An Ode To My Embarrassing Crush On ’00s NRL Player Luke Burt

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An embarrassing crush. We’ve all had one, right?

Maybe, looking back on the boy bands of the ’90s and ’00s, you may think your embarrassing crush was someone like Nick Carter or Justin Timberlake. That’s fair, they’re pretty embarrassing in hindsight, even though they may have seemed like the hottest thing at the time. But they were common crushes at least — many people universally agreed the white bread dancing and singing boys were God-like, with their chiselled jaws, floppy hair, blue eyes.

Maybe your crush was a sports star: perhaps a David Beckham or, here in Australia, a Ryan Girdler, a Harry Kewell, a James Hird. Men known for their abs, their sporting ability, their white smiles that could beam down from TV screens into your heart.

Stumbling across my pre-teen and teen diaries, I dictated many of my crushes upon discovering that I was unfortunately a heterosexual woman, doomed to be attracted to men for the rest of my life. There was Chris Hemsworth (“The hottest guy just joined Home and Away!”), Jared Leto (“I want a hot emo boyfriend!”), and later on Matthew Wright from The Getaway Plan (“He has the voice of an angel, and I want him to sing ‘Transmission’ directly to me and then we can get married.”).

But before these men, and long before my emo phase I never grew out of, there was one person who captivated me. A man who captured my 11-year-old heart like no other. A man who I dedicated diary entries to, printed off photos of to stick on my schoolbooks, a man who I named my Year 6 signature bear after.

That man was ’00s Parramatta Eels player, Luke Burt.

Luke Burt

I can’t tell you what it was about Luke Burt that made me fixate on him and pledge my undying love. Perhaps it was the amount of screen time he got in games, scoring try after try and following it up with conversions. Talent is hot.

Perhaps he just looked particularly striking standing next to Nathan Cayless or Nathan Hindmarsh. Whatever it was about Luke Burt that caught my attention, it was a crush unlike any other I had before. Move over Nick Carter, this was real love.

When I tell people of my childhood crush, it’s often met with some shock. “What about Ryan Girdler?” people ask. (He’s obviously hot, but anyone loyal to their team knows you can’t fantasise about an opponent!) “What about Eric Growthe Jr?” one Bumble match queried when it came up in conversation. (Also a good looking man, just didn’t make the diary!)

Luke Burt

An insider look to what my schoolbooks probably looked like.

That’s not to say our love didn’t have its challenges. Luke Burt did have a battle on his hands early on — my affections also turned to John Morris for some time, but Luke always won out. Perhaps it was his unwavering loyalty to the Parramatta Eels that really cemented our fictional relationship. To stand by a club who hasn’t won a premiership since 1986 is a test of loyalty, one that both Burt and I passed, despite the traumas of the 2001 and 2009 grand final losses. Loyalty in a man is hot.

My crush was so prominent it became part of my personality. As I mentioned, my Year 6 signature bear was called Burty, and sometimes my friends even called me Burty. Maybe it was practice for what I thought was going to be my married name when I grew up.

If the Parramatta Eels games weren’t televised, I’d sit in my lounge room, in my hometown of Wagga, listening to the radio commentary of the game instead, getting a little thrill every time the commentator would yell out something about Luke Burt on the wing.

If we won, I’d be ecstatic and just know that my man Luke Burt had contributed hugely to that. If we lost, I’d be a grump, fervently crossing my fingers for next week’s game (and for it to be a televised one).

Like, c’mon, the skill of this man.

One of the most thrilling parts of my childhood was when my Dad took me to a Parramatta Eels vs. Canberra Raiders game in around 2005 where I finally got to clap eyes on my longstanding crush. There I was, in the middle of winter, docked out in an oversized Eels jersey (they don’t make them for scrawny, 4’ft something teens), an Eels scarf, and to top it all off, an Eels visor. Yes, before you ask, I was a huge virgin.

It should be known, around this time, my eyes had started to wander as sometimes happens when you’re years into a crush — specifically to Eels’ one-year prodigy Tim Smith — but overall my allegiance to Luke Burt still held strong over the years. I stopped watching games weekly once I went to uni in 2010, but I guess it’s not a coincidence that ever since Luke Burt retired in 2012, I’ve only caught a handful of games since.

Burty 4eva <3

If writing all this down isn’t embarrassing enough, behold some of the historic diary entries that really drill the message home.

It’s nice to think in 150 years when I’m long gone, my great-grandchildren could stumble across this. “What was life like in the ’00s?” they’d ponder, as they settle down, flicking past the first page of my diary that viciously screams “KEEP OUT. THIS IS PRIVATE. I WILL FIND YOU”, and get ready to learn about history and ’00s culture… but all it turns out to be is the history of Luke Burt and the Parramatta Eels, sometimes interjected with “School sux” and “G2G talk l8r”.

There was the loving, defensive entries…

luke burt

…and I was prone to jealously if anyone else dared to dream of Luke Burt too.

Don’t pray for me, I’ve already passed away from sheer embarrassment.

Anyway as it turns out, I wasn’t the only one. There’s a whole Facebook page dedicated to the great man.

I promise I didn’t actually make this page, but somehow it makes me feel slightly less weird. Just slightly.

luke burt

To conclude, I’d just like to state if Luke Burt stumbles across this, I’m very sorry and please don’t take out an AVO, I promise I have moved on.