Exhaustee's,
The insanely fanatical resilience of the rusted-on life-long die-hard Balmain supporter has never been in question, even in the most trying of circumstances. The faithful will travel from miles around to be at the Spiritual Home, Leichhardt Oval, for their religious experience. The devoted will pack themselves together on that Hill, like sardines in a tin, and become this writhing, heaving, screaming mass of humanity that has a life all its own [see above]. Adherents of the Mighty Tiges let everyone know they have come for just one thing. To worship at the altar of a Tigers victory. And still they come, tumbling down from the Balmain Road or climbing "heartbreak hill" up from the Parramatta River and pouring in through the Mary St turnstiles, at even the slightest whiff of more glory for Balmain. At the appointed time, there's a crowd surge as serious pre-loaders leaving the Orange Grove Hotel [where drinking in the middle of the street is not unknown on match days], marching in colours, with flags waving, taking the short cut through the old Rozelle lunatic asylum [which has always been tastefully referred to as the "mental hospital"], arriving at the Glover St gates at the back of the Hill in the unshakeable hope of another magnificent Tiges triumph. And still they come, Balmain supporters are everywhere, and all of them will tell you they'd rather be at Leichhardt Oval on a Sunday arvo. Said it before, say it again, it is without a doubt the best viewing ground for rugby league in Sydney, and possibly the world. The last of the great suburban grounds. Ever since it was literally blasted out of the cliff face as a Great Depression work creation project with the rubble used to smooth out and fortify the Hill and build a swimming pool below in 1934, it's had iconic status. The idea of creating a large artificial amphitheatre for the game - where the spectators are more or less on top of the players - was a brilliant one. Improvements, tho', have been few and far between. Spectator facilities [highlighted by the 1950's era brick latrines without bog holes at the side of the Hill] have always been sub-standard, there's never been any car parking, the desultory scoreboard has its own idiosyncrasies and a famous bar, the Norman "Latchem" Robinson Stand was a 1970's monolithic mistake, and the original white-ant-eaten dinky little wooden Keith Barnes Stand, which holds only a thousand folks or so, has always been occupied by Tiges legends and club worthies on their way to The Pantheon. Most of the hallowed ground is standing room only for the hoi polloi. Despite none of it meeting any of the National Rugby League's criteria as a suitable up-to-code 'stadium' worth having matches at, and despite it being left in wrack and ruin as the autocrats at the Powers That Be have long been threatening it with closure as a waste of maintenance money - to howls of protest - the Spiritual Home endures. It's very hard to close an institution.
The final game of the season was a sell-out a couple of weeks prior, given that Robbie "The Best Leb in the Game" Farah was due to play his 303rd and final game before retirement. And it was do or die, the last throw of the dice to make the finals. Punters flocked to the ground doubts that Farah would even play, as he'd put a hairline fracture through his tibia 26 days previous and therefore had to "play on a busted leg". Robbie was ruled out of the game on match day morning, meaning he would have to do his lap of honour in a suit and tie.Then, ten minutes before kick off, Super Coach Mr Magoo dramatically pulled the trigger and decided to risk being a player down, and he put Robbie on the bench so he would indeed play his final game. Nobody expected the Great Man to come on much before ten minutes from the end and throw the ball about a bit from dummy half, and that's pretty much what happened. Fans got to say their much anticipated farewells to the Living Legend, and whether it was a tactical mistake picking a player who might as well have come on in a wheel chair is neither here nor there in hindsight. It's not every day of the week that your team - with everything to play for before a capacity crowd - is comprehensively outplayed and robbed blind by the Umpires. They had to beat Scummo's Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks by any margin to make it into 8th on the final ladder. [In a quirk of the table, a draw would have seen both teams go through the finals at the expense of Brisbane, but that result would have been clear cut case of match fixing, so it was never on]. It was victory, or nowheresville. But it never looked like it was on. Balmain didn't show up to play, were lacklustre from the off, despite taking the early lead with penalty goals, and then the refs turned against them, with the Bamfords constantly blowing the whistle for obscure technical infractions of the rules that no-one else could make any sense of, and the Sharks were given free ground to get away with four tries free gratis. There is no other sound in the world quite like a deafening Leichhardt Oval crowd going absolutely apeshit when Balmain scores - and in this case there was but one opportunity to go off one's tits.
So, for the eighth season in a row, emotional disconsolate fans filed out of the ground holding back tears, kicking the dirt with their boots. Yet again, no finals appearance. Another winter of discontent dissolves into Mad Monday. The screaming mob had yet again failed to spur the team on, and the usual 10 point home ground advantage at Leichhardt just did not materialise. For those of us who've been around a while, the Miracle Year of 2005, when they won the Premiership coming from stone motherless last mid season to finish fourth on the final ladder, slowly recedes further and further from the memory, the Grand final losses of 1988 and 1989 are in real and present danger of being lost in the mists of time, while the most famous Premiership victory of all in 1969 has now been consigned to the dustbin of ancient history.
Ah well, as they say in the classics..."there's always next year".
WESTS TIGERS 8. Tries: Garner. Goals: Momirovski (2).
CRONULLA-SUTHERLAND SHARKS 25. Tries: Feki (2), Nikora, Morris. Goals Johnson (3). Field Goals: Gallen (1).
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 19,491.
