Fingerprints on an abandoned handrail

What could have been, or in fact never was.

Jack Wighton is leaving Canberra.

It feels surreal to say, even to me, as a neutral with no active rooting interest in the fortunes of either Canberra or South Sydney, and yet, I found a small part of myself feeling somewhat hollow as this saga drew to it’s foregone conclusion.

In rugby league, as in all sports, there’s something inexplicably romantic about a one club player. Players that dedicate their professional careers in servitude to a single entity, for some reason, are just valued and cherished a little bit more. It’s something intrinsic and intangible, but for fans there’s a deeper sense of connection.

As a fan you don’t see yourself ever supporting another club. When a player reciprocates that, it gravitates themselves towards the supporters, and an extra level of reverence is placed on them.

Granted, all of this is purely emotional and almost spiritual. Unfortunately, rugby league isn’t played on a field of feelings, and that harsh yank to reality was dished rudely to Canberra and their fans with the unfolding Jack Wighton contract situation that has dominated the headlines in recent weeks.

Jack Wighton is Canberra.

Despite the frustrations and the love-hate relationship, most Canberra fans would place Wighton on their pantheon of greats in the 21st century. A sparkling talent on his day, his frightening and rare athleticism and skill, coupled with his utility value, made him a blue chip prospect and turned him into the representative stalwart with both New South Wales and Australia.

The problem is those days were more rare than one would care to admit.

And therein lies the ultimate source of angst for fans of the lime green.

Canberra isn’t a destination club. In the NBA there are “big market” teams, such as your Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks, Miami Heat etc. Teams that can use the lure of location, celebrity, and other third party factors to attract talent.

Then there are what we call “flyover cities.” Lesser markets (in terms of dollars anyway) that rely on internal measures to be successful, whether it’s through the draft or careful free agent planning, because you know the big fish don’t want to swim in your pond.

In the lens of the NRL, Canberra might be the ultimate flyover city, and that’s OK. Those in charge of the Raiders aren’t silly. They recognise the unique set of challenges that face recruitment and retention in the nation’s capital.

Canberra, much like Newcastle, North Queensland, New Zealand and (to a lesser extent) Penrith, focus more on internal development and using a strong base of juniors to build a club, because the harsh reality is marquee free agents just don’t sign for Canberra.

Canberra have been left at the altar more times than most other teams combined in recent history, whether it be Josh Mansour or James Tedesco, the club has been burned by external recruitment.

When you rely on internal promotion over external shopping, you desperately want to hit on a junior with star potential, because when you do, you have a ready made marquee that the club can build around.

For Canberra, that was Jack Wighton.

A product of Orange in the NSW central west region, Wighton joined Canberra as an 18 year old in 2011, debuting the next year in the NRL and has been a mainstay pretty much ever since.

For the next 12 seasons, Wighton would develop from brash outside back with questions about his best position into one of the game’s most damaging five eights, and a premier utility to boot.

Canberra, over the course of time, have been nothing but accommodating to Wighton, building the team around him during his highs and standing by him during his lows.

Canberra have shown unbridled faith in Jack, for him to lead this team and take them as far as he can. Whether Canberra have gotten a fair return on investment in terms of successes is a debate for another day, but I do know given the highs of 2019, there’s a sense of disappointment as to the progress since.

Wighton, now, has made his assessment that he wants to win a premiership. That is his prerogative.

South Sydney have signed one of the most versatile players in the league, a true rep-calibre star on his day, to play presumably in the centres, likely his best position, on an already ridiculous left hand side. A true luxury, and one that would certainly have bookmakers purring at the Rabbitohs chances next season.

Wighton is allowed to sign where he wants.

That doesn’t make it sting any less for Canberra fans.

I understand the feelings of confusion and anger, of disappointment and betrayal, that might be coursing through the capital right now. The assessment that Canberra are further away from a premiership than Souths right now is, ultimately, fair enough.

The play of Wighton and the team being structured around his ebbs and flows being a large reason as to why that is the current situation, though, is a bitter pill to swallow.

There’s no rational and logical way to assess this situation, because sports isn’t meant to be rational and logical. In essence, your star player, the lynchpin of your entire franchise, one who has given you over 200 games of cascading emotions, has turned around and said you’re not good enough for him anymore, and that sucks.

No one is suggesting Wighton has acted unfaithfully or against the rules. He’s within his rights to explore his options and assess his priorities. This move to Souths seems driven by legacy more than money, if you believe reports of the figures offered by Canberra, Souths and even the Dolphins.

That’s small comfort for the Raiders though, and while Ricky Stuart has projected frustration at the system, I’m not sure it would’ve made a difference at the end of the day.

Loyalty concessions in the salary cap aren’t a new concept. They’ve been around for a while now, and while I don’t know the exact machinations, I’m led to believe the relief provided by them is minimal at best.

I understand the argument though. As a fan you like to think a player that has been with you for his entire adult life places higher importance on the familiarity of a comfortable setting, the adulation of an adoring and parochial public.

In this scenario though, it reads like Wighton’s mind was made up to leave the moment he triggered his clause. Canberra were already reportedly above South Sydney’s financial offer, so the proposed concessions, while helpful to the club’s bottom line, don’t really appear to calculate into Wighton’s decision.

Even though this news has been on the cards for a while now, today it feels like the heart and soul was ripped out of the Canberra Raiders.

Sports have the innate ability to render our critical thinking useless and to reduce even the most stoic among us to dribbling neanderthals.

It takes over our entire beings. The dopamine that floods our bodies during a moment of triumph is incomparable, a seemingly inconsequential victory magnified into the most important thing in the world.

But when it takes us to these heights so giddy, it must come down, often with a crashing halt. What makes the wins so tantalising is the despicable taste of defeat, and the yearning to never return.

The “it’s just a game” crowd might be right, if you cared about having your emotions minimised to a linear representation of universal importance.

It is just a game, but it’s so much more. It’s an escape, a paradise, a way to meet new people or reconnect with those we lost along the way.

It’s what makes the Wighton news so tough to take for Raiders fans. All those highs and lows come flooding back in one intense cacophony of white noise. The promise of those dizzying heights, the furore of Grand Finals and famous victories, of deafening viking claps and green waves, the tears of loss and the unity in anguish and heartbreak, all sucked out in one heartless swoop.

The Jack Wighton era will end in Canberra with feelings of what could have been, visions of success temporally swirling, haunting, vanishing without a trace through the sands of time, like fingerprints on an abandoned handrail.