Notes On A Dynasty… Viewed From Afar And After The
Fact… Where To Next For The Perpetual Losers?
Something is
rotten, south of the border. It’s not a lack of talent, of skill, of dedication.
It’s nothing to do with brute force, or lack of. It’s nothing to do with power
and precision, at least not as much as you’d think… it’s more that these
southerners, shrouded in sky blue with the hopes and dreams of Australia’s fifth
largest state weighing mightily on their shoulders, seem to have forgotten how
to win.
Come full time,
first-time Captain Robbie Farah stood in disbelief, hands on hips, eyes cast
down. Surrounded by teammates doing the same. Disbelief that they’d come close,
that they’d let it slip again, that for eight years now, their northern
neighbours had basically erected a wall around this most prestigious and lauded
patch, this game, this series, this way of life.
While Queensland
celebrated jubilantly, their dynasty intact and, in fact, seemingly never
stronger despite the aging of many of its stars, New South Wales stumbled back
to a place they now habitually frequent, that of second place, of the Perpetual
Loser. And this place, of course, isn’t real, but one of the team’s own making,
a mental place where they loathe to tread, no doubt, but a place that they just
know – there is, it seems, no other place they can go, and this is troubling to be sure.
Queensland, by
comparison, know how to win. It was most evident in Game Two this year, where a
loss would have ended the
aforementioned dynasty, but backed by their rabid home crowd, they schooled the
Blues, they basically broke down everything NSW thought they knew about
football, and re-taught it to them in a display worthy of legend. This is a
team who knows how to win, it’s as simple as that, and not just because they’ve
achieved it more often in the past eight years, but because they believe they
can, they know how to channel their passion (they know there’s a difference
between dedication and passion), and they know how to get it done, even when
their collective back is against the wall.
And so they won
again this time, Game Three making it eight series’ in a row for a team many
are calling the greatest team, of any sport, anywhere in the world. And they’re
not far wrong.
Meanwhile, where
there’s a winner, there’s a loser and that mantel has, of course, been worn,
stoically for the most part, by the Blues. And so, they don’t know how to shake
it. They get close most years, win a game, play a decider, but they just can’t
seal the deal.
And so what can
they do to remedy the situation? Something as mundane as changing a coach,
switching players to different positions, changing game tactics will not work,
it’s been proven not to work. Even recruiting the fastest, strongest, most
skillful players in the league (as, of course, they try to do every year) won’t
work – you can have the thirteen best rugby league players in the world on a
single team, but if they can’t mesh together effectively, then they may as well
be the thirteen worst.
No, what New South
Wales need, in order to help them make the mental shift from that of Perpetual
Loser to Winner, in order to make them realise that there is a place they can
go other than the metaphorical second place cave they seem to have created for
themselves, what they need to remind them how to win again, is passion. The
same passion exuded by the Queensland team, their supporters… they need to
bleed, cry, shit and piss blue. They need to be able, as a team, to unite, a
rock solid unit, through which nothing can flow because they BELIEVE so heavily
that they can WIN.
It’s what QLD have
been doing for eight years, and it works. It’s simple and it’s effective. But
you can’t fake it. And it won’t work straight away. It’s the changing of a
culture within a team, and this is something that takes time and effort, pain
and little gain until glory is unleashed and this current dynasty is felled. It
is, again, as simple as that.
Until then
however, Queensland reign supreme, a golden age in rugby league, without a
shadow of a doubt.
Samuel J. Fell
(SJF is an ardent
Queensland supporter)
No comments:
Post a Comment