Gullible marks and rubes
Time for our annual PVL assessment
Welcome to The Maroon Observer, a weekly newsletter about rugby league, Queensland and rugby league in Queensland.
Shooting himself in the foot in celebration of his victories
It is time to talk about the proposed rule changes to the NRL:
The non-scoring team will now have the option to kick-off or receive the ball to restart play. As it stands, the team which concedes a try or goal restarts play by kicking off…
Coaches will now be able to carry benches of six players but will still be only able to play four per game. It means game day squad sizes will increase from 17 to 19 but interchanges will remain capped at eight…
If an attacking player drops the ball in the act of attempting to score a try over the tryline they will not be penalised by a seven tackle set…
Set restarts instead of penalties will be awarded from outside the 20-metre line of the attacking team. This is designed to speed play up. Full penalties will still be awarded inside the 20-metre mark. This season, penalties were awarded inside the 40 metres.
Five years ago, the change to kick-offs and the increased set reset area would have caused me to have an aneurysm. I would post an angry thread about how stupid it is on Twitter and then write a lengthy blog post on pythagonrl.com that incisively explains there’s no evidence that this will solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Imaginary problems should be the easiest kind to fix.
This would rally a handful of likeminded people to do nothing except make noise and collectively fume. After reaching the high water mark of the NRL in 2025, these fools just can’t help themselves but tinker to justify their continued existence! or words to that effect.
But this story dropped on 30 December. Between Christmas and the New Year, I do nothing. It’s now 2026 and I try to wait a bit before committing to apoplexy.
“Due to the nature of the changes and in order to provide a level playing field,” Abdo wrote to club bosses in an email obtained by this masthead. “We are sharing this with all club CEOs to provide any feedback on the proposed changes via the (club consultation) committee but also share the proposed amendments with coaching staff at the same time.”
The proposals originated with a coaching committee. This is the kind of rhetorical detail that is meant to silence nobodies with Substacks but only serves to highlight the combination of a catastrophic lack of ball knowing by coaches and adminstrators, a total inability to think strategically and their goldfish memories of the 2021 season.
Fortunately, someone still has a functioning brain:
However, the proposal has been rejected by the clubs.
This masthead has obtained an email from Broncos CEO Dave Donaghy, on behalf of the Club Consultation Committee, to Abdo on Friday which outlines the clubs’ concerns with the kick-off change.
“Clubs are opposed to this proposed rule, as they believe this changes the ‘fabric of the game’, in a way that may not be justified,” the email said.
The clubs have three concerns about the rule change, claiming there is little clarity around how it will be implemented, could increase stoppages and confuse fans, particularly those watching live at venues.
The clubs have requested clearer drafting and detail, however “given the scale of this change and the club views, clubs recommend trialling rather than immediate implementation.”
Donaghy goes on to raise concerns with the lack of clarity of what the rule changes even are, and the obvious potential for confusion for clubs and fans, as well as highlighting some problems with the set restart rule that we’ve been banging on about since 2020. It is nice to know someone is listening.
Overarching principle - lead time, clarity and trial period: Clubs are aligned on one critical point - any change introduced at NRL level must be accompanied by adequate lead time and detailed operational guidance to ensure coaches, players, trainers and match-day officials can train and implement changes consistently. Where changes are likely to materially impact fatigue, injury risk, match flow, tactics or officiating consistency, clubs strongly recommend trialling in lower-tier competitions and/or controlled trial periods (late season non-finals’ impacting games) prior to full NRL implementation, so the impact can be properly assessed.
There it is, Big Dick Dave riding to the rescue of the common fan by simply asking the question, what the actual fuck do you [redacted] think you’re doing? It is January, you stupid [redacted], and we have a season to prepare for but phrased more professionally and with some heft behind it.
Because the ARLC is owned and operated for the benefit of the NRL clubs, club CEOs negatively reacting to anything that emerges from the V’Landys/Abdo hive mind is dangerous to their tenures. Using political capital to implement some dumbass coach’s idea that disrupts the work of the people who really matter is presumably not how PVL wants to do business:
“We are in the consultation period so we’re listening to everybody’s views and once we consider it all we’ll make the decision,” he [PVL] said.
“We review every season and get feedback from all different aspects – fans, players, and we also had a meeting with six coaches – Wayne Bennett (Rabbitohs), Ivan Cleary (Panthers), Craig Fitzgibbon (Sharks), Ricky Stuart (Raiders), Craig Bellamy (Storm) and Michael Maguire (Broncos).
“They came up with some ideas, we came up with some other ideas, and that’s how it was formulated.
V’Landys blathers on about how the game needs to be exciting, how well the sport is doing and how that’s down to the hard decisions he made as an administrator. We simply do not have time to relitigate this revisionist view of his pants wetting during covid-era negotiations with broadcasters, however, I will note that most of this list of achievements reads to me like a politician trying to justify their way out of something they previously said they were considering and steering the topic away from how dumb it now makes them look because of how easy it would have been to think about and then avoid.
“The purpose of consultation is to listen to people’s views and see if they have a strong enough argument not to do it.”
Completely ass backwards. You should try starting with a good idea for once.
The disappointing thing is that I thought V’Landys had learned his lesson1 and that he might stop shooting himself in the foot in celebration of his victories. That does not appear to be the case. V’Landys is a dumb bitch with terrible taste that will never change or improve, that is a promise.
It has, at time of writing, been two weeks since PVL‘s response and there has been silence on the subject. By the time you read this, you may have the fullness of knowledge as to whether these rule changes are proceeding or not. My bet is no - perhaps wishcasting that the clubs are sufficiently organised and well led to avoid the absolute worst atrocities of this regime - but it’s still at least a 40% possibility of yes. The best case might be a compromise that would push off a trial implementation until next season and then quietly kill it - i.e. the national reserve grade treatment - which is more than PVL and co deserve for their lack of attention and common sense.
As if that wasn’t enough of an off-season, Vlando biffed this moment of international relations:
“Having rugby league there for the community as a whole - taking the kids to school, bringing all the people together like a glue,” Mr V’landys said on Tuesday.
“No matter how much investment China makes in PNG, it can never achieve that.
“You can never achieve the heart and soul and brain of the PNG person - and we can in sport.”
Mr Marape hurriedly stepped in to affirm support for critical Chinese investment in his country.
“I want to quickly say a word or two, a big thank you to China and all our bilateral partners,” he interrupted.
Great stuff. Truly, a man for all seasons.
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One of the services offered by The Maroon Observer collection of newsletters, and perhaps its most appreciated, is an interpretation of the news. Here is what I offer:
Experience watching people make good and bad strategic and tactical decisions
Shown sufficient self-reflection to understand the consequences of my own (relatively low stakes) professional decision making
Good memory
An innate dislike of being treated like a moron that is equally powerful as my need to post to be seen as smart, and
I never have (and never will) worked for media or in sport
This resume means that I can strip back the hyperbole to a set of facts, look at other evidence, and then reframe the story, usually in a way that can be embarrassing to someone trying to cover their ass but in a way that is potentially more truthful and free from concerns about causing offence or losing access. This is opinion, and should not be confused for journalism, because the latter would require me to talk to people and defer to a house style that would not allow me to insert my very real but ethically sourced biases into the text.
It is not to everyone’s taste, because it is written down in words that you then have to read, because it is complicated, because I am acerbic and because, sometimes, it is important but very boring. I can get things wrong, misread the emphasis of the evidence and fall into the same rhetorical traps as everyone else. I was convinced that we’d be playing a National Youth competition again this year. That does not seem to be happening and we’ll talk about that some other time. Chalk up one ‘fell for it’ award for me.
Nonetheless, I think my track record is good enough to merit continuing to offer this service. While it is flattering to have people tell me that they uncritically ingest what I write, it is much more reassuring when people tell me I’ve changed their perspective, even a little bit. You shouldn’t be force fed information like a foie gras goose, you should be using your brain to critically evaluate what’s in front of you. I may be wrong and you may be right!
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Hypernormalisation of R360
It seems clear that the only rubes in the market for Rugby 360, the failed breakaway rugby series that was going to sign hundreds of top rugby players so they could play a F1-style2 calendar of events around the world, were the NRL and its stakeholders.
Zac Lomax outed himself as the biggest mark in the sport, quit Parramatta because he thought he was going to get a big pay day from whatever vaporfinance was behind R360 and now he’s using that as leverage to go to the Storm. Good for him, who cares.
Even if everyone rumoured to be in talks with R360, and this exercise should show you the quality of the rumour mill, had departed, the NRL would still be here and those guys would be forgotten about. Remember Joey Manu? He’s playing the form of rugby that people ostensibly like. Payne Haas would’ve disappeared into a black hole, never to be heard from again, and the Broncos would still be premiers of the top rugby competition in the world.
Peter V’Landys, himself panicking because the clubs were panicking because they read the news without the benefit of a Maroon Observer subscription, threatened any potential defectors (of which there was one) with a 10 year ban that would not have withstood a trip to the Supreme Court.
I don’t necessarily blame the average person for believing there might be something there - but, seriously, the best case scenario for R360 was a game at Lamport Stadium streamed on Youtube and they were never going to deliver what was being promised - but adminstrators, clubs and players (or at least their agents) should have known better.
When was the last time one of these things turned out to be real? The Premier League? The rugby league Super League? Indycar? Those would be heavily qualified comparisons but, more importantly, those opportunities were more than thirty years ago and do not exist now. LIV Golf is losing money at a rapid rate of knots, has no viewership, is changing its format to align with normal golf tournaments and only has a couple of high profile players left on its books. This is the most successful recent example, because it actually produced some golf but required the Saudis to directly inject hundreds of millions of petrodollars.
That support may not be long for this world:
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) is reportedly running low on funds for new investments, which could impact its outlay on sports properties going forward…
However, according to The New York Times (NYT), the fund has spent much of its money on projects that are in financial trouble, and is now looking to turn around its fortunes. Most of the assets it has invested in are described as ‘hard to sell’ and have no public valuations available.
The projects that are cited to be in distress includes Neom, the mega smart city that has been subject to several delays, as well as companies spanning coffee, cruises and electric vehicles.
The flow of cheap money leaking out of sovereign wealth funds is being clamped. The party’s over, fellas, and the long, cold winter awaits.
I find the whole thing so expaserating3. It is not unique to rugby: We call it the super duper cycling league. Do you see the parallels? The phrase “out of touch elites” is usually misused by the kind of One Nation voter you’d cross the street to avoid making eye contact, but it is applicable here. They have better access to money than understanding of what makes sport tick. It is classic MBA brainrot.
I realised R360 was mist, vapour, fumes, gaseous when rugby union podcasts had no more information than I had gleaned from a single article on The Guardian. That was because there was nothing more to it than a business plan on a napkin, the kind of stuff Redditors dream up before being downvoted by more realistic and smarter people. The podcasters pointed out the same obvious problems: who is going to play for this? When is it going to happen? Where is the audience? There weren’t any answers because there were never any answers.
But because these kinds of people who come up with R360 and run NRL clubs all bounce around their own little echo chamber of dipshittery, they convince themselves that fantasy is reality and then start getting scared. Fear causes lashing out, and you end up with an unenforceable 10 year ban from the very real NRL for non-existent players defecting to a figment of their fevered imagination.
Having written that all out, it feels like the mooted Global Round, the subject of a series of near identical articles outlining the exotic destinations in which NRL could conceivably be played and eliding the obvious timezone, broadcast and access problems, that all dropped in late October, was the NRL’s attempt to fight off R360 with its own attempt at a glamorous world tour. While this is not the first time it has been floated, and also comes off the back of the Broncos talking to the Qataris to see if they wanted to host the World Club Challenge for some reason, we can only wonder what other potential avenues sports could have been forced down by the very real threat of Rugby 360.
(Should be noted that kind of like the idea of Global Round but you would have to set some outlandish metrics to have any kind of qualified success with it)
Intermission
Insane that he got away with this.
As Steve Mascord has pointed out, we are seeing some mummuring about boycotting the ‘28 Olympics or the ‘30 World Cup, although nothing that anyone with power has yet responded to, but the NRL has shown dick-all concern about sending a bunch of foreign nationals to Las Vegas. Cue the extremely reassuring headline: ‘They’re not targeting Australians’: Police chief says NRL fans will be safe in Vegas. Maybe PVL can intervene with his close personal friend to protect rugby league fans from being disappeared to El Salvador?4
Here come some bears
After announcing a coaching team of Mal Meninga and Ben Gardiner and poaching CEO Anthony De Ceglie from Seven, the Bears had been pretty quiet. The first signings have started coming through, with the Bears picking up a bunch of guys in poorly Photoshopped black tees. I don’t think this roster is going to be any better on paper than the Dolphins’ inaugural team but expectations seem to be a lot lower for the Bears. We’ve barely been treated to any hand wringing about how they’ve failed to sign any stars.
The logo dropped and it fit neatly in the current NRL graphic design oeuvre, unimpressive but will screen print easily onto a $60 shirt and can be scaled easily in Illustrator for when they need a small version or a big version without losing detail or introducing weird artefacts. That is, the practical stuff that management likes and not the superfluous aesthetics that fans want.
Curiously, in announcing affiliations with the Easts Tigers and North Sydney Bears, the Perth Bears said this:
Perth Bears CEO Anthony De Ceglie said the partnership was more than just about on-field success but also represented a commitment to honour and respect the heritage and supporter base of the North Sydney Bears.
“The Perth Bears are a new NRL franchise, but nothing will ever change the fact that the birthplace and spiritual home of the ‘Bears’ in rugby league will always be North Sydney,” he said.
“The Bears brand is one of the most respected in rugby league, and this exclusive alignment with North Sydney ensures our players have access to a proven development system.
“It’s a powerful statement about our commitment to building a sustainable future for the Perth Bears, both here in WA and across the country.”
Boy, that sounds like the Bears aren’t really back, doesn’t it? It sounds like a new team that just happens to be red and black and called the Bears.
Supposedly, the first pass of the new logo did not look like the Bears’ current logo, although this is a detail from one of those horrible autoplay videos featuring journalists that have no business being filmed, talking to camera, because that’s what the editors at News Corp think people are into. The Australian declined to unpaywall its article.
This arms-length approach did not thrill the folks at Kirribilli. They leaned on Peter V’Landys, in his capacity as ARLC chairman and therefore Lord High Protector of Sydney Nostalgia, to lean on the De Ceglie to change the Perth logo to look more like North Sydney’s. Not the one from 1908, or 1959, but the more familiar version from 1978-1996 before we got stuck with this Super League and rain nonsense that killed off the Bears. Of course, this is presented as some sort of victory and not a gross overreach.
Subsequent press releases have been more effusive about the special relationship between Perth and North Sydney, which is a very natural pairing. The ARLC’s ownership of the Perth Bears franchise, and PVL parachuting in his hand picked appointment that he met at a wedding, has negated the questions I had about the potential east-west culture clash. The Perth side has no identity and dances to PVL’s tune, so there is no scope for pushing back on North Sydney. Note that this is not necessarily a stable arrangement in the medium term.
But it does raise another interesting consideration. The two new teams seem to be owned, in the first instance, by the ARLC. This is explicit in Perth’s case but only by inference in PNG’s. Given that PVL can lean on the CEO of the Perth Bears, and presuming that the Perth Bears now have a vote as an ARLC member, do we potentially see an opportunity for some governance shenanigans?
I’m sure it’ll all be fine.
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Stats pop
Here’s the average margin of every NSWRL/ARL/Super League/NRL season going back to 1988:
My view is that this divergence primarily results from the relatively young age of the Super League clubs. SL had ten teams, of which two were in their first season (Rams, Mariners) and three more were in their third (Cowboys, Warriors, Reds), while the ARL had a dozen teams but only one of the 1995 generation (Crushers). Australia had no business supporting 22 professional rugby league teams, six of which were very new, and that would have caused some discrepancy in competitiveness.
Nonetheless, this is the only datapoint for what happens when the kick off is received by the conceding team. While technically the proposed rule change merely allows for a choice by the conceding team, in reality no one is going to turn down possession of the ball. Like the 20/40, its obviousness masks any potential for tactics.
In nearly four decades of footy, that rule change coincided with the biggest blowouts we’ve seen, significantly worse even than 2021 and 1995. It doesn’t exactly scream winner.
Read this
Sportress: Six Again: For the Love of the Game
Rugby League Writers: Assessing the NRL’s proposed rule changes
John Davidson: 'Gentle Giant' Tallis, trailblazing and tracing family roots
Notes
RLPA Player Survey: Eight NRL and NRLW clubs handed F grades in damning player survey. Time to name and shame. It’ll be funny if nothing else to find out which club got an F for “environment” from NRLW players.
Rugby brain injury case suffers blow after judge rejects court appeals
Queensland woman wakes up to find carpet python on top of her. Normal state. ‘Ms Bloor, who grew up on an acreage, said she wasn’t scared of the snake and was just glad it wasn’t a toad. “Toads freak me out,” she said.’ You and me both, sister.
Lifting ban on developer donations could increase corruption risk, Queensland watchdog says. Sky is blue, Queensland watchdog says. Pope also Catholic.
My annual plug for Sick, Sad World of Sports. As a postscript, I do not currently plan to start a regular F1 newsletter, although I am currently trawling the archives of F1 TV and am doing some reading, which is my way of telling myself that I have the intention of doing that later. It is important to have a fallback plan if e.g. the NRL gets cancelled.
My lesson is that I should not attempt US politics discourse if it can be helped because it is way worse than even I, a routine pessimist, had thought.
It’s always F1-style and presumably the reason we only have one F1-style sport, that is Formula One, is that no one thought of doing this earlier, despite all evidence to the contrary.
I tried to write about it last year but couldn’t stick the landing and bumped it to Ko-Fi.
Dang, I have already failed footnote 1.