By GAVIN BANNERMAN
DO YOU treat a rugby league season like a long-form story, a la Breaking Bad, or a series of distinct, self-contained episodes?
Public consensus is that this season’s ending fell flat. It was as if that great production team, NRL Central, who brought viewers two tense, fulfilling endings to the last two seasons, had taken a mis-step. Has Greenberg and his team of writers decided this was the bridging year, the season we had to have for the sake of a wider story arc?
It’s true, Melbourne Storm’s grand final win against the plucky North Queensland featured admirable execution. Every ounce of talent was squeezed out of the men in purple. It was a display, a public demonstration, of a team perfectly honed to perform on that day in early October.
There were no porch lights going off, no extra time heroics, no broken cheekbones. In an attempt to wring some emotion from this finale, you could argue that we were witnessing the last NRL outing of the Slater-Cronk-Smith combo. But such is the “all for the team” approach, the machine like efficiency of the Melbourne side, it felt more like a part of that machine has been scheduled for replacement. Time to pop down to Bunnings and swap a Cronk out for a Croft.
I think the malaise with the grand final- and I would suggest the reduced attendance during the rest of the season – is because people are looking at each season as a single story line.
“Who will win the grand final next season?” It gets asked almost as soon as the Provan-Summons Trophy is raised. There is an unhealthy attention paid to the finale, how the season ends. We forget all those little moments along the way.
This season’s Wests Tigers-Gold Coast game at Campbelltown on a wintery Friday night was a Class A bludger of a game. But there were a few bright moments: Jarryd Hayne broke through and Konrad Hurrell unleashed the beast. In the grand narrative, these moments are lost. But this game exists in the memories those 6,891 fans in attendance (and those tuned in via a screen somewhere.) This game goes from an Origin-affected bump on the season’s trajectory – who’ll make the eight, then the four, then the GF – to being its own story. A story of 34 highly trained professional athletes, some overcoming disappointment, injury or poor form, to compete and test themselves in rugby league’s toughest competition.
The memories that stick with us as fans are often these little moments. I found the Brisbane-Titans game at Suncorp more entertaining than most of the finals matches. Newcastle’s home win this season over St George Illawarra may be savoured more than the future success they are building to.
So, for the sake our enjoyment, I have a recommendation: let’s not treat rugby league as House of Cards, The Wire or Sopranos. Let’s have fun in the moment. Let’s treat each game as a magical thing of it’s own making, neatly resolved at the final whistle. Let’s make it like Law and Order.
