For those who believe the Cronulla organisation deserves everything it gets, you should be well pleased. Karma is preening itself to be an absolute bitch on Monday night.
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The only thing missing from the end of the Sharks season appears to be a plague of locusts. Amid a splendid mess of drug suspensions, injuries, retirements and rampant mediocrity, the boys from the Shire are gritting their teeth in preparation for hopping the bags in the face of insurmountable odds.
In Townsville, the Cowboys look as if they might take the wooden spoon out of the cabinet and dish out an early hiding. Given the discrepancy in the lead-up form, the playing lists and the external influences surrounding this game, there's a question as to whether it should even be sanctioned.
Certainly the types that set the odds are preparing for a bloodbath. The Cowboys have been installed as the shortest-priced favourites since we all worried the Y2K bug would bring on armageddon (that word might yet feature in someone's match report).
If you're Clive Palmer, there looks to be an easy $30,000 to be made, providing the big fella is happy to lay down one million on the Cowboys, who have been listed at $1.03 in a two-horse race. The Sharks are at $14 and likely to be 'friendless', as they like to say at the races when a nag's price drifts off into the never-never, often taking my cash with them.
The Sharks have also been given a casual 30.5 point head start. It's almost unheard of but not surprising, given the Cowboys are in white-hot form, just beat the Rabbitohs in Sydney and play about 75 per cent better at home, where they recently cantered past Wests Tigers 64-6.
Which brings non-diehards outside of The Shire to a dilemma of sorts. Usually, a mismatch of such epic proportions would produce a groundswell of support for the plucky underdog. Will that be the case this time, or is this all part of rugby league's completely epic, cosmic payback to a club found to have run a systemic doping program?
The coach from the time in question, Shane Flanagan, isn't on the scene. All of the players that admitted their culpability to ASADA are suspended. Only nine players that smiled cheerily for the team photo at the start of the year are available for selection. Oh, it's grim.
Yet the perceived leniency of the sentences handed out to the players has left a bad taste in the mouth of many observers, who would no doubt feel that the Sharks deserve everything they get and then some, including what could be a horrible hiding from the Cowboys, who won't give two hoots about Cronulla's doldrums.
But the Jeff Robson's of the world probably don't deserve the game's collective angst. The same could be said for Pat Politoni, or Junior Roqica, or a number of other players who require Googling. Valentine Holmes, anyone?
Even with some massive contests (Brisbane-Dragons just to start) that will go a long way to deciding who plays in the NRL finals, Monday night's affair in the Far North might well be the most intriguing fixture of the lot, purely for the potential car-crash factor.
Cowboys fans would love a massacre. But what about the rest of you? Can you ever give love the Sharks again?
