Hey Parra fans, welcome to the TCT Golden Point season review. There’s no analysis or rehashing of concepts that few people would naturally connect to rugby league this time — just some reflection, a little reminiscing, and a bit of context I pulled together last week before an unexpected health issue put this piece, and quite a few other things, on abrupt pause. On that note, I also want to give a big shout-out to my awesome and legendary sons, who helped me pull together this introductory paragraph, turned my graphic preparation notes into Canva images, and supported me to get this piece uploaded and published from my bedside, all while I’m apparently looking (and very much feeling) half-baked and completely cooked at the same time.
A SEASON OF F-WORDS, A LIFETIME OF BLUE AND GOLD
It started with a question, one that I nearly didn’t have the courage to answer. It was early February and I was on a late train home from the office, listening to The Tip Sheet discuss the Zac Lomax circus. I had been reading and listening to TCT for yonks, having first discovered the site in 2017 while looking for NRL content Dad and I could both enjoy as I sat by him during his cancer treatment. Dad was born in 1941 and barely had his head around phone banking, let alone the internet; and the chemo wasn’t kind to his vision, so his favourite pastime of reading the news became my honourable duty each afternoon. I found TCT because I never got to the newsagent in time to grab the paper — a contentious flaw — but it quickly became a pretty good middle ground for both of us. I liked the opinion pieces and the Parra focus; Dad liked Sixties’ old-school vocabulary and the fact the site didn’t feel like a scientific calculator with too many buttons to navigate.
Despite following TCT for years, I had never introduced myself, commented or otherwise made my presence known. I simply enjoyed reading the articles and listening to the banter. For context, my profession requires me to maintain a fairly low-key public profile, which honestly suits me just fine most of the time. I can hold a conversation and hold my own when required, but I am equally content to go unnoticed. Some people enter a room wanting everyone to know they’ve arrived; I prefer to make it to the other side without anyone noticing I was there.
But when TCT asked a question about the different types of court hearings and what they actually meant, I bit the bullet and stepped out of my comfort zone. There was an enormous amount of sensationalised and inaccurate commentary flying around, and the situation happened to intersect with an area of expertise that I understand better than my own two feet academically and professionally. So I wrote something in the hope that I might help fellow supporters make sense of what was in reality, a complicated and multifaceted case. I sent TCT a message on Instagram intending to explain the organised chaos unfolding across the various state and federal courts, translate what all those overly Latinised legal terms actually meant, and then happily retreat back into my cave to continue a life of predominantly voluntary obscurity. That singular intention became an intriguing conversation with Sixties about the club’s legal options, chances, risks and possibilities for remedy and, before I really knew what had happened, I was three articles in, had committed to a regular column and Golden Point was born.
On Father’s Day, my family and I were reminiscing about Dad. He has been gone for just over eight years now, and the conversation turned to what he would be most proud of in each of us if he were still here. It has been a pretty big few years for all of us, so there was some spirited debate, but we eventually agreed that in my case, he would probably be prouder of Golden Point than anything else I have achieved; including my double master’s degree. To dad, much like being a Parra fan, life wasn’t always about the big wins; it was about what made the rough-and-tumble road more enjoyable. He had also set his heart on me becoming the next Debbie Spillane in my teenage years and, in a way, I think he might have preferred that I hadn’t chosen such a conservative career path. When people asked him why Parramatta, his standard answer was simple: “It’s not just a club. It’s a community.” Hence my attachment to Parramatta is very much connected to my dad and has always extended well beyond eighty minutes of football. I love the club, the city, the people and the cultural history wrapped around all of it. I did a lot of my secondary schooling locally, Dad spent much of his last 30 years living in Dundas and Northmead, and both my maternal grandparents and their parents before them were locals too. So there is plenty of background and substance to my passion; it isn’t just blind loyalty; it’s nostalgia, familiarity and emotional comfort.
Dad taught me from a young age that intelligence was important, but that it was only truly useful in conjunction with survival skills and altruistic actions. When I was about eight, a teacher stopped him at school pick-up, concerned because I kept climbing trees at recess — mostly to pick fruit or extract foreign objects that had been projectiled into the branches through unruly play. Instead of immediately condemning my terrible discipline, Dad took one look at the size of the trees and asked me to explain how I had managed to get so far up without a boost. Then he wanted to make sure I was sharing any fruit I picked with my friends and giving the projectiles back to their owners. The teacher was considerably less impressed and made a disparaging comment about what my future held if I continued to prioritise my current skill set rather than improving my classwork. Dad could see her comments had upset me, so he reminded me on the way home that I could gut a fish better than anyone he had come across, and most people can live comfortably on fruit and fish; so if what she said came true, I wouldn’t be living under a bridge for long. Though he did make me promise to keep the tree climbing to weekends from there on in.
My point is, while I haven’t gutted a fish or climbed a tree for about 30 years, the crux of that life event has stuck with me to this day; and I reckon it is part of why I remain such a hopelessly committed Parramatta supporter. Even when a game, a season, or occasionally several consecutive seasons, leave me feeling like a metaphorical underachiever gutting fish under a bridge, there is something wonderfully imperfect about loving a club and a place that carries such a large and memorable piece of my family history and childhood. Much like picking fruit for your friends, it means being surrounded by a community that, at its best, is loyal, protective, passionate, and familiar.
2026 NRL and NRLW Summaries – A Year of Ups and Downs – written by the author, prompted by NRL match centre, enhanced by recollection and reflection – Created with Canva Premium
A Season of F-Words
There is really only one honest way to describe 2026 for mine: it has been a season of F-words; some printable, some probably best left in the grandstand. There has been football obviously, along with frustration, failure, fragility, questions of fairness, occasional fury and, every now and then, something resembling fortune. But underneath those have been the F-words that have mattered considerably more: fun, family, friendship, familiarity, fellowship, fortitude, faith and future.
Football clubs are strange beasts. They are businesses, employers, cross-industry health networks and community institutions all at once, yet as supporters we rarely see them through these factors beyond the team list and the scoreboard. Our experiences are influenced and intertwined through our family and friends, peers and colleagues, those who sat beside us at games thirty years ago and those who sit beside us now. Even the familiar strangers we walk past to and from the game whose names we may never learn somehow become part of the ecosystem of what supporting a club like Parra means.
Our experiences are shaped by places too; some obvious, some not. Stadiums, leagues clubs, car parks, train platforms, pubs and the particular patches of concrete where you always seem to bump into someone before a game. There is a familiarity in those rituals that is difficult to explain to someone who has never had a complex relationship with a sporting franchise. The colours, the routines, the walk towards the ground, the nervous optimism before kick-off; all of it accumulates over time until football becomes attached to memory in ways that have very little to do with the final score.
For me, Parramatta has been stitched through different versions of my life for as long as I can remember. It is partly football, partly family, partly habit, partly community and partly inheritance – though it may also, at times, involve a small amount of voluntary psychological disturbance. That is probably where the F-words become most relevant. Supporting Parra has involved frustration, periods that have felt distinctly forlorn, sporting fragility, unexpected failure and the occasional glorious burst of momentary fortune. Thankfully, there are more enduring F-words that make it all worthwhile: family, friendship, familiarity and fellowship. These are reflected in the people you go with, the people you meet there, the people you argue with and the people you somehow recognise instantly and greet with a smile even when you have never formally been introduced. There is also the strange sense of belonging amongst the thousands of people who may disagree about coaches, players, selections, administrators, tactics and almost everything else, yet still turn up wearing the same colours and wanting the same thing. There is also fortitude, which is perhaps essential for any long-term Parramatta supporter, and of course faith — not necessarily faith that next week will be better, because there are limits to recklessness, but faith that one day it might be.
There is another part of this year I hadn’t anticipated. Somewhere along the way, Golden Point became important to me in its own right. Writing for recreation has always been a big part of my life; almost as much as Parra. Having somewhere that allows those two things to collide has been an extraordinary privilege; though what has made the column meaningful is not simply the opportunity to publish my own thoughts, it has been the conversation that follows. Readers have agreed with me, disagreed with me, corrected me, added context, challenged assumptions, and sent me down rabbit-holes I had never considered; as some of the best ideas I have explored this year have come from comments underneath previous articles. That sense of fellowship matters to me because Golden Point was never intended to be a place where I declared myself indisputably correct. Rather it was always supposed to be somewhere where ideas and analysis could be presented for subjective consideration; a place where agreement is optional, critical thinking is welcomed and differences are respected. Because respectful curiosity is always much more interesting and entertaining than ripping one another to pieces for simply thinking differently.
There have also been weeks this year when writing this column has been my sanity. No matter how meaningful our intentions are when we make voluntary commitments like Golden Point, life has a way of intervening. Sometimes our families need us, people we love are sick or struggling, and everything else has to be put on pause for a while. Yet finding the time to keep writing has become an important part of finding a healthy balance beyond the constant cycle of work and everyday responsibilities. Golden Point has become a cathartic outlet and a welcome escape when everything around me feels particularly heavy.
All things considered there has been something unexpectedly grounding in that comfort; and perhaps that is where fortune belongs in this story. However this column came about, I feel incredibly fortunate that it did. It has become a place to question, learn, occasionally vent, have fun and write about the football club I love. So, to everyone who has read an article this year — whether you agreed with every word, disagreed with most of them, left a comment, shared an idea or simply quietly followed along — thank you.
One Fans Irrelevant & Subjective Reflection 💙💛 – written by the author, prompted by NRL match centre, enhanced by recollection and reflection – Created with Canva Premium
The Golden Point: A Lifetime of Blue & Gold
So, I didn’t set out to become a regular contributor, and I certainly didn’t anticipate voluntarily spending quite so much of 2026 disappearing down rabbit holes involving governance, regulation, recruitment, workplace systems, player welfare, organisational behaviour and just about every other complicated subject that could conceivably be connected to a rugby league club or the code. But I guess Debbie Spillane was always in there somewhere, waiting to be set free. Life can be funny like that; sending you gifts you didn’t know you needed, challenging your fears, giving the cyclone that is work-life balance a tad more life and somehow filling a hole you didn’t even know was there. At the beginning of the season, I introduced myself by saying that if it were scientifically possible, I would bleed blue and gold. After a year spent questioning assumptions and repeatedly trying to separate evidence from emotion, I have still found absolutely nothing that disproves the hypothesis.
Yes, 2026 may well have been a season defined by a highly subjective collection of mostly conservative F-words; and yes, on game day, that F-word—and its many variations—also made regular appearances in my vocabulary whether I was at the game or watching elsewhere. But through all of them remain the things that have always mattered most: the past, the people and the places. For mine, rugby league clubs have a remarkable way of connecting those things — through friends, siblings, children, parents, grandparents and the many others who shape our lives; through memories of people who are no longer with us; and through places that helped shape those memories, some still standing and others surviving only in our hearts and in the stories we continue to share. That is why supporting Parra has always been about far more than eighty minutes of football to me.
The 2026 season gave us reasons to celebrate, swear, question, hope, despair and occasionally wonder why we put ourselves through this. Still, in 2027 we will return with fresh hope and anticipation, and 2026 will become another season in our history — one where the ladder tells only a very small part of the story. Emerging players will excite us and give us something to dream about, new coaches will provide hope that improvement is on the horizon, and new leadership will continue strengthening the club beyond the football field. Another batch of bright-eyed supporters and future stars will begin their own Parramatta stories in backyards, lounge-rooms and watching on in the stands — backing the badge, inheriting the pride and embracing the history while learning to shoulder the pressure and completely unreasonable expectations that come with supporting a club that hasn’t won the lollies since Halley’s Comet last graced the Earth’s skies.
Bring on 2027! 💙💛
Roly-Poly
