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Fat
In the recent Federal budget a whole lot of money was allocated to combat childhood obesity among Australian kiddies.
There is also talk of bans on supposedly unhealthy foods being sold at school tuck shops. Now all this is a nice idea but the fact of the matter is Australians are getting too fit and too thin and it is beginning to show where it matters most, on the rugby field.
Last year’s Wallaby tour of France and the UK showed how desperately hard up Australia is for big fat blokes who are hard to shove around. We were out-scrummaged in every game and the results were embarrassing. We even lost to Wales… a nation known historically as “the thin men of Europe”.
What the Government should be doing is working out how we can get more big fat blokes and get them on a rugby paddock fast. Every week, when the KOBs team sheets are emailed out there is a plea from the coaches for prop forwards. If it is the same at every other club in the country and anecdotal evidence suggests that it is, then rugby in Australia is in crisis and our country needs its fatties more than ever. This is why the Government’s policies are short-sighted and wrong.
Of course there will be some so-called expert dieticians who will be up in arms about encouraging people to engage in “unhealthy” activities such as over-eating in the interests of sport. But lets just take a moment to examine who these dieticians really are. They are people with a vested interest in people changing their eating habits. So no matter what you are eating, dieticians will always say you are eating the wrong thing, otherwise they are out of a job. Thus you have to take anything they say with a grain of salt, or you would do if adding extra salt to your diet wasn’t so bad for you.
There will also be some fitness experts who will misguidedly suggest you can’t be fit and carry a few extra kegs around your waist-line (and I do mean kegs, not kilograms). But they are the same people who think paying money to a gymasium so you can lift things up and put them down again over and over is a good idea. In other words, they are idiots.
Overweight people are doing weight training everytime they get out of their car and waddle into Macca’s. So there’s a tip, don’t use the drive through. They are naturally strong as a result of having to lug around their own corpulence. And I for one say good on them for that, there are no better team players than the big boofy blokes stinking of stale beer and KFC, muscling down upfront in the engine room that is the scrum. They are heroes and should not only be encouraged, but celebrated.
Just as you don’t have an athletics carnival without the shot put needing putting, you can’t have a rugby match without scrums. So in the interests of scrums, in the interests of your rugby club, in the interests of your country; turn off your TV, turn off your computer, get off your arse and go and eat a family size pizza, make that a family size pizza with double cheese.
by Maso
Nickname/s: Hac, Concrete, Baby Faced Assassin,
Height & weight: 6ft 2in 105kg (with Boots on)
Born, date & place: Artificially created out of spare parts from the 6 million dollar man project, as such was briefly known as the 6 dollar man……was worth a fair bit back in Gular
Lives: Ultimo
Job: Banker
Marital Status: Live with Girlfriend
Rugby Position/s: Wing, Fullback, (I thought I must have been in the forwards for a while as Kongy was always standing outside me)
Rugby Background: Farrer at school, Robb College, Burdekin Canetoads, Coffs Harbour Mud-dogs, Kobbies
Seasons for Kobs: 2nd
Kobs Tours: 0
Rugby Highlights: Winning a couple of GF’s, being a back
Rugby Lowlights: Everytime I have to mark a bloody c#co@ut
Club/s you most enjoy defeating: St Alberts, Hastings and hopefully everyone this year
Rugby Goal: Play good footy, win the comp
Favourite Rugby team: The Tahs
Favourite Rugby player: Lote
Play any other sports: Frisbee, Annual SWR Boule Championships – current “2005 Doubles Champion”
Favourites
Drink: Guiness
Food: Pizza
Movie: The Matrix
Book: River God
Song: Sour Girl
Band: Cog, Kaiser Chiefs, Powderfinger, Stone Temple Pilots
actress: Natalie Portman
actor: Morgan Freeman
TV Show: Lost
Pick up line: Baby, I would do more things to you than MacGyver in a “Do-It-Yourself Shop”.
Best Saturday night ever: “Disco Inferno” at The Planto in Coffs
Scariest Moment in Life: Putting my arm through a plate glass window at school
Best advice from your Parents: Brush your teeth
Last beer before you die can be shared with one Kobbie: Would probably need some amusement, so anyone willing to do a flaming mangina, 3rd degree burns optional
Nickname/s: Dirty Macca, Macca, Maca, Maccer, Mecca (Kiwis)
Height & weight: 179cm and 75kg on a heavy day
Born, date & place: 6lbs 8oz, April Fools Day 1982 at 9:35am Mother and
Baby are well
Lives: Broken Hill – The Silver City
Job: Journalist
Marital Status: single
Rugby Position/s: Full Back and wing
Rugby Background: Beecroft, King’s Bristol, and KOBS
Seasons for Kobs: 2001-2005
Kobs Tours: Blue Mountains twice
Rugby Highlights: Premierships in 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2005
Rugby Lowlights: Getting dropped from the U13 D’s to the E’s
Club/s you most enjoy defeating: Joeys, Barker Old Boys and Blue
Mountains
Favourite Rugby Goal: Grand final kick to win the 2004 final
Favourite Rugby team: University of Wollongong women’s team at 2004 Uni
games
Favourite Rugby player: Tim Schwilk
Play any other sports: Tennis, golf, AFL
Favourites
Drink: protein shakes…for my physique
Food: protein shakes
Movie: Top Gun
Book: “Every Australian Bird Illustrated”
Song: “Schnappi”
Band: Chilly Peppers
actress: Roseanne Connors
actors: Vince Vaughan and Owen Wilson
TV Show: The Biggest Loser
Pick up line: Hi I’m Steve Glossop.
Best Saturday night ever: Night after 2004 GF
Scariest Moment in Life: When Sean Casey stepped me in touch
Best advice from your Parents: Eat before you drink
Last beer before you die can be shared with one(s) Kobbie(s): Flicka and
Hammo
What are they smoking at the Western Force? I’m simply dumb-founded by the amounts of money being offered to players to move west and join the Force. And it’s not just the players; I have just got off the phone with Western Force coach John Mitchell and he offered me $2.6 million over four years to write a column for the Western Force’s rugby newsletter. Not that I am unhappy with this new Rug Rag gig, and if anyone in rugby needs a laugh, its the players and supporters of the Western Force. I won’t be taking him up even though the Force’s offer is considerably more than I was offered to write this column, I’m not in this for the money as you know. However, a figure like that does make one stop and think and I don’t blame the players who accept these deals at all.
The questions are: where are they getting the money and how do they expect to get value? Over the years Western Australia has produced some of the most pathological corporate cowboys in the history of capitalism; Bondy, Last Resort Laurie and some of the boys at Sons of Gwalia to name but a few. The process they use is not so much to develop a business with entrepreneurial skill, initiative, careful planning and old-fashioned Aussie hard yacka, but to piss so much cash up against the wall that investors think they must be loaded and raking it in and willingly fly to them like moths to a flame giving them still more money to piss up against the wall. When times are good for the mining industry, it all works fine and has done for years. But when times change or they venture outside of mining, things tend to go horribly wrong.
Now the same sorts of blokes have got hold of a professional Rugby team in Perth and are applying their usual methods. Back room deals for outrageous sums, little or no explanation of how the money will be accounted for or re-couped, bugger all respect for long standing reputable organisations and institutions… we’ve seen it all from the West before yet the brain boxes at the ARU indolently sit back and let the game of rugby be undermined by a bunch of cashed-up sand gropers riding the WA mining boom like they’re at a rodeo, and in the process letting these cowboys do to Australian Rugby what the cowboys at Brokeback Mountain do to one another.
It’s time for the ARU to step in, and for the future of the game, fully regulate who is paid what to play where, otherwise, as we saw during the Rugby League schism of the 90s, the Super 14 franchises will self-destruct in an cocaine-fueled orgy of over-priced player and newsletter columnist signings, taking down with them the sport in this country. Actually, scratch the “cocaine-fueled orgy” bit, I’ve been thinking of taking a P&O cruise soon and got a bit carried away.
by Maso