Crow Boy: Beatings just aren’t the same if they don’t involve black leather and baby oil. Sure you can lie back and take it, like at the K Fed fertilisation clinic, but being mauled by a rampant opposition team scars you for life. The Queensland Reds and Richmond Tigers are currently feeling more vulnerable than a patisserie in Casey Donovan’s neighbourhood.

Nugget: Those two teams received bum smackings not seen since the outtakes for Brokeback Mountain 2 but, deep down, even if the Tigers or the Reds are your team of choice, there is something magical and unmissable about a genuine flogging on the field of sporting battle.

CB: Yes, much like slide night at Paris Hilton’s place, watching others being forced to wear their rear end as a hat has endless entertainment appeal.

N: The result for the Reds seemed fait accompli when, about 20 minutes from time, two of their players had set up an outdoor setting on the 22 and were enjoying the best lattes Pretoria had to offer. What sort of message is that sending to the kiddies, I ask you?

CB: In the words of scientific stallion Dean Hutton from The Curiosity Show, I’m glad you asked. It’s telling the kids that when things get hard, lay down and take it like Anna Nicole Smith. Sure, there are days when one team proves superior but, in the world of professional sport, it’s a dead set disgrace.

N: What is always an inevitable by-product of a good hard flogging, apart from a welt mysteriously shaped like Kerri-Anne Kennerly’s left hand, is a raft of tremendously creative excuses that would make even the writers of Lost say “damn that s..t is clever”. Look no further than the Dilmahslurping Sri Lankan cricket team. They have just been on the business end of a flogging not seen since Warney found out who cancelled Hey Dad and they are blaming Gilly’s squash ball. Grow up boys.

CB: The poor old Sri Lankans. They were smashed like David Hasslehoff during a quiet night at home with the kids, and now they’re looking for excuses. They’re whining more than Daryl Somers when Myer stopped stocking Ken Done knitwear.

N: One must ask, are the Lankans complaining about Gilly’s glove or the 149 he smashed while wearing it? Do you reckon if he’d scratched around for 11 off 29 balls we would be hearing about it? They need to take some advice that was given to me during my tougher years at St Augustine’s School for Wicked Boys, “suck it up boyo and stop whinging”.

CB: I’ll arrange a courier to ferry across a few cases of Harden Up to the World Cup runnersup. But we digress. With all this talk of pantsings, we could hardly forget the drubbing that was the A-League grand final. Adelaide United collapsed faster than Mark Latham. United they stood … and laid.

N: The only thing more disappointing about that result was the fact that it was at the hands of a team of filthy Victorians. It is our duty as Queenslanders to hate those filthy vermin. We have no official beef with South Australia, however. We consider the state that houses Adelaide to be more like that country cousin no one really talks about and we only socialise with when we have to.

CB: Let’s not delve too far into history. You’ll find my ancestry chose a move to this wide brown land, but your jibe is noted, convict. I’m surprised you have found time to write this column in between stealing loaves of bread, DVD players and bric-a-brac. Make sure you leave enough hubcaps for the Kiwi population.