From the Vault: The Bird

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Matabele

Journey Man
The glorious green pastures of the middle 1990s were a smorgasbord feast for the Fierce Eagle. Week after week it dined out on the choicest delights of a routine flogging of pitiful opponents, and the grisly spectacle was beamed live into our living rooms on free to air television. Three times the bird flew to the very pinnacle of the Rugby League Everest and on one glorious day in 1996 it swooped down and firmly planted its maroon and white flag into the peak.

But it all started to unravel on one horrible afternoon in 1997. Once again the bird perched close to the peak, with flag in talons and only seconds separating it from another day of untold glory. However, this time a troop of drug addled Knights led a charge, first by smashing their boots into the face of the fearless bird and shimmying and shaking their way over and beyond the summit as the littlest Knight of them all braved a punctured lung and managed to engineer a miracle. The brave eagle was callously swatted from the heights.

The following year the flight of the bird became stilted as the pressures of life tore at its wings and ripped away the proud foliage of its feathers. The bird sputtered and coughed its way through a world ravaged by the wars of previous years and the cold winds of the winter bore bad news and limited the bird’s capacity to soar. The flight of the eagle was abruptly stalled by a monstrous visage swathed in orange and yellow and brandishing a fearful weapon that emitted a terrifying shriek at frequent intervals. On a cold and frosty night the flight of the bird ended, and the lofty heights of mountain peaks and feathers rushing in the howling wind became but a distant memory.

The bird descended into a dark and tortured valley. Its master grasped about for a way out before handing the reigns to another without the sharpness of perception to find the way to success. By the end of that year, there was scarcely life in the beast and it was grafted together with its mortal enemy, the bear, to fulfil the ‘vision’ of a man that had long ago forsaken this land and lost touch with the common beast.

For three long years this awful creation wandered through torturous mazes of misery. The heart and soul of the bird became a corroded image of what it once was. The feathers on its wings became defaced and emblazoned with awful ruinations of black and red. Strange men that had overseen that wicked entity, the rotting carcass of a Bear that had endured seven decades of no success, were given the ability to influence and direct the fortunes of the hybrid animal.

The gasping caricature of bird and bear was mercilessly pulled out of its spiritual Brookvale home and forced to perform in front of the toothless inbred pagans that dwell on the Central Coast. And at first the pagans did come to the ground that the bear had built. They came to hoot and holler and jeer at the monstrosity that ran out in front of them, week after week. But it reached a point where even this toothless and ignorant horde could no longer bear to gloat at such a sick and sorrowful creature, a creation of faceless men in Golden palaces of a foreign land.

And so it came to pass that the bird found enough air under its wings to give one final, mighty flap and disengage its talons from the rotting carcass of the terrible black and red bear. The bear fell away, spinning and twirling into the abyss. On its way down it was temporarily saved by the tangled and barren branches of a Singleton tree before it too gave way in the shallow soil of the Central Coast and consigned the bear to a final, fateful plunge into the greatest depths of that fiery hole – to be forever forgotten and consigned to the memory of derision.

And what became of the bird? It flew to the rim of the pit and flopped to the edge, talons grasping desperately to the edge of the hole as it clawed with beak and wing to emerge over the side of the pit. And emerge it did, into a new century and a new footballing landscape. All around were high dunes of cascading sand. Water and sustenance were rare and helpers from on high were not to be found.

The bird, once a proud and forceful figure, a strutting mix of hooked talons and sharp beak, had barely the strength to hold off the fierce creatures that confronted it, let alone compete with them as it once did. And the bird flopped and spun from the edge of the pit and tried desperately to begin the climb to another summit of achievement. Yet this time the strength of wing to swoop and ride the current was not there. The bird could achieve little more than a few flapping strides before flopping back into the dry terrain and eventually the sands of began to slowly envelop the bird and force it under.

And then a man on a white charger rode up to the bird. He looked down on the bird with increasing pity and observed its pitiful efforts to drag itself up the never ending sand dunes. He saw something of himself in that bird – the fierce will to win and survive, despite pressing odds, and he decided to make the bird his own. So Delmege stooped from his steed and picked up the bird and breathed new life into it, bringing strength to its wings and steel to its belly.

Partially revived the bird was able to ride the currents of air to the top of the first sand dune to survey the new lay of the land. Far around, for as far as its keen eye could see, it saw that it was surrounded by tall sand dunes and jagged, rocky mountain ranges. The way ahead seemed unclear and uncertain. But such was the bird’s cunning that it surveyed the vista for a long time, and it picked out the places where sustenance could be found and where the path seemed smoother and capable of supporting life.

And so, on the 19th of February 2005 the bird spread its wings and began the long journey towards restoration amongst the elite. It sets its eye upon a shimmering streak of silver, glittering amongst two mountain ranges nearly as far away as the eye could see. And it launched into the air.

The person who loves the bird now waits with baited breath. Has the bird, with limited resources and the memory of the abyss still clear in its head, chosen to fly toward a devastating mirage of the false dawn, or has it chosen a destination towards the glittering catacombs of the NRL trophy cabinet.

The journey continues ……………
 
thanks mata
I think there may need to be another chapter after sunday

Its amazing to think what we have achieved.
 

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