Skip to main content

300*

This is the three hundredth post to the blog known as ‘This will hurt me...’, and what a post it will be!

Actually, it is a quick link to promote The Swinging Arm, Australia's leading antidisestablishmentarianist rugby league periodical, which also happens to be the official journal of the Rugby League Institute of Technology.

Now, I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of ‘the game played in hell’™. However, I am a big fan of anything associated with the fine work of the boy from Broken Hill, the sin-city residing former Reverend turned roving rugby reporter Barry "Scoop" Freelove. Anyone with any doubt as to Barry’s passion and eloquence on the beautiful game need look no further than his communiqué this week, titled Rugby League's Greatest Shame.

Comments

Anonymous said…
"The game played in Hell?" Are you casting nasturtiums on Rugby League-obsessed Barrow? May the ghost of haunt you till your dying day!
Anonymous said…
Meh! That should have said

May the ghost of haunt you till your dying day!
Anonymous said…
Oh, I give up! I think the ghost of Willie Horne is haunting me!
Kris McCracken said…
Willie Horne? Chook Raper? What is it with these rugby legends and their fnarr fnarr names?

The Swinging Arm will have to do a feature.
Barry Freelove said…
Thanks for your generous words Kris.

I reckon rugby league's unique status is not just due to its unmatched skill, tactical subtlety and its sensitive, well-adjusted practitioners. There's also been some great names. Well worth a feature.
Kris McCracken said…
Do you have a favourite name of a player Snooker? I find it hard to go past "Chook Raper", but my knowledge of the game's rich history is no match for your learned mind.

Popular posts from this blog

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.