Cricketers &Footballers:Messiahs Or Monsters?(1)

One thing that has never ceased to fascinate me is how 12 men, each with disparate backgrounds, tastes and personalities, can seemingly form the deepest, most meaningful, for-life soul-mate relationships with women who all look exactly the same. I refer of course to the Australian cricket team and their very blonde wives/girlfriends.

Have you ever noticed that? The wife/girlfriend of almost every single member of the Australian cricket team (not to mention the Queensland Bulls, and every football team of every code in the country) looks EXACTLY like every other wife/girlfriend of every other member of the Australian cricket team (and the Bulls and the footballers etc). It’s like living in Stepford, and I have a theory that the reason these guys don’t spend too much time together in public with their partners is that there’s a very real danger that they could have one too many beers and accidentally go home with the wrong girl. For sure it would be an easy enough mistake to make.

Don’t get me wrong here – I’m not disparaging these women in any way at all, and I’m sure they’re all charming and delightful. In fact, I had the pleasure of meeting the very blonde wife of a Queensland Bull at the Melbourne Cup at Doomben a couple of years ago. She was just gorgeous and so very lovely to talk with (she and I share a taste for Alannah Hill fashion, so she’s a seriously cool chick in my view).

It just seems to be a frighteningly creepy coincidence. There are a couple of exceptions of course, but the odds are certainly in favour of blondes here.

Since we know that ALL men are attracted to blondes, it got me thinking about what kind of girls are attracted to what kinds of men. I think us girls work out in our early teen years what kind of guy we’d like to marry and we then set about trying to meet as many of them as possible in order to narrow down the field of contenders and choose the best specimen available.

By the age of 15 or 16, we seem to have divided into three fairly distinct camps –

1. those girls who want to marry doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers and the like;
2. those who want to marry tradesmen; and
3. those who want to marry someone famous – whether it be an actor, musician, media mogul or professional sportsman. Strangely enough, all the women from this category are blonde.

Most of my friends and I fell into the first category, although I do know some girls who chose the third category kind of men. It seems that we were all as stupid as each other and should have been like the girls who chose the second category, who clearly were the smartest of the lot.

Whilst the boys in the first category are now dropping dead like flies from stress related heart attacks and strokes due to malpractice suits, allegations of fraud and embezzlement, an overly energetic mistress, or losing millions on the stock market thanks to the US sub-prime mortgage crisis; the boys in the third category are in rehab, jail, on the front page of the paper with his undies round his ankles and a skanky ho in tow, involved in some sort of bribery scandal, or are out for the season with injury/slumping under bad form.

However, the boys in the second category are earning megabucks per hour as contractors in the never-ending building boom, buying their 26th house property and taking their happy wives and happy kids on fabulous debt-free holidays to Majorca, New York and Paris.

And I wonder where it all went wrong.

Apparently I must have completely missed some very important classes on offer while I was still at high school. While the Good (most of us Catholic) Girls who wanted to marry doctors and lawyers were busy going to Mass, studying biology, chemistry, the finer points of Shakespeare’s influence in English literature, and taking ballet classes after school, the ambitious blondes seeking famous husbands were taking classes of another sort entirely, such as:

-Botox 101
-Fake Tan Is Your Friend
-Dumbing Down Around Men
-Your Eating Disorder Needs Tic Tacs
-It Is Possible To Turn A Scrunchie Into A Dress For The Allan Border/Brownlow Medal dinner
-Chicken Fillets And Double Sided Tape
-How To Trap A Professional Sportsman into Marriage

and my personal favourite

-How To Suck A Cricket Ball Through A Garden Hose (your teacher: Paris Hilton)

Just quietly, I think that if those girls had taken that last class first, none of the other classes would be necessary, as everything else would have just fallen into place. But hey, you get that on the big jobs.

I’ve always been of the view that Category 3 husbands would make the worst possible partners. They’re so frequently away on tour, completely self-absorbed in their careers, prefer their mates to you any day of the week, and are shockingly notorious for their infidelity – we all know what “what happens on tour stays on tour” really means – right girls? Let’s face it, all sportsmen know how to bowl a maiden over, but the problem arises when they expect said maiden to get naked within approximately 3 hours of the first hello. Sportsmen clearly do not know how to play by Catholic Girl Rules, and nor do they want to because their enormous egos demand that they get what they want immediately.

“What are Catholic Girl Rules?” I hear you ask. Well, it’s probably easiest to explain it this way. You must look at Catholic Girls as something like a large health fund. You need to sign up and pay money each month, and some activities will be included as benefits from the start. These benefits would fall into the categories of things such as coffee dates, dinner and a movie, drinks at a hip bar, the simple pleasure of our company, and if we really fancy you – the merest partial glimpse of ‘the girls’ in a lace bra through a silk blouse. However, there is a very clearly defined waiting period for all major benefits, which clearly include physical access to ‘the girls’ and nudity of any description. If you listen to the Holy Father, such waiting period will be approximately 17,466 dates, or the honeymoon, whichever comes first.

Unfortunately I’ve also discovered that Category 1 guys make pretty lousy partners as well. It turns out that lawyers are indeed the locusts of the societal landscape, doctors have egos too big to fit into the room while you’re in it with him; stockbrokers are always ill from stomach ulcers, and merchant bankers are simply as dull as dull can be.

I’m sure Category 2 guys generally make pretty good partners, but apparently all of them are already married (to the smart girls who picked them in the first place) and none of the single ones are interested in me, as I’m far too ‘princessy’ for their tastes. It’s a shame really, as I’m rather fond of men who are good with their hands and who could build me a walk in wardrobe complete with the appropriate shelving to house my 200+ pairs of shoes.

So, it’s back to Category 3. However, since I’m a redhead with porcelain skin who refuses cosmetic surgery, and I bear absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to Paris Hilton, Posh Spice, Lara Bingle or an animated Barbie Doll, I figured that I’m immediately disqualified for selection as a cricketer’s/footballer’s girlfriend. This has never bothered me before, and indeed I’ve been quite relieved to know that I’m automatically out of contention (see Part 2 of this post).

Of course Murphy’s Law always comes back to bite you in the butt when you least want it to, and the one and only time in my life when I might want to actually go down that path is precisely the time when my disqualification is most evident. Sad really, as I think I’d be loads of fun to take to the Allan Border/ Brownlow/ Peter Burge/ end of Grade Cricket Season dinner and I’d play very nicely with all the other girls there.

Maybe I should have taken Paris Hilton’s class after all.