He won the Stawell Gift from scratch at age nine
He won the Stawell Gift from scratch at age nine
Titans and Broncos win, Cowboys and Dolphins lose, Jackson Topine, concussion, Brianna Clark, Wide Bay Bulls and a Knights text message exchange
Around the grounds
Titans 27 defeated Warriors 24 at Mt Smart. We got a Queensland NRL team included on ANZAC Day, a point of principle but not necessarily a point of pride, depending on your views. Make no mistake that, depsite the result, the Titans performed more or less exactly how they had in the prior fortnight - better but not good - down to the detail of how they ran and moved and organised. Gold Coast had more ball when they were scoring, received an unusual bounty of penalties, still lost the yardage battle by 350 metres but if the opposition opens the door with low effort in defence, the Tans can actually get across the line. Their dogged goal line defence, which does seem at least above league average, exists in strange contrast to being completely at sea at defending beyond their 20 metre line.
At least now Gold Coast are off the bottom of the ladder. And Des has dropped Khan-Pereira for this week's game. Wonderful.
Broncos 34 defeated Tigers 10 at Campbelltown. The Broncos swatted away an annoying fly. One of the innumerable Fainus tackled Corey Oates, who had caught the ball on the full in goal and was ambling to the 20 for a restart. No one could quite believe Fainu was that stupid - at what point in your career has that been play on? - resulting in a sin bin that made me cackle maniacally.
Panthers 26 defeated Cowboys 20 at QCB. The odds of a succesful comeback in the NRL when 20 points down after 43 minutes are less than 2% and go to 0% within ten minutes of that. Being 20 points behind is my rule of thumb for when you are free to turn a game off. Unlike most games where one team is three scores-plus in the hole, North Queensland never quite felt out of the running. Although this is possibly because I knew the score in advance of watching, it also would be in part because Penrith capitalised on two stupid errors directly for points and so the margin was somewhat misleading. If one could put aside the unfriendliness of the scoreboard, as it were, the Panthers played their usual game but with more weakness than we’ve come to expect, which will be of interest to the rest of the NRL. The Cowboys played up to the standard set by the Panthers but as much as an epic comeback was necessitated by handling errors, so it was also thwarted.
Knights 18 defeated Dolphins 14 at Suncorp. Anglo American got two ads in the various game breaks (they produce high quality coal for making steel in central Queensland), so welcome to the NRL Friends of Coal Bowl. A small crowd by Brisbane standards - still middle of the pack for the round, although as noted in a Senate inquiry, the Knights are neither nationally significant nor an iconic brand - made for a QCup atmosphere for the QCup team. Despite the best efforts of the ground announcer, the crowd didn’t react to the star power and sheer sex appeal of KURT DONOGHUE or RAY STONE coming onto the field and only really reved up for “3-2-1 DOLPHINS” on repeat, which could become a thing I guess. The malaise probably reflects the three-way split between Dolphins fans, opposition fans and neutral onlookers - I counted at least three Broncos jerseys - that is the defining characteristic of a non-derby Dolphins game at Suncorp.
The Dolphins could have won this game because the Knights aren’t very good. They would have won if they had their starting pack. They would have won if they hadn’t blown at least three tries. They would have won if they had played with any depth in attack or could move the ball through the middle faster than glacial pace, which allowed the Knights to slide and man-mark. There were lots of paths to victory and the Dolphins didn’t take any of them.
Also, the Tesi Niu we know is back and I don’t really care for Euan Aitken in second row. Somehow with both second rowers back this week, Aitken has held his spot.
Thank you for reading The Maroon Observer
Health and safety in the NRL
Workplace health and safety is governed by the Work Health and Safety Act and its associated regulations. This is state legislation based on a nationally agreed framework, so it varies from state to state but in the broad strokes is the same across Australia. Queensland’s Act was passed in 2011, so this is not new.
While most people think of WH&S as needing to wear hi-vis and the right kind of footwear, it is an extremely broad piece of legislation. It applies to all workplaces, including NRL clubs, and covers physical and mental health (“psychological hazards” to use the parlance of the legislation). An amendment to the Queensland Act in 2022 strengthened the requirements for employers to mitigate psychological hazards, which is one reason why this is becoming more prevalent and has, ironically, increased anxiety at organisations around the country with a sense of their safety obligations.
Fundamentally, meeting one’s obligations under the Act is a risk management exercise. What is the task, can this person do what we’re asking, what are the hazards, what can we do to reduce probabilities and mitigate the impacts? Rather than government red tape, this is quite a flexible approach. Instead of legislating what is and isn't safe, the government makes you decide with due regard to certain thresholds. There are second order impacts on corporate red tape, which partly explain why it’s so expensive to build a stadium these days, but they are not the focus today.
Responsibility to comply with the Act ultimately lies with the Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking but duties are also distributed to every employee, with a heavier personal liability sitting with senior executives. In my experience, most people are very bad at this risk management, either attempting to eliminate all risk (which is not possible), overthinking potential hazards, overestimating probabilities and consequences or, worst of all, not considering risks at all.
While there are many clear-cut cases of harrassment, bullying and discrimination that would pose psychological hazards to be eliminated, there is a significant grey zone. It’s not clear what behaviour crosses what thresholds for which these organisations might be liable. Much will be down to the context of the specific situation, especially when sexuality, race, culture and gender are involved, which is existentially terrifying for those with a liability because this would require them to actually manage people.
Of course, if you’re Des Hasler and the Manly Sea Eagles or Travis Touma and the Canterbury Bulldogs, the law apparently doesn’t apply to you. You’re trying to toughen players up for a season of first grade rugby league, so you can ruin as many lives as you feel is necessary to reach 9-15 and blithely ignoring as many obvious hazards as you like. Hot in the gym? Don’t turn on the fans, it’s time for a full-on training session. Late for training? Don’t speak to the player like a human being, it’s time for humiliation. Never had a real job? Don't worry about legal ramifications, footy is immune to the society around it and you’ll never have to answer to a coroner or a judge.
Oops.
Jackson Topine
In the case of Jackson Topine, none of the reporting has made clear the specifics of the action but I assume this is a civil suit seeking damages, not necessarily brought under any particular Act as a prosecution, so the preceding paragraphs serve as a picture painting of how a related legislative framework operates, in stark contrast to the understanding of the stunted, gas huffing individuals haunting social media and comment sections (and possibly conference rooms at Belmore) that were too busy eating paint chips to read the actual article.
In my legally unqualified view, I would expect that a judge would factor in that a professional rugby league player requires a certain level of commitment and toughness in order to do the job and that, much as construction has a different risk profile to accounting, professional contact sport has a different risk profile again.
The difficulty, however, would be demonstrating that having to wrestle 30 teammates in an embarrassing fashion for accidentally being ten minutes late is necessary to that end and is, in fact, not bullying. On the face of it, that seems like quite the uphill legal battle. I wouldn’t relish having to be the Bulldogs’ lawyers dealing with the dipshit trio of Touma, Ciraldo and Gould trying to justify their actions but I really hope they end up providing some evidence.
Whether this results in a multi-million dollar payout also seems like an uphill battle but that’s how negotiations start. Topine and his legal team probably want the Bulldogs to settle before it reaches a courtroom. The suit and the inflammatory language in the media is a means of getting what he feels he is owed. By going down this route, Topine has ensured he will be blackballed from the NRL because bosses will protect their own, even if they work for an ostensible rival.
The Bulldogs’ problems of the last few years have not been a lack of toughness but a front office tearing through a seemingly never-ending rebuild of the roster in an effort to cover their inability to do their jobs of putting together a winning team.
Irrespective of whether you’re a fan, in the media or an ex-player, there’s no need to protect them from the consequences of their decisions. That's what they get paid for. Passing this off as “kids being soft” is an abdication of our collective responsibility to better the lives of future generations but it’s doubly insulting coming from ex-Bulldogs who should know better and also Willie Mason. You weren’t there, you don’t know how it feels and you don’t know how you’d react in their shoes because that didn’t happen to you. You may not have even bothered to read the substance of Topine’s complaints but if you don’t think this would embarrass you, well, aren’t you a hero then? Enjoy your glide into CTE-induced dementia. You’ve earned it.
It’s not about hard work, it’s about being treated with dignity. The more welcoming a workplace is, the better talent it will attract. By severely bullying people for minor indiscretions, you create a workplace that automatically rules out some people who might have otherwise gone on to do great things (or perhaps not). These are supposed to be your comrades and your colleagues: if you can’t trust them, how can you be expected to succeed?
It would be nice if we lived in a society where people always followed the Golden Rule and didn’t require employers to act as moral arbiters while also needing to hold them to account for abuses of power. Given the decline of organised religion, union membership and the abrogation of social intervention by government, that seems to be where we are. If you are a potentially exploitable person, then at least you can try to wield the legal system to effect a positive change in your circumstances and hold some dipshits to account.
Concussion
One of the theses of The Maroon Observer is you should be the coverage you want to see in the game. I don’t like being talked down to, I want coverage of weird minutiae, especially in Queensland, and I want specific analysis that knows what it knows and what it doesn’t know.
I find the coverage of concussions, brain injuries and CTE in rugby league media to be extremely lacking, although this is hardly surprising. On one hand, neurology is a complicated field of science that even better informed traditional media outlets struggle to appropriately report.
On the other hand, if you’re an actual journalist and not an alcoholic buffoon, the bare minimum requirement for you to do your job is to talk to an expert and place what they say into useful context. This might require understanding more about how the world works than what you’ve picked up in a career of attending post-game press conferences and texting player agents.
We don’t talk to people at The Maroon Observer (chalk that up as another thesis) but then this isn’t journalism. What I do is read a lot and then write what I read down in a more consumable format that doesn’t make you feel stupid for having read it, so let’s elevate the discussion around concussions.
After some light research, here’s what we know:
The brain is a very complicated, poorly understood organ that is responsible for your personality, your thinking and regulating your body’s operations. I will not be learning the names of of its parts and certainly not the endless lists of proteins involved.
A concussion is a traumatic brain injury but not all brain injuries are concussions.
Concussions are bad for you. Getting a concussion on top of another concussion is really bad. Being concussed increases the risk of future concussions.
There is no specifically agreed upon definition for what constitutes a concussion but everyone has a pretty good idea of what it is.
While the impact to the head is instantaneous, concussions take time to develop and so a chemical or biological test that returns quick and accurate results suitable for use in live sport is challenging. This is why the NRL deals in concussion-like symptoms and takes precautions accordingly. The US FDA has just approved this blood testing device that can rule out concussion but its not clear from the reporting how quickly it works and it is implied it would still need to be used in conjunction with traditional assessments.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is brain damage but not all brain damage is CTE. CTE used to be known by the more poetic dementia pugilistica, becuase it was first described in boxers in 1928.
CTE can only be diagnosed after death. As yet, there is no way to diagnose CTE before death.
CTE has different categorisations of severity but only with reference to the physical condition of the dead person's brain.
Concussions are not the only risk factor in developing CTE; sub-concussive impacts play a role. Soccer players heading the ball seems to be the cause of CTE in that sport.
Distinguishing behaviours arising from CTE from the symptoms of other underlying physical and mental mental issues is difficult, as there can be significant overlap between the two. How CTE presents in a living person will be subject to genetic, chemical, psychological and environmental factors.
The background rate at which the general population has CTE is not known.
The actual rate at which professional athletes (soldiers are the other big risk category) get CTE is not known but it is likely to be high. Every study into CTE rates so far has been affected by selection bias, i.e. almost everyone who donated their brain to CTE research thought they had it before agreeing to donate their brain.
Children, because their brains are still developing, are at greater risk of negative consequences from head impacts than adults. It is not clear how much damage is sustained by children playing sport and what impacts that leads to as adults. As a basic principle, our society notes that children cannot provide consent and that includes choosing to have their brains damaged to play a sport.
What you’ll note is that it’s not especially clear, to not put too fine a point on it, how many blows to the head you can take before it scrambles your brain. Saying then that “the risks are known” is at best partly correct. A risk is known to exist but the detail and the useful mitigations is not. Perhaps a different kind of society would simply stop playing rugby league for a decade or two until the science was better resolved but that is not the society we live in.
Concussions and brain damage make people, including me from time-to-time, squeamish. The NRL is a meat grinder, wherein players throw in their bodies and get tossed out battered and broken, some with lifelong medical conditions as a result, while we cheer the creaking handle turning. You are obligated to face up to that reality, even if that doesn’t move you to do anything different because these are, more or less, consenting adults.
Until recently, we’ve thought of those post-playing conditions as typically being limitations on joint use or back problems or the ordinary kind of thing that you might pick up from a career of hard work, and then manageable with surgery and extremely addictive pain killers. The occassional ex-player suicide hints at something much darker.
Concussions don’t just affect a part of the body, it affects you, as in the homunculus that metaphorically lives behind your eyes, monologuing through this essay, making decisions, feeling emotions, forming and recalling memories, and tending to relationships with others. Perhaps a better way to put it would be concussions can directly change your soul.
Whether this makes the urgency of addressing concussion a higher moral imperative, I’m not sure. Physical pain can deform people’s personalities as effectively as brain damage and we don’t really seem to care about that. Is losing some of your mental faculties that different to losing your ability to sit comfortably? What price would the devil have to pay you now for you to trade away the memories of your kids in your latter days? Would you regret not taking the deal if you lost those memories to ordinary dementia anyway? A dilemma as old as Achilles, many philosophical treatises could be written on the bargains made by rugby league’s meatheads.
There are many questions but here are few answers. Should the NRL change the kickoff to reduce incidents of concussion? Maybe, although this seems entirely driven by a media apparatus so bereft of ideas for content that they are forced to consider old Jon Bois videos (see also: previous six or so years of criticism highlighting the media’s ineptitude; potential CTE impact on former players’ mental faculties).
Should the NRL acknowledge that brain damage is caused by sub-concussive impacts and think about how it is going to address that? Yes. Are there all sorts of other hazards and mitigations, some generic to collision sports and some specific to the NRL, that should be on the table? Yes.
Is it smart or right to let insurers and lawyers drive this process? No.
Tackle heights can be lowered and kickoffs eliminated but that doesn't remove the sub-concussive hazard (being involved in 40ish tackles a game) or other concussion risk factors (lowering tackle height puts the tackler’s head near hips and knees more often). It’s two small pieces of the puzzle. Provided we all agree that the puzzle should even be solved, more pieces will be required.
The game should be more malleable than it is treated by its constituents but any changes made should be to actually address problems, instead of being seen to be doing something and falling foul of unintended consequences. Whether that is even a feasible course forward, given the state of the art, remains to be seen.
Speaking of state of the art, lab-grown 'minibrains' help reveal why traumatic brain injury raises dementia risk: “They found a gene for a protein on the surface of cells — KCNJ2 — that, when switched off, provided protection against the effects of TBIs… but again, more research is needed to move such a treatment from organoids to human patients.”
Intermission
Speaking of sub-concussive impacts, this is probably not the ideal takeaway from a well fought contest between two contenders but there weren't any spectacular no-look flick passes. This seems more mean-spirited than the chaos of the Seagulls-Capras fracas however Wynnum’s Brianna Clark was literally at the centre of the Rockhampton incident and gets binned for her trouble here. Two data points can be a trend.
The comms suggested Brigginshaw should've have gone as well, as the escalator, but Brigginshaw is a shove to the front which is, at worst, in line with a ticket outside the ballpark of acceptable rugby league behaviour, while Clark is a slap to the back of the head, which is not. Obviously I don’t know what was said but it is the kind of thing you'd expect to see from cranky sisters stuck inside on a rainy weekend. The ref was right to send Clark for a juice box and lie down.
Wide Bay Bulls
Broncos junior, Coby Black, had his face plastered on billboards around Brisbane as part of news.com.au’s headline, “Broncos’ teen sensation orchestrates historic 130-point thrashing”, which would be weird for him but I guess he’ll get used to that once he takes over from Adam Reynolds.
The Burleigh Bears beat the Wide Bay Bulls 130-0 in the final round of the U19s Mal Meninga Cup, ending a disastrous season for the Bulls with the program notching exactly zero wins across the four junior competitions.
This is not to have a crack. The Bulls posted this to Facebook:
The Wide Bay Bulls are the only SWC club run by volunteers and it’s a massive job for them to get these players on the field.
We are fully aware of the media coverage about the loss we have just experienced, but as stated above, our players, staff and committee have made every effort to ensure that our players are getting the same opportunities as the rest of the competition.
We look forward to having more support from our local school, clubs and leagues, to ensure the continuation of this QRL Pathway program.
The Bulls only entered Mal Meninga Cup in 2021. To date, they haven’t won a game (best statewide results are two draws in Cyril Connell and a win in the HNU19s in 2021) but then the Dolphins finished 2019 in last place, 0-6, and the ARLC gave them a NRL franchise the next year.
In their third season, the Bulls are still building a lot of the infrastructure and community connections that make these kinds of programs function. Traditionally, schools might have taken more precedence over statewide duties in the area and those from the north of the region probably would have gravitated towards the Capras, those from the south to the Falcons and the Tigers are in their Burnett backyard. It’s going to take time to clear some space for themselves.
Moreover, the point for the Bulls is not really to win. This isn’t professional sport, this is about the academy model the QRL is pursuing. While “come to the team that got pasted by 130 last year” might be a tough sell for a wavering talent, the pathways work the Bulls are doing will not be done (or will be done by more stretched resources) if the Bulls do not exist.
There are several regional hubs squarely in the Bulls’ remit, including Bundaberg, Maryborough and Hervey Bay, and the rugby league players there should have the same opportunities as those elsewhere in the state. While there are other ways to approach this problem, let’s see if this one works in the medium to long term (or not) before getting too agitated.
Most of the noise is just one notable result exploited by a media floating on a sea of Facebook family court dads with nothing better to do than annoy people doing something in their community before heading to camgirls dot com.
Analysing a text message exchange
Alex McKinnon of the Knights posted this screengrab to Twitter, giving himself a pat on the back for “this is what development looks like”.
What is our favourite bit here:
Andrew Johns referring to a nameless prospect as an “Aboriginal kid”.
Considering this exchange took place three years ago, that part could have been easily left out of the screengrab unless the message below “beautiful change of direction too” is much, much worse.
Sending a text message to someone to get them to check their Whatsapp.
“Wow he is quick” being the best analysis Johns can come up with.
“Development” is signing a fast kid from out of catchment three years ago and sitting on him until Ponga gets injured (the Knights do love a Maroon-eligible fullback though).
Or that they’ve missed that Armstrong looks quick but, based on my discerning scouting at the ground on Sunday, is only actually faster than the forwards. They’ve fallen for the guy who was the most enthusiastic on ground.
This is the point at which someone will email and say “Actually, I've known David since he was three and even then, he was one of the world's finest athletes. He won the Stawell Gift from scratch at age nine.” Fine, I’m sure he’ll have a great career at the Roosters.
Upcoming Slate
NRLM - Broncos vs Roosters at Suncorp, Friday 8pm
Apparently this is a highly rated game, perhaps because the Roosters are coming off a 60 point flogging of a team that I still think is pretty ordinary (note: anyone who watches the Dragons regularly should be on a watchlist). It is an opportunity for the Broncos to get revenge on the Roosters for one of the handful of times they put together a half decent performance this season, all the way back in Vegas two months ago. The Broncos are fronting a handsome lineup that will only lose if they beat themselves. Tip: Broncos
QRLM - Bears vs Falcons at Pizzey Park, Saturday 4pm
We’re far enough into the season that “first versus third” actually means something and isn’t just a total fluke. Both teams are 5-2, the Bears have the advantage in points difference but the Falcons haven’t lost since a trip to Fort Moresby in March. The Bears have just seen the Hunters off in the Kokoda Cup, by a comfortable margin, and are in similar form. Has the potential to be a classic as well as a preview of round 27’s Storm-Broncos match. Tip: Falcons
QRLW - Seagulls vs Seagulls at Piggabeen, Sunday 12.05pm
Ladies FLOCKBUSTER! This is obviously not the first time these teams have met - it will be the third in BMD history - but it is the first time that Tweed might have an actual chance at winning. Tweed are on a bit of slide after an extremely promising stint with a stack of NRLW players. Now most have left, the Gulls have notched a draw against the Tigers and two losses. Wynnum are on a three game losing streak themselves, which should be impossible for one of the competition heavyweights in a nine week regular season, but they’ve been beaten by Burleigh, Mackay and Western - all the best teams in the league - in quick succession, albeit by an average of just eight points. Still leaning to the Seagulls but the Seagulls might surprise on the upside. Tip: Wynnum
(Tips 14 / 25)
Watch Guide
Weather - With only one game in the Brisbane LGA this weekend, this is an opportunity to showcase the diversity and beauty of Queensland’s geography and footy grounds, although we’ll be denied the usual Rockhampton sunsets because they’re at Rugby Park and not Browne Park.
Brisbane: Friday 16 - 22 mostly cloudy; Ipswich: Saturday 13 - 22 mostly cloudy; Gold Coast: Saturday 14 - 22 light rain, Sunday 15 - 23 isolated thunderstorms; Toowoomba: Saturday 12 - 19 light rain; Rockhampton: Saturday 18 - 24 light rain; Mackay: Saturday 19 - 25 partly cloudy; Townsville: Saturday 20 - 28 isolated thunderstorms, Sunday 21 - 28 partly cloudy.
Notes
Foley Shield is this weekend featuring the tropical troika of Cairns, Townsville and Mackay for men and women. Games are on Qplus.
The Broncos annual report came out and it’s not particularly exciting, even by the standards of annual reports. Revenue is up 25% to $75.2m and costs up 21% to $66.9m (e.g. Stadiums Queensland went from $6.5m to $7.8m) on the back of an extremely positive year on the field. The NRL now chips in $21.6 million to cover the costs of ~$22m in football operations spending. Dividend payments are 1.5c per share (I got about $15). Dave Donaghy is still on $500k/yr with $150k in bonuses last year - the guy might need a payrise in line with inflation soon as he’s doubled the value of the Broncos’ market cap. The NRL’s licencing arrangements with the clubs expire at the end of October this year, so that’s six months for them to get sorted.
Paul Kent needs help. I don’t care if he gets it, because he seems like the worst kind of person and long may he suffer, but he may and probably has harmed those around him. If there’s no one who wants to help him, that is its own kind of misery.
No The Game this week due to space constraints but Dudley Dotoi of the Blackhawks looks to have dude potential.
Not a coincidence: Luki extended to end of 2029 so Finefeuiaki to the Phins for 3 years.
Signatures: Plath extends with the Red Fish to ‘27. Cowboys sign Harrison Edwards (?). Billy Walters extends for two more years. Jack Gosiewski is official.
Injuries: Tom Chester out for 4. Flegler back in 4. See you in 2025 Pezet. Jock Madden status: scuttlebutt.
Jason Demetriou gone. Sometimes -50 is -50, especially when you’re on track for single digit wins.
Shane Richardson won't be returning to the Tigers after taking a permanent role at the Tigers.
Schrodinger’s retirement: Luke Keary is retiring, either because he has decided to put his health first after suffering numerous head knocks (according to News Corp), or it has nothing to do with concussions and Keary has just had a long and storied career that he is satisfied with (according to Ninefax).
For the ratings sickos: VOZ: Reach v Average: The Debate rages
Not Queensland: Aussie trio aiming to help Netherlands qualify for World Cup (Netherlands beat Italy, 56-6)
The AP story on Wally Lewis’ trip to Canberra was picked up by the Washington Post
From Rugby League Project’s Patreon: “Following a rigorous Twitter/X discussion in early April, we've begun to implement changes to the naming conventions used on player's career pages to denote which comps they played in. For instance, Garry Jack's career is now labeled as "NSWRFL/NSWRL/ARL Premiership (NRL)". You will see this appear more as player's pages are gradually refreshed over the coming weeks…” I assumed I was the only person bothered by NSWRL games being labelled as NRL, so that’s nice. Now to get Fox to fix their commentator chyrons to reflect what “premiership” they’re talking about (e.g. Eric Weissel and Wally Prigg, both pre-war Hall of Famers, would have zero “premiership” games while Mick Ennis played 274).
Nickelware
