A Sports Guy

Welcome to the first official column from A Sports Guy, something I hope to turn into a regular feature here at Hammertime's Brog. Either that, or it's a one off.

I would like at the outset to declare my indebtedness to Bill Simmons (The Sports Guy) and other good sports writers at ESPN.com. What I feel Australia lacks is sports writers that are 'always good'. You know how some writers just always do it for you, no matter what they write about? Bill Simmons and Douglas Hofstadter are two such scribes.

Australian sports writing has its moments, and there are many who are readable. But don't all readers deserve more than just 'readability'? I want to laugh, I want to look forward to the column and tell my friends about it. I would not be so bold as to suggest this column will be anywhere near as good as its inspiration, or that of another amazing non-conventional-subject writer, Lester Bangs. He really changed my perception of music. I just throw my hat in the ring. The more voices the better, in my opinion.

[By the way, just saw a great interview with Paul McGeough on SBS's Dateline. As Negus put it, a sane perspective on an insane situation.]

I was inspired to start spreading my fingers over the keyboard by an article I read by Phil Gould. He does tend to polarise people, but I will say this about him - he is often entertaining. So I thought I'd better write something about league, that much maligned Australian contact sport.

I'd like to talk about two players, who in their own ways are freaks. Matt Utai and Greg Inglis. At his best, Utai is unstoppable. Sterlo always says he is so hard to stop from 15 metres out, but he's hard to stop anywhere. Inglis at first seems slender, and fast. Then he seems big, powerful, agile and damn fast.

Utai was at his peak during the Bulldogs enhanced funding days of 2001, 2002, 2003. He always seemed to be running down the sideline and generally straight at, then through a series of defenders. You just felt sorry for the bloke trying to tackle him, even though they were usually bigger than him. He was pretty fast, too. I wonder what he was like in his junior years.

Generally a small run for Utai was 15 metres. a good one 35 metres. He seems to have this bulk that just throws defenders off without any contribution from his arms. I wonder if he's ever palmed off anyone.

By all indications Greg Inglis was the freak in juniors that he still is now. I don't know why sheer pace is so impressive, but it is. Something about seeing one guy who you know is really fast struggling to keep up with the other. A good example is Billy Slater being chased by Luke Patten once. The Dogs got up, but Slater scored one of his typical (btw it's shocking how quickly he's gone from 'freak' to 'teammate of Inglis'. He's still got game) 95 metre tries and laughed in Patten's face when he finally knew he'd beaten him.

The pace Inglis showed in beating Brent Webb in the test was impressive. He's done that to him before, maybe round one against the Warriors. Apparently he's still growing. Projections are 6' 11'', 130 kg, who can sprint 100 m in 11 seconds. He'll be able to pick up and grip one of those exercise balls (while inflated) with one hand.

By the way, Roger Federer is a freak. He's the only guy to win 10 titles in a year three years running. His current undefeated streak is 24 games, still 11 shy of the mark he set last year. But it's the way he plays that makes him a freak. I remember when he was just one of those juniors who are touted as promising. He actually appeared on the tour and didn't do much for a while, apart from beating Pete Sampras (pretty impressive, although how impressive will it look from about 2012, when Federer has more Wimbledons than Sampras?) He could have been another Richard Fromberg, but he went even further.

I would pay for a highlights video that blended Utai, Inglis and a sprinkling of other freaks - your SBWs, your Noa Nadrukus, your Brett Mullins (I remember this one time he was chased down by Matt Seers and everyone was shocked because no one else had ever chased him down. At least that's how I remember it. In fact, while we're here, I hereby ask for suggestions on most surprising / impressive chase downs. It could be Paul Harragon on that Canberra centre, Albert Fulivai. Thanks to their exhaustive database, I can now reveal that he played 44 games over 6 years. He scored tries at the impressive rate of one every two games, or less impressive 3 and a half per year). I spose what they all have in common is being really fast and/or demolishing the defence.

First it cutteth,
then it taketh slack