Looking like Tarzan… playing like Jane.​...

Week three of the federal election...

By Richard McEncroe

 

I’m not sure if I’m using a footy analogy to describe politics or a political analogy to describe footy, when I compare Labor’s campaign effort to date and the recent on-field performances of the Essendon Football Club.  But, being a footicopolitical junkie, I don’t really mind.

 

When they should be hitting top gear, preparing to ‘breast the tape’ so to speak, both Labor and Essendon are limping to the line, offering seemingly token resistance.  In Hird and Rudd both camps are led by men fiercely confident they will be vindicated, but who are also becoming increasingly isolated, in charge of a collectiion of individuals marking time as opposed to a team.  Like Essendon players these past three weeks, with a few exceptions, Labor candidates seem to be going through the motions, listless.  Bill Shorten answers questions from the media with all the enthusiasm of an exhausted midfielder with a dodgy hammy chasing his opponent down the wing.  

 

After a great start to the year, Essendon have lost their last four games by a total of 39 goals.  Two of those losses were to teams that won’t make the finals.  The way they played in those games is much more interesting than the scores though. The Bombers players have lost their mojo and they are getting cut through like butter.  There is a yawning gap between the rhetoric and the reality at Essendon.  The more determined and ferocious the denials of wrongdoing become off the field, the more lacklustre and defeated the performances have become on it.  For every over the top emotional message of unity and “love for the Club” there is a corresponding underwhelming physical reality at play on the park. 

 

Footballers these days are so good, so fit, and work so hard off the ball to chase, tackle and make position that it becomes a matter of course.  You hardly even notice it.  But boy you notice when it doesn’t happen.  It stands out like the proverbial when blokes just don’t chase opponents out of defence, don’t make that second effort.  The Bombers this last month appear deflated, depressed even, as though barely able to bring themselves to turn up. 

 

Football, like politics, is a game you can’t win if your heart’s not in it.  You can have all the skills, all the talent you like; you can mouth all the right words, and send cool selfies, but it is passion and belief in what you are doing and saying that will get you the chockies.  Ask an Essendon player or a Labor Candidate and they will happily tell you that they are right behind their respective icon.  Hirdy’s a legend after all and hence infallible, Kevin, well, he’s the best we’ve got and he’s not Tony Abbott so of course we’re behind him too.  And sure, the Players, and the Candidates will all turn up when required, but it’s what they are bringing, or don’t bringing to the fight, that is telling right now. 

 

That the rank and file of both Labor and Essendon are a bit sub-prime and jaded right now is not hard to understand.  Both have torn themselves to shreds over the past year or three.  Both, in a pathological determination to gain an edge on their rivals, perceived or imagined, internal or external; have pushed ethical and moral boundaries.   In parallel slow motion own goals, both organisations have cannibalised their leaders and jettisoned their ethics in the quest for short term advantage.  Prime Ministers and Board Chairs, Treasurers and CEOs have been terminated and supporters and voters alike have been left confused, disenfranchised and disillusioned. 

 

The heavy casualty toll the internal bitterness has taken on Labor is only now really being appreciated.  Several proven and experienced Labor players who would otherwise be on the field in this campaign are either sitting on the bench or have been carried off on stretchers.  The polls reflect this self administered ‘talent-ectomy’.  Gillard, Emerson, Roxon, Crean, Garrett, Combet have all been either injured or omitted on form. Swan is on the bench for the duration and Shorten, the Jobe Watson of the line up, is allowed to play but only if he promises not to get a kick – oh, and Peter Beattie is the Sub, yet to be activated. 

 

To the extent that coach Rudd does have a strategy it goes something like...big Kev wins the ruck tap down to little Ruddy who dodges three rabid Libs, baulks an Asylum Seeker and kicks a long bomb inside the 50 meter special economic zone where Keeeevviin Ruuuud You Beauty! takes a screamer and slots one straight through the chop sticks. 

 

If there is a bright side for the Bombers and Labor in all this, it is perhaps that there is still time before Grand Final day to turn things around - but only if they want it badly enough.  There is still time for Shorten to decide, stuff this, I can’t just stand by and let Abbott win, and force himself into the contest. 

 

There’s time in this season and this campaign for Brendan Goddard to tear some games apart and for Greg Combet and Tania Plibersek to get into the game by waking the electorate up about what an Abbott Government would mean for low paid workers.  There is still time for Michael Hurley to show some presence and demand the ball inside 50 and for Penny Wong to do the same and demand Marriage Equality become Labor policy.  There is still time for Paddy Rider to switch on and time to stop the electorate from switching off on the environment.  No point looking like Tarzan and playing like Jane. 

For both Labor and the Bombers there’s still time. 

 

As they search themselves for inspiration, they could do worse than to reflect on the immortal words of the legendary St Kilda and Hawthorn coach Alan “Yabby” Jeans when he implored his players to “DO... don’t think ...don’t hope...DOOOO!”.