meet the nominees: cutest rookie in league 2008

Only two awards left! Can you believe it? Time sure does fly when you’re pitting footy players against each other.

This week we’re presenting the contenders for the Fuzzy Duckling Award for the Cutest Rookie of the Year. This award honours the baby players that make our hearts explode (Please note the difference between this and the Hot Bitch Award, which makes our pants explode). The children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.

And who better to present this category than Errol’s own footy rookie Lozzy? Like Lozzy, these boys have all been thrown into the strange but wonderful land of the NRL – besides Kevin Locke who is actually yet to play a first grade game, but we care not for details.

It should be noted that the Important Research we conducted for this award led us to piccies of this year’s Rookie Camp, where apparently the NRL like to break the boys’ spirits early on with Powerpoint Slideshows:

John Kite. Oh John Kite. You warm our hearts with your sunshiney glow of adorableness. Who knew 120kg could be this lovable? Not only did he provide some of the most aww stories of the year when he brought his passport on a trip to QLD, paid his own way to Melbourne after playing the NSW Cup – WITH HIS BOOTS IN CASE THEY NEEDED HIM -, and talked about his 4 sisters dressing him up as a girl (And I thought that shit was genius when Kiki told me she did it to her brother as a kid. It’s even better when the the victim is a future giant), but he just really really loves playing footy:

“Man, I am just happy to be here,” he said. “Playing first grade. This is what it is all about.”

“Playing just one game for them would have been enough to make me proud for the rest of my life.”

We wouldn’t be surprised if he nursed baby birds in his spare time.

So we don’t want to brag, but we totally discovered The Herb. He was featured in Kiki’s first ever Hot Man News, where she lovingly referred to him as ‘fresh Canberrean Meat’.

If his strawberry blonde locks weren’t enough to get him a nom, this article would be:

MARC Herbert has no tattoos. No streaks. The kid even moved back with his parents on Monday.

“So, yeah, nothing too exciting,” he smiles. “Although I do grow my hair into a bit of a mop occasionally…but then I cut it.”

“But then I cut it”. TELL IT AGAIN MARC.

To solve this conundrum Kiki whipped up an artist’s impression of what a decent pic of this fuzzy duck nominee might look like:

Bitch is just adorable, ok?

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. But he’s your WORK EXPERIENCE BOY! It’s not faiiiiir! Look, we may be a very Serious and Important workplace but there’s just no way we could leave out the kid who thanked all his fans in the interest of equality. Take it up with our complaints department – and by ‘complaints department’ I mean ‘Intern John-John wearing a headset and asking if he can solve your problem with a back rub – your choice of aromatic oil but he recommends Ylang Ylang’.

Plus, those baby blues! AND he’s an apprentice greenkeeper (you know, when he’s not working for us). Sigh. Oh Lachie.

I don’t actually know what to say about Wade, except have you seen those eyelashes?  I also enjoy these pics of him at rookie camp – look at him listening all attentively. And all those apples! Cute cute cute. Sassy thinks every player gets a whole plate each. I shake my fist at whoever left the apple core on the table though. DAMMIT ROOKIES, USE YOUR MANNERS. TALENT IS NEVER ENOUGH…EVER.

WHO WILL THE WINNER BE? John-John is loading up the Fuzzy Duck prize toybox as we speak, and in the interest of not spoiling any surprises we’ve given Lachie a new silkworm farm to set up out the back. Should keep him busy for a while.