PVL is CEO for one game and look what happens

Is Ash Klein trying to get fired perhaps?

Welcome to The Maroon Observer, a weekly newsletter about rugby league, Queensland and rugby league in Queensland.

That was a travesty

I am going to need some time. Probably a week or so will do it, with a few deep breaths, maybe a long run and a couple of beers. Perhaps I will read Nick Campton’s column about the game needing a good Origin.

Because that was an all-timer by Ash Klein.

Oh well, no one will worry about how Queenslanders feel.

As a result of my needing to practice self-care and distance myself, you will not be treated to me making fun of Ethan Strange’s Hitler mustache or Mat Thompson replacing Spencer Leniu with Victor Radley in his awful pre-programmed patter or offering a grovelling apology to Sam Walker. I will not even attempt to riposte comparisons to Sualili’s send off a couple of years ago that will be as dreadful and poorly thought-through as the Blues’ offence was for 60 minutes of that game. Nor will I insist that this being the Blues' greatest comeback, along with 2021 as their greatest series win, says something about New South Wales.

Everything after this point was written before last night, so cue whiplash change in tone in 3… 2… 1…

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Remember to click on things

My oldest man gripe is that no one bloody clicks on things anymore. This may not seem like a problem for you, the satisfied forcefed algorithm enjoyer, but for those of us in the content mines, we would really like it if you clicked and explored the internet under your own power and curiosity to find new things, broaden your horizons and generally become better people.

If the rumours about what Google is planning to do to search are true, then we’re all fucked:

First, yes, this would be the final nail in the coffin for digital media as we know it. It would effectively wipe out search traffic, and by extension, ad revenue for basically every website that relies on those things to exist. For those who have never had to care about internet traffic, in some for or another, it is the only way online businesses make money. While Google has continued to tweak what it requires from websites to rank in their search algorithm, it has stayed remarkably consistent as a metric and there is no real replacement for it. Even during the peak Facebook traffic era, search was good enough for entire publications to rely on it — and keep their ad-based businesses running — in between viral hits. Now that social traffic has dropped to zero, Google Zero would wipe out everything else left.

This newsletter is not my day job and I don’t get ad revenue, so this is not strictly speaking the end of the world for me, even if it ushers in a period of cultural decay and informational stasis that may threaten what makes us fundamentally human.

I prefer to rely on subscriptions for my side hustle because the only intermediary between me and the reader is the email service they use. That is why every single edition of The Maroon Observer includes this box:

It is hard to get attention in a world where Google doesn’t function, social media elevates slop and no one wants to do the work to find something novel. Your subscription, free or paid, goes a little way to pushing back against that.

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Around the grounds

Dolphins 30 defeated Raiders 22. Even if we weren’t entering the sludgiest part of the calendar, I didn’t think a whole lot of this game, mostly for Vlandoball reasons, and don’t think there’s a lot to take away here. Brad Schneider should not have been allowed to score that try in a first class match and I like Tevita Naufahu. Instead, let’s hear from the fans:

The right side was the most problematic. Four of the five Dolphins tries came on that side of the uprights, and most involved a torture of Daine Laurie that seemed so cruel that Isaiya Katoa decided to inexplicably not attack the weakness for near 30 minutes of the second half. Thank Christ for the Geneva Convention, otherwise this could have got messy.

Dolphins 36 defeated Capras 16. The Dolphins were far and away the better side, running faster, looking sharper and tackling harder. Redcliffe took an early 20 point lead and then opted to manage Central in the second half, picking up a couple of quick, late tries to tamp down any thoughts of a comeback at 26-16.

Falcons 38 defeated Wynnum 30. The margin is reflective of the difference between the teams but does not reflect the road taken. The Falcons looked in control, leading 20-10 at the half, but a resurgent Seagulls side took it to them in the second half, even taking the lead at the hour mark, but the Falcons turned on the jets and ran them down.

Sea Eagles 12 defeated Titans 8. Those are some paper-ass Sea Eagles. After an hour of play, Manly’s completion rate began with a 9 and the Titans’ with a 6, and yet the Sea Eagles only led by 10 points, had a helping hand from the refs and still nearly lost the game to the worst franchise in rugby league. Woeful. Manly are on the express train to September disappointment and probably another few years after that.

The Titans, at least, are now good enough that their severe, acute and chronic problems are diagnosable. The pack sucks: it is not built for the current rules and cannot move fast enough to make any space for the backs. Campbell and Kini can’t do anything because they don’t have any room to move and even when they do, there’s no teammates standing in even remotely the correct position to profit. Harrison goes sideways and there’s nothing left for Brimson, Sami and co but the touchline. The Titans also drop the ball a lot, a problem afflicting a lot of the league in 2026. There’s maybe one or two teams in the NRL that can tackle and until that number increases, worrying about the defence is a waste of time, but Gold Coast have the boys that can generate points if only the slugs in front of them would hurry up.

Tigers 24 defeated Devils 16. At 24-0 with a lot of time remaining, you start to wonder what the point of playing that game is and whether a mercy rule might present a better use of everyone’s time. Norths struck back, showing that they are at least capable of that, but I don’t think Easts were worried at any point in proceedings.

Jets 22 defeated Tweed 20. If you wanted to argue that putting all the fringe first graders into a single team wouldn’t affect the competitive balance of the competition, you could show them this game and everyone would furiously agree with you. The titanic showdown between Gold Coast’s feeders delivered no thrills, poor defence and even worse conversion attempts.

Cowboys 30 defeated Rabbitohs 12. When the score narrowed to 18-12 after the Cowboys blew two near-certain tries, I felt the gorge rising in my throat. Fortunately, Souths’ resolute commitment to giving the Cowboys more opportunities worked in North Queensland's favour, which the Cows finally took advantage of to extend their lead in the last quarter of the game. Souths’ team of unloved losers made Reed Mahoney look likeable. That's a huge culture problem that should result in the Bunnies’ relocation to Yekaterinburg. Why don't we have Bob's Bulk Booze in Brisbane? I like cheap liquor.

Andrew Abdo is dead (sure about resigning from the NRL)

The king has left the building:

Andrew Abdo has resigned as chief executive of NRL.

Abdo, who was appointed as the head of the NRL in April 2020, is believed to have taken up a position with Tennis Australia after the departure of their chief executive Craig Tiley.

That seems like not an ideal start to broadcast negotiations. The AFR had a write-up to this effect in a surprisingly lack lustre effort that was out-written by the fairly-maligned Bevan Shields. To wit, no one “walks through a pressure cooker,” alone or otherwise, and fans of losing and winning teams are complaining about the rules.

Two facts were worth noting: Amazon seems likely to make a pitch (one guesses they will go for a Monday night football-style product) and the insiders seem to think the FTA market is not real healthy, which I was saying in 2019 so its nice to see everyone catch up.

This does pave the way for PVL to install himself as joint chairman and CEO, a role he has already been effectively occupying and is now doing on an “interim” basis that will surely become permanent. At least the savings and quality product will be delivered to me, the loyal NRL consumer. Failing that, an ex-cop or a flunky from Racing NSW will be parachuted in.

Abdo has been fortunate to go out on his own terms. I thought for sure he would be sacrificed to protect V’landys after it became clear how badly the covid broadcast negotiations had been botched by the latter. I, for one, am glad I did not buy his dad’s book for a bit. Looks like I’ll dust off my QRL CEO cover letter and CTRL+F for NRL instead.

We’ll always have the great interest you showed in the 2023 under 19s Origin.

Farewell.

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Intermission

It is strange to see Rimbu in a Tigers jersey. Still waiting to see if he’s going to wind up at the Bears or the Chiefs or both.

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Sunshine State-wide

We’re not only halfway through the NRL season, we are now halfway through the Queensland Cup season. With the women’s premiership starting in a little over a week, it’s time to recap where each club is at before our attention is split.

Teams are ordered by ladder position, which includes the hated bye points. More stats can be found in The Almanac.

1. Falcons (8-1). Surprising early clubhouse leaders of the competition, the Falcons are good. Sunshine Coast are also the luckiest team in football, outperforming their Pythagorean expectation by nearly two and a half wins with only the fourth best points difference. That luck doesn’t have to run out in the regular season but teams are often found out in the finals. Liking what I’ve seen Tom Casey brings to the team at five-eighth.

2. Dolphins (6-2-1). My personal pick for the title this year, the Dolphins have re-established themselves as the essence of competence. Other than a round 1 loss to the Bears, Redcliffe threw away a game against Sunshine Coast with +8 net errors (21 total). Since then, it’s been a series of crunchings of the opposition. Look out for the spurned coach Dave Elliott coming to get what’s his.

3. Jets (6-2-1). It is not terribly surprising to see Ipswich where they are. The recruitment drive, changes to the roster and the overhaul of the entire Jets operation after that 0-20 season has left them only one way to go. Tye Ingebritsen should be celebrated for this but we’ll see if they can go deep into September. I’m not betting against it.

4. Bears (5-2-2). The defending premiers have had something of a lack lustre start to the season by their own standards. The two most recent results are a loss to the Capras and a last gasp victory over the Cutters, two teams that are rarely in the same ballpark of the competition as the Bears. Nonetheless, it would be silly to rule Burleigh out from here.

5. Tigers (6-3). Easts sacked Matt Church in the off-season, replaced him with Jim Lenihan, who has now departed for England, and been replaced by Ben King on an interim-basis. That’s a lot of disruption in 12 months for a club still trying to work out the shape of their post-2023 rebuild. Counterbalancing that is the coming alignment with the Bears and the turnover of the roster. Might be too much talent for the interim to really mess up though.

6. Pride (3-2-3). The Pride have had few gimmes on the schedule so far, having to face down other Northern rivals as well as Sunny Coast, Redcliffe and Burleigh. We might expect the Cairnsites to have a better second half with more games against the cellar dwellers and the mid-table to establish themselves.

7. Capras (5-3-1). We wondered if the Capras post-covid golden run might have come to an end after an innocuous 2025 campaign that ended in 13th. That seems to have been premature, although Central’s points difference is negative and the offence is a couple of points per game off the pace. Whether that will see the Capras slide down the ladder in the second half of the season or if they can keep their heads above water is one of the things to watch.

8. Cutters (4-3-2). A hot start has not precisely sputtered out but the Cutters are finding the going tougher. An emphasis on speed, a lack of other opportunities for players to matriculate and the competition coming back to their level for structural reasons have all benefitted Mackay greatly. There’s a better than even chance of them breaking a finals drough that dates back to their 2013 premiership. Jimmy Ngutlik is still up there in the Guy charts.

9. Magpies (4-3-3). The coin flip team. It’s just a shame that playing exactly at 50% is not good enough to make top eight in a 15 team league. Can beat the best on their day but can also throw away entire halves of football. Tom Duffy is fitting in well, Anthony Milford has it and Callum Eggerling might be having a breakout season.

10. Wynnum (4-4-1). The Seagulls are singularly unimpressive, in the literal sense. There is nothing about them which impresses itself upon the mind.

11. Blackhawks (3-6). Townsville should divorce permanently from the Cowboys. It only brings them down. While there were some hints of fraudulence in 2025, it should not have regressed to the mean quite this hard. Probably would’ve liked to have seen more out of Jacky Campag.

12. Tweed (2-6-1). This doesn’t seem to be heading in the right direction from a win-loss perspective, or from a schedule perspective where the only win over the Falcons so far is cancelled out by giving the only win to the Clydesdales.

13. Devils (1-7-1). Any doubts you may have had about aspects of the Devils dynasty have been amplified massively this year. The team just cannot get it together. The Devs are currently running as the least fortunate team in football, playing at 2.2 wins under their Pythagorean expectation, so there is a slim chance that may turn around.

14. Hunters (2-8). Roster turnover was always going to make 2025 hard and Darren Lockyer personally made it worse. There are always some worthwhile players in the mix, they just need time and experience.

15. Clydesdales (1-8). It’s a bad team with poor coaching. They look like they have no game plan, other than stupid gimmicky tactics. Christopher Woodbridge has been a bright spot.

Upcoming slate

The Challenge Cup final between Wigan and Hull KR might be the pick of the bunch.

That’ll just about do it

Putting aside the hacky backs-against-the-wall, Queenslander mentality for a second, the Maroons have lost three players to injury, including Upton and Robinson, and are already down 2-0 in the series. It is hard to imagine the Queensland B-team beating the Jillaroos tonight but stranger things have happened (1959, 1995, 2020, etc, etc).

That makes now an appropriate time to talk about the potential for whitewash. The last Origin series sweep was the Maroons in 2010 and the last Blues’ sweep was way back in 2000, which is potentially before some grown-ass adults reading this were born. Presuming the southern aristocrats prevail, whether you want to chalk this up as an historic achievement by the New South Wales, the state with the media, money, demographics and rugby league political-cultural complex biased in their favour, never mind managing to avoid decimation by injury, or just another thing that should happen more often but they fail to do because of their innate shortcomings, I will leave up to you.

I am less interested in the result than I’ll be looking for the margin in this one. The last series was lost by a net of 36 points. Queensland are at risk of being swept but are only down by nine so far. Even a 12 point loss in game 3 would be a net improvement on last year. While a 26 point (or more) beatdown is not off the cards, it seems less likely based on how well they’ve run the Blues so far. I think if you want to look at something from the ashes of this series, it’s that the gap is wide but not as wide as many pundits will make it out to be.

Tip: Queensland 13+

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Thank you for reading The Maroon Observer

If you enjoyed this newsletter or my insistence that the Maroons’ sleeve postcodes - I was right, Sam Walker did rep 4305! - or the clubs Origin players are capped from are both very interesting and worthy of hours of analysis, per the following:

Charting State of Origin, 2026

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Nickelware

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• Eye Test - NRL 2026 mid season advanced stat leaders

• Rugby League Writers - Dolphins Attack The Middle & Monitoring The Rabbitohs Left Edge

• Storm Machine - Game 753 – S29E12 Review

• The Sportress - Six again: Mess

• 🎧 Rugby Reloaded - What Was The Original Derby Match?

Notes

• Jai Arrow drops NRL retirement bombshell after motor neurone disease diagnosis

• Cowboys sign Katoa and Ramien

• World Rugby launches bold new six-year strategy to shape the future of the game. This is not interesting. There’s a lot of use of “grow”, “invest”, “strategic” and not a lot of detail. There’s a single oblique hint to the financial crisis that their top flight clubs have been dealing with in England, Wales, Australia and elsewhere but mostly what’s surprising is how much of a parody of itself it is. As anyone who has worked in a large orgnisation knows, the release of strategic plans have less impact on the day-to-day work at the coal face than just about any other change (c.f. changing a filing system or implementing a new procedure). World Rugby are very excited about the WCs in the USA but don’t seem to have allowed for America splitting into five separate republics as a result of the looming second civil war.

• The Titans will play the Eels at Vegas next year. More when it matters (it doesn’t matter).

• French clubs push back on summer plan

• The sporting spectacle of the Enhanced Games was underwhelming but the financial rewards were not. “Doping bad” seems to be an extremely old fashioned view to have, and there is no way to have unregulated doping unless you want 12 year olds pounding EPO, HGH, T and steroids, but doping bad. It shouldn’t be allowed. The organisers of this stuff just need to fuck already. Will the people of the 2120s look back at this like we look back on amateurism? Perhaps.

• Berlin’s state parliament approves bid to rehost Olympics on or after 100th anniversary of Nazi-run Games. Not going to be hard to outperform LA28 while ICE is ripping people off the street and the centennial of the Hitler games.

• Australian tram patronage by route. GC is pretty up there. Now to see if the current state government is planning on funding any extensions.