DYLAN CLEAVER'S MIDWEEK FIXTURE
There are many reasons why far more young, homosexual men end up battling crippling mental health issues (and sometimes worse), than end up being the next Gareth Thomas or Ian Roberts.
One of those reasons is jerks.
Jerks that quote from convenient passages of scripture and who apparently choose to worship not a loving god, but a hateful and intolerant one.
Jerks who think their set of beliefs override basic humanity.
Jerks who profess to Love Thy Neighbour, as long as that neighbour is not flying a rainbow flag from a pole on the front lawn.
Jerks who want to dismiss the ravings of another jerk as a "personal opinion" because, well, everyone is entitled to one, no matter how damaging that opinion might be to those more fragile than themselves.
Jerks who watch and listen while this is going on and choose to do or say nothing because the initial jerk might be really, really good at running with a ball, or maybe just because they don't want to draw attention to themselves.
Let's be honest, we've pretty much all been the above jerk at some point in our lives, brushing off intolerant, homophobic nonsense because, well, it's easier that way.
So non-jerks like Brad Weber give me hope.
Weber is a modern-day rugby hero, taking a lead where much bigger, literally and figuratively, players have feared to tread.
The Chiefs are lucky to have him.
Taller teammates, like Michael Allardice for example, should look up to him.
--
As the great philosopher-contrarian of our times George Costanza once said: Always leave them wanting more.
So the organisers of the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games did the opposite of that and staged the worst Closing Ceremony in the long history of bad ceremonies (which also might have appealed to Costanza, who once spent an episode of Seinfeld doing the opposite of his every instinct after deciding that all his life decisions to that point had been the wrong ones).
Perhaps Games chairman Peter Beattie got caught between Costanza's two stools of thinking when deciding to rubber stamp a ceremony consisting of boring people making boring speeches, while bored athletes walked listlessly from the stadium as an apoplectic host broadcaster told bored viewers they would be better off watching re-runs of The Sullivans.
It's amazing how little $46 million can get you these days.
You can only hope it is another nail in the coffin of these flatulent ceremonies that few have any interest in watching. These gratuitous thank-fests have no relevance to the modern athlete or the modern viewer.
End the Games with the 100m relay, quickly run through the medal ceremony, pull down the flag and hand it to the mayor of the next city, tell the volunteers to meet you around the back of the stadium where they can pick up their gift bags, and let the athletes do what they desperately want to do, which is to get back to the Village and get on the Foster's.
There you go Birmingham, I've just shaved £30m from your budget.
Thank me for it later.
--
Fears over the state broadcaster's ability to handle the Rugby World Cup, in partnership with Spark, are overstated. The World Cup offers the sort of structure and certainty you cannot get at such a chaotic jamboree of sport like the Commonwealth Games, and with just seven matches, there is limited scope for the sort wall-to-wall balls up we endured from TVNZ over the past fortnight.
To be honest, I'm kind of looking forward to listening to some new voices on the national game and am hoping that TVNZ take advantage of its broadcast journalism capabilities and actually try to break some stories at the World Cup, something Sky, for all its fabulous access, have never shown any interest in doing.
THE WEEK IN MEDIA ...
William Nack was a sports writing genius whose best work for Sports illustrated happened near the racetrack. This is a beautiful story about a man's love for a horse.
'They know how to make a champion. That comes from the culture to begin with.'