I can’t wait for the NRL season to begin so I can watch my favourite opinions run out on the field.

Nothing is more exciting than seeing approved views, adorned in my team’s colours, parade around a football stadium for 80 minutes.

I don’t care if we win or lose, as long as my team is diverse and inclusive and equitable and completely in favour of gay sex and things.

But this week the 2021 season was in danger of being ruined before it began, with talk that one club had invited Unapproved Opinions to play.

That St George Illawarra thought they could improve their premiership chances by recruiting  Unapproved Opinions was truly shocking.

Sports fans had assumed that Unapproved Opinions would never again get a run in this country after being exorcised by Rugby Australia and banished to France.

Had the ARU not made it clear? We don’t want the best players. We want the best players we can cope with. 

Moreover, the Australian Rugby League Commission had repeatedly said there was no place for Unapproved Opinions in a game where views were now more important than tries and where thoughts were as relevant as effort.

Tolerance plays at fullback – no exceptions. Everyone is supposed to be onboard with this and there is no room for those who think differently.

So news on Tuesday that St George was considering 31year-old Unapproved Opinions threw the country into turmoil.

The Club assured panicked sponsors and fans that Unapproved Opinions would be bound by a gag order to ensure that unsanctioned views, unfashionable ideas and, most importantly, Christian perspectives, would never enter the public’s consciousness.

But this was never going to be good enough to placate officials concerned that a blistering run down the wing by Unapproved Opinions during a weekend game might suddenly cause wrong think to break out in the crowd.

Today Show host Karl Stefanovic spoke for all of Twitter when he described the idea as “appalling” and insisted that Unapproved Opinions should not be allowed to run, kick or tackle without first apologising for beliefs. 

Daily Telegraph sports journalist Jamie Pandaram went further, and borrowing from Unapproved Opinions’ own unauthorised worldview, insisted that repentance was required.

“If they allow Israel Folau (better known to sports administers as Unapproved Opinions) to return without repenting, that work will be all for nothing,” he wrote.

And, of course, Pandaram was right. 

If Unapproved Opinions would only repent – a religious term that means to make a 180 degree change of direction toward God (by which Pandaram presumably means the State) – then he could be born again as Reformed Opinions, baptised in the approved pro-LGBTQ narrative and gain admittance to the heaven on earth that woke thinkers are busy creating.

But today St George officials have announced, rightly, that they would rather finish stone cold motherless last than win the competition with Unapproved Opinions, and so the whole thing is off.

We won’t need to wear masks for our minds at the football after all. We can again look forward to the NRL virtue season where we will be free to cheer only our most agreeable players.

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James Macpherson is a sought after international speaker with a background in journalism at the Courier Mail and Daily Telegraph. He previously pastored a significant church in Australia and South Africa. James' weekly Good Sauce podcast comes out every Tuesday. He also writes regularly for The Spectator.

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