I have often lain awake after a night on the claret cordial thinking whether an informed jury of my peers would convict me for ever calling Jamie ‘Al’ Packer a mean-spirited prick.  Unsure of the blurred legal lines between opinion and fact when defending oneself against a defamation case I also wonder what evidence I could tender to support my claim.  The biggest weakness in my defence would be that I do not have concrete evidence that Jamie Al Packer is a prick so I would naturally never call him one.

However in theory, if they were mounting their case against me Al’s legal eagles may be able to use the principle of precedence by raising the ghost of an earlier indiscretion that I allegedly committed against the young Jamie some decades ago.   It happened when I was a ‘guest’ in one of the boxes at the Sydney Cricket Ground.  From memory, it was the then State Bank corporate box.  The State Bank had recently morphed from the Rural Bank that once proudly claimed “We do more for you…personally”.  This was a distant time when customers were king not the shareholders.  I’d cut a hole in a few bottles of Tyrell’s Vat 47 Chardonnay and was well on the way when I went out onto the balcony.  I glanced left and there was the unmistakable Packer profile.  The bull-like build and the extraordinary chin that goes on forever.  Easter Island had come to the SCG.  Without thinking I blurted out “ Son of Goanna!”. 

Al kept his eye on an ordinary game of league but his companion, Chris ‘Lucky’ Murphy, solicitor to the stars and scallywags, didn’t.  ‘Lucky’ gave me the death stare as he brushed dandruff off his shirt.  The only thing I could think of at the time was why do people with snowfall-like dandy brazenly wear black?

A bloke I do like who makes a quid from cartooning once told me he had been at a dinner party where Al claimed that his Daddy Go had “saved cricket”.   The Meg Ryan obsessed Michael Parkinson was also at the dinner.  Parky took offence at this airbrushing and berated young Al for mistaking greed for philanthropy.

But let’s not dwell on the past, your Honour, for in more recent times Al’s bid for putting the bingo into Bangaroo and the seemingly extraordinary acquiescence of the people in charge of the process to treat him like a protected species does raise questions about undue influence.  I raise this in the interests of background only, that in Sydney the slipstream to success seems to be predicated on pleasing people like the Parrot and the Packers.  These are the people who pick and stick regardless. So as the increasingly befuddled and scrubbed Parrot struggles to find facts (see Media Watch) in his world of radio dribbles, Al struggles to hold a girl for longer than the length of Parrot’s talk-back radio delay.  They are people who like to get their own way and give very little grunt to the public good despite ‘leaked’ faux good deeds.   The fabled good deeds?  Daddy Go funding hospitals so he could get a bed and slipping dealers and waitresses a slim wad when he made millions at the tables.

But does Al’s uncanny gift of getting his own way make him mean-spirited or at worst a prick?  I think not.  In the Obedian world of NSW it makes him just another player.  Please note, your Honour, I do not wish to raise any matters of undue influence over process nor the dud figures that consultants used to support Al’s attempt to civilise the city.  I mention them purely as context.  I would in support of my claim that he is mean-spirited, table what he and his Crownie colleagues have done by changing the rules of blackjack.  In the Age newspaper last year, Jason Dowling put it well.

“They say the house always wins. At Crown casino they have gone to great lengths to ensure the adage holds true.  Rule changes at the casino mean the house does not lose when it has a hand of 22 in Blackjack Plus – a version of the world’s most popular casino card game.  Blackjack is also commonly referred to as 21 because the aim is to get 21 and not go over. But under Blackjack Plus, which is the form of blackjack on all low-bet tables (sic below $50) at Crown, a ”stand-off” occurs if the dealer’s hand is 22, meaning no one wins. Players are not given the same leniency if they go over 21.”

In other words you are well and truly rooted at Crown if you have limited funds and cannot afford to bet big at blackjack.  The Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation found ”the rules of the game to be compliant with principles of player fairness and game security”.  Anti-gambling crusader Tim Costello said if Crown was allowed to get 22 playing blackjack then ”Essendon should be allowed to have 19 players on the field”.  I love the Good Costello and while I totally agree with the sentiment I believe the world would be a significantly better place if there were both less Crowns and less AFL players.

Your Honour and the esteemed jury, as to my claim that Jamie ‘Al’ Packer is a prick.  I wish to call an expert witness to the stand.  An authority without peer. Would Mr Alan Jones please come forward…

I was dragged up in the world of unlimited tackle rugby league on the coalfields.  A time of wet Saturdays where glue-like churns of cricket pitch mud turned local games into wet ugly propositions of no quarter given.  Then in the late sixties and seventies I was slowly seduced into the foreign art of rugby union through the ABC’s Saturday coverage of the Sydney competition. Post Depression sensibilities meant that there was no colour television in our house.   One waited for such things.  One bided one’s time before making such an extravagant purchase.  We didn’t need one.  The prism of enlightenment was a flickering black and white television screen and it was more than enough because what I saw was a world that was tough, fast but ultimately terribly exciting.

When Kenny Catchpole and the Ellas (Rube, Quin and Rose) danced the wonderful magic and a flowing mane of hair called Russell Fairfax dropped kicked from half-way all was well with the world.  Even on wet Saturdays I was happy to be thoughtfully lectured by a science teacher-like Trevor Allan in the art of rugby and warmed by the bonhomie of Norman ‘Nugget’ May.  Trevor Allan, a Wallaby of distinction, was no shirker.  He was typical of the era, he played above his weight, firmly and fairly and without fuss.  As a teenager he shared an ice-run with one of his brothers and would haul 28-pound blocks of ice on a hook in either hand sometimes climbing three or four flights of stairs to make the delivery.  He didn’t let opportunity melt in his hand, he had a job to do – it was that simple.

This was a time when I felt that all was good with the world.  The ginger nuts weren’t falling into your cup of tea and the mail was getting through.  I knew that blokes who worked in a bank or at the local school were turning up and having a go.  Some decades later in 1999 when Stephen Larkham kicked a field goal in extra time to beat the Yarpies with his Dad’s ringing endorsement “He’s never kicked a field goal in his life” this ‘have-a-go’ spirit was still alive.  And in Wellington in 2000, we saw an impossible victory with the towering big fella John Eales booting a penalty goal and clasping the Bledisloe Cup ever so closely as if it held his Nonna’s special pomodora recipe. I smiled with relief that ‘we’ had done it….it just doesn’t get any better.  And it didn’t.  We moved into the funk.  We were becalmed despite some interesting times and then we entered the ark ages when the vandals from the north turned the lights off.  A time when England made ten man rugby successful again.

And so to now.  After a stumblebum performance against the Pumas a week or so ago Australian Rugby has it’s neck securely held in the national laughing-stock.   Despite a scrambling one point win against the Meat Lovers people rightly lined up to throw corn, enchiladas and fruit at this rag-tag bunch of poor struggling boofheads.  Then at the same time as Ewen McKenzie was lauded as the “new beginning of Australian Rugby” by Fairfax Media, the Little ‘O’ (James O’Connor) was refused access to a flight to Bali due to the island having exceeded their September Bogan Quota.

But if Ewen is the new beginning I really want a touch of back-to-the–future.  Nothing against Ewie mind you, he’s having a go, but despite panning a few flecks of gold with the Reds I don’t think he is the answer.  I don’t think he has the ability to challenge and to create something new.  He is of the old school of potatoes and corned meat with white sauce (and there is nothing wrong with that) but it is a new game and we haven’t adapted very well.

I’ll be honest with you unlike a lot of people who bother to write about rugby – I don’t know anything about the game.  But a lack of knowledge obviously hasn’t stopped some people so why should I stay in the shed.  However what I do know is that the current national team plays like a bunch of tight-skirted, moon-shined hillbillies.  They have delivered to us a couple of years of tosh and broken promises under coach Deans.  And now under Coach McKenzie we were promised a change but we got the same old, sad, tired game that has been trotted out for a decade.  Is this the best we can do?

You see to me the logical choice for a new coach was Jake ‘the Peg’ White. White coached the Brumbies to an unlikely Super Final and they were the only provincial team to have a win against the touring Lions on a bitingly cold evening in Dull Town.   ‘Peg’s’ problem was despite his success (and being a South African) he didn’t fit the bill according to the ARU’s current “thinking”. If I can I will try to paraphrase the ARU’s current thinking – it’s high order stuff so you may struggle to understand – it goes like this;

“Let’s think for a minute…. We tried a foreigner but it’s gone pear-shaped and ‘Computer’ doesn’t get on with him…we should go for home-grown talent…take your time….oh bugger we don’t have any…mmm ok who hasn’t been DUI in the last twelve months…has he got a suit? “

That’s about it.  That’s the current thinking that’s guiding our poor boys.  So my suggestions are these.  Firstly, a good old-fashioned weed-out.  Get rid of self-centred inked dopes like the Little ‘O’, Computer’ and any other flash Harry who thinks they can piss-up the privilege of playing for their country and put in decent, hard-working blokes who will have a red-hot go until their legs fall off.  But that’s only the start. Then let’s try something new.  The plan is we put ‘Nobody’, ‘Noddy’, ‘Bernie’, ‘Bumshaft’, ‘Biscuits’, ‘Boxhead’ and anyone else who can tie up their shoe laces in a room for a week.  We give them plenty of biros, butchers paper and Bundy.  Their task is to come up with a new style of rugby.

We then march forward – we have a new plan – in fact it’s an old plan.  We get out of the funk.  We actually try to do things differently, completely differently – like catching the ball. Now wouldn’t that put things back in black and white again?