“Mick Fanning being interviewed after I assume 40 beers was the icing on the cake.”
If you’re an Australian living on its eastern mainland flank, but not including Victoria, you’ll be aware there was a rugby league grand final last night and that a team called Penrith, which is a little town at the foot of the Blue Mountains, won a tremendously exciting match.
And, the three-time world champ Michael Eugene Fanning, who was born in Penrith in 1981 before moving to Tweed Heads in 1993, was in the thick of the celebrations, looking very much like a pink-faced cherub amid the sweating brown bodies.
Following the game, Fanning, forty-two and very much nourished by the win, was interviewed by a television reporter and gave a performance that has been unanimously praised by football fans on social media.
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“Mick Fanning ain’t driving the Panthers bus tonight.”
“I reckon Mick Fanning has had a beer or 20!!”
“Mick Fanning is smashed haha.”
As he strolled through the winning players, Mick responds to questioning with,
“Are you kidding? This is the best thing ever. Oh my god, this is sooo amazingl, like, phew, look at it!”
Tears in Kelly Slater’s camp, however, as Mick, a straight-shooter if ever there was one, tells the reporter that Penrith’s co- captain Nathan Clearly is “the greatest athlete on earth” usurping common opinion, including mine, that Slater is the greatest sportsman of any era and medium.
Not Mick.
“Seriously, I swear to God, (Cleary’s) the greatest athlete on earth,” repeats Mick. “He went absolutely loony.”
Pointed.