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Aaron Timms | December 2, 2007 - 4:33PM
SMH
Reports last week that Western Force players may have been guilty of picking on quokkas on Rottnest Island provided welcome news for all those who had been struggling to think of how Australian teams would be competitive in next year's Super 14.
Admitting a team of quokkas into the 2008 competition will not only solve the problem of how Queensland can avoid the wooden spoon next season, it will allow Australian rugby players to avoid the negative press that their frequent, drunken attacks on South Africans, passers-by, women, children, taxi drivers and each other regularly attract, by focusing their hatred on quokkas instead.
No doubt some - the animal-pashers, toilet flush refuseniks and serial bed-wetters of the Left - will blanch at the suggestion of admitting a team composed entirely of small, defenceless marsupials into the slick, commercialised Super 14 world.
And sure, if it does decide to proceed with the proposal outlined in this column, the ARU may have to consider allowing the quokkas certain on-field concessions (eg paws in the ruck, jumping in from the side allowed).
But that aside, the reality is that the entry of quokkas into the Super 14 would be no more than a natural progression of developments that both of the rugby codes in this country, with their fetishisation of the wallaby and the kangaroo respectively, have themselves initiated.
From there, the possibilities for expansion would be almost limitless, with bilbies, quolls, bettongs and potaroos all presenting themselves as obvious franchise candidates for a new, dramatically expanded Australian representation in the SANZAR provincial tournament.
Needless to say, a Super 14 made up of Australian marsupial makeweights will also have the consequence of gifting Australia's homo sapiens-based teams a couple of easy wins each season, thereby allowing them to rise from their customary bottom-of-the-ladder ignominy to mid-table respectability.
The "quokkas for Super 14 rugby" push also makes sense from a marketing point of view. As everyone knows, John O'Neill needs something big - a striking, memorable gesture - to get his sport back on track.
After the inactivity of the Gary Flowers era, in which it was impossible to arrange even the simplest of kickarounds with a bandicoot, and requests for scrum drills with opossums had to be submitted to the ARU for clearance six months in advance of the contemplated drill date (on account of some woolly, unparticularised concern for "marsupial welfare"), giving a Super 14 franchise to the Rottnest Island quokkas might just be the marketing coup that will tilt the balance of power back towards rugby union.
Ultimately, the only way the ARU will be able to reassert its authority at a regional and international level is if it plays to Australia's traditional strengths.
And there's no area in which Australia is stronger than marsupial diversity.
Before long, quokkas will become the sworn enemy of every North Shore private school kid - and that's no more than many of us, in our honest moments, have dreamt of for years.
http://www.rugbyheaven.com.au/news/n...530470766.html
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Originally Posted by innocent quokka
