This week Country Rugby League announced plans to scrap the current model and replace it with an Under-23s competition.  It means the chance to represent the Northern Rivers or North Coast is effectively finished for anyone over the age of 23.

I just… I don't know how one can recover from a shock like this. So much of the North Coast culture is built around the tradition of short fat men with broken noses, cauliflower ears, and no necks groping each other in the middle of a muddy field.

From an early age I was cursed with being tall and good-looking. So I was left on the sidelines, fending off a barrage of advances from attractive women, wishing that I too could one day fully appreciate the smell of male armpits and the endless comic potential of drunken cross-dressing.

Pushing people in their prime out of ritualised violence is just a gift to the reading and thinking lobbies, who will be glad to sink their claws into these vulnerable young men. We can't let them destroy our cherished way of life. How will our health care industry survive without a steady stream of knee injuries?