a rival and every morning of every day of your life growing up you spoke football and argued as to why yours was better than the others. Every new person you meet you greet with the question, "Who do you barrack for?", and you and they know if the answer is Collingwood you either love them or hate them. Passion is beating Collingwood and packing a dead magpie in a box and posting it to a Pies fan that you know. (OK that might be madness). Passion is getting wheeled out in your coffin to the sounds of your club song with the badges of your favourite players pinned to your chest. (Both these last two incidents were perpetrated by my Grandma and I now concede she may have been mad). ( But passionate.) Passion is standing 10 deep in the outer on a milk crate to see over the head of the drunk Collingwood fan throwing empty VB cans over his head and swearing at Peter Featherby. Passion is every weekend of the footy season for every Aussie Rules fan, not just AFL fan (I'll save this point of nomenclature for a later argument), who hangs on every news item to see the score of ANY game that is on at the time. It all impacts on the prospects of their team, the reports, the injuries the scores the maybes and not quites. I could go on........
I took my wife and daughter to a game of rugby league last year, just cos we could. I could not remember being in an environment with less passion and meaning and involvement from the fans since last time I watched Uzbekistan play the Eskimos in a game of scrabble. It was dead. Their idea of passion was about the equivalent of what I demonstrated when I realised you could buy Bundy instead of Fourex. Enough.
Passion is every day for an aussie rules fan. Rugby league fans are seasonal. Clubs come second. It does not compare.
Bring on the retort..........