will.i.am
Benchwarmer
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 7,098
- Reaction score
- 11
I really feel for the Bobcat, with what he has had to endure over the last 12 months especially..WHENEVER the game bleeds, we go back to the warriors.
They are the game's DNA. They reaffirm what we believe in, and what we believed in.
Less than an hour before Sonny Bill Williams was due to be aired on Channel 9, Andrew Ryan, one of the warriors, was sitting in a room doing a very un-football thing.
He was attending TAFE.
He realises football is not there forever and, unlike many of them, that the game is not a licence to earn for the rest of his life.
So with all that spare time he does two classes a week, shooting for a career in marketing after the final whistle, still giving. Andrew Ryan is always giving.
Williams, we were told, as Ryan sat in TAFE, was about to drop bombs.
Shortly after he went on The Footy Show and sure he was willing, but he had everything but the understanding.
He was asked the loaded question: "Andrew Ryan, the day after you walked out, was very critical . . ."
And with that, Williams sat there and put this proud footballer in his sights.
"I'm just hurt that some of the players have come out and bagged me straight away without knowing the facts," he said.
"Because I thought with them knowing the kind of bloke I was, there would have been a legitimate reason for doing what I've done.
"Those players that have stood up and hammered me straight away probably weren't my friends in the first place."
It was as arrogant and stupid an answer as was ever given. Terribly unfair.
Sonny Bill, lost in his own world, expects Ryan to understand him without returning any understanding for Ryan's circumstance.
After the club's greatest win this season, of which Williams was a big part, Williams pulled out injured the next game and was back for St George Illawarra with the Dogs hoping to keep their faint season hopes alive. That's when Sonny Bill walked out. Their best player. Two days before the game.
Wonderful.
There went the season.
Now Sonny Bill adds to this insult by saying he is running out for all their greater good: "I'm not sorry for sticking up for what I believe in, for standing up for myself, for standing up for fellow players."
What a guy.
Ryan had every right to be upset when he said what he did. The Bulldogs have endured one of the worst seasons in football history.
It began when their season began, when Willie Mason picked a fight and walked out in pre-season training.
Then came the most bitter board battle in the club's history, with the old board tossed and a new board brought in and chief executive Malcom Noad moved on.
Around this time Sonny Bill had changed management and, although nobody knew it then, it was a seismic shift.
Williams was rudderless and looking for direction.
In camp with the Kiwis for the Centenary Test, Williams constantly picked the brains of coach Steve Kearney and assistant Wayne Bennett.
"What do you think of this player? What about him? Maybe I'll tell them we should sign him?"
Here was a player trying to find players for his club.
Here was a club that had lost control of its players.
And with Willie gone and Sonny Bill about to go, it compounded when players everywhere began falling down injured. For a club whose talent pool was already shallow, it was disaster.
"Every day you look up and we go to training and it hasn't been the best place to be, just from a footy point of view," Ryan said. "Especially coming off such a great win in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago.
"It has been pretty horrible since then. But . . . the main thing is we have got to keep bouncing back.
"Everyone was disappointed after the loss . . ."
The Bulldogs are now so deep in injuries they are calling on under-20s players.
The losses hurt the warriors more than the others.
"Especially after the game it's pretty disappointing," Ryan said. "Trying to sleep after games."
Ryan lies in bed and can't sleep. Old plays run through his head. They fill his head just when he is trying to empty it and fall into peaceful sleep.
This is what happens in times of trial.
"I guess you do think about it a lot," he said. "Although I've got a family at home and my wife and daughter take my mind off it a fair bit.
"When you're trying to get to sleep at night you're thinking about what you can do better, what we're trying in each game."
Thoughts wander in and out, but few answers. "When I'm lying there awake?" he asks. "Things just drift through your head a bit, I guess.
"There's hundreds of little contests in a game, just little things which for teams like Melbourne and Manly are their bread and butter . . . like getting numbers in tackles.
"It's not the scoring tries.
"It's the little contests that go on through the game, that's what most teams talk about."
After last week's loss to Wests Tigers the Bulldogs went back to their leagues club, pizza and beer night.
They do it after every home day game, which happens now only once or twice a year.
Ryan sat with his 10-month-old daughter Lily in his lap, giving wife Olivia time off and giving himself some time with his daughter.
She grabbed the top of his schooner glass. She had a grip like her dad.
Amid the ache of the loss, the proud warrior sat with quiet dignity.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/sport/nrl/story/0,26746,24148333-5003409,00.html
Hang in there Andrew, these are tough times, tough people like yourself will overcome these down times. I, for one, will continue to support you and the team.
The last comment pretty much summed up the bloke Andrew Ryan.
