Your Kind are No Longer Welcome in These Parts: Violent Vitriol and Some Home Truths for Willie Mason

“You’re a bum, you’re a punk, you’re an old slut on junk”  

-Fairytale of New York, The Pogues

The Pogues and Donleavy and Joyce and Yeats and all the other fine Irish wordsmiths of today and yesterday have made a habit of accurate conveyance and though none would be aware of Willie Mason and his infantile attitude towards life, the Great Fellowship of the Irish Poet managed to find the right words to sum it all up. Mason is a bum and a punk and an old publicity slut whose junk is seeing his strange head and uncouth diatribes in the newspapers and on television screens. With the mental capabilities of a Big Brother contestant, the desperation of a low-rent ice addict and the loyalty of the common weasel, Mason pounds through life with complete disregard for all and sundry. Willie cares about nobody but Willie. Well, he has backed himself into a nasty corner now. And he would want to have lawyers, guns and money at the ready because that is what he is going to need.

After a decade of being treated like a king by Canterbury, he has turned around and smacked the club from behind, right in the eardrum. Even Danny Williams would not have sunk so low. Not that anybody should really be surprised. He has been nothing but trouble since arriving at Belmore and he will be missed by very few when his belongings are left strewn on Canterbury Road and his name is stricken from the proud history of the club. He will be nothing more than a sordid footnote, remembered, if at all, with the same fondness of a principal who got his thrills from a half-metre leather strap after the final bell had rang. He has entered the Jarrod McCracken spectrum of loathing and nobody who has sank that low has ever returned.

Willie Mason has been more elusive as to the reasons he wants out of the Bulldogs than he ever was on the field. Something to do with not being allowed to box in some two-bit clown event that he has claimed was for charity but subsequent reports suggest was for Willie’s bank account has upset the fool. Childish tantrums about his dislike for certain members of the Bulldogs front office staff has been widely reported in electronic and print media. He has bitched about fines he has received for repeated breaches of club rules, including undermining the financial well-being of the club by constantly wearing the paraphernalia of a competitor of the official club sponsor. In vague rants of stupidity and insolence, he has made claims that the Bulldogs are a disloyal club who no longer have a positive culture.

Before we get to bringing down the hammer on the head of Willie Mason, let us have a brief look at his behaviour while contracted to Canterbury-Bankstown. It reads like nothing more than a brief history of delinquency. He was reported to have tested positive to an illicit substance in 2002. That same year he allegedly did a runner from a taxi cab without paying the fare. It was around this time that Mason claimed to have ADHD, a convenient excuse for his ill-doings. When the Bulldogs were tossed out of the competition, Mason was one of the few greed-heads who cared more about money than glory and openly spoke out on the possibilities of leaving the club. In 2004 he was fined when on Origin duty for acting like a three year old when he forged another player’s signature, leaving the team hotel after curfew and allegedly visiting a brothel. In 2006 he threatened to walk out on the club despite having recently signed a long-term deal because he had delusions of grandeur that he could make it in the NFL, showing reckless disregard for the Bulldogs and rugby league as a whole. This year he verbally abused a female reporter without provocation.

That is quite a rap sheet and hardly a sturdy base to be working from when claiming to have been wronged.

It is tough for any intelligent person to fully grasp what is driving Mason more; his utter stupidity, his mind-boggling selfishness or his colossal sense of self-import. There is certainly no legitimate reason as to why he should want to leave. He has not been hard done by. To the contrary, he has been treated like the beloved family Golden Retriever and was given many more chances than I would have afforded the punk. He, simply, refused to adhere to club rules, believing he was above the laws and behavioural guidelines the rest of the club and, in most instances, the rest of society were and are required to stick to. 

His qualms about club loyalty are completely unfounded. Mason wants to coarsely screech at anyone and everyone that loyalty at the Bulldogs is dead. He uses Adam Perry as an example. Adam Perry was released as his career was coming to an end and it was not in the interests of the Bulldogs to re-sign him. Perry was a loyal servant and will always be welcome at Belmore. But he was released because his play has been less than stellar over the last few seasons. One thing Mason has to get through his skull is that he is a player. He is not the CEO or a board member or the coach. Players, for good and ill, look out for their mates and themselves and the on-field efforts of the team. They have no understanding of the football club in its totality. And that is sharp players. Those with the wit and intellect of Willie Mason have, what we in the gambling game call, not a hope in Havana.

The idea that loyalty is a two-way boulevard is also a notion foreign to Mason. Constant misbehaviour and a failure to always perform on the field do not constitute repayment.

Mason has also made it known that, in his learned opinion; the culture of the Bulldogs has changed for the worst. He speaks as if he is an outsider, a passive first-person character in a tale of the decline of man and substance and empire. Does he think his attitude and generally negative demeanour doesn’t have a harmful impact on the club’s culture? Is he that dense? This, I must say: I am in complete wonderment at the possible shallowness of the human mind when Willie Mason opens his gob. Culture comes from both the top and the bottom. It is not a decree handed down or a reward collectively demanded. It derives from attitude, unity, mindset and action, of both the group and the individual. When a domineering presence like Willie Mason speaks and behaves as he has, it has a most destructive effect on club culture. That point is inarguable.

Without the slightest regard for the team that has fed and protected him, Mason, without legitimate reason, has abandoned the Bulldogs. There was no consideration of his signed contract or the fact he managed to make the money he is on because Canterbury were forced to decide between him and Thurston and him and Anasta and him and Price. A corrupt city councilor doesn’t behave with such scant regard for others. Blood will soon cover these walls the pressure in my skull is so great…

Right.

There we are. Back on track.

The Bulldogs have done the right thing in popping this giant pimple from the ass of the Canterbury Rugby League Football Club. He has been barred from the premises and effectively sacked. He is now free to indulge in his fantasies of bourgeoisie self-import while low rent clubs chase the myth with delusions he can be changed. The Bulldogs are now free of the scourge and have cap room to invest in decent players for 2009. Canterbury-Bankstown welcomes with open arms Todd Carney and Israel Folau. We hope you enjoy your stay.

Willie Mason knows nothing of providence or fidelity or gratitude. He is a recidivist of the highest order, a modern day rugby league cross of a cheap and dumb Dickensian pick-pocket and a poor man’s Machiavellian mimic. Willie Mason will soon learn a few of life’s truths and when he does, we can all cackle heartily when the realization hits that he has burnt all his bridges and the only road left is the one straight to hell. They thought Richard Nixon has a rough time once he left the White House with a victory sign and a beaten down legacy. Willie Mason will soon learn that was nothing.  

Fare thee well Bucky. Your kind is not welcome in these parts and never will be.