Coming out in the Walsh

So, Tauranga has lost Winston Peters and the 2011 Rugby World Cup? What is it doing right to deserve that? Hamilton wants to know. Rugby has also been in the news this week with the expulsion from the game of erstwhile leading referee Steve Walsh. Apparently there is a drinking issue. Strange, I thought there was always a drinking issue with those in charge of rugby. Maybe it is just because Steve is from the Southern Hemisphere that he stands out and is being penalised. He probably doesn’t like gin either. But Walsh’s troubles are insignificant to another facing rugby this week; that’s the commencement of the NRL season. Now, as everybody knows, and none will dispute, rugby league is the superior game. Indeed followers of all sporting codes will welcome tonight’s first game of the 2009/10 NRL season. Those who are particularly starved of good sport—i.e. Super 14 followers and golfers everywhere—will be salivating at the prospect. Unless they are of course masochists and living in Hamilton and therefore self-delusional and luxuriating in lives of misery. For the rest of us, with actual lives, rugby league is 26 weeks’ of sheer panacea akin, but not exceeding, our enjoyment and relief last year at the departure in one year of both Helen Clark and George W. Bush. It is the best of times…the worst of times can now be forgotten.

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