Monday Night recap: Roosters vs Sea Eagles

Edit: the lovely *cough*snide*cough* Kiki has just pointed out to me that, in fact, I watched this game on Sunday afternoon, and not on Monday night. In retrospect, I concede that this might be true, especially because it was still daytime when I watched it. What can I say?  I blame the vodka.

This is not going to be your usual recap. Mainly, this is because I didn’t see most of the game. More that I clutched my schooner, covered my eyes, and waited for eighty minutes to pass. Also, because I was drunk.

In other words, sometimes football is a bitch.

I’m a Sydney girl, and if I know one thing it’s that when my city is in a foul mood, she can make your life miserable. But when she turns on the charm, you go running straight back into loving her, because, really, who can resist that face?

And like my Sydney mistress, when footy is feeling vindictive, all you can do is stay put, remember the good times, drink another beer, and wait for the fight to blow over.

Sigh.

My Roosters beaten by Des Hasler’s Manly: 42-0.

Truthfully, the score is no surprise. From the first three sets and the moment I get to the pub, the boys look … scared. Little and scared. This is a completely different team to the team who won so convincingly against Parramatta before Origin 1. To quote that wordsmith Phil Gould:

They wet their pants.

I run to the bar for a drink. Anthony Minichiello is finally back on the field playing this week after an eternity recovering from injury. We’ve missed you baby! (If you’re wondering more specifically why he was out of the game and hasn’t played in any of my other recaps, it’s because his back is made of glass).

Mini is tackled by two Sea Eagles and ten old-timers around the bar start cackling. Someone yells out ‘CALL THE CHIROPRACTOR’. That joke is both hurtful and medically inaccurate.

I cover my eyes.

Manly spread the ball everywhere and the Roosters look constantly shocked. Their line of defence starts throwing up as many rips as Kiki’s opaques (tip your waitress!) and I start looking for distractions.

Ooh, hello David Williams’ beard. I have a serious weakness for a man in a Ned Kelly beard. I wrote in a magazine review back in February that beards were back, but the mans of Sydney have seriously disappointed me so far re: jumping on the beard bandwagon. My eyes, my heart, and my pants all request that you pick up your game, thanks.

Halftime. Apparently a man proposes to his girlfriend and she accepts. I die a little inside at how tacky that is. I die a little more when the teams run back on, and in a mere twenty minutes, the score explodes from 14-0 (vaguely respectable) to 42-0 (bloodbath).

At least I’m happy for Steve Menzies that his team is trashing mine so horrifically. Look at that face! So endearing, so upstanding. I feel like a head like Steve Menzies’ simply doesn’t belong in 2008. He shouldn’t live in an era of ipods and league sex scandals. He should be playing football in the original baggy cotton jerseys, marrying a woman called Jean, and controlling his tears in a stoic and manly fashion when he boards the boat to be sent to Palestine for training in 1940.

Instead he plays professional league and runs a mortgage brokerage. You know you’d totally trust him with your mortgage, too.

I feel exactly the same way, Anthony Cherrington.

Twenty more minutes and, at long last, the pathos ends. Curtain.

If anyone’s interested, I then go on to down a vodka or thirty and make quite the drunken spectacle of myself. It’s a real trainwreck. Des Hasler, I hold you completely responsible.