KEY POINTS:
When Australian rugby league hit local television in the 1980s we were wired into the raw voltage running through Sydney's west and south.
League is the working-class game, and the style around it was wild, open and expressive. Players didn't carry the ball at the opponents. They did
"the hard yards straight up the guts".
A head injury needing treatment was "a shot on the melon, he's in Disneyland, and he's going to the head bin".
A referee's possible error was not just a mistake, it was "a travesty, an utter travesty. That's shocking, shocking. That joker ought never to be allowed to whistle for his guide dog to follow him home ever again".
All that, plus the sharp uniforms and superb television coverage made league a winner. It came with a wonderfully Australian pragmatism, one I'd seen in the 1970s at Leichhardt Oval.
A battered, bloodied Balmain Tigers team were coming off after a big loss to the hated Eastern Suburbs Roosters.
Three old women hurled abuse and full beer cans at the Balmain players. One Tiger, with a gash to the forehead, looked around for help, realised there was no chance of any and fled, under a heavier bombardment.
It bordered on farce then. It is serious now. Something close to the worst of football hooliganism erupted last year at the Canterbury Bulldogs ground, threatening to undo what league has worked to accomplish, including toning down the rhetoric.
Somewhere in the late 1990s the struggle for air among the various codes in Australia, where cricket is the only men's sport to stretch across all states, arrived at rugby league. Part of that is taking the rougher edges off the game.
League was late taking its game to the middle class. The AFL (Australian rules) had already calmed down once Jack "Captain Blood" Dyer, a player and broadcaster who provoked many of the sport's great brawls, especially as a commentator, left the microphone.
With the AFL on its turf, with teams in Brisbane and Sydney, league had to broaden its support base. That meant appealing to a public which did not see a haymaker punch as the only response to any situation beyond a trainer bringing out the drinks.
The language was smoothed. While the commentators do their best to hew to the party line cracks do appear. They are still fond of "big hits", as seen in the game between the Warriors and Melbourne.
The team then homed in on the Warriors giant Manu Vatuvei. They struggled to decide if they were sympathetic for his struggles with high balls, or lost in admiration at his powerful running. While the game was pedestrian this made for an entertaining evening.
But the clash between new and old league values was clearest in the Manly and Cronulla game, when a Sea Eagle flattened a Shark.
"That was a real bellringer, a real genuine bellringer," roared out of the television.
Only the Cronulla player didn't get up. He stayed frighteningly still. The enthusiasm for power tackles stopped cold.