Red and black block: fans want the Bears back too

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This was published 4 years ago

Red and black block: fans want the Bears back too

By Peter FitzSimons

If I do say so myself, TFF received an extraordinary response to my light musing on Thursday about the virtues of bringing back the North Sydney Bears.

My broad theme was that if Todd Greenberg was formulating his dream team for the new franchise they’re going to add in 2023, could they possibly do better than one that has:

North Sydney Bears great Greg Florimo.

North Sydney Bears great Greg Florimo.Credit: Tim Clayton

  1. A great history already built in;
  2. An affluent bunch of existing supporters that are already nutters;
  3. The most beautiful oval in Australia;
  4. A rich leagues club nearby, the whole thing based in the middle of a major metropolis, next to a towering CBD filled with potential new supporters and sponsors?

The obvious thing I said was to activate John Singleton’s long-time vision and simply expand the footprint of the Bears to include the Central Coast.

And sure enough, the supporters came from everywhere! Emails, tweets, texts, calls, back-thumping. And that was just Greg Florimo. The rest of them are still out there too! The most eloquent text came from Doug Woods who wrote:

Peter,

“I have been sponsoring the Bears Hooker for 10+ years and I am so glad you have aired the NRL insanity of having no team from Milsons Point to Lake Macquarie – the wealthiest suburbs in the country.

Well done. We’re not dead yet,

Doug

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Brilliant, yes? Without the Bears, there is no NRL team representing those who live between the Bridge and Newcastle. (Discounting, of course, those on the insular peninsula who follow the Sea Eagles.)

High time industry counted the cost

Illustration: John Shakespeare

Illustration: John ShakespeareCredit:

Back in 1990, see, this Swedish academic Lindhqvist put forward this concept of “Extended Producer Responsibility”, to his country’s Environment Ministry, focused on waste management. The guts of it is that if you produce environmental waste that is going to cost to clean up, then the cost of that clean-up should be included in the cost of the product.

Bingo! In Australia it worked perfectly with the carbon tax, which not only lowered emissions but made the producers pay – at least until those producers mounted a successful political campaign to kill it stone dead. I grant you the connection to sport is not obvious, but I was fascinated this week to see the concept floated in a press release put out by the Coalition for Protection of Greyhounds, calling on the racing and betting industries – not the public – to pay for the costs of greyhound welfare after each dog stops racing.

Love it! We all know that the brutal reality of this horrible “sport” is that while the dogs who can run fast are looked after like silkworms, those born slow or who slow down risk heading for an early grave. Right now, according to the RSPCA website, somewhere between 13,000 and 17,000 dogs are put down annually, because the very business model the greyhound industry works off is indeed killing those slower dogs. The best hope of protecting them are those admirable volunteers who work for charities like Greyhound Rescue, who raise their own funds to house the greyhounds until they can be safely put out for adoption.

But Dennis Anderson, the CPG national president, makes the point: “Without the betting industry there’d be no greyhound racing industry, so it’s only fair the betting industry should also help pay to look after ex-racers once they are ‘retired’, instead of them being killed.”

What would it mean, in practice? (Beyond, I mean, the NSW government ceasing to hand over wads of the people’s money as prizemoney for a bloody greyhound race!) Well, at the expense of the industry itself, every greyhound bred for racing would be tracked throughout its life. And a cost would be added to every bet so that the industry itself paid over the money needed to look after them.

And exactly the same principles should apply to the horse racing industry. Fire at will, see if I care.

Losses, damned losses ...

In response to TFF’s item last week which cited Eddie Jones’s quote that Super 12 was perfect rugby until they needlessly expanded, the rugby statistician Matthew Alvarez wrote to me, himself citing that expansion as also lying at the root of the Wallabies’ ills.

Essentially, he says, the primary reason behind the Wallabies’ struggles since the 2003 Rugby World Cup can be laid at the foot of Super Rugby expansion.

He notes:

  1. The Force had just two winning seasons in 11.
  2. The Rebels have NEVER had a winning season.
  3. The Reds, who by 2003 were already under the pump from the retirements of all-time greats such as Horan, Eales, etc and then decimated by the arrival of the Force in 2006 (think Nathan Sharpe and Digby Ioane leaving for other franchises, and a litany of others including James O’Connor when old enough) have had four winning seasons in the last 17 years.

“Collectively over 37 seasons,” he notes, “those three franchises have had SIX winning seasons only – or 31 losing seasons, a mindset/mentality that surely hasn’t helped when picked for Australia.”

I know. “Lies, damned lies and statistics.” But it is a compelling argument, yes?

Tragic epilogue

You will recall, perhaps, the sad story of Barry “Tizza” Taylor, the well-known Manly rugby figure who became the Australian under-21 and then Waratahs coach before suffering early dementia which saw him institutionalised in his 50s.

When he died five years ago, TFF approached his widow Enid, to see if his brain could be surgically removed and sent to Boston for examination and testing for CTE. She agreed and as I wrote at the time, Tizza was one of the least likely men to have his brain examined for the purposes of medical science, but it came to pass.

A man with a long history of concussions through a little boxing and a lot of rugby, the answer came back: it was one of the five worst cases they had ever seen. This week, the story had a very sad sequel.

Tizza and Enid’s son Stephen, 56, who had been so supportive of the research, who himself had had five bad concussions before the age of 16 and worried that he, too, was developing signs of CTE, fell backwards off a chair, hitting his head on hard stairs and died on Saturday. His brain was removed by surgeons working for the Australian Sports Brain Bank, and will be examined for CTE and compared with that of his father – something of a first in cross-generational research in the field.

The great Mark Skaife led the tributes as news broke this week that Holden would be no more.

The great Mark Skaife led the tributes as news broke this week that Holden would be no more.Credit: Graham Tidy

Well said, Skaifey

This a little long for the quotes but too eloquent to leave out. This is Mark Skaife to Fox Sports, on Holden’s day of demise: “Whether you’re a city person or a country person, wealthy or not, whatever it looks like for you, Holden have been part of your journey somewhere. Your grandfather built one, or your dad had one, or your mum had one, or your sister had one as her first car. There’s a Holden story in nearly every family across this nation. When you think about what Holden meant to us, not just through its power but through how many people were employed, the hundreds of thousands of people who have been part of the Holden story  ... think about all the young tradespeople and apprentices who have applied their trade through Holden. It has been a remarkable story.”

Do yourself a favour

True, TFF has already raved several times in this space on the virtues of the doco on Adam Goodes being hounded from the AFL, The Final Quarter, by Ian Darling’s Shark Island Productions. That was a micro masterpiece looking at the up-close horror of the whole thing, the reaction after Goodes drew the line in the sand over crowd racism, the mass booing, the sheer ugliness of it all. On Sunday night at 8.30pm, the ABC is running another doco, The Australian Dream, which looks at the same subject from a macro level, the systemic reasons such racism is so deeply entrenched.

Illustration: John Shakespeare

Illustration: John ShakespeareCredit:

Steered by Stan Grant and starring Goodes himself, it is a must-see – and a particularly good one to have your kids watch. This is the Australia we are changing!

What They Said

Steve Smith on having flashbacks coming back to Johannesburg for the first time since Sandpapergate: “Probably just walking into the hotel, just initially I was like, ‘Last time I was here, it wasn’t pretty’.”

Catalans Dragons coach, Steve McNamara, following Israel Folau’s first game: “I am here to talk about rugby league. That is what I know, that is what I do, not any of the other stuff.”

Waratahs coach Rob Penney after three straight devastating losses to begin the season. “I just want them to be honest in their appraisals and their reflections. For want of a better word, don't bullshit each other and don't bullshit when you're thinking about what we need to change. If we need to move somewhere else, let's be open and honest and not be intimidated by it.” Can I go first, coach? Youse blokes are playing shockin’! There’s no shame in losing, per se, but remember: if you can’t beat ’em, at least take a piece of them home with you to show your mother!

Dragon Ben Hunt on St George Illawarra's rough 2019: “I think we’re a lot better prepared. Last year it hit us out of nowhere. No one knew where to look or what was going on. It was a lot of unknown. I know it’s not fully resolved yet but we’ve had time to put things in place and know where we stand going forward.”

Cricketer Emily Smith on her ban ending: “I love cricket and I cannot wait to get back playing on the weekend after being away from the game for three months. It's seemed like a lot longer to be honest and, to be fair, it's pretty much been the whole season. It has really driven home just how much I care about the game and how much it means to me.”

Usain Bolt on his retirement: “I knew it was time because the drive wasn’t there. But every time I watch track and field I miss it. And every time I go to the track to see my coach and I watch him training I go ‘did I make the right decision?’ But every time I train with them I think ‘ah yeah I made the right decision. I don’t miss this’.”

Fifteen-year-old Mohamed Toure on being the youngest A-League scorer and makes an early run at quote of the year: “I never thought I'd do it in a million years, not at 15.”

Adam Scott on winning his first PGA Tournament in half a yonk: “I haven't won for three years. This feels very special.”

Mark Skaife on Holden’s collapse: “When I think of Holden, I have fond memories, so it was a very, very sad day. The major thing which comes to mind immediately is how ingrained Holden has been in the Australian psyche . . . it’s a heartland brand.” Everyone sing it with me, one more time for the road: “Football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars!”

Preston Campbell on the anthem at the All Stars game: “I don’t know where it’s going to go, I just know conversations are being had now and it’s going to keep going. If they feel like it’s going to go away, it’s only going to come up more. Nobody likes tough conversations, nobody likes to ask tough questions, but they need to be done in order to create positive change in our country. That’s the way it has been forever, whether you’re Indigenous or non-Indigenous.”

Team of the week

Australian women's cricket team. Begin their campaign to win the T20 World Cup.

Adam Scott. Had a PGA win for the first time in yonks. On that subject, where is Jason Day do you know? He was fabulous in times not long gone, but seems a bit quiet of late?

The Roosters. This weekend play St Helens in the World Club Challenge, for boasting rights as to the strongest club team in the world.

Rugby. Three weeks in and still no wins for Australian teams against anyone else. No wins yet for either the Reds or Waratahs. If it’s not panic stations yet, when would it be? Worst of all, is the seeming lack of care by anyone.

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Liverpool. Liverpool fans can rejoice for this year the title is theirs. Just about impossible for them not to claim it from here.

Joshua Cheptegei. Smashed the 5km road world record by 27 seconds in Monaco in a time of 12 minutes, 51 seconds wearing a pair of Vaporfly Nikes.

David Mortimer. The long time president of the Sydney University Football Club is reportedly on the shortlist to be the new chair of Rugby Australia. He would be a great choice.

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