Rusted-on Balmain supporters,
You can imagine just how disheartening it was for a man who has followed Balmain for more than 30 years [for three Grand Finals and one Premiership] to find them on the bottom rung of the betting boards down at the bookies last week.
After many, many bitter winters of discontent - seven in a row now without making the finals - and there's the Mighty Tiges friendless in the ring, written off by the odds-makers and not rated by anyone - anyone at all - least of all the professional pundits who were loudly proclaiming them as certainties for the Wooden Spoon.
They were at the unbackable odds of $1.15 and favourites to miss the Top 8.
You could get a crazy 14/1 about Balmain making the Top 4.
Can someone please tell me what the fark is going on?
Sure, Balmain did lose the Best Fullback in the Entire World, James Tedesco, who took the superior coin and the chance of a Premiership at Eastern Suburbs, known as the Sydney Roosters, who are the red-hot favourites to win the comp.
And the well known New South Wales prop Aaron "Woodsy" Woods...with his trade-marked hair-do...sold his soul to the Evil Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs in a supreme act of treachery.
But the Balmain/Western Suburbs coach, Ivan "Clearly It's" Cleary, decided to get out the clubhouse broom and do the full sweep out and has been very active on the player market in the off season, with the Club Secretary saving a shitload of cash out of the salary cap, to bring in all sorts of odds and sods and bods to make up an almost entirely new team.
In Round One, Cleary named no less than six débutantes for the Club...Pita Godinet, Ben Matulino, Russell Packer, Josh Reynolds, Robbie Rochow and Corey Thompson.
Now there's some names to conjure with.
Who exactly are these people?
Josh "Grub" Reynolds [who reportedly signed on for three mill $ over four years] is the best buy at five-eighth...half backs are a dime a dozen, for mine...but you've gotta have a good pivot.
Having that huge 6'4" Samoan man-mountain in Matulino and the half-man half-beast Packer [both current New Zealand Internationals] standing at prop, and that's one helluva brick wall in defence and has the potential to be a mighty powerful battering ram in offence.
One of Cleary's best ideas was to rescue that sneaky little nugget of a winger Corey Thompson [a journeyman Queenslander] from the dark satanic mills of northern England where he's spent the last two years earning his pension at godforsaken Widnes.
Corey was very keen to come home and happy to play on a cut-lunch and a couple of post-match schooners contract, and then he turned the incumbent David Nofoaluma out of the first grade starting side on pre-season form.
So the club, at least, has some depth.
And who would have thought that the Great Benji Marshall - a Balmain 200 gamer - would return to Leichhardt after four years of self-imposed exile, which need not have happened at all if it wasn't for an entirely stupid argument over money?
But that's ancient history which chewed up acres of newsprint.
Benj himself admits he's well past his best at 33, and will spend the year as a bench warmer and club elder statesman - but how fabulous is it for die-hard fans to have a survivor of the 2005 Premiership winning team back on board?
According to the club newsletter, Benj has been away for 1,646 days, but now, all is forgiven.
So, found myself in some trepidation fiddling with the long-wave aerial on top of Dad's Shed in order to bring in the crystal-clear wireless broadcast for the season pipe-opener, ironically, against Easts.
It was like being stuck in some kind of time warp.
The match was akin to old school 1980's-style low-scoring defence-at-all-costs rugby league...2-0 at half time...and 65 minutes were played before the Roosters scored the opening try of the game to go 8-4 up.
It was a bold showing to hold out Easts when the Balmain half Brooks was outrageously sent off for ten minutes by the Bamford in the first half for an alleged "professional foul".
The Tiges could have been robbed blind, there and then, but no.
With everyone on both sides completely rooted at the denouement and an Easts win the logical outcome, it was Thompson who went over and took out the corner flag with 90 seconds left in the match to tie the scores, and then the LoLo teed it off from the sideline to send the ball over the black dot after it bounced off one of the uprights to convert it into a 10-8 victory for the Tiges.
Talk about an absolute heart-stopper of a screamer!
Tables turned in the shadows of full-time.
One for the ages, first up.
Perhaps the last word should go to that nasty crazyman former jailbird and now one of no less than five co-Captains, Packer - who on interview after the game said in his trans-Tasman accent - "you know, I've been around football a long while now, and you don't win the Premiership in Round One, so we'll see what happens, eh?"
You can't get better than being a first round winner, but it's sound advice to the staunch supporter who might be getting ahead of themselves.
WEST TIGERS 10. Tries: Thompson. Goals: Lolohea (3).
SYDNEY ROOSTERS 8. Tries: Ferguson. Goals: Mitchell (2).
At Olympic Stadium, Homebush.
Crowd: 18,243.
