Crucifying the Convert

The North Sydney Bears died because of people like Peter Lewis. Lewis wrote one of the worst screeds ever imposed on this language, full of dumb blindness and devious untruths, titled “The Convert: A Fan’s Journey from League to AFL”. He was supposedly a “devoted fan of North Sydney” for his entire life, one who embraced their defeatist culture and supposedly found meaning in their inevitable failure season after season. He abandoned them in 1996 for the Sydney Swans.

It was somewhat unfortunate that I stumbled across this wretched diatribe of a traitor. It had been a tough week. Cigarettes are long gone. Boozing was out. And I had just come from a vegetarian meal. The sun was out and people seemed happy and one man was trying to attach a toaster to a push bike in an attempt to seemingly build a time machine and everyone was having fun. Everyone, it seemed, but me. On my way home from Veggie Bar, I stopped by the Grub Street Bookstore to browse around and check out the cute American who worked there. I needed a lift to the spirits. Flicking through the boxes out front, I found “The Convert”, selling for the too-expensive $1. By the time I had finished the back-cover blurb I was in a fury. I was muttering to myself like a mad man and only stopped to blather something awkward and probably weird when handing over my $1 to the American girl who most likely had one hand on the telephone ready to call the police.

The book, naturally enough, was completed that evening. Lets just say it was no Town and the City. It was a scandalous rant that essentially told the tale of one man’s betrayal of his team and his code and the questionable motives he used to personally justify such treachery. He, of course, trots out the Super League War to validate his infidelity. He bleats about the game becoming corporatized yet pays no heed to the fact the most business oriented and politically correct organisation in Australian sports is the AFL. He claims to have been a genuine league lover but also makes it abundantly clear that he is a rugby union gusher who understands little about the true beauty of the sport. He seems to unilaterally declare that Australian rules is a better run sport for better athletes, more egalitarian in access and participation and a sport with a greater national imprint than rugby league ever could be.

I could write a book tearing his book to shreds. Instead I will just devote a few paragraphs highlighting how the last decade has proven what a fool he is personally, how he is the fair weather type the AFL is trying to win over in western Sydney and how he was never a true rugby league fan.

Lewis’s book is littered with references to league’s impending death. He talks about the boredom of modern State of Origin, going so far as to say that a Swans-Bears match is the equivalent in terms of excitement, intensity and public spectacle. The irreconcilable divide created by Super League (though the book was written in 1996 and Super League had not yet even played out). The corporatisation of rugby league as if league were the first sport to be treated as a business while at the same time criticising the League for not pursuing rationalisation earlier. He decries the regular season as monotonous and belies the influence of referees on matches while declaring every AFL match the equivalent of State of Origin at its eighties peak and AFL umpires always fair and right. In his conclusion, Lewis writes that league “has chosen to sever its community roots and will live or die on the largesse of businessmen” while finishing “With other sports like rugby union and AFL thriving, the commercial decision could be made to do away with this idiosyncratic game”.

Most of it is his obvious crush on Australian rules. He was smitten with the Swans success. It is no coincidence that he left North Sydney for a team who, in 1996, were successful. He is, quite obviously, a fair weather fan. His constant digs at league and prognostications of its impending death do, however, highlight what a shallow understanding he has of rugby league and the strength of rugby league in Sydney culture as well as a fundamental failure to understand the role of the media in the perception of sports.

There was no statement quite so dumb as his claim that rugby league could be superseded in Sydney by rugby union or the AFL. Thirteen years on and rugby union is not even considered a competitor to rugby league. The Swans managed to get a crowd of less than 20,000 to their last home final. The Melbourne Storm got bigger crowds to both their home finals last year despite the fact Nine refuse to show their matches before midnight, a problem Lewis never encountered when defecting to AFL in the mid-nineties with the AFL ensuring Swans games were always shown at a reasonable hour in Sydney. Lewis talked in his book about the sell-out between the Swans in their match with Geelong where 44,000 filled the SCG. That weekend a touch under 80,000 attended the five rugby league matches in Sydney including over 35,000 on Monday night. Last year the Swans still got 40,000 to the Cats game even with the match moved to Stadium Australia. That same weekend Sydney hosted five matches and had a cumulative crowd of over 77,000. Nationwide, rugby league out-rated the AFL on both pay and free-to-air television. The two major newspapers devote over half their sport pages to rugby league with the Swans receiving a half-page at best. Even during the off-season, rugby league is the most read about sport in the Telegraph and Herald. Like many jokers at the time, he rolled the dice and predicted the death of rugby league. He could not have been more wrong. And now he has to live with a reputation akin to that of a shamed cult leader.

The most damning criticism of Lewis, however, is not his stupidity or his blindness but his callousness in betraying a team he allegedly loved and then allowing that team to die in the gutter, bloodied and beaten and alone. Lewis wasn’t the only one to dessert the Bears in their time of need but he is in the firing line at present and he is the one who will come to personify those who turned their back on North Sydney. The Bears were perennial losers and geography consigned the Bears to a seemingly bleak future but unlike South Sydney supporters, who fought for their club and their history, the majority of Bears fans turned their back and walked away. Plenty used Super League as an excuse to abandon the club in the mid-nineties. Few stood tall when the club was forced into a horrid merger in 1999. There were even fewer who took to the streets or the law books in 2002 when that merger fell apart and the Bears were consigned to history. Most seemingly didn’t care and spouted well worn lines about Super League ruining their passion for the game and the corporatisation of the sport driving them to AFL and union. In times of trouble you stand and fight for what you believe in. Peter Lewis and all his weak-spined associated who supposedly cheered for the black and red took the low road though and left the Bears for dead. It is shameful and something that never would have happened at most clubs. That isn’t the way rugby league types operate.

It comes as no surprise that Lewis went on to work for disgraced former New South Wales Attorney General and ALP Left wing warlord Jeff Shaw. His behaviour has all the hallmarks of a Labor stooge.

Lewis is not only the type of person the AFL wants to win over but his unimpeded arrogance and belief in the sense of entitlement for the Southern game personifies the AFL attitude to Sydney and the battle for the West.

The AFL won’t have to worry about winning over the Lewis types; they already have them. Now they will just have a choice: Sydney or Western Sydney. Selection will no doubt be made on the relative success of each club with Western Sydney sure to be the popular choice early on as the AFL tries to manufacture them into an immediate premiership threat. There will be the eventers who will go along for the ride initially. Some fans who enjoy all codes will be there. Those bored by Sydney F.C, one time supporters of the Wallabies, will go and check it out. There will no doubt be a few who are won over by the bling and bluster the AFL is making out west. And that will be about it. They certainly aren’t going to eat into the rugby league faithful who, despite claims to the contrary by Lewis, are still attached due to the deep community roots the sport has in Sydney, particularly out west.

The AFL is delusional if it thinks it will gain any significant and long-term support in Western Sydney and Andrew Demetriou should be committed if he thinks that Australian rules having a team in Western Sydney will in any way damage rugby league.

The AFL obviously hasn’t done its homework. They claim to understand the demographics of Western Sydney yet they send up a coach who is not only unknown in Sydney but is out of touch with his own sport. That coach, Kevin Sheedy, an alleged legend in Melbourne, claims to not even know who Nathan Hindmarsh is. Sheedy’s inability to identify Nathan Hindmarsh just proves what a cheap act of publicity it was for the AFL to sign Karmichael Hunt.

For Kevin Sheedy, Nathan Hindmarsh is only the personification of a champion. A workhorse flush with skill and deep on heart, he represents all that is great about sport: toughness, courage, durability, skill, heart, work ethic. He is beloved across club lines by all in league and he would become Premier of New South Wales in a landslide if he ran at the next election. I doubt very much whether he would hire Peter Lewis as his media advisor.

The AFL will learn eventually though. It will cost them a fortune, it may lead to the fatal wounding of the Swans and it will be an embarrassment of monumental proportions. But they will one day learn that rugby league is as deeply rooted in Sydney as Australian rules is in Melbourne. They may think most Sydneysiders are fair-weather league fans like Peter Lewis who only suffer league because of the lack of an alternative. The realisation will one day dawn, however, that the average league fan in Sydney bleeds the blue and white of Canterbury or the red and white of the Dragons or the blue and gold of Parramatta.

The message to the AFL is simple. Take all the Peter Lewis types you want. They will just hitch their cart to the next bandwagon anyway. But if your aim is to kill off rugby league, well, you are entering a war you cannot possibly win.