How Biased I am
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aussiestorm
- Weather Forecaster
- Posts: 8
- Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2017 6:02 am
Was thinking about Melbourne Storm the other day and how completely bias I am. Although I don't get to a lot of games I try and watch all of them on TV. According to my reckoning in each match (if I was the referee), I am sure it would be Storm 20 penalties and the opposition probably none.
People talk about who your second team is. Not me. It's pretty much who I hate the least of all the other teams. I simply don't care for any other team. The team we play on any particular day is clearly the team I hate the most right then and there.
Do I think there is a bad Storm player. Nope, love them all. Doesn't matter who plays, if you're in a Melbourne Storm guernsey then that's enough. When someone leaves the Melbourne Storm to play for another team, complete enemy material.
My partner feels exactly the same.
People talk about who your second team is. Not me. It's pretty much who I hate the least of all the other teams. I simply don't care for any other team. The team we play on any particular day is clearly the team I hate the most right then and there.
Do I think there is a bad Storm player. Nope, love them all. Doesn't matter who plays, if you're in a Melbourne Storm guernsey then that's enough. When someone leaves the Melbourne Storm to play for another team, complete enemy material.
My partner feels exactly the same.
My wife and I based our whole marriage and honeymoon around going to a World Club Challenge game that our Melbourne Storm won. Sure we went to Barcelona, Paris and Ireland inc the Giants Causway too. But I basically proposed to her, on the understanding we would get married in time to honeymoon and go to the World Club Challenge game.
We love our Storm and when we don't go to a game' my whole family sit around our little table together and watch the Storm games. My kids laugh at how my mood changes when our Storm score. It is a good old jolly family time and we love and thank our Storm for it.
Our whole life is Storm.
We, supporters have been amazingly blessed to have been given this very special gift.
A team and Club that is everything you could possibly ask. usually it takes year and years and decades and decades to get a Club to establish a culture and a special brand. Heck the Gold Coast teams and even Newcastle and the Warriors and even some of the Sydney teams are still trying to establish an identity and culture. Same with big ticket teams like Collingwood and Carlton in the AFL. But somehow, the Melbourne Storm was basically born with a mature identity.
It is seriously amazing.
We are like a huge, strong, historically cultured club with our own values and our own structures without having gone through any of the teething problems associated with creating a Club. That just doesn't usually happen for outpost, newly created, start from scratch teams that no one believes in. They just don't get created, take on the establishment and win. That is not how sport usually works. The inside crowd usually finds a way to bring you down but we have been able to keep one step ahead of all the muck racking and shite thrown our way along the journey and the last 20 years. And there has been plenty of shite thrown our way; let me tell you.
It is like God blessed us.
I like you feel like the Melbourne Storm is my religion. Like my total faith system and that of all my family and all my friends is wrapped up in the ethos and ideology of the culture of this mythical thing called the Melbourne Storm.
May we always have the Melbourne Storm to fall back on to help us in times of stress and self loathing.
It is something that is bigger than all of us.
And we have been sooooo blessed to be part of it.
I think if Elvis was still alive today; he would be a Melbourne Storm fan too.
We love our Storm and when we don't go to a game' my whole family sit around our little table together and watch the Storm games. My kids laugh at how my mood changes when our Storm score. It is a good old jolly family time and we love and thank our Storm for it.
Our whole life is Storm.
We, supporters have been amazingly blessed to have been given this very special gift.
A team and Club that is everything you could possibly ask. usually it takes year and years and decades and decades to get a Club to establish a culture and a special brand. Heck the Gold Coast teams and even Newcastle and the Warriors and even some of the Sydney teams are still trying to establish an identity and culture. Same with big ticket teams like Collingwood and Carlton in the AFL. But somehow, the Melbourne Storm was basically born with a mature identity.
It is seriously amazing.
We are like a huge, strong, historically cultured club with our own values and our own structures without having gone through any of the teething problems associated with creating a Club. That just doesn't usually happen for outpost, newly created, start from scratch teams that no one believes in. They just don't get created, take on the establishment and win. That is not how sport usually works. The inside crowd usually finds a way to bring you down but we have been able to keep one step ahead of all the muck racking and shite thrown our way along the journey and the last 20 years. And there has been plenty of shite thrown our way; let me tell you.
It is like God blessed us.
I like you feel like the Melbourne Storm is my religion. Like my total faith system and that of all my family and all my friends is wrapped up in the ethos and ideology of the culture of this mythical thing called the Melbourne Storm.
May we always have the Melbourne Storm to fall back on to help us in times of stress and self loathing.
It is something that is bigger than all of us.
And we have been sooooo blessed to be part of it.
I think if Elvis was still alive today; he would be a Melbourne Storm fan too.
I like to think I can be objective when looking at NRL games - but it is obviously very difficult when you have such strong positive feelings for one side playing.
I can see when we get lucky and a call (or a few) go our way (Parra in the finals last year).
But I also see when we get the rough end of some calls. Specifically, I think the general NRL wide complaint of 'Storm get away with too much in the ruck' is just propoganda, disseminated by those with an axe to grind, that has been repeated so much now that it is mostly accepted by casual fans. And that can absolutely influence the referees. Opposing coaches take advantage of it every single year. You can set your clock to the complaints ramping up around Round 24.
The highs and lows of watching a Storm game really stretch the limits of my personality. My neighbours can attest to the loud, vile language screamed in moments of frustration - more often than not at a soft, ill-gotten penalty handed to the opposition. Dogsh*t Sydney press - followed by dodgy on-field calls, will have me seriously questioning the professionalism, integrity and image of the game of RL.
But the elation of winning the big moments, in the big games is hard to match.
The highs and lows! At least we have more highs than lows following the great club that we do.
Sharks - One peptide asterisk Premiership in 50 years.
Eels - Nothing in 32 years.
I can see when we get lucky and a call (or a few) go our way (Parra in the finals last year).
But I also see when we get the rough end of some calls. Specifically, I think the general NRL wide complaint of 'Storm get away with too much in the ruck' is just propoganda, disseminated by those with an axe to grind, that has been repeated so much now that it is mostly accepted by casual fans. And that can absolutely influence the referees. Opposing coaches take advantage of it every single year. You can set your clock to the complaints ramping up around Round 24.
The highs and lows of watching a Storm game really stretch the limits of my personality. My neighbours can attest to the loud, vile language screamed in moments of frustration - more often than not at a soft, ill-gotten penalty handed to the opposition. Dogsh*t Sydney press - followed by dodgy on-field calls, will have me seriously questioning the professionalism, integrity and image of the game of RL.
But the elation of winning the big moments, in the big games is hard to match.
The highs and lows! At least we have more highs than lows following the great club that we do.
Sharks - One peptide asterisk Premiership in 50 years.
Eels - Nothing in 32 years.
You know the Sydney media has a lot to answer for.
For those not versed in establishmentarian bias, Melbourne – the most astutely administered, perennially successful league club – are the worst because the ‘N’ in NRL stands for New South Wales, not ‘neighbourly’.
These remote immigrants from Mexico somehow snuck through our extreme vetting process in the haze of the 1990s, setting us on a Donald Trump-like search for a shonky Barack Obama birth certificate ever since. Why the heck didn’t NSW build a Trump insipred Wall???
As such, the Storm must be persecuted at all costs to maintain the most important thing in rugby league: the inadequacy complex of us embittered Sydney also-rans.
When I was at last year’s Grand Final, a local Sydney media representative came up to me and said “I thought we had fully armed snipers on the banks of the Murray to stop you losers coming up to God’s own country!”
So before the game grows any further, here are some reheated preconceptions that will invalidate the premiership we unjustly pocketed last year.
1. They cheated the cap!
Melbourne illegally stockpiled talent that they didn’t buy from other clubs but organically grew through their own junior system and then decided to shouting everyone a heap of undeclared boats and sheds. Not only this, they returned their tainted premierships, offloaded players, played a season for no points and conducted a clean rebuild, yet they still have the gall to challenge for the premiership half a decade later? Does this club have no shame?
2. They wrestle!
The results are in. Besides everyone else, the Storm are the only team that wrestles. What’s worse, they have never publicly admitted to wrestling. All they’ve given us is a few weak denials from a club spokesperson who was speaking from a headlock.
Did you know the first cannonball tackle reported was against Gordon Tallis in 1997 (before the Storm?)
The first wrestling coach was employed by Wayne Bennet in 1998 (before the Storm)
In 2007, Andrew Johns publicly applauded the Storm tackling style, stating that “we were doing judo throws and wrestling holds 10 years ago” (i.e 1997, before the Storm).
And to further the point, ” wrestling has been part of league since Souths prop Jim Armstrong won Olympic bronze in 1948. Kangaroo coach Frank Stanton having players grapple in the 1980s while, in the last years of baggy jerseys, judo coaches encouraged players do chin ups while gripping towels strung over the bar — believing the practice would help grip strength.”
Melbourne didn’t invent wrestling. That is utter rubbish. The chicken wing, performed by Adam Blair doesn’t reflect on the Storm, because guess what? He did the same move when playing for the Bronco’s in 2014 against Sam Thiaday in a test match. Do we blame the entire bulldog’s team because Josh Reynolds likes to trip people?
This idea that Melbourne brought wrestling into the game is rubbish (the above proves that), but by all means, keep saying it, because then it must be true….
3. They’re boring!
The Storm play a repetitive and methodical style that grinds the viewer into unconsciousness like skolling a foaming Pint of tranquiliser. Well, that’s how they played last time the Sydney media watched the Melbourne Storm back in 2009, and Sydneysiders can’t be expected to think for themselves.
4. They’re overly reliant on immortals!
Melbourne were gifted a one-in-a-million trio by the serendipity of astute talent identification and first-class development structures. Appallingly lucky.
Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk were forever carrying bums like Jesse Bromwich, Cameron Munster and Suliasi Vunivalu, Will Chambers and Josh Addo-Carr not to mention a passenger of a coach who does nothing for unidentified talent other than transform them into world beaters.
Not only is having class players an affront, you shouldn’t be allowed to label three old blokes and a heap of roof tilers as a team. It’s more like a TAFE class.
5. They’re not taken seriously in Melbourne!
Any town that enjoys street murals so called educated but really just soft Melbournians drink Lattes is not a rugby league town. That’s why the NRL trophy should be fitted with a dye pack that explodes the moment it passes through Albury.
In fact, relocate the Storm to Sydney. If there’s one thing good ol' Steak and Kidney can do with, it’s more rugby league teams, especially considering there’s a small demographic of rare possums in Rooty Hill they could lose to supporting the AFL West Sydney Giants.
6. They were News Limited-aligned!
As they are born from the remnants of the infamous Super League wars, the Storm’s mere existence is a slap in the face to one of the game’s great heartlands and the NRL establishment.
7. Their players openly like other sports
This is total blasphemy. When Billy slater takes his children to AFL Auskick. When Cameron Smith goes on the Foxtel AFL channel or says how much he loves the Hawthorn Hawks and is seen at one of their AFL games. How can they support AFL propaganda when the NRL must crush the AFL in every way and never EVER work with them. When Ritchie McCraw comes to the Storm headquarters and says how much he likes the Storm and how the feelings are mutually felt with the Storm team towards the All Blacks. When English wicket keeper Jonny Bairstow comes to Storm training and has some fun with goal kicking. How dare the Storm advertise other sporting codes!!!
8. Nobody knows how to correctly say their name!
Are they Storm? the Stormers? Or the Storm? Or, if you’re from Melbourne, are they Storm, the Storm or the Rebels? This gives the Sydney media representative the chance to throw in the typical joke; their stupid name is so appropriate because Melbourne Weather is so shit...
Karate-kicking fullbacks, a captain who referees every game that he plays and flaunting cap rules is one thing, but lumping rugby league with grammar affairs should be an immediate expulsion.
The Sydney media doesn’t do grammar so well and they can’t have a bar of the Storm or whatever that Mexican team is called from down south of the Murray.
For those not versed in establishmentarian bias, Melbourne – the most astutely administered, perennially successful league club – are the worst because the ‘N’ in NRL stands for New South Wales, not ‘neighbourly’.
These remote immigrants from Mexico somehow snuck through our extreme vetting process in the haze of the 1990s, setting us on a Donald Trump-like search for a shonky Barack Obama birth certificate ever since. Why the heck didn’t NSW build a Trump insipred Wall???
As such, the Storm must be persecuted at all costs to maintain the most important thing in rugby league: the inadequacy complex of us embittered Sydney also-rans.
When I was at last year’s Grand Final, a local Sydney media representative came up to me and said “I thought we had fully armed snipers on the banks of the Murray to stop you losers coming up to God’s own country!”
So before the game grows any further, here are some reheated preconceptions that will invalidate the premiership we unjustly pocketed last year.
1. They cheated the cap!
Melbourne illegally stockpiled talent that they didn’t buy from other clubs but organically grew through their own junior system and then decided to shouting everyone a heap of undeclared boats and sheds. Not only this, they returned their tainted premierships, offloaded players, played a season for no points and conducted a clean rebuild, yet they still have the gall to challenge for the premiership half a decade later? Does this club have no shame?
2. They wrestle!
The results are in. Besides everyone else, the Storm are the only team that wrestles. What’s worse, they have never publicly admitted to wrestling. All they’ve given us is a few weak denials from a club spokesperson who was speaking from a headlock.
Did you know the first cannonball tackle reported was against Gordon Tallis in 1997 (before the Storm?)
The first wrestling coach was employed by Wayne Bennet in 1998 (before the Storm)
In 2007, Andrew Johns publicly applauded the Storm tackling style, stating that “we were doing judo throws and wrestling holds 10 years ago” (i.e 1997, before the Storm).
And to further the point, ” wrestling has been part of league since Souths prop Jim Armstrong won Olympic bronze in 1948. Kangaroo coach Frank Stanton having players grapple in the 1980s while, in the last years of baggy jerseys, judo coaches encouraged players do chin ups while gripping towels strung over the bar — believing the practice would help grip strength.”
Melbourne didn’t invent wrestling. That is utter rubbish. The chicken wing, performed by Adam Blair doesn’t reflect on the Storm, because guess what? He did the same move when playing for the Bronco’s in 2014 against Sam Thiaday in a test match. Do we blame the entire bulldog’s team because Josh Reynolds likes to trip people?
This idea that Melbourne brought wrestling into the game is rubbish (the above proves that), but by all means, keep saying it, because then it must be true….
3. They’re boring!
The Storm play a repetitive and methodical style that grinds the viewer into unconsciousness like skolling a foaming Pint of tranquiliser. Well, that’s how they played last time the Sydney media watched the Melbourne Storm back in 2009, and Sydneysiders can’t be expected to think for themselves.
4. They’re overly reliant on immortals!
Melbourne were gifted a one-in-a-million trio by the serendipity of astute talent identification and first-class development structures. Appallingly lucky.
Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk were forever carrying bums like Jesse Bromwich, Cameron Munster and Suliasi Vunivalu, Will Chambers and Josh Addo-Carr not to mention a passenger of a coach who does nothing for unidentified talent other than transform them into world beaters.
Not only is having class players an affront, you shouldn’t be allowed to label three old blokes and a heap of roof tilers as a team. It’s more like a TAFE class.
5. They’re not taken seriously in Melbourne!
Any town that enjoys street murals so called educated but really just soft Melbournians drink Lattes is not a rugby league town. That’s why the NRL trophy should be fitted with a dye pack that explodes the moment it passes through Albury.
In fact, relocate the Storm to Sydney. If there’s one thing good ol' Steak and Kidney can do with, it’s more rugby league teams, especially considering there’s a small demographic of rare possums in Rooty Hill they could lose to supporting the AFL West Sydney Giants.
6. They were News Limited-aligned!
As they are born from the remnants of the infamous Super League wars, the Storm’s mere existence is a slap in the face to one of the game’s great heartlands and the NRL establishment.
7. Their players openly like other sports
This is total blasphemy. When Billy slater takes his children to AFL Auskick. When Cameron Smith goes on the Foxtel AFL channel or says how much he loves the Hawthorn Hawks and is seen at one of their AFL games. How can they support AFL propaganda when the NRL must crush the AFL in every way and never EVER work with them. When Ritchie McCraw comes to the Storm headquarters and says how much he likes the Storm and how the feelings are mutually felt with the Storm team towards the All Blacks. When English wicket keeper Jonny Bairstow comes to Storm training and has some fun with goal kicking. How dare the Storm advertise other sporting codes!!!
8. Nobody knows how to correctly say their name!
Are they Storm? the Stormers? Or the Storm? Or, if you’re from Melbourne, are they Storm, the Storm or the Rebels? This gives the Sydney media representative the chance to throw in the typical joke; their stupid name is so appropriate because Melbourne Weather is so shit...
Karate-kicking fullbacks, a captain who referees every game that he plays and flaunting cap rules is one thing, but lumping rugby league with grammar affairs should be an immediate expulsion.
The Sydney media doesn’t do grammar so well and they can’t have a bar of the Storm or whatever that Mexican team is called from down south of the Murray.