Sentimental Favourites

With each passing year of league, each team writes another chapter in its history. Some teams' histories are so rich, so full of highs and lows, that they could be a real person, perhaps watching from the sidelines. I have no idea how a rugby league team's history would go about buying tickets to a game, nor how many seats it would take up, but that is beside the point.

Watching the Dragons play to a packed home crowd on Friday night, you could tell that their jubileetion was not limited just to their team's play this year. No, the Dragons hilarious recent run of combined making-semi finalness and non-grand final winningness was deeply implicated, if not red-handed, in those emotions.

It got me thinking, thanks to club histories, fans have both a heightened sense of the significance of seemingly regular events where their team is concerned, as well as a sense of history-making stories that extend beyond the usual parochial limits of their team. It seems to me there is a certain amount of sentimental favouritism with StGeorge this year, owing to the perfect storm of aforementioned past inglories, the addition of Zen Master Bennett, and some kind of residual goodwill for the Dragons throughout the league, on account perhaps of their glory days.*

I really hope the Dragons don't win this year.


*I hasten to add that the goodwill for the Dragons is far from first in the league. I would rate the Rabbitohs as far and away number one there, and if the Bears ever come back, they'd be number two. Imagine a grand final between those two! StGeorge would be a fair way back, then maybe Cronulla. All the rest are either two young or too recently successful to engender the same feelings. Before their merger, Tigers and Magpies would have been well up there too. As it is, I'm not sure how their 05 win would have been taken by their club history(s).