I could not understand why anyone would choose not to compete (and, yes, I know cheerleading can be competitive - I've watched Bring It On, and late-night screenings of national championships in which university teams from across the US do indeed bring it on) and effectively just cheer.

I am reading the most fabulous book, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain. It is the story of several soldiers, heroes returned from Iraq, spending a Thanksgiving game as guests of the Dallas Cowboys. It is a daring treatise of all that is right and wrong with war, the United States, and indeed professional sport, the sort of book you cannot wait to read but do not want to finish.

The soldiers, young, virile men in the prime of their lives, get to meet the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (they're not the Cowgirls, you know).

They [the cheerleaders, not the soldiers] are a life-sized sampler of rapturous female flesh with all colours on display, all flavours of sculpted tummy and supple thigh, scooped waist, contoured flare and furl of hip, and such breasts, oh Lord, such volumes of majestically fulsome boob overflowing the famous tail-knotted half shirt, yes, at any moment an avalanche could burst forth and bury them all, only a few scant inches of besieged cloth save Bravo from utter annihilation …

Now it would not be too much of a stretch to suggest the Dallas crew are the pinnacle of cheerleading. Girls from around the world head to Texas to trial for the team. Indeed, former Melbourne Storm cheerleader Jinelle Esther was in this season's squad. (As an aside, Making the Team, a reality television show about auditioning for the cheerleading team, then do so, it is a cross between Real Housewives, Dance Moms and The Bachelor and great, great guilty viewing.)

What I am getting to here, in a roundabout way, is what is it we, the football-loving people of Canberra, want from our cheerleaders? Indeed, do we want cheerleaders at all? This week it has been pompoms at 10 paces as the Raiders decide who will don the white boots and lime-green hotpants and prowl the sidelines with Victor the Viking - Rogue Dolls or Raiderettes, a troupe with a ''signature Vegas/Pussycat Dolls/cabaret style'', or wholesome young virgins from Kambah with a little gymnastics background and hair extensions.

Here is an idea. Let's cut them altogether. From the whole National Rugby League. What is the point of them? With all due respect, of course. I hate the sight of the girls lined up outside the tunnel waving, high for the home team, low for the visitors, looking totally uninterested. I feel sorry for them huddled on the bench in the cold in July, sometimes managing to stand if they notice a try has been scored. Yes, they might mingle with the kids, maybe raise the spirits of some bourbon-drinking bogans, but please.

Girls, it is time to go.

The Australian Football League and Super Rugby manage perfectly well. And despite the influence the NFL seemed to have over the expansion of the NRL - think Raiders, Broncos, Cowboys, and Titans, just the names, let alone the set-ups, we are not America.

If the Raiders, indeed the whole NRL, want to increase attendance, want to promote a family-friendly atmosphere, want to bring women back to the game, then cheerleading is a waste of time.

I am a woman, I have a friendly family and we like the football. I am probably the target audience. If I do not leave my seat at half-time, and let's face it, most of the crowd is lining up for another beer or a pie or the loo during the hiatus, I want to see an under-sevens game between the Queanbeyan Roos and Gungahlin Bulls, or punters from the crowd trying to catch a bomb, or relays involving men in uniform, or something. And here is another point, too - what would really get me returning to the football is a team that is actually competitive. There is something novel.

Or I want to see a full-blown proper cheerleading troupe, one that does chants and throws and tumbles and backflips, as in Bring It On, not a ponytail-flicking bunch of girls gyrating their hips to the latest Beyonce number. And there is nothing more disturbing, as a woman, as a mother, than tween girls doing that. Nothing. Stop it now.

In 1967 a stripper named Bubbles Cash changed the course of cheerleading when she made a scantily clad entry to a Cowboys game and caught of the eye of Tex Schramm, the then general manager of the franchise. In 1969 he decided to give the cheerleading troupe a makeover and stripped them just about bare, made dance and looks a priority, and over the next 40 years the troupe evolved into a multimillion-dollar entity all of its own. Complete with swimsuit calendar and Barbie dolls, available on eBay for just $89.

But, as I said. We are not America - why do we insist on being, well, try-hards? Let's do half-time our way. And if that involves nothing more than a kicking competition and making new friends in the queue for beer, then that is what it is.

Bring it on.