An All-Out Brawl in Australian Rules Football is Here to Bring Us a Message of Hope

I've had all I can take of ads somberly reminding me the way we're going to make it through a thing is together, paid for by companies that just laid off 1,000 workers. I long ago reached my limit of someone I didn't vote for handing the podium over to someone who was never elected telling us to forget all the times they've been dead wrong but to believe them now and everything will be back to normal someday. If you want to sell me hope, this is the content I need.

I haven't set foot outside the Commonwealth of Massachusetts since going to the Baylor at WVU game on March 7th. So I don't know what it's like in other places. But I see full casino floors in Vegas, indoor dining in New Hampshire and Rhode Island, bars open all over the place. And I can't believe we're still in about Phase 2 of like a 150-Phase reopening plan. It feels like being a kid with an overprotective mother who's got Munchausen-by-Proxy Syndrome and will only let us look out the window at the kids playing in the neighborhood, but not join them because she says we'll catch something and drop dead on the spot. 

It feels like being Bubble Boy. 

So what all Massholes, to one extent or another, are doing to get through the now fourth month of this interminable sentence of House Arrest is to look at the rest of you for hope. For glimpses into a far off future in which the things that truly make life worth living have returned. And this fight between Australian Football League's Western Dogs a GWS Giants is another bright light of hope, shining in the distance. 

Just look at this display. Fists flying. Cheap shots. Guys wrestling each other to the ground. No one's worried about social distancing, WHO guidelines, asymptomatic spread or comorbidities. No one's putting blue lights to each other's foreheads to check for signs of fever. It's just two wolf packs of enraged testosterone and Foster's fueled Alphas, breathing each other's respiration, swapping each other's persperation, and kneeing each other's balls, as God intended. 

And this can be us someday. Hockey fights. NBA shoving matches. If MLB and the Players Association can take their heads out of each other's asses for once, bench clearing brawls where everyone stands around and grabs each other and no punches are thrown. A reminder of what once was good. And can be again. 

So thanks, AFL. I don't know what that field goal looking thing was or what it's worth on the scoreboard, nor do I care. Just keep throwing knuckles and being a beacon of hope to a world that's still suffering.