I don't like to be a spoilsport, but I'm not entirely disappointed the Warriors are out of the NRL grand finals.
League is not a pastime I've ever really warmed to.
And while glory may have been just reward for the New Zealand underdogs - who on the whole this last season have kept themselves out of trouble and the headlines - there's just too much violence associated with the game to be healthy.
It is sometimes said of rugby union that it is legitimised assault.
Well you can add battery to that for league - and it doesn't just happen on the field.
The entire enveloping culture seems awash with alcohol-fuelled violence.
The very names of the teams ripple with testosterone-drenched muscularity: the Broncos, the Sharks, the Raiders, the Tigers, the Cowboys, the Bulldogs, and of course the Warriors.
And if the contest itself sometimes seems like a particularly thuggish enactment of last man standing, then the assorted after-match activities can make the average domestic look like a picnic.
Take a cursory stroll through an abbreviated list of incidents attached to top players during the past couple of years, ambassadors of the sport who are - or in certain cases were - earning large sums of money in its service.
In 2006, Cronulla Sharks player Tevita Latu punched a 19-year-old woman in the face and broke her nose at a service station.
Jarrod McCracken successfully sued the Melbourne Storm and former players Stephen Kearney and Marcus Bai for $97,000 after suffering neck and spinal injuries following a spear tackle in the 2000 season.
In 2007, Penrith Panther Craig Trindall was charged with intentionally causing serious injury after allegedly bashing a woman in the face with a children's blackboard.
The woman suffered a broken nose, shattered eye socket and had timber splinters embedded near her brain.
Broncos Ian Lacey and John Te Reo were charged with intentionally causing serious injury to a bank worker, who suffered a fractured skull and bleeding of the brain.
And this year, police charged another Cronulla player, Greg Bird, with assaulting his girlfriend, Katie Milligan.
Bird allegedly smashed a glass into her face, fracturing her eye socket.
Is there a pattern here? As I say, just a smattering . . . the tip of a very unattractive iceberg.
As an advertisement for sport it is not a pretty picture.
As an advertisement for "professionalism", it is nothing short of a heinous perversion of all the term should entail: the highest standards of practice and deportment both on and off the field.
Unfortunately, these days, and in the context of rugby league, the term seems to equate to earning heaps of filthy lucre then spending as much of it as possible in the most ostentatious and obnoxious fashion - often involving inebriated young women and the hotel swimming pool.
If that's not enough to give the game a bad name, there are the hard-core supporters.
The other day I caught the tale-end of a radio interview with an official from the Bulldogs, on Sonny Bill Williams - for the uninitiated the young New Zealander who is one of the biggest stars in the game.
It was in response to the rumour that the big Kiwi lad was homesick in France where he has fled to play rugby union. Quelle horreur! The Bulldogs had washed their hands of him; wouldn't have him back if he came crawling over cut glass.
And that's where Zoo Weekly comes in.
Australian readers of the magazine last month put Sonny Bill at the head of the Top 50 people we hate list, pipping for No 1 spot the Bali bomber Amrozi responsible for the deaths of so many innocent tourists in the Indonesian resort.
Because he left the Bulldogs?!Just a little bit out of whack? Well, you have to wonder.
When people feel so passionately it distorts their sense of reality to such an extent, then I reckon it's time to close the book.
There's an old saying that football (football) is a game for gentlemen played by thugs, and that rugby union is a game for thugs played by gentlemen.
It's not true of course, but by this logic, rugby league is a game for thugs played by thugs.
In any case, and as I said, despite their evident pluck, I can't lose too much sleep over the fact the Warriors' dream run came to an end last weekend.
Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor at the Otago Daily Times.
