Football Leagues
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Struggling cane farmers in a busted-arse town The Nth Queensland Cowboys entered the comp in 1995 and decided that since Australia was becoming the 51st American state, they might as well copy the name of the Dallas Cowboys gridiron team rather than use an Australian term like"jackaroos." The Cowboy name disappointed the local community who had preferred ‘crocodiles'. Instead, it was the Townsville basketball team that used the crocodile name not long after. Aside from choosing a silly name, on the field the team played as if their only desire in life was to relax next to the swimming pool. Consistent losses ensured that they were not shown on NSW television from 1996 to 2004. One of the few times that they made headlines was in 2001 when Tiger's winger John Hopoate stuck his finger up the anuses of three of the players. Following the experience, the three players had good reason to walk like Cowboys. Even though the team has an American name and a history of failure, it received phenomenal crowd support. This could be partly attributed to the high number of tourism workers in the local economy. Tourism workers are very positive people because they have to sell the idea of living life to the fullest and spending money on the intangible. They do things. North Queenslanders make an interesting contrast to the public servants of Canberra. As a public service community, the Canberra culture is one of bean-counters that complain about the need for a senate inquiry. Consequently, while Canberrans like to spend their money on a new computer, Nth Queenslanders like to feel the emotion of a football game. Occasionally, Nth Queenslander's emotion has spilled into areas other than cheering. At one home game, a brawl spilt over into a group of cheergirls; bringing a smile to the face of many-a-man lacking access to Canberra's XXX videos. Likewise, the administrators also seemed particularly passionate about their job. So much so that they fired one player for drinking beer on the plane. (Of course, it must be stressed that they weren't concerned that the player was drinking beer, just that the player was drinking VB not XXXX.) In 2005, the club finally strung a few wins together and proved that their passionate supporter base made for a club with an interesting image. Sadly, the Sydney media's lack of imagination had them playing up the Cowboy's "doing it for a down and out community" angle. According to the Sydney media, Queensland's cane farmers, struggling with American restrictions on their cane, head off to the footy to find some rays of sunshine in their otherwise gloomy life. It was a similar angle to that Roy and HG used when they barracked for the Sydney Swans on the grounds Sydney was a "busted arse" town hurting under million dollar house prices. Each to their own, but surely stories of scragging Cowgirls would have held a newspaper over the man's lap for a far greater time period than that of a busted arse community - especially as Hopoate incident had ensured that the angle had already been well and truly played.
2004 - When compared to other NRL supporters
2006 - When compared to other NRL supporters
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Invention of Australian sports Cricket
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Roy
Morgan research
