Call me a naif
The finish of the QDub spoon bowl was worth watching
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I'm shocked! Shocked to find that corruption is going on in here
That didn’t take long:
The chairman of the successful bid for Papua New Guinea’s new rugby league franchise faces corruption concerns involving a Chinese company – after the Albanese government poured $600 million of taxpayer money into the scheme to ward off Beijing’s influence in the Pacific.
The summary is that Wapu Sonk, board member for the new PNG NRL team and managing director of Kumul Petroleum, directed a Chinese company that had won a contract to build oil tanks for KP, to engage companies he owned to undertake engineering work, without disclosing his ownership of those companies. The assumption is that Sonk would directly profit from this arrangement, although engineering can be a tricky beast.
The story is long and unusually detailed for an output of the current Australian media environment and did offer this moment of levity:
Called this week, Pollock denied knowing his boss, Sonk, was the owner of PNG Developments Pty Ltd.
“I would find it hard to believe that Sonk owns that company,” Pollock said. “That would surprise me … I’m quite taken back (sic) by that suggestion.”
When later sent a shareholding document by this masthead that proved Sonk’s ownership of the firm, Pollock responded with an emoji of an angry red face swearing.
Call me a naif but even by Australian standards, this is hardly the worst case of corruption. Perhaps I am desensitised by having recently read Matthew Condon’s Three Crooked Kings trilogy; things were out of control in Queensland not that long ago. By the standards of a country whose own ICAC is in complete disarray, this seems like not a big deal. That Sonk put it in writing tells you a lot about his perception of what he was doing.
There are other allegations about a house in Indooroopilly being paid for by business partners that his - it is implied but not stated - sidepiece/mistress/partner is living in with him. Is there more dirt to this? Undoubtedly. I would guess that this was all the journalists could prove and there are briefcases full of cash to be found should anyone care to spend enough time on it. Now Sonk has stood aside, at the direction of James Marape (another conflict?!), the heat will inevitably come off and the Australian media will pay Kumul Petroleum exactly the same amount of attention as they did previously (none).
Besides Dean Ritchie’s retchingly awful PR, in which he compares to Sonk to Nick Politis (I’d be on the phone about that if I were ol’ Nick), this story tells us the quantity of money involved in the PNG NRL team, and the highly publicised and politicised nature of it, has attracted journalistic resources. While the media mostly sucks, when they want to put their ass into it, they can still make people uncomfortable. Will this result in any long term improvements for PNG? Probably not but there are plenty of opportunities for leaning into Australian prejudices about both China and PNG.
Fortunately, some of that $600 million has been given directly to good, honest Australian rugby league clubs. What’s that about a carpark?
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Around the grounds
Dolphins 43 defeated Cowboys 24. If it wasn’t already obvious, the Cowboys are done for the year. It’s not even the result per se, it was mostly from minute 10 to the break where the Dolphins built an almost unassailable lead with a bunch of nobodies against a team with a bunch of somebodies who weren’t trying. The nobodies switched off in the second half and the somebodies have a few who try no matter what (Dearden, Drinkwater, et al) and clawed back some self-respect. The Dolphins are three wins away from finals and this game had the most obnoxious Dolphins crowd I’ve ever sat with.
Random statewide split screening, Saturday. The ending to women’s Capras-Tweed was fantastic for two teams that had one (1) total win to that point in the season - something something about quality of female talent pool. Cutters have moved Emily Bella to halfback (finally) and notched a try assist for Mackay after going behind to Norths early. Tayla Curtis, 22 year old ex-Dragon and current Cowboy, looked impressive for the Pride. Norths and Northern both won. Men’s Tigers defence was truly awful, dropping a slew of tries to Burleigh en route to a 48-6 defeat. Magpies still look widely variant and not sure what the go is with the Dolphins.
Cowboys 16 defeated Sharks 14 (W). You can tell this team has improved markedly. In years past, there was no way the Cowboys would have defended a slender lead for so long. Yet here they were, keeping out the frankly anaemic Sharks offence. The Cowboys were without both Dibb and Whitfeld and it didn’t seem to matter much. This gives us clues to the secret of North Queensland’s success (the forwards systematically crunching the middle and comprehensively winning the arm wrestle). It’s a big win for a team that hadn’t yet started 2-1 and will be fighting for places in the midfield with the likes of Cronulla. More to come in the next Bovine Bulletin.
Roosters 30 defeated Broncos 26 (W). While I think this will likely get some ‘classic’ game billing, this was less of an attacking masterclass than it was poorly defended in the first half. The Roosters stormed out of the gates and had it won in 15 minutes and the rest was window dressing. Both sides kept it simple and we were treated to more of a fiercely contested struggle in the second half. The Roosters played with an extremely compressed middle and no one seemed to think Jocelyn Kelleher hanging out on the wing in defence merited any investigation until it was too late. The Broncos handed the Roosters their possession through errors, and then add another layer for one of the worst refereeing performances we’ve seen since the 2023 Queensland Cup final, and the Sydneysiders’ big bodies won it in the trenches. They nearly, nearly, ran out of gas but the Broncos needed another five minutes. Jess Sergis sucks and has for a while. Bree Spreadborough remains pretty good. The Broncos haven’t beaten the Roosters in the last five attempts. That probably won’t be relevant later in the year. More to come in the next Pony Picayune.
Titans 24 defeated Tigers 12 (W). The solution here for the Titans’ constipated offence was to stop playing with their food and get on with it. Down 12-6 shortly after half time, a disaster was in the offing despite the surfeit of opportunity presented to the Gold Coast team. The Titans are missing a couple of pieces (one Shannon Mato-sized, one Evania Isaako-shaped, among others) from being in contention this year. Plenty of time left but there’s plenty of work to do; you don’t get the Tigers every week.
Tigers 21 defeated Titans 20 (M). This organisation seems intent on wasting Jayden Campbell’s talents.
Intermission
Here is an abbreviated history of women’s football at Tweed Heads and in Central Queensland.
Tweed - 2021: 2-4-1, 2022: 1-6, 2023: 0-7, 2024: 3-5-1, 2025: 1-4
Central - 2021: 2-5, 2022: 6-1 (!), 2023: 1-6, 2024: 2-7, 2025: 0-5
Between them, these two teams have had one winning season since 2021. Unlike some of the other clubs, you will have heard of the people that have briefly and temporarily played for these teams as they are some for the biggest names in women’s football: Tarryn Aiken, Jaime Chapman, Olivia Kernick, Tamika Upton, Jesse and Hannah Southwell. Nonetheless, add up the wins.
In the new regime, 2025 is going about as expected. The Seagulls and Capras faced off in Rockhampton for what was probably going to end up being the spoon bowl, pending Wynnum’s somewhat inexplicable collapse.
But this is why you watch rugby league games.
17’ to go and Central lead 10-8, looking like they may be able to hold out for their first win of the season and oops, there goes Raimee Wright.
Four minutes later, Savannah Roberts-Hickling uses a turn of pace to jam the knife in and set up Tweed for their second win of the year. After the kick, it’s 18-10 to the Gulls.
With just seven minutes left, Gemma Brennan gets her nose through the line setting up Tylah Phillips’ barnstorming run to the line and try in the corner, bringing the Capras within one score.
On the siren, Phillips pops up again to ground Lydia Durkin’s kick, which Roberts-Hickling has really mismanaged.
The conversion is missed and the game finishes all square. It doesn’t quite have the drama of a Leka Halasima charge-down try but if you go looking, there’s magic to be found.
Reform RFL
This is not a Super League newsletter but I do try to keep half an eye on the transpirings in England, as it is the only other professional league. English rugby league’s commercial crisis is both obvious and deep, with the Sky broadcast deal repeatedly collapsing in value to the point where the top flight clubs receive much less and the rest almost nothing at all.
Will anyone realise that Sky previously paid overs for a long time and probably didn’t care much about the Super League pocket change in comparison to the Premier League deal? Post-covid, times are tougher for Sky, squeezed between streamers, alternative cable providers and astronomical rights fees for domestic football, and that luxury can no longer be extended to a tinpot sport like rugby league. But still, probably not.
The pressure arising from the crisis has expressed itself in two ways. One was the coalition of Vegas clubs, who participated in this year’s season kick-off and are slated for next year’s, following IMG’s commercial lead and then also seeking some help from the NRL to keep the ship afloat. To what extent that succeeded or how far along discussions were is not clear. These clubs seem to be Wigan, Warrington, Leeds and Hull KR.
The other is a coalition of business-as-usual (BAU) clubs, who have not shown an interest in Vegas, have expressed antipathy towards the IMG grading structure for its lack of sporting context and do not seem interested in NRL investment. These clubs have managed to overturn the board of the RFL, institute a strategic review and re-install their preferred power-brokers, including the return of the much maligned Nigel Wood and the differently but very much maligned Rob Hicks. Gary Hetherington, lately of Leeds but now of London, Derek Beaumont of the fast-rising Leigh and St Helens’ Eamonn McManus seem to be the main figures on this side.
Had St Helens opted to join the Vegas crew, this probably wouldn’t even be up for discussion but the big club power brokers have split. The BAU has picked up support from the lower tiers, who are otherwise held down by silly things like having to present a professional product to compete in the professional league and also the French, and want the opportunity to rise to where the money is, no matter how insanely unlikely that is to happen.
In the first instance, this may mean a return to a 14 team Super League. The logic follows something like: in the absence of broadcast revenue, gate revenue is king. Clubs cannot countenance a reduction in fixtures but a smaller number of teams in the competition would mean more repeat fixtures so a larger league is required to maintain the same fixtures, and the same revenue, without the matchups getting stale.
In the second instance, the French teams do not bring in broadcast revenue - this is apparently their responsibility for some reason - and lower than average gate attendances, so it will be politically convenient to axe the Dragons and Olympique. And if not axe them, then slowly starve them of commercial viability by increasing the burden and reducing the payout until they go back across the Channel.
To the outside, slapping away a helping hand of the NRL and the cachet of the French clubs is nutso. I understand the logic, such as it is, but it smacks of Brexitism and reminds us that the sport is not steered by rational automatons, operating efficiently in a free market and optimising for profit, but petty people with political dispositions colouring their decision-making.
I was then dismayed, but unsurprised, to see that the Reform UK party, headed by ethno-nationalist Nigel Farage, is leading the polls as the most popular party in the UK. While there is four years to the next general election, that signals a significant and negative change in the political mood in England, as Reform hollows out the Conservative vote.
A decade of Brexiting has made the country immeasurably worse off, so they seem to want to try Brexiting harder and see if that fixes things. It won’t. As the Trump administration is showing, this calibre of politician doesn’t have the answers because they don’t really understand the problems. Importantly for the ongoing decline of democracy in the west, neither do their voters, who are euphemistically “low-information”. The parallels with this political scenario and the BAU coalition should be fairly straightforward.
Which brings me to rugby league’s political heritage, and traditional association with the working class, that middle-brow content creators (like me) love to cling to. This prior needs updating for the present day. I am reminded of Tony Collins’ Workington Man piece, published shortly before the 2019 general election:
Unlike Essex Man or Worcester Woman, Workington Man (Johnson’s consultants appear to be ignorant of the fact that women are also rugby league fans and players) has none of the advantages of living in the economic bubble of the south of England. While dissatisfaction with Labour also runs deep, it is unlikely that traditional rugby league areas in the north of England will fall to the Tories.
Although the Brexit party has picked up votes in these areas, Nigel Farage’s Dulwich College accent and golf club-bore demeanour is too great a barrier for him to make any significant breakthrough in areas where stubborn resistance to self-appointed authority is deeply ingrained.
The Conservatives absolutely bodied Labour in that election, turning a large part of the M62 corridor’s red belt to blue. The Tories’ incompetence during the covid era saw most of that revert back to its traditional red with Labour’s landslide 2024 victory.
Now, just a year later, of the constituencies featuring Super League clubs, Castleford, Wigan, Wakefield, Leigh and parts of Warrington, Hull and Leeds would go to the light blue of Reform. Only St Helens and Salford would remain wholly red with Labor. Curiously, Huddersfield is tipped Green, although this seems to be a tight three way tussle that is impossible to predict so far in advance.
What does this all mean? Other than the ongoing dissatisfaction of the lower working and welfare classes in the Anglosphere with the outcomes of globalisation and capitalism on their quality and purpose of life, and their increasingly reactionary politics, who knows? It may be a flash in the pan but I think there’s enough to suggest that, in the same way that some foreign policy thought is required to understand the PNG NRL expansion, forecasting the future of the English game will require consideration of the domestic political situation and its influence on a handful of pasty, middle-aged, petit bourgeois Englishmen.
Upcoming Slate
There are six games of the NRLM rated two stars or lower this weekend. The QCup spoon bowl is also this weekend which, even if the Clydesdales manage to win, will still leave them in last place. I briefly thought about whether I could go to a QCup game this weekend and so now, of course, rain is forecast for Saturday, which will make anything in SEQ borderline unwatchable. The QDub is on hiatus for two weeks. I’d say tune in for the Cowboys-Raiders in the NRLW because at least the Cows should run up a score.
(Tips 26 / 53 in 2025; 48 / 92 in 2024)
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Notes
Kevin Walters signs up as Kangaroos coach for this year’s Ashes tour
Enter the Titans 2025 Hot Dog Eating Contest. $2000 prize money doing a lot of heavy lifting that tickets for a box at a late season Titans game aren’t.
Gus reveals why he pulled out of salary cap shake-up. To save you watching the 43 second video with a 15 second pre-roll, the NRL apparently isn’t going to burn it down and start again, so Gould felt he had nothing to add. Sure, man.
Warriors set up base in Logan City in South East Queensland. This got the war/bombshell treatment from the CM but in reality, just about every NRL club has a presence of some sort in SEQ for scouting. A non-trivial portion of the U19 Maroons play for Sydney clubs already. It is not only surprising that it took the Warriors this long, but it is interesting that the Warriors are tied up directly with Logan City Council. Souths Logan should be getting on the phone.
While I am not laughing at these people, I’m not not doing that either. You bought a video game that has been historically pretty bad, everyone expected was going to be bad and got a bad game. As expected. I’m not sure Big Ant is entirely to blame here. Sounds like you’re feeding cats to the coyotes. What is funny is the variety and breadth of bad experiences people are having. What’s hilarious is that I thought there was something wrong with me when these people are out there among us.
AJ Mithen: “It was hard to understand what the Warriors were challenging after Tanah Boyd’s missed two-point field goal because Andrew Voss was bloviating over the top of the referee’s explanation…” You should be reading AJ at The Roar each week but I mostly like that he said Voss was bloviating.
Peter V’landys predicts the Gold Coast Titans will become an NRL heavyweight under new owners. Uh-huh. The owners aren’t even new.
I had a longer take on this but between the new franchises in the NRL, expansion of the Super League, potential additional NRL-branded competitions and the increasing foreign quotas in Super League, the rugby league labour market is coming under significant strain as it is. Not only is the mooted Rugby 360 competition likely to be ephemeral, or at least under-capitalised, it will be the least of our issues. We’ll hear about it as an options from the least scrupulous, least loyal, least ideologically aware players, tediously invoking R360 when they need a pay rise, as if there weren’t enough opportunities for that already.
A good AI story: Humans beat AI at international math contest despite gold-level AI scores. Turns out the International Mathematical Olympiad is happening on the Sunshine Coast. Also: “Contest organizers could not verify how much computing power had been used by the AI models or whether there had been human involvement, he cautioned.” Lol.
A brief reminder that the Crisfaulli state government are a bunch of morons and the LNP have no worthwhile answers on energy policy. Any time anyone claims that “ideology” is driving the rollout of renewables, and not engineering or economics, you can safely ignore that person for the rest of time.
Nickelware
The Queensland pennant race could come down to Conflict on Caxton V. The Broncos have that and a Big Game left on the schedule, which you’d expect Brisbane to win the latter, and the Dolphins have a Brawl on the Beach to go, which you’d expect Redcliffe to win. With the Dolphins’ psychotic points difference, a win in the Classica Civoniceva would put the Dolphins over the top, with both on 5-1 in divisional play.
North Queensland are having an absolute bummer of a season. Not sure if getting the NRLW Cowboys and maybe the QDub Pride bounced in week one of the finals would be any sort of consolation. Unlike, say, Newcastle, at least you get to share the Origin success.
It’s increasingly looking like a two horse race for the overall title, with both Norths and Burleigh having pretty good teams in both senior competitions. Last year, the first for the Pyramid Premiership, Burleigh won with 33 wins. With the expanded women’s competitions, that record should fall this year. Burleigh are forecast to add another six wins but, crucially, Norths only five. The Devils were only mid-table in 2024 but a much improved performance across the youth categories has put them in contention, even if they fall short.