Less amphibious and more reptilian
Weather event Alfred, a revamped Watch Guide, QCup season preview, Cory Paix and the ongoing demise of the English game
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Waiting for Alfred
Anti-climactic would be something of an understatement for those of us lucky enough to hear the brunt of Alfred around midnight Friday but not suffer much in the way of actual consequences of said brunt. That's not the case for the thousands who lost power or the one apartment building on the Gold Coast that lost its roof or Australia's most godforsaken town, Lismore. The irony of Alfred’s Saturday night tropical low restlessness having more impact is not lost on me, not least because once it ceased being a cyclone, the BOM dusted their hands and seemed to say ‘job done’ (Energex looks over, frowning).
My experience went something like:
Saturday: Ah, the first of March, a day like any other.
Sunday: A cyclone? At this time of year? In this part of the country? Localised entirely within our region?
Monday: I guess it could turn out to sea. Until then, would everyone stop talking about inane shit, like work? There's a cyclone coming!
Tuesday: This is going right over my house. We're all going to die. I'm going to look God in the face when the eye passes over.
Wednesday: Everyone's home, prep is done, we should be fine.
Thursday: This four day crisis is now just two days. Easy.
Friday: Fuck, this thing is just piss farting around. What's this, a loop de loop? Hurry the fuck up already, you prancing overgrown storm. Hmm, getting breezy.
Saturday: Huh, that was easy. Time to write an essay for my newsletter. What am I going to do with all this ice? (Later) Shit that's a lot of wind.
Sunday: (power out) Womp womp.
Monday: Power came back in the afternoon just as we’d given up hope.
After parts I (cyclone watch) and II (black out), we shift to the final installment of the Alfred trilogy: flood watch. Early returns are that it’s not going to be as bad as it could have been, even if the Titans have decamped for Sydney early.
In the lead-up, the North Queensland ex-pats reassured anyone that would listen that a cat 2 was not worth getting worked up over, provided some common sense solutions were followed: sit tight, watch tv until the power goes out and then start drinking, maybe stash some water. Your house should survive.
Other than a tree smashing in a window and caving in my daughter's bedroom while she slept, my main concern was keeping my 4 and 2 year olds settled and occupied for the duration. The 2 year old slept like a log through totally insane weather and the 4 year old now has a firm grasp on what requires power. The house remains intact.
While I spent a bit of time Remembering Some Flood Events with friends during the week, the wind was a new variable. For most of the Southeast Queensland's 3.5 million, including me, this was their first experience with this particular iteration of natural disaster. You'll have to forgive us for getting a bit nervous, possibly a tad unhinged.
Rather than an opportunity to unite with a shared identity, rep footy team and now experience with cyclones, although that may have happened too, ex-TC Alfred created a small frisson of resentment between north and south or, perhaps more accurately, metro and regional Queensland.
Some of this was the perceived disproportionate media attention. A once in a 50 year event affecting a large metropolis is the very definition of news worthiness, much in the same way that the more frequent cat 5s wiping out parts of North Queensland and sending banana prices skyrocketing provides fodder for the media’s fetish for disaster porn, expressed as concerned looking journalists standing around fruit and veg shops.
Happening in the networks’ backyard made Alfred cheap to cover, which the media loves more than titillation by typhoon. That is, to the extent the mainstream media can be said to have any cut through in a society mostly glued to their phones since covid, a habit made worse by hours of anxious waiting for some kind of sign of what would happen.
Most of this is the narcissism of small differences, like making fun of the English for struggling with 30 degree days, even though their entire society is not equipped to deal with that and is about as funny as if Townsville were to be hit with a snowstorm and people froze to death1. Less ha-ha, more darkly humourous at some remove.
Tuesday the 4th was the crossover point of people moving from apathy or denial to engaging with the projected force of nature. By Wednesday, local councils (who it turns out are responsible for this?) started talking about setting up evacuation centres, a bit lackadaisically if Alfred had been on time.
The state government told everyone to be prepared and batten down the hatches, fine for most but less so for the homeless across the Southeast. Whether that was out of an understanding that this wouldn't be that bad or a laissez faire approach to your safety, I guess we can better assess at the next crisis. If we can be certain of nothing else, there will be another crisis.
Hindsight is 20/20 but people won't take that into account in their assessment of events. The Dolphins probably didn't need to move their game in the end but it didn't look like that at that the time the decision was made. At that point, not doing anything starts to look like callousness, rather than an acute commitment to waiting and seeing.
Have we learned anything from this, other than to be more complacent in the face of the BOM’s next predicted catastrophe? It turns out the line between cyclone and tropical low is an entirely arbitrary one of wind speed, and not of inconvenience or risk, so that’s noteworthy but otherwise, not really.
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Around the grounds
Broncos 50 defeated Roosters 14. If your team scores one try as good as any of like four the Broncos scored in this game, they'll be doing ok. With nearly 8 minutes net possession, Madge looks like a genius. More to come in the next Pony Picayune.
Knights 10 defeated Tigers 8. The Tigers looked a lot better in the first 30 than I imagined they would. I missed everything from then until the final 10 and the Tigers were now down by two and showed they have nothing to break open a game. Tough look. Luai at least tried going forward, instead of crabbing, so that was refreshing.
Rabbitohs 16 defeated Dolphins 14. The Phins looked extremely ordinary to begin with - flat and unenthusiastic - and Souths looked like they had Bennettian belief to carry a talent deficit. Then in the second half, Redcliffe didn't look much better but got the physical upper hand and Souths started to fall apart. The Dolphins still managed to blow this one because they got bitched by former Capra Lachlan Hubner (?) and played some of the dumbest footy you've seen. Extrapolating this, they're not going to be a finals threat but when the Dolphins miss out, it'll be because of these kinds of losses.
Sea Eagles 42 defeated Cowboys 12. Let's agree that rugby league was more fun when people hated it circa 2018 so you didn't get a full house at Brookvale to watch your pants fall down. North Queensland didn't have a lot of answers for the tall fast guys or anything else. The Cowboys weren't a good Vlandoball team and if we're in Vlandoball 2.0, which is an emerging thesis, it's going to get ugly. Plenty of time to turn it around. More to come in the next Bovine Bulletin.
Upcoming Slate
Falcons versus Hunters, Saturday 5.00pm, Sunshine Coast
We enjoyed the last time these two team’s met in week 2 of last year’s finals. “Enjoy” is probably not quite the right word - no one seemed to be particularly having fun - but it was physical. There will be an element of revenge on the cards for the Falcons, as the Hunters try to find their footing with a newly turned over squad, but there are a few too many question marks for me to take Sunshine Coast with confidence. Tip: Hunters
Broncos versus Raiders, Saturday 6.35pm, Canberra
It’s too early in the season to have an aneurysm over the Raiders but this presents a stiff test for the new Maguire Broncos. Canberra will come out hard, as they always do, tilting over that line from intimidation to violence. The Broncos have the muscle in Haas, Carrigan, Jensen and Willison to compete in that regard and an exceptional spine, if last week is anything to go by, but there are players in the mix who might wilt. If they don’t, that’s extremely promising for the outcome of this game and the season. Look for Joe Tapine to make himself feel like a big man with a cheap shot down by 20 at the end of the game and Corey Horsbrugh to cry when he remembers he lives in Canberra. Tip: Broncos
Titans versus Bulldogs, Sunday 5.15pm, Belmore
Given two of the four Queensland NRL clubs looked like dirt last week, and we’ve already talked about the Broncos, that leaves just a debut for our flood-affected friends on the Gold Coast as a point of interest. Hasler has benched David Fifita, so this is going to go about as well as you’d expect and any further analysis would just be wasting my time and yours. Brock Gray is making a veteran debut. Tip: Bulldogs
(Tips 1 / 3 in 2025; 48 / 92 in 2024)
Intermission
Still can't quite believe Cory Paix outlasted Kevin Walters. That stuff was not good process and it showed eventually.
Sunshine State-wide
Severe Tropical Low Alfred ended up postponing the entire first round of Queensland Cup. The Hunters and Tigers couldn't transit through Brisbane airport and the rest of the games were in the (mostly poorly drained) firing line of the former cyclone. The QRL left it to up to clubs to postpone games, much in the same way the state government left a lot of decisions up to individuals or schools or councils. Some of that reflects high variability of local conditions and some of that reflects that no one, anywhere, wants to be the one responsible for loss of revenue.
I would've done a Queensland Cup season preview last week but it's clear from the open rates that people have had enough of dense, marginally interesting material, so here's some (relatively) brief thoughts ahead of the kickoff of the 2025 Hostplus Cup -
Bears: It was a tough year in their first season with the Broncos. Brisbane's depth isn't likely to offer much help offsetting Burleigh’s aged core of veteran Guys. There’s still some spark in the backs and Guy Hamilton has aged into a capable leader from the halves but the pack is a bit of a question mark.
Blackhawks: A second year for Campese and the real work begins. Jacky Campag returns to where he belongs, in Queensland Cup, leading a team with James Tamou and Kalifa Faifai-loa. Josh Stuckey, once a hot prospect, comes home to the North, leaving Wynnum Manly behind after two seasons, and is joined by fellow ex-Bulldog, Bailey Biondi-Odo. I think Townsville might surprise on the upside.
Capras: I don’t know if this is how Rockhampton sees it but is it time for a push over the top? Some of the Capras of earlier in the decade, e.g. the aforementioned Lachy Hubner, are starting to make an impact on the NRL. Who have they got coming through to replace that generation? Nixon Putt’s return from Castleford is part of the answer. As other franchises regress, there’s potential to move into that pack of regular contenders and if they get hot at the right time, then anything is possible.
Clydesdales: Nope.
Cutters: I make a deal of the Pride getting favouritism out of the Cowboys but the Cutters have Semi Valemei and Thomas Mikaele, so that’s not nothing, and if we get Taumalolo making his way back to the NRL via Mackay, I’d definitely watch that. Probably another tough year ahead though.
Devils: Norths seem to always manage to make it work and we’ll see if Rohan Smith still has the juice. If this week’s lineup is indicative of the year ahead, this could be more 2023 or 2018 than 2024 or 2021. Jordan Lipp is at 6 and where is Jack Ahearn may I ask?
Dolphins: Calling it now that Redcliffe are finished as a force in QCup. Attention is going to be focussed on the NRL team and that’s where the resources will go. Other clubs in the Democratic Dolphins’ Republic are better motivated to take the talent given and turn it into wins. Expecting Eric Smith to not do as well without Jake Clifford but at least the Phins have bolstered the three-quarter line, even if Nat McGavin’s best days are behind him.
Falcons: Do the Storm still love you? I’m not seeing a lot of purple affiliated players and a few all-caps names from Sunshine Coast A-grade. I think the Birds had the right idea last year, focussing on guy rather than dudes, and they just hit the Hunters’ brick wall at the wrong time. They’re going to have run it back with Galeano, Camilleri and Cody Hunter.
Hunters: As usual, PNG’s best players got picked off for actual professional contracts. We'll see what the Hunters reload into under Paul Aiton, although a few familiar faces like Morea Morea, Sanny Wabo and Jamie Mavoko return. With the new NRL team needing to start making signings, 2025-27 shapes as really important years for individuals to make that leap. Looking at you, Morea.
Jets: I am expecting if not big things, then something out of Ipswich this season. The Jets were active in the guy transfer market over the off-season and picked up some decent names, including Josh Patston, Jono Reuben, Julian Christian and Kobe Hetherington’s twin brother, Zac, who returns after some time in the lower grades for the Bulldogs. It can’t get worse so it has to get better.
Magpies: Who really knows with these guys? Anthony Milford, the big offseason signing, is incognito, although Ricky Leutele is starting this week. He’s the only really notable name next to Latrell Siegwalt, whose main claim to fame is being useful in bait and switch headlines about the Broncos signing Latrell. They could be anything but will probably be bad.
Pride: Northern lost their coach to the Phins but still get the best pick of the Cowboys’ crop. Jake Clifford is starting 7 and Jeremiah Nanai is probably playing second row for them this week. Expecting that to come in handy over the course of the year.
Seagulls, Tweed: Applying pro sports mentality to QCup is a bit fraught but Dave Penna should be on the hottest seat in the league. Tweed have been meandering along since the Jamayne Isaako game against the Falcons in 2022. They’ve missed finals every year, despite having the better pick of reggies from the Titans. The lineup looks similar to what we’ve seen, so what are we expecting to change?
Seagulls, Wynnum: Been a couple of quiet years after building to almost, but not quite, winning the premiership before and after covid. Cory Paix might be settling back in to the big time, so let’s keep an eye on Cameron Bukowski and Ronald Philitoga this year. If this turns out to be a middling-to-above average team, then that will give us a reason to tune in regardless.
Tigers: Their season spent as defending premiers was close to a disaster, mostly through injury and lack of cattle. Energy machine Tristan Hope is now a viral sensation for the other Tigers, so it’s something of a blank canvass at Coorparoo. They’ve tended to go well with good fullbacks, whether that was swansong Corey Thompson in 2023 or up-and-coming Scott Drinkwater in 2018. That might be a lot to put on 23 year old Tony Thompson but let’s see what the kid has.
It’s not going well in England
I subscribe to rugbyleaguehub.com Long Reads on Patreon (you should too), which is the work of John Davidson and less frequently these days, Steve Mascord. Not everything reported is of interest (there are also few long reads) but there are stories, sourced with a degree of responsibility and untold elsewhere, that make it worthwhile if you want the fullest view of the game.
Here are some headlines from the last couple of days:
Salford, a mainstay of the Super League, ran out of money, found new owners, the new owners have basically disappeared and the RFL has had to advance money to the club to keep the players on the pitch. You will recall they lost their season opener by 82 points because of cap restrictions meant they couldn’t play their first team. Catalans are being burdened with an ever-increasing financial strain in the hopes of forcing them out of the competition, something that will sound familiar to Broncos and Reds fans. The disaster of the Lionesses in Vegas has highlighted the complete lack of support for the women’s game. All of this has occurred with a backdrop of RFL directors resigning one-by-one to pave the way for… what, exactly? With a wider angle lens we see the farce of IMG’s involvement achieving little, "the main issue is funding,” but costing plenty.
These are legitimate crises, plural. Any one of these would keep the Australian media occupied for a week if it were the NRL. Think about the Wests Tigers’ boardroom garbage from the summer. That was tame and tangential by comparison.
Some of this is the medium term consequences of covid coming home to roost but most of it arises from structural issues from the way the sport is run in general and the mentality and operating conditions of the English clubs in particular. I haven’t written about this much recently but it’s been in the works for a while.
Even if the problem is very simple - they don’t have enough money - most in the game seem to be at their wit’s end as to how to resolve it. Many seem to be hoping less for a Greek god and more for an Antipodean messiah. Should a messianic figure emerge for English rugby league, we should be prepared for it to foment a clash of cultures:
English hostility towards Catalans - and even Toulouse - is certain to be dead-batted by Australasian officials who definitely want them involved in an NRL-run European competition. British clubs are thought to have been made aware in Vegas that French involvement was not just regarded as preferable at League Central - but mandatory.
I take this with a grain of salt because it seems somewhat at odds with what we know of V’Landys and co, who failed to go to bat for the state leagues during covid and are reluctant to spend money on rugby league at the best of times, but it would make some sense in the hypothetical world we are considering. The NRL has broadcast arrangements in both England and France, where Sky and BeIN respectively carry the FTA slate. Bundling in Super League with the NRL, either as a co-branded offering or as a side bonus, will have more appeal to BeIN if Catalans and preferably Toulouse are part of the mix. This is a fact so obvious one wonders why the Super League, which is once again not broadcast in France, hasn’t worked it out.
I’m not convinced that anything short of extremely radical action is going to be enough to cure the English disease. What would it mean if the NRL took a 10% stake in the Super League? Anything short of a wholesale takeover and a complete overhaul2 is not going to save the sport in the northern hemisphere. We’ll see if anyone has the guts to take it on.
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RL Reads You Should Read
Good stats/boot coverage from Eye Test: NRL Round 1 – massive margins, advanced stats and… Sketchers?!?
Colleen Edwards: 'Exciting times for the country': PNG aim to build on Bid success
The Ball Playing Forward / Jack Cronin: 10 Big Questions for the 2025 NRL Season
Beyond the Goalpost: 2035 is not a real year
Storm Machine: Game 715 – S28E01 Review
Rugby League Writers / Jason Oliver: 10 minutes of Cory Paix, Paseka in attack, Papenhuyzen inside & a Storm scrum
Very good from Rugby League Project: Scorigami checker
Notes
Phins: Finefeuiaki is back in round 3 with Bostock, Lemuelu for round 5
If the news on the QRL website has felt a bit slow lately, that’s not your imagination. The QRL dot com content team seems to have been disbanded. Rikki-Lee Arnold, Jorja Brinums and Jacob Grams all posted farethewell #OpenToWork type posts to LinkedIn in the last couple of weeks. We’ll wait and see if they get replaced or not. We all know the mainstream press isn’t going to pick up the slack and I ain’t turning out to every game, every weekend to get player quotes and photos.
Bulldogs NRLW coach Blake Cavallaro resigned over relationship with colleague. It’s something of the lack of professionalism of journalists that they use the words “romance”, “tryst” and “on-again-off-again” to describe the nature of the relationship. What evidence do you have that it was “romance” and not “harassment” or “abuse of position”? Cavallaro’s word? What is Seitz’s characterisation? The reporting is unclear. Now to think if there’s an old man with a long history of media manipulation, significant power within the game, installed at an executive position within the Bulldogs organisation whose morals might not be exactly what we would call ‘woke’? I’m sure it’s fine.
McDonald's have a Peter V'Landys cameo in their ad now. Good lord, there is a man not made for TV. Fortunately, it's short so he's not had time to sweat it up. Somehow this makes him less appealing, less amphibious and more reptilian. It is still not as bad as the ad with a conspicuously diverse bar of young-to-middle age people singing Sweet Caroline as an act of community. Deeply weird behaviour.
Newstead Brewing is closing down. Some may be old enough to remember the halcyon days of 2013 when a new brewery opened each month, often in a broom closet in an inner city semi-industrial area that was empty on weekends. Green Beacon, the original Tippler’s Tap (on Masters Street if I remember rightly) and Bitter Suite (several owners ago) were all part of the same scene in the 4006. They were all making or serving something you’d either never heard of and never experienced before or, sometimes, something completely undrinkable. Newstead was one of the first of that generation of venue that was a reasonable size and you could take people who weren’t beer perverts to, even though that’s where I learned what butyric acid3 tastes like. Doggett Street was the first place I went when restrictions lifted in 2020 and I was at Castlemaine Street as recently as the Australia-Tonga test last year. Their beers rarely missed and the expansion to Milstead, adjacent Suncorp, was suggestive (at the time) that this could be a real business without selling out to Kirin/Asahi. But the industry is changing - interest rates are higher, cost of living is biting, the millennials have fled for the suburbs, repeated disasters, kids don’t drink anymore, social media is total dogshit - and this is the sad consequence. End of an era. Vale.
Somehow the Lord Alfred is still in business.
Not rugby league but lol: The AFL, 'Vic bias' and the flawed logic behind Opening Round. Did that even need to be asked?
Brains: How to clear the toxic tau protein that can lead to Alzheimer's and related diseases
Some good content
Welcome aboard all.
Programming notes
I realise the pace of content produced up until last week was too much content for vast majority of you to consume. I will not be continuing at quite the triple posting pace. Even setting aside the slight delay of recent events, I'm not planning on doing a specialist second post for a couple of weeks while I get the stats sorted out.
Thanks for reading!
I once had a freak out about driving in a light dusting of snow in Canada. What if we had to put snow chains on? I don't know how to do that.
A proposal: let’s say a 20 team NRL (the current 17 plus PNG minus one or two Sydney plus Perth, Adelaide, SEQ 4, NZ2, or some more realistic permutation thereof) is divided into four divisions of five teams. Then weld on two or three more European divisions: either the current Super League minus three plus Toulouse, or the current Super League plus Toulouse, London with some liquidity injected and maybe Carcassonne. Leaving some space for in-season rep footy, an 18 game schedule would have a home and away series within each division (eight games) plus two interdivision matchups (10 games, or add a third interdivisional to get 15 and a 23 game schedule). After a couple of years to get the Euros up to speed, each season would have two divisions play inter-hemisphere, one travelling from north to south and the other from south to north for five games each with at least one round of matches at Vegas and maybe a second/third at Magic Round/s, rotating through the divisional matchups on a 3/4 year cycle, to maintain a cultural connection but with a hard limit on the amount of inventory disappearing over the timezone horizon.
Division winners are seeded first for finals by record (southern hemisphere automatically above northern hemisphere until commercial parity is reached or by selection committee for maximum outrage) and division runner-ups have a longer qualification route via something we would inevitably call a play-in or a wild card. Usual finals system applies, maybe with some sort of geographical bracketing to minimise travel, and annoits a champion (last northern hemisphere team standing gets to be European champion).
We no longer have to hand wring about when to play the World Club Challenge. Opens up a huge slate of bidders for grand final and other tentpole event hosting rights. After some initial investment to bring everyone to rough commercial parity, harmonises rules and salary cap regulations across the game. The Rugby League Commission starts to resemble a parliament with no particular geographical faction dominant. Travel to every game becomes financially impossible for almost everyone, keeping people at home and broadcasters happy. The whole thing gets bundled as one package for broadcast via Nine/Fox, Sky UK and NZ, TVWAN, BeIn, ESPN and/or a cheaper version of Watch NRL. Double up the same framework for the women to keep everyone invested all season long and the sport covers five countries and starts to look a lot deeper and more sophisticated than it is. The dream of non-stop footy all weekend is within reach.
This was a purposeful learning exercise for sickos, not a lack of quality in the product. I still have a laminated sheet describing what flavours beer is not supposed to have.