“I can’t imagine even the most ardent Newcastle fan could back them now that Johns has gone.”
I’ll be putting on fifty bucks tomorrow.
The king is dead, long live the king. Go Knights!
Update 11/04: OK so that’s the one-eyed fan bit out of the way. I won’t go on about Joey’s legacy, his impact and the hole he leaves: your papers today are chock full of that. When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s growing up in Lake Macquarie our most frequent school excursion destination was something BHP related. We learnt its history the same way we learnt about Gallipoli and the squatters: thoroughly, gravely and year after year. After year after year. The Knights are part of the life of the place in the same way. And like downsizing in a company town, they’ll wake up today knowing something has really changed.
It’s unfortunate, the way it ended, but looking at it in a cold-eyed way, I’m not unhappy. Honestly it’s better this way than him being out for a few weeks and meanwhile the team is in a holding pattern awaiting his return. This way, the team and the coach will crash or crash through and they have to do it on wits and courage and glorious luck and skills. No more speculation or waiting. They have to do it immediately without the off season to mull things over. They have to do it for real this time without the psychological check that he’ll be back. This catharsis could be the difference between the Knights’s sometimes indifferent sans-Joey results and the making of the post-Joey team, right before our eyes.
Obviously contingency plans will already exist (the way news outlets have obits on hand for prominent folk in case they shuffle off unexpectedly) but the prospect of watching this transformation on the run is really quite exciting.
I’m most curious to see how this new world pans out.
3 responses so far ↓
Phil // Apr 10, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Yeah, I reckon they’ll lift…..at least for one game. Then………? Wooden spoon.
Mungo Amanda // Apr 10, 2007 at 8:38 pm
On yer bike, Phil
Shaun // Apr 10, 2007 at 9:06 pm
What a player he was. Hard to compare players across eras but the best I’ve seen in my time. The way he could impose his will on a game was extraordinary.
Farewell, Bargearse.