And when the rainbow jerseys arrive it shall be complete

I always sniggered (quietly, behind my hand) about the amount of latent homosexuality in the Australian football codes. You know the line: all those fit, hard-bodied men, sweating together in and out of their tight shorts, gripping and wrestling each other for a living. It's got to be more than one-in-ten in the national leagues, right? But of course, the Australian male hegemony being what it (still) is, of course no-one is openly gay in professional football. Not in such a way that it was ever discussed.
Until now.
In case you didn't know, Matthew Johns, former NRL player has been stood down from his job for his part in a group sex scandal. Turns out it's fairly common practise for NRL players to have group sex with a woman - "team bonding" is a phrase often let slip here, like a sly testicle from ill-fitting shorts.

I'd like now, if I may to set a reading exercise (does the fun never end?!). Read the following passage taken from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald entitled 'Defiant rep star says group sex romps will keep happening'. At the end, I'm going to ask an open question which I believe, if I'm right, might just change the ugly, ugly face of Rugby League in Australia.

THE comments of one senior NRL representative player indicate how difficult it could be to change the sexual behaviour and attitudes of elite league players.

He warned group sex among NRL players would continue regardless of a warnings from chief executive David Gallop that unsavoury sexual acts would put their contracts at risk. The representative player told the Herald that his colleagues were left stunned by Gallop's hardline stance when no player had been convicted of sexual assault, adding that the caution would quickly be forgotten.

"It's fine for David Gallop to come out and say you can't have group sex but the last thing blokes will be thinking about on a Friday night at the club is David Gallop," said the player, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "I don't know how a chief executive can come out and say we can't have group sex if it's consensual. It's like discrimination because that is a person's private life. It's like saying you can't be homosexual, or you can't have such-and-such sexual preferences. How can he tell us what we can do in our private lives?

"We already have so many rules: we can't drink on these days, we can't go to these places, now we can't have group sex. About the only thing we can do these days is go to club functions, and just hang around other players. That's just isolating us more from the rest of the world, and it could lead to even more violent acts."

Are Rugby League players finally coming out of the closet?
Read the passage again, but this time bear in mind the fact that while these players appear to engage in a lot of group sex, there aren't any women mentioned. Based on this, I firmly believe that the NRL is on the threshold of throwing open the flimsy plywood doors, tossing aside the coathangers and shoe racks and announcing to the world "We're here! We're queer! We have group sex with each other!" Imagine that. Out, proud and scoring tries. I reckon the NRL fans and clubs would breathe a collective sigh of relief: no more scandals, no more 'How to treat women nice' classes, no more lies! Just good, honest, consensual sex between large groups of large men without the apparently tricky and complicated inclusion of a woman.
Of course, the game itself may suffer from the channelling of all that built-up homoerotic tension away from the playing field ...

Bigfoot: BUSTED

I'm sure you've all been paying extremely close attention to the latest unfolding saga of Bigfoot. Famed Bigfoot hunter Tom Biscardi claims to have in his possession a dead bigfoot and is holding it in a freezer. The creature is said to have stood 7 feet and 7 inches.
This was my first clue.
I am a bigfoot believer. I enjoy the idea that there are many amazing and interesting things hiding under rocks, in basements and behind magazine racks that humans are yet to discover. I'm sure 327 will have some kind of science-based problem with this, but he's travelling the werld right now and so right of reply is probably playing second fiddle to right of passage at this time.
Anyway, this bigfoot smells wrong to me. No, not from here. The "undisclosed location" isn't on the island (although it probably could be).
My second clue came when the DNA tests came through. One of the samples was 96% opossum and the other was human. Ringing any bells yet, people?
Three days before the DNA test news broke, another, less-remarkable, sadder event occurred: the world's tallest woman, Sandy Allen, passed away at age 53.
She was 7 feet and 7 inches tall.
She was a human.
She may or may not have been wearing opossum fur at the time, but those grave-robbing bigfoot hunters would have gotten it somewhere.

***
GTH - This was actually just my hand of fury scorching the Royal Brisbane from the face of the earth. I know they save lives but how reasonable are you supposed to be after five days straight of "I'll put a note on your chart and there will be someone here in the morning. In the mean time, just try to hold on ..."
Points go to Kath and Ninja for their amusing stories and to River for creating a new meaning for the picture. No points to Other Sam for playing around with the URLs too much. Maybe it's time you started your own blog dude ...