Agenda 2025: Te Whare Call
Being a little bit more civil to PVL, the absolute bloody state of the Olympics and simming the season
Welcome to The Maroon Observer, a weekly newsletter about rugby league, Queensland rugby league in Queensland. It’s another reading of the news.
As the off-season nears its end and the return of football is just over the horizon, the next few newsletters will take a look back at the news of the last five months and point to what I think will be some of the recurring themes of this year in rugby league.
A re-appraisal of Peter V’Landys
Back in 2020, during lockdown, I wrote a sentence that has been rolling around in my head on and off recently:
Meanwhile, Peter V’Landys is treated with the same reverence as the second coming of Christ because apparently, the rugby league media’s main takeaway from watching world events of the last five years is that a strong man with a penchant for action, or at least being seen as imposing his will, and no respect for consultation is a good thing.
With five years’ removal from writing and an understanding of everything that has happened since, that piece definitely had more misses than hits - the game is to figure out what’s going on and what’s next, after all - but I still mull the comparison between V’Landys and Trump (the “strongman,” used as a term of art) because rugby league is one lens through which I look at the world around me. I should probably try getting out more and talking to people instead.
That has become a more pressing thought since the Trump’s re-election to the presidency late last year. While we are removed by several tens of thousands of kilometres from the stream of likely illegal executive orders designed to make everything worse for everyone, Australia’s politics and culture sits downstream of America’s, not least because a lot of us Online spend too much time marinating in US discourse. The merits of banning vapes or social media for kids just doesn’t cut it when there’s a republic and an empire whose future is in grave doubt.
There are plenty of superficial similarities in how V’Landys and Trump are presented. They dress poorly, have an affectation that suggests masculinity without actually being very masculine and they’re both weirdos about food. They don’t listen to experts and are loudly insistent that their short term thinking is the right way forward long term. They like reaching into the past and putting that forward as the future. They like being seen doing things. They both grossly overstep the limits of their role. Granted, that may be more than superficial but beyond, I also think there are material degrees of difference.
Trump seems almost entirely motivated by the accumulation of status and adulation, most of which I guess is a function of ego, even if that seems all too simplistic. There are plenty of characterisations that go further and deeper if that’s your interest but he is fundamentally extremely selfish and loyal only to himself and his own ends. This all makes Trump malleable enough that, provided that ego is satisfied, some of the worst people in the world can make things happen through him.
It seems as hollow a base on which anything could be constructed but it evidently appeals to a slight majority of Americans, and has its sympathisers here. I can’t say I understand it.
V’Landys, or at least as far as I can tell after half a dozen years at the helm, seems motivated by his own importance. That’s not quite the same thing as status, because V’Landys plainly has no interest in trappings in the way Trump does, but he very clearly wants to be at the centre of it all. He insists on loyalty and obedience in his subjects but is himself a spineless bootlicker loyal and obedient to his stakeholders. That’s how you build trust and can get a network to place you at its centre. What he wants to do once at the centre is still, after all this time, not clear. Perhaps the schmoozing, the handshakes and the deals are enough but it is probably a weird sex thing.
It occurs to me, belatedly, that V’Landys’ image was created by opinion columnists and gas leak enthusiasts (but I repeat myself) during his ascension. This was probably a semi-purposeful construct to mirror Trump in 2019. That choice could be made for any number of reasons but if I was to speculate, it would be because gas leak-columnists assume things about the politics of the NRL fan base that I don’t think would hold up to scrutiny and more reflect their own personal views than anything else. V’Landys still tips his cap to that from time to time.
Even though I’ve dipped my toes in the ‘he’s a fascist’ bucket, its becoming clear that Trump is not a Nazi in the strictest sense. He may be a lot of things that add up to effectively the same thing but, to the extent that any of this historical taxonomy matters, it’s a bit different. Similarly, V’Landys is not Trump, even though that’s the easiest political bow to draw, to the extent that any of that archery matters.
But, if you were to write a newsletter that pontificates about the politics of rugby league, and society in general, then updating the precision and accuracy of the framework used to analyse those politics is important, if not especially impactful. If there is a real political and culture vibe shift to follow Trump’s election, and not just neo-barbarians looting a burning Rome while they can and some dinguses aping that out here on the marches of the empire, then that distinction may pay dividends down the track in terms of trying to work out what’s next. In the meantime, we’re all going to have to learn to live with it because there seems to be a definitive lack of alternatives and means of implementing them.
Steve Mascord often talks about the right and left wings of rugby league. The right wing is conservative and the left progressive and the two sides can be seen in any domain you care to name: stadium policy, the value of international footy, whether expansion is worth pursuing. Do we like it the way it is or do we want something different? He made a point while on Rugby League Digest last year that PVL talks like a righty while doing lefty things. I rejected that out of hand when I heard it, and I still don’t think it’s completely correct, but I am coming around.
International footy seems to be finding its feet for the first time in 20 years, the women’s game continues to explode, there’s new teams in new places, there’s more people going to games and there’s more money than ever, which is causing its own problems that we’ll revisit another time. Assuming you had a gun to your head and were forced to overcome the cringe and choose left or right, as a subscriber to this newsletter, I would assume you would go left, like me. If so, then why aren’t we happy about the state of it?
There’s an obvious disconnect between the quality of means and quality of ends. There’s also the question of how sustainable some of these things are. The money will disappear eventually. PNG will have its challenges, to put it mildly. What attendances will do in 2025 is anyone’s guess.
Is due process what’s holding us up? I am not sure. I am still a bit pissed off about the six again fiasco but we all have to move on and most of the worst of it will be memory-holed with the rest of 2020-22. V’Landys has committed to not changing rules this year, although there's always got to be a play the ball crackdown.
A neat summation of Trump’s oeuvre was that his supporters take him seriously but not literally, while his opponents take him literally but not seriously. I’ve always advocated watching what people do, rather than what they say, but I think there’s something in that for V’Landys too.
I am still going to call him a sweaty dumbass when he fucks up the broadcast deal though.
Programming notes
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For the other 50%, I’ve been turning over whether to have paid subscriptions to The Maroon Observer since inception in 2023. I stuck to ‘no’ for various reasons, none of them particularly interesting1, but have changed to ‘yes’ over the off-season.
The final straw was my current laptop repeatedly running out of memory while trying to do analysis of NRL stats dating back to 1999.
It is also becoming increasingly clear that having a laptop with a functioning battery would improve my productivity several-fold by untethering me from power points. A top of the line laptop is - inexplicably, in my opinion but I am getting old and don’t understand inflation - over $5000. Even something more mid-range is not an expense I can readily justify, unless part of the cost is offset by my loyal readers.
So that’s where I’m at: I think The Maroon Observer is good enough in quality, you can provide some financial support that would directly help keep the operation going and I would greatly appreciate that.
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Intermission
We don’t, by rule, allow rugby union in this newsletter but we make exceptions for Valynce “The House” Te Whare, or as he is known in Japan, バレンツハウス.
2032
If you haven’t been keeping up with developments in the Olympic City, I do not blame you. Whether it’s in Woolloongabba, Hamilton, Mayne or Mt Coot-tha, everyone has a poorly thought out idea for the main stadium. Other than the general concept of a Gabba redevelopment, all of these should be treated with similar levels of contempt. They are not real, they are barely worth discussing and they are mostly ads for the consultancies that cooked them up who have figured out you can get free publicity in the Brisbane Times if you come up with some renders.
Each proposal has at least one obvious, existential and often self-admitted flaw - we would have had moved the main railway yard for the commuter train system before now if we were to turn it into a potentially flood prone stadium next to Breakfast Creek, getting to Mt Coot-tha is harder than getting to QSAC, no one is paying for a $6 billion stadium at North Shore, why do they always have greenery in the stadia? - but nonetheless, there are clicks to drive from gullible readers, like me.
Palasczuk getting the Olympics will be one of the top achievements of her premiership. It’s right up there with hilariously beating the shit out of Campbell Newman in 2015 and had been on the cards since Brisbane bid for the ‘92 Games that went to Barcelona (Brisbane was third behind Barcelona and Paris; I’ve always said Brisbane is the Australian baby of Paris and Barcelona). However, Palasczuk didn’t do enough to lock in the vision, and so I do not really want to hear her critiques right now.
The way the construction industry works is that the cheapest time to build something was yesterday and the next cheapest time to build it is now. By not signing the contractors up for the plan as originally schemed, we have now wasted several years of toing and froing because no one wants to be the one that commits to several billion in spend and the inevitable cost blowouts that will follow. While cost blow-outs are as often a result of poor scoping, poor briefing and rushing through those initial phases as they are mismanagement during construction, a cost blow-out on a $2 billion stadium is a lot less than a cost blow-out on a $5 billion stadium. But Palasczuk left, Steve Miles did a review, decided QSAC was the ‘sensible’ choice, despite its patent lack of popularity and utility, and then lost the election anyway. I remain mystified by his last minute policy proposals, because even if they kind of broadly align with my worldview, surely no one was taking that seriously.
Queensland had a state election, the LNP won and just as soon as they were finished passing legislation to put children in jail, got right on to yet another Olympic review. The review functions as second opportunity for vested interested to skew what was a fairly sensible, easy to deliver and cost effective plan when the Olympics were awarded into whatever mess this is now. Hockey, for example, doesn’t want to play at Ballymore - who could blame them? Also, why is union getting free upgrades for their facility? A bunch of people are adamant Vic Park shouldn’t be touched, even though up until recently, it’s been a golf course.
We remain no closer to locking in Vic Park or the Gabba or whatever other stupid idea some LNP crony cooks up while looking to offload their land to the organising committee so they can free up cash to buy up the Sunshine Coast rail corridor. Brisbane is running out of time.
Meanwhile, the board of Stadiums Queensland turned over in a significant, but perhaps not meaningful, way and JC from Powderfinger now has a whole panel to reshape the nightlife of Brisbane, which seems a little on the nose from the writers if I’m being honest. None of this is new and has all the sticky fingerprints of ouur particular brand of parochial government. North Queensland secession looks more and more viable every day2.
Simming the season
I didn't quite have this worked out for the big Stats Drops that came during the off season, so apologies for the intrusion of numbers into the news newsletter.
One of the problems with being ‘the stats guy’ is if you post a list ranking NRL teams, and people disagree with it, the first thing they do is ask what statistical basis such a ranking could possibly have. What, am I BANNED from doing vibes? VERBOTEN?! Fascists.
The last couple of years, I did some gut feel gradings, which were like 50/50 at best, but I spent very little time on it. Prior to that, I would do Monte Carlo simulations of the season, using various detailed metrics that I would rigorously test for performance and would largely get the prediction that next year will be like last year or maybe that but more mean regressed. Lame.
This year, I'm doing a bit of both. I've spent a little bit of time putting together some numbers that have the right vibe to predict the season ahead but predictions are a crapshoot, it's always going to be a crapshoot so you're going to have to live with that and I'm not going to spend any time testing its performance to eke out an improvement of 2.1% in mean absolute error of predicted wins that no one cares about because people treat these things like ink blots and see what they want to see.
I ranked the teams by these metrics in the table below. No, I don't think Shane Flanagan is the best coach in the league (I'm not even sure he's above average but I couldn't calculate a helmet factor) and no, I don't think the Bunnies have the worst 17 on paper. I do think the Sharks might be good, the Raiders might be bad and bounce backs for Broncos (sustainable) and Eels (not sustainable) also seem likely enough.
The outcomes of these sims will be in the Q4 season previews and the Deep Dive for the rest of the league.
Apparently, I plan to start that next week but I'm 0-2 on deadlines already this season.
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Reads
The Guardian: The curious case of South Sudanese streets named after Australian rugby league greats
Eye Test: Expected Run Metres version 2.0
Rugby League Writers: "Of all the plays we’ve done, nothing will match Oyster"
Gavin Willacy: From rugby league to the NFL: rookie loving each day despite Patriots’ woes (it’s our friend Jotham)
The Athletic: Patrick Mahomes and the secrets of the Dad Bod: What we get wrong about athleticism
The Cruncher: The 2025 NRL draw is out…
Notes
I hope everyone up north is doing OK. This should be more than a note but I also don’t have much else to say. Floods are not good. Here’s a rundown of damage done to the Herbert River Crushers.
I am probably only going to say this once but it is impossible to talk about The Media™ without sounding like a crazy person. It won’t stop me, although I was going to try to spin this into an essay but have restrained myself at least that much, but I am aware.
How many bloody hotels does this guy want? ETFs. Mate. They're right there. It’s not Monopoly.
The Falcons are staying at Sunshine Coast Stadium for 2025 before [Olympic-shaped question mark].
Melbourne set to host blockbuster NFL matches at MCG. Given I think the significant overlap between the ‘fly to Brisbane for Magic Round’ crowd and the potential ‘fly to Melbourne for a NFL game’ crowd, I wonder how this will impact budgets and decisions in 2026.
Daley returns to coach NSW Blues. Hahahahahaha. Oh wait, you were serious. Is NSW so bereft of ideas it must revive the antiquated notion of Laurie Daley as Origin coach?
John Strange for the women’s team was far less inexplicable after Kylie Hilder “stepped down” (due to lack of winning a two team comp).
Ah shit: Darius Boyd has been appointed head coach of the Queensland Under 19 men’s team for 2025.
Less concerning: Tua-Davidson to head up Queensland Under 19 women’s team. Tua-Davidson was QRLW coach of the year in 2023 with Souths Logan.
Pacfique Treize are preparing for a second tour, visiting Vanuatu, Hervey Bay and Bundaberg. Presumably after seeing Coby Black single-handedly sink the Wide Bay Bulls, P13 thought they’d have a go too.
Selected signatures: Caius Fatili is off to Wakey, a quartet of Englishmen have signed on to join the Townsville Blackhawks, Tyrone Peachey is playing at Burleigh (not as important as Sami re-signing but sure), Nixon Putt is back at Central, Ryley Jacks extends at Coorparoo and brother Rhys retired from Ipswich, while the Jets picked up Jono Reuben.
I am well off (but I have two kids and a mortgage, so not $5000 laptop as a whim well off). I do this for fun and money would make it into work. I just repeat news gathered by other people, it’s neither that great nor that hard. Unless I have x number of subscribers, it’s not worth doing. Etc, etc.
I am not opposed to NQ secessionism and think it would actually be both funny and a bit chaotic. One of my political beliefs that rarely gets aired is that there should be more states in Australia and we eliminate local government to compensate. The feds would serve to equalise funding and standard setting across the Commonwealth, as they do now. Even if this is ripped from Facebook, I think that looks in the ballpark even if I might consider e.g. merging SEQ into one state or the Gong and Cenny Coast into Greater Sydney. Authorised by The Maroon Observer, Brisbane.