Weird things happen at the Walkabout
It was the best of times…
The Wallabies had just beaten England at Twickenham and the Walkabout at Shepherds Bush was a rich, giving environment.
As numerous vodka-cranberries changed the afternoon’s mellow Guinness buzz to a more manic, common or garden variety kind of shitfaced, things started to loosen up.
Trying my darndest to impress a confused Norwegian lass with tales from the Southern Ocean, I looked across and, for an instant, couldn’t help but wonder what I was seeing.
Amid the mingling masses, the gap-toothed locals and dozens of gold-shirted fellow Australians, my hulking and generally-reserved housemate, a Rockhampton boy with the kind of down-home manners anyone’s mother would be proud of, was doing something that can only be described one way.
He was eating a young lady’s hair.
Not just nibbling, either. He was seemingly devouring a mouthful of her flowing locks – and all without her knowledge.
Whether the scene said more about his lack of sobriety – or hers – is debatable.
That it screamed CRAZY FUCKING THINGS HAPPEN IN THE WALKABOUT is not.
Now, all of nine years later, things are different.
Now… it was the worst of times.
Now the Walkabout was in Birmingham, not London, and the patrons were the next generation of mullered Brits and wankered Australians and, wandering among them like immortal Highlanders, several international cricketers.
There’s some kind of weird cosmic symmetry in the allegation that Australia’s David Warner picked a blue with England’s Joe Root – because Warner could now very well be fucked.
The Matraville Malcontent may have played his last stroke in green and gold if the patchy reports filtering through from Blighty are proven true.
It’s not that Warner’s actions won’t eventually be excused, but given his patchy form of late he’s probably not in the kind of place where he wants to flirt with selection.
That was the line when Shane Watson screwed up in India, wasn’t it?
Don’t give a sucker an even break!
If, in this case, Warner sits out the Champions Trophy and loses his Ashes spot to Chris Rogers – an opener with a solid technique of all things – how simply does he return?
Not very simply, I would venture.
Beside potential selection debates, though, what on god’s green earth was David Warner doing in a Walkabout a couple of days before an international cricket match?
This is a guy touted in some circles as a future Australian skipper.
Yes, Ricky Ponting has form… but Warner is no Ponting, make no mistake.
I mean to say, HOLY FLIPPIN’ SNAKEBITE BATMAN! This is a freakin’ Walkie! This is a den of iniquity of some repute.
This is an ‘Australian’ theme bar with branches in town centres across the UK that specialises in serving pint glasses half filled with lager and topped up with strong cider to penny-pinching backpackers and even tighter office workers intent on getting full of piss and pulling anything keen(ish) – regardless of waist measurement or immigration status.
This is not a hotel lounge bar with a well-balanced G&T and the company of Ed Cowan and his latest Wisden.
No, no, no.
It’s the kind of place an unfit Sunday League cricketer might find himself on a Friday (but not a Saturday) and no professional athlete should be anywhere near within a week of their next performance – let alone 72 hours.
David Warner’s latest brain fade has seen him colour the Australian tour of England an even murkier shade of shitty brown and comes on the heels of another infamous rage-fuelled incident featuring the strawberry-blonde slapper from Sydney.
Just weeks after taking umbrage at Crash Craddock’s stinging comment on the IPL and biting hard on Mal Conn’s Twitter-bait, Warner has taken a quite literal swipe at young Root’s hairpiece – and may have connected with the young Yorkshireman’s chin in the process.
Word is that Root was well within his rights to be in the pub, enjoying a rare Saturday night away from the England camp, but the story goes that he was quite sober… which seems odd given he chose the Walkabout and is reported to have been decked out in a ‘silly wig’.
(In the experience of your humble correspondent, a ‘silly wig’ or costume of any description on a night out is a sure sign of intent to become over-refreshed. Either that or a desperate attempt to regain long lost self-esteem in the manner of a toupee-wearing bald man in leather trousers.)
Who knows why ‘it’ happened, though.
It’s not like Warner had batted long enough on Saturday for Root to really sledge sufficiently to deserve a whack in the pub.
And I doubt Warner is cerebral enough to pre-meditate anything other than his next swipe across the line at a lifting delivery pitched on middle and off.
Perhaps Root looked at Warner the wrong way and Warner, playing the part of the pitbull to Root’s naïve and defenceless toddler, tried to maul his face off.
Perhaps Clint McKay double-dog-dared Warner to bloody Root’s nose and Warner, not able to resist the man test that is a double-dog-dare, obliged.
Perhaps Root is a jumped-up little prick who deserved it.
Perhaps Warner really wanted to slot Stuart Broad but realised he isn’t tall enough to bother Broad’s chin with any kind of meaningful punch and picked out the shorter mark instead.
Perhaps he just plain ol’ should have had the good grace to be home in his hotel suite in the wake of a humbling loss to the old enemy.
Perhaps David Warner has shot his bolt and needs to be relegated to the realms of disgraced former Australian cricketers, a land patronised by Greg Ritchie, Trevor Chapell and Shane Watson*.
Perhaps, as mentioned earlier, the prospect of Chris Rogers in a baggy green is a godsend.
Another batsman in the Australian top four that has a forward press in the arsenal can never be a bad thing, surely.
Ultimately, though, let’s all view this as a cautionary tale.
If you’re a twenty-something Australian in England and you’re headed out on the town thinking to yourself that a night at the Walkabout – your home away from home – sounds like a good idea, think again.
Sure, it might be your best chance of finding countrymen to rub shoulders with, but if you go looking too hard for an easy Root you’re almost certain to wake up the next morning asking yourself that eternally rhetorical question…
“What the fuck did I do that for?”
* Shane Watson is not yet a disgraced former Australian cricketer, but it is just a matter of time.
