Right back at ya

Craig Hutchison
June 08, 2008 12:00am
FORMER West Coast premiership star Daniel Chick has backed Chad Cornes's decision to consider amputating his finger.

Amazingly, Chick said this week amputating his finger had been the best football choice he had made.

"It's the best thing I ever did because it kept me playing and all the pain and agony was gone," Chick said.

"If it's affecting his football, and if there are no other options, then he should look at it.

"It has meant that I was able to play on and maybe I wouldn't have been . . . I was back training in three days."

Chick said he had a little trouble picking up coins or small objects, but few other dramas.

He is still playing great football at Subiaco.

"It doesn't really affect the functioning of the hand when it's not the outside finger," Chick said.


The toughness argument is an interesting one as I truly believe that rugby league fans and players think that their game is tough and requires a brand of toughness. I suppose I can warm to this, as a brand of toughness. As we know, in life there are many brands of everything. Take toilet paper. I did an experiment in year 12 physics that looked at toilet paper. Actually I was supposed to test the theory of relativity or something else but took my time deliberating on which handy piece of lab equipment I would use and so I was left with the machine that tested the tensile strength of things. What to test the strength of? What else but good old poo tickets. So I bought a bunch of bog roll over the road from school, and rocked up into the last week of prac time with about half a dozen packets, varying in everything from number of sheets per roll, size of the sheets, how many ply, texture, of course price, and the most significant tensile strength, or toughness. From memory homebrand, while the cheapest and possibly widely used, and with claims of strength to boot,came a resounding last once placed on the tensiometre or whatever it was. Sorbent I think, without any proclamations of strength, came out the toughest. Which brings me to rugby league. Rugby league gives the impression of toughness. Blokes smashing into each other over and over again may look tough at times. But the thing is, these blokes know what is coming. It is predictable. It is repetitive. It is downright boring. There is nothing tough about smashing into someone. you just do it. Yep, if you don't do it properly you might get hurt, nocked around and lose some claret. Yep the crowds that know no better love it. Aussie rules is as unpredictable as a pregnant wife in her 3rd timester, harder to pick than a broken nose. The hits can come from anywhere at any time. You have to run with the ball against the play. Think about that for a minute. Imagine running headfirst into Jonathan Brown or Mal Michael or those blokes, while you are looking the other way. Thats tough.
Yes folks, as you can also garner from the little snippet above about Daniel Chick and his pesky redundant digit, aussie rues players are tough. Tougher in fact than rugby league players. The players know it, the fans know it, I know it and you know it. Rugby league is the homebrand dunny paper, The paper you buy in good faith only to have your fingers go straight through it when you least expect it. Looks can be deceiving. Quality is priceless. In fact if Rugby league toughness is homebrand bog roll, then the game of rugby league itself is whats left under your finger nails after you've tried using the toilet paper. Stinky, brown S@#t. Wipe your a%se on that rugby league fans.