SUPER LEAGUE has yet to kick-off and already it has left me scarred.
Like many impressionable youngsters (51 is still young isn’t it?) I like to mimic the actions of my heroes.
So since the new television promotion for the coming 2013 Super League campaign arrived I have been hoping to show I too have the super-strength of the Giants’ international star Eorl Crabtree or the amazing agility of Wigan’s Sam Tomkins.
The ‘Rugby League of the Extraordinary’ campaign has picked a player from each of the 14 Super League clubs and endowed him with super-hero powers.
The 60-second long promo film shows Tomkins dodging through a series of flaming wrecking balls swinging like pendulums, Big Eorl pushing a skip full of rubbish and rugby balls being thrown so hard they go through walls like shells.
What it doesn’t have is a ‘don’t try this at home’ warning anywhere in it.
So far I have dislocated my shoulder trying to push a load of builders refuse down the road near our house and then sustained a fat lip when the ball I threw at a wall rebounded and hit me in the face.
Thank goodness there were no sites under-going demolition on my way to work or I may have been writing this from a hospital bed.
To be fair the ad is pretty impressive, but some of the super-hero tags handed out to the players do make you want to wince just a little bit.
When I tell you that Eorl and Sammy T will be pretty happy with their respective monikers ‘The Hulk Of Huddersfield’ and ‘The Wigan Whirlwind’, you can begin to guess that others might not be as taken with their new nicknames.
Former Giants skipper Kevin Brown is ‘The Widnes Kingpin’ which for some reason makes me picture him standing at the end of a bowling lane waiting to be knocked over.
Others just beg questions, like does it take an awful lot for Michael Dobson to be dubbed ‘The Mastermind’ in an area like East Hull? (I do realise my Humberside drinking activities may now be limited to West Hull).
And as a Trinity fan I am particularly worried that Tim Smith is ‘The Wakefield Wizard’ – is this a veiled threat from the RFL that this time we will magically disappear from Super League if the ground issue is not sorted out?
But spare a thought for Kieran Dixon of London Broncos who has been dubbed ‘The London Phantom’ and will spend the whole season singing in sewers of the capital after being forced to take up residence underneath the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
But all this is just avoiding my annual attempt to predict who will be Super League champions as the competition starts at the weekend, so I will keep it simple this year.
My heart says Trinity, my head says Warrington – so it will be Leeds again then!
