Vale “The Moose”

AussieRulesBlog is sad to note the passing this week of Sydney football and media identity Rex “The Moose” Mossop. Mossop excelled in both Rugby Union (now Super Rugby) and Rugby League (now NRL) through the 1950s and early 60s.

 

We’ve made no secret of our disdain for “cross-country wrestling” and we never saw The Moose play. It was his media career that, indirectly at first, brought him to our notice.

 

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Sydney author Alex Buzo wrote a series of articles for the National Times highlighting the mangling of the English language by various media performers, not least those among the sporting fraternity. The Once-Yearly Annual Tautology Pennant became mandatory reading for anyone with a sense of both English and humour.

 

Almost inevitably it seemed, each year Buzo would award first prize to Rex Mossop. Some of his ‘entries’ were:

 

• if I keep getting Boyd and O'Grady mixed up, it's because they look alike, especially around the head

• now the referee's giving him a verbal tongue lashing

• let me recapitulate back to what happened previously

• he seems to have suffered a groin injury at the top of his leg

• they're going laterally across field

• that kick had both height and elevation

• I've never seen him live in the flesh

• there he is, hopping on one leg

• he's been a positive asset

• they've been going on about it ad nauseam — that means forever

• I've had to switch my mental thinking

• that referee's got glaucoma of the eyes

• I don't want to pre-empt what I've already said

• I don't want to sound incredulous but I can't believe it

• a little bit marginal

• very mobile running

 

and, most celebratedly, after making a citizen’s arrest of a man leaving a nude beach who’d neglected to dress first . . .

 

• I don't think the male genitals should be rammed down people's throats …

 

In the 1990s, Mossop appeared in a panel segment on Andrew Denton’s Live and Sweaty on ABC. Also on the panel were Elle McFeast, Lex “The Swine” Marinos, Debbie “Skull Of Rust” Spillane and Peter “Crackers” Keenan. We don’t remember anything too specific about this other than that it was a hoot and that Debbie Spillane was regularly gobsmacked by Mossop’s comments.

 

RIP Rex.