My chest is a construction site and my stomach is turning inside out over a game where grown men chase leather.
But try telling my central nervous system that this is just a game.
It’s the finals and the irrational mind-games have officially begun.
Every heartbeat feels like a bass drop in an empty room.
I’m staring down at a schooner, too nauseous to even swallow.
My hands are actually shaking as I check the lineup for the fourth time in five minutes, treating a tactical tweet like a matter of life or death.
The screen above the bar is just glowing static until kickoff.
A literal countdown to public humiliation or pure ecstasy and I’m trapped here paying good money to let eleven strangers ruin my entire month.
It’s a pathetic state of affairs, really.
Willingly letting a corporate logo and a bunch of twenty-somethings dictate whether I sleep tonight or spend the next week in a blackout.
I’m gripping the edge of the sticky timber table like it’s a life raft, just waiting for the screen to cut to the tunnel.
At least when that first whistle finally rips through the noise of the taproom, I know this agonising, pathetic dread is going to snap.
Up Up Cronulla.
Dane.