Fitx Files 20/12/08

http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/col...e#contentSwap3





Black magic woman

In June, TFF ran a burst of that piece from News of the Screws, aka News of the World, about the English woman who supplied excruciating details on how and why she switched her sexual favours from one professional soccer player to another and back again. The following week, that same newspaper moved a little closer to home when it quoted an Auckland woman saying she had slept with David Strettle, one of the wingers of the touring English rugby union team: "He pressed all the right buttons and kissed me in all the right places," the journalist quoted her as saying. "My England man put rampant rabbits to shame, even though he'd been drinking all night. We did it all night long before he got up at eight to go for physio. He was probably still drunk then." Honestly, does that sound the way a Kiwi woman speaks? Listen, I know Kiwi women. I have been with them on Saturday nights while on rugby tours. And that is not the way they speak. In my experience, they are much more prone to say things like, "Thank you, but no", "I would love to, but unfortunately I have to go home and trim my nails," and, a personal favourite, "Not if you were the last man left on earth, and I was told it would save my life …" That, my friends, is how Kiwi women speak to visiting rugby players on Saturday nights. At least that is the way they spoke to me


Gaz a true league loyalist

And yea, verily, it was written. In the future, the poor will be rich, the weak will be strong, the meek shall inherit the earth and rugby league will scream like stuck pigs as the forces of rugby union, with chequebooks in hand, merrily pluck their best and brightest to join union's swelling ranks. Fascinating, isn't it?
Of course, the likes of Craig Gower and Mark Gasnier are only the first of league's guns who will go, and there is little league can do to stop it, apart from go into a blathering lather about the importance of, wait for it, "loyalty". (Hello? Didn't the whole game of rugby league start when enough blokes got together and decided to go after the money instead? And isn't that really the greatest rugby league tradition of all, the key plank on which the game was built? And in the centenary year, shouldn't Gasnier be hailed for so upholding it?)
For in the fight to carry away elite football talent, how can rugby league's parish pump possibly hold its own against rugby union's real tide of serious global money? I don't write that as parochial breast-beating, much, but as a mere statement of fact, mostly.
The International Rugby Board has announced that contenders to hold the next Rugby World Cup will have to offer them £120 million ($248m) before they could even begin to bid. Meanwhile, the value of rugby league's World Cup and a few dollars will get you a cup of coffee. Oh, do stop all that tedious carry-on and simply look at the numbers.
While the NRL continues to conduct an illegal cartel - a collusion of employers to enforce a salary cap and therefore pay players well below their true market value - you cannot blame those players who choose to go and get what they are really worth. A bare first step to league fighting back will be to abandon that salary cap.