Frothing at the mouth at the prospect of some violent retribution
Broncos win, Cowboys win, Dolphins win, Cutters win, Jeremy Marshall-King got falconed and the Olympic city
New post
This has everything: footy, clown hats, strippers, karaoke, derangement for Jordan Riki. On the latter, it did occur to me that this was a sound effect piped in, rather than an organic response from the Broncos’ under 25 female fans, because it sounded like it was coming from a specific direction but I couldn’t see who could be that audibly horny.
Also:
Me: ah good, I got the new post out. I can take it easy this week with just one.
Also me: ah crap, the weekly is too long and needs to be split into two.
That was a lot better
Broncos 28 defeated Rabbitohs 18 at Suncorp. Souths did their absolute level best to hand the game on a platter to the Broncos. Brisbane took it but still looked like they were going to trip over and send whatever was on the platter flying at several points. The Broncos still aren’t back to their best. Tries were bombed. Reece Walsh put a few down. Ezra Mam put a few down. The two tries conceded were pathetically defended, one down the highway I thought had been closed between Riki and Reynolds, and the other exploiting Brendan Piakura and Ezra Mam not spacing themselves correctly. The bench looks increasingly problematic. There’s lots of work to do and if Walters thought he’d cracked this coaching thing, he has a whole new set of challenges to resolve in 2024.
Dolphins 38 defeated Dragons 0 at Kayo. The Dragons flew high after demolishing the Titans the previous week, as if that was some bellwether of note, and were rudely brought back to earth by Redcliffe’s finest. St George Illawarra’s April premiership did not even clear March. This performance was more in line with what we expected to see out of the Red Fish in 2024. It wasn’t exceptional by any stretch but it was a lot more competent and enthused, bolstered by some common sense selections in Katoa and Averillo. We saw more involvement from Isaako and Farnworth. Surprisingly, Aitken wasn’t a disaster and the dire bench of old men looked a lot less old. Tyrell Sloan ate shit on the first Tabuai-Fidow try - satisfying - and Ravalawa did not contest the Isaako try - mystifying. The Dragons held on for a while, blew a few more try scoring opportunities and then the dam blew open in the second half. My three year old has upgraded the clown hats to just remaking that there are so many dolphins.
Cowboys 21 defeated Knights 20 at QCB. Say what you like about Todd Payten’s Cowboys teams, they are at least interesting. North Queensland may play a few thousand volts lower than Brisbane but there’s still some electricity and they may have been bafflingly poor in parts last year but at least that was a mystery worth solving. I’m still not really all that convinced by their defence but the Cowboys offence has enough spark, magic, unpredictability that will be, at the very least, a handful for the top half of the league (if they can hold on to the ball). The best case scenario is they get their defence a bit tighter against the Dragons and then we are in for a cracking Queensland Derby on Good Friday.
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The Game: Falcons vs Cutters (QRLW)
I’m hoping to get at least one game in for each of the teams over the first four to six weeks of the competition before zeroing in on the likely premiership contenders in the second half. This match between Sunshine Coast and Mackay was both the feature game and an opportunity to size up two of the middleweight prospects for this year’s premiership, in a similar weightclass as the Caps and the Dales we watched last week.
Observations
This was far from a classic match. The wind played havoc with both sides’ kicking games. There were plenty of handling errors to go around. The Cutters had a delayed flight in. While neither side managed to string together back-to-back sets or build any pressure in the conventional sense, if the Falcons have one area to work on, it’s their handling. This is back-to-back weeks of pretty much this poor standard of play. The Falcons got away with it last week against the Tigers, the Cutters were not so easy.
Emma Manzelmann has a bit of the Cam Smith about her in two respects. One is that she clearly has a similar scale of toolkit, with passing, running and kicking all available. The other is that, at this level, she’s playing in the women’s equivalent of a dinner suit, which I guess is a ballgown, a considerably more inconvenient form of dress to play in.
Emily Bella left a deep impression in me with her performance off the bench to single-handedly swing the outcome of last year’s under 19s women’s Origin. I was surprised then to learn then that she didn’t have a BMD team. That has been rectified this year, with Bella shadowing Manzelmann at 14. Manzelmann covered the first 50 or so, giving Bella a run at dummy half for about ten before she was rotated out to the wing for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me. She played well enough, enthusiastic at contact, no trouble with the pace, couple of missteps, hasn’t yet had the shit kicked out of her by years of elite football. I assume at some point the Cowboys will see the obvious but until then, with the Pride coming in to the comp next year, that opens up another starting position in north Queensland.
Overall, I thought the Cutters looked like the better team but didn’t necessarily play like it. Krystal Blackwell looked more comfortable at fullback than in the three-quarter line for the Cowboys. Tahlulah Tillett was fine-to-good but there’s going to be a NRLW opportunity for Kayla Shepherd at some point, one of the few it was noted that doesn’t have a contract. Kim Hunt has the athleticism. Hegarty, Mooka and Banu all had powerful runs. I know who the Raftstrand-Smith sisters are now, although I couldn’t tell you which one plays which position.
On the Falcons side, Holli Wheeler and Hayley Maddick are the ones making things happen. The former limped off the field towards the end of the match in a way that suggests a broken collarbone (comms suggested a burner - will leave that for NRL Physio to figure out). Annette Brander had a tough one. Maddie Studdon looks stiff, like she slept wrong. Sheridan Gallagher was contained. Most of the team comes up a bit anonymous otherwise.
Both sides’ defence was easily beaten. Neither side put together anything particularly sophisticated offensively and managed to find space by passing from left to right and then from right to left, exploiting defenders that just could not number up. If the Cutters can get in to their next match on time, they’ve got the firepower in the spine to challenge but you don’t really want to be giving up tries in the first 90 seconds every week.
Highlights
Unless you really like watching Hayley Maddick sweep out the back of the left hand side attack, which you can see in any Broncos game of the last few years, there weren’t any real highlights per se and none that would fit neatly into a two or three GIF package. It was one for the purists/perverts.
Ok fine, here's Sareka Mooka barging past four Falcons for a try.
The Olympic City
Former mayor Graham Quirk was brought in by the state government for a whirlwind 60-day review of the 2032 Olympic venues. There were 30 recommendations but to cut to the chase for RL purposes:
Sunshine Coast Stadium - proceed with upgrade to 20k
Barlow Park, Cairns - proceed with upgrade to 5k permanent and 15k temporary seats
Clive Berghofer, Toowoomba - denied
North Ipswich Reserve - not mentioned and never was, let it go
Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane - new pedestrian bridge to connect to Roma Street
The bulk of attention will be paid to the Gabba redevleopment being canned and the recommendation to build a new 50k seat oval stadium in Victoria Park, which is going to cost about the same amount of money. Victoria Park golf course was closed a couple of years ago in anticipation of the Brisbane City Council turning it into a massive park in the middle of the city and now it seems it will actually be a massive construction site for the next decade or so. Wonderful.
While the whole pitch for the Brisbane games was the minimal infrastructure that needed to be built, we all knew the political egos (and the dire need to keep the construction industry constantly inflated lest we realise that nothing else is supporting the economy) would have their say. It was hard to swallow that effectively constructing new land over an operating train station that serves as the main station for the city would be more cost effective for an arena than literally anything else, so at least some sanity has prevailed there.
It’s also hard to swallow the idea that the Gabba is “end of life” but
the site isn’t big enough, with the existing stadium hanging over Stanley Street as it does
I can buy the argument that the existing is not built in line with modern building practice, both for safety and amenities, and that bringing it up to standard would be as expensive as a knock down-rebuild (see also: the SFS)
as we discovered during the Vendetta on Vulture, the Gabba is a squishy fit both inside and outside the stadium for a big game and if the transport isn’t immaculately planned, then it can be a long wait for patrons
What happens to the Gabba once the new Olympic stadium is built will be its own political shitfight. Brisbane could use a mid-sized rectangular stadium in the vein of Melbourne’s, but there’s probably another thousand better uses for the land than that.
However, the Woolloongabba station of Cross River Rail was going to be one of that infrastructure’s lynchpins and now it could just be kind of in the middle of nowhere without some sort of attractive nuisance. Stephen Miles: get PVL on the phone to lineup the licence for NRL19 for the Brisbane Tigers in 2029 and bring real footy to the Gabba.
The Cup
The Roar provided a platform for PVL to thow some thought bubbles out there. None of which is worth relitigating other than a sigh of relief at zero mention of vertical integration and the throwaway lines about a Cup tournament. The NRL season is already too long, with at least a quarter of the inventory being a huge waste of everyone’s time, and the NRL has trouble moving replacement-level Sydney NRL clubs out of the way for rep fixtures that actually bring in mass audiences, and has a player’s union hostile to the idea of doing more brain-damaging work without a significant increase in compensation but you’ve cracked the American market, so sure why not?
“We are very keen on [getting one established]”, V’landys said. “We will look at this over the next couple of years. It brings in new revenues. It gives broadcasters more content.” And sportsbooks, don’t forget about them!
Ironically, there’s space to do this with the women’s game and/or state clubs and/or international club competitions that could be culturally worthwhile, if not exactly a revenue winner, but that will never be considered. Instead we’ll be subjected to reserve graders running around on 35 degree days to fill a gap in summer programming and reduce Kayo’s subscriber churn. Half the commentary will be about who isn’t playing and the other half will be trying to convince you this matters. Do you remember who won the Pre-season Challenge™️?
Intermission
Yeah this made me laugh a lot, sorry.
Notes
NRL has failed by not going harder on Leniu: Thurston. If there’s some upsides of this whole saga, it’s a) I didn’t have to write a thing along the lines of “actually, it’s bad to call someone a monkey and here’s why”, it was just taken as a given by people who aren’t suffering from severe lead poisoning, b) That someone of Thurston’s stature can come out and criticise the NRL for not going harder and that is consdiered acceptable criticism, and c) the NRL avoided a rematch because that would have painful to endure, not just for the reopening of the wounds that won’t have healed by then but also because a handful of male journalists whose conception of masculinity is deeply warped from years of pretending they’re manly men so footy players didn’t think they were gay, would have been frothing at the mouth at the prospect of some violent retribution, when the professional thing to do is to accept the verdict and move on.
Brian Torpy to step down as Brisbane Tigers CEO. Doesn’t seem to much in it other than Torpy has decided to move on. However, with Torpy and Richardson going, one wonders if the NRL bid is still in any way viable. We’ll see if the new administration can give it any momentum.
OMFG NO WONDER I WAS CONFUSED. Getting beaten in your own kit. Brutal.
Townsville A-grade did a draft to decide who gets the rights to 11 Blackhawks. Phenomenal stuff. Should be more of it between NRL/QCup (even within feeder systems, although it would work better as a free for all with a couple of reservations) and QCup/local A-grade. Could make a night of it! It’d certainly be easier to implement than a NRL draft!
Remember when coaches and others in the game brag about doing 18 hour days that the amount of time a person spends talking about how busy they are is inversely proportional to how busy they actually are. Citation: any office anywhere in the world. NRL coaches seem to have plenty of time to gossip and give anonymous quotes to some of the scummiest examples in the media though. That’s work apparently. Personally, if I “worked” that much and all I had to show was a 7-17 season, I’d really start to wonder about my methods. Before you start to jump to their defence, they decided this is how they’re playing their zero sum game - no sympathy.
Streakwatch is over. Both the Ipswich men (d Western, 36-16, the first win by Ipswich over Toowoomba in Cup since 2003) and the Tweed women (d Souths Logan, 32-16) recorded wins this weekend, ending losing streaks that date back to 2022.
Channel Seven boss meets with V’landys about joining ARL Commission. Not much in this given three board members were re-elected like two weeks ago and there’s no current vacancies. Occurs to me that we hear much less out of Wayne Pearce than we did during covid and the laughable attempts to convince everyone the six again was a good idea.
Corey Oates is doing a Cory Paix, which seems unwise. He’s complaining about not being selected and having to play at Burleigh but at least he’s not gunning for the son’s job. Let’s see how that went last year:
Blackhawks’ Jayden Hodges played 40 minutes with a broken arm
Broncos crack 50k members. I personally don’t put a lot of stock in member numbers, other than to note that they largely change year to year based on the team’s performance.
Injuries: Lemuelu and Stone out, Luki out for 6-8, Reynolds out, Haas in doubt for Penrith
Mal Meninga leaves the Titans. Hands up if you’d forgotten he was there as a consultant. It seems like the Titans did too because “leaves”, in this case, means his contract was not renewed. Meninga felt “ostracised” because he wasn’t asked if he too thought Hasler would be an obvious upgrade on Holbrook.
Teams from PNG and Fiji will participate in this year’s Harvey Norman Women’s National Championships, as will the women’s “winners” of the combine the NRL held in Vegas. Anyone with passing familiarity with the concept of a combine will know it’s not something you can win and yet here we are.
This was a classic Sunday morning read: ‘I took Trent Robinson astral travelling’: Inside the mind of mysterious ‘Coach Whisperer’. Speaks for itself.
From the Bears: A little bit of Burleigh Bears history
From the Hunters: Newmont supports PNG Hunters in 2024 season, QRL Round 2 Report: Hunters v CQ Capras
From the Devils: Devils defend line in stirring win
Not Queensland: South Island Kea? Andy Marinos, former head of SANZAAR and CEO of Rugby Australia, and David Moffett, former NRL CEO and union administrator who recently wrote 10 reasons league and union should merge to become One Rugby - and give AFL nightmares on The Roar, are involved. They are talking a co-op model. Going co-op doesn’t make a lot of sense given that NRL franchises should, generally, be profitable given the level of central funding and so is a feasible investment for serious businesspeople and corporates. I gather this is separate to the South Island NZ bid that launched on LinkedIn. We’ll see how it goes but in the mix, that’s PNG (still the favourite anytime PVL is asked), the Bears of somewhere, Brisbane-ish Tigers, South Island Kea and maybe a second South Island bid that will surely run out of steam. There’s still no real Perth bid, although the WA government have previously commited to supporting someone else doing it. I like the jersey and logo.
Not Queensland: RFL confirms Championship and League One to contain 12 teams from 2026. We must RETVRN and put all the teams in a huge unwieldy single division below Super League. I also think once the NRL goes down the conferences route, the RFL will mimic them by doing something similar in the Championship. Time for the Big Yorkie and the Pennines East Conference to finally take their place on the rugby league stage.
Not Queensland: Featherstone, the epitome of flat capper club, are in dire financial straits. My reading from here is that's another club that went all-in on securing promotion, didn't get it and now they're screwed. For all the bleating about how promotion needs to be decided on the field and their long history, it looks like they're going to have to eat their words.
Not related to anything in particular other than I love stories like this: From TED To PERNOCTATED, Scrabble’s Best Player Knows No Limits