Is the Dally M Award turning into a curse?
Posted 7/8/2011
By Shaun Maher
Watching 2010 Dally M winner Todd Carney flounder around the football field this year it got me wondering about the nature of the Dally M award.
Does the winning of the Dally M build so much pressure and expectation on the player that they are doomed to fail the following year? Does it give the winner an inflated opinion of themselves and karma brings them down the next season - or is the award just plain cursed.
Major awards throughout our society are given for exceptional work in a particular field. The award can be given for one exceptional performance or as a reward for a body of work over a long period of time, but in either case the winners are usually able to parlay the award into greater success. There is one notable exception though. An award so terrible, it’s acknowledged throughout the world as a harbinger of career doom…… We talk of course of the Best Female Actor Oscar.
Ever since Halle Berry won the award for Monsters Ball in 2002, future nominees have approached nomination with trepidation. After her win, Berry was divorced within the year, helped kill off the Pierce Bronson era of Bond and embarrass herself with Catwoman.
Is it possible that the Dally M award is approaching the same level of darkness as the Best Female Actor Oscar has become?
Let’s look at the last few years.
_______________________________________
2010
Dally M Winner – Todd Carney (Roosters)
Best Female Actor – Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
Natalie Portman wowed the world with her emotion and technical skill in Black Swan, but has since served up such B-grade drivel in Thor, Your Highness and No Strings Attached that it makes you wonder if she was just saving up for maternity leave.
Portmans massive fall from grace is eerily similar to the form reversal of the Roosters. They have gone from runners up to also rans and their form has tracked the same course as their star Todd Carney. They are going so bad th could now be called the Black Roosters.
2009
Dally M Winner – Jarryd Hayne (Parramatta)
Best Female Actor – Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
Since winning her award Sandra Bullock has literally done nothing. She has not made a single film. The curse of the award was proven when she broke up with her husband immediately after the ceremony when it was revealed he was having an affair with a human tattoo. If it wasn’t for her adoption of a very fashionable African baby, you’d say the last two years were a complete write-off.
In the same period, Jarryd Hayne went from being the toast of the Rugby League World to not even in the Top 5 fullbacks in NSW. In the 2011 series, Josh Dugan, Anthony Minichellio were chosen ahead of him for the number one jumper and it appeared that Brett Stewart, Kurt Gidley and even William Hopoate would been picked before him.
Hayne's only chance for future success appears to be if he gets adopted by Bullock and she guides on an 'against the odds journey' of a sporting fairytale like she did in The Blind Side.
2008
Dally M Winner – Matt Orford (Manly)
Best Female Actor – Kate Winslet (The Reader)
Matt Orford won the Dally M in 2008??? Holy crap. Now he can’t even get a game for Canberra who are currently running 14th. But before you start feeling to sorry for him, we need to look at Kate Winslet.
Poor old Kate also got divorced after winning her award (as do 63% of all female recipients) and since then she hasn’t made a single movie either. Nothing. All she has done is make a TV series.
We expect Matt has a lot of time for TV now as well.
_______________________________________
Actors are just like sports people in that they are only as good as their last performance. Sure you can build up credibility over years of hard quality worker, but one stinker can bring it all undone.
So beware Gallen, Cronk, Thurston and co. Dally M success this year will definitely mean your husband will leave you, but may also mean that you go through a rough trot on the field.
