First a confession. I live approximately 200 meters from E.J Whitten Oval which looked like this yesterday (that’s me under the arrow):
The Bulldogs win has me in heaven with my entire district. Second, I am actually from Sydney and, by sheer coincidence, am also a die-hard Sharkies fan.
Yes, the pinnacle of my sporting life has just been reached.
So, first to the raw emotion of the weekend: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHFGFGHFH!
Then to the point of this post. There are two obvious reasons why the Doggies and Sharks captured the imaginations of the public this weekend in a way that nobody has seen for a long time. Neither has won a premiership for so long (in the case of the Sharkies never) that most people can’t remember.
Second, and more importantly, these two clubs are organic figments in a phony world. Both hark back to a period when cultural truth was an assumption not a choice on a supermarket shelf. That has its own foibles but not in sport. In defeating Sydney and Melbourne, the two local clubs also crushed the two teams that best represent the corporations that now own and operate the NRL and AFL. Both of which receive unfair sponsorship and dispensations from the owners of the sports to ensure competitiveness to boost their television ratings footprints.
In a post-truth world of monetised identities, seekers of rent and capital over culture, the Dogs and Sharks just pole-drove ersatz elites face first into the turf.
It’s deeply reassuring to know that such a thing is still possible.
