What a great achievement! Australia managed to beat New Zealand in Townsville 18-10 while being led from the front by a player born and raised in New Zealand who our officials and coaches recruited thanks to the possibility of at least $10,000 for every State Of Origin game he was selected to play in.
What a proud moments for the famous Green and Gold colours…
In what was a very high quality contest in which New Zealand looked very good, James Tamou was the elephant in the room, blatantly playing for the wrong team and being encouraged to!
Should I go into depth about the game? Should I break it down and praise Australia while talking about how unlucky New Zealand were? Does any of it really matter when you comes down to the simple fact that the best forward on the night should have been playing for the opposition and in all likely hood, if he had, New Zealand would have won the game?
Everyone that reads this site knows how proud I am to be Australian. You know how much I love watching Australia play against any opposition. Watching the game last night….its just like watching the NRL All Star Game. Yeah, its fun to watch, but how much connection should I have to my national team when our best player on the night is a Kiwi?
What’s worse if that, this time next year we will have the 2013 World Cup, which is going to be a complete and utter farce, and every single side will be a jumble of Aussies and Kiwi’s just looking to get a free trip to the UK and a few runs for a team they couldn’t give a stuff about.
I do my best to get everyone I talk to to give Rugby League a go. Once I get past the “Its not Rugby, its Rugby League” talk, which in itself is ridiculous, I normally just tell them to give it a chance and see if they like it.
Most of the time, they do like what they see. They start asking questions about the game. They try to find things within the game they can identify with, teams they can cheer for and call their own.
That all starts at the very top with your national team. It doesn’t matter where you come from in Australia, if you have never watch Rugby League, the Australian Kangaroo’s can be your team.
And then they see James Tamou. Born and raised in New Zealand. Doesn’t sign the national anthem. Very obviously one of the opposition playing for us.
They ask why….and when you start telling them how this game you tried to make them value doesn’t even value its own traditions….you lose them.
If Rugby League doesn’t care about enough about this stuff, why should someone that is trying to give the game a chance to win them over as a new fan.
Australia won. Our best player was a Kiwi. It was a great game. None of that really means anything.
Who gives a fuck…
It’s exactly what is wrong with international rugby, oz have an abundance of international stars who could fill that role. England do it out of desperation and fans do not think it’s right for Chase to play for England. What will happen when tamou is not good enough or not in form to play for nsw or oz, he is free to play for nz, think is why international league is a mess
You can’t sell something to people by trying to say “Sure its mostly uncompetitive, but its full of passion and history” and then have players switching teams for money, or simply to get a run. Its ridiculous!