"Only Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble don’t like the six-again"
In a banner week for quotes, "rugby league is the national sport of Ipswich and Toowoomba."
Welcome to The Maroon Observer, a weekly newsletter about rugby league, Queensland and rugby league in Queensland.
Way to send the NRL to the poor house, Albo
The plan, unveiled by Anthony Albanese during a National Press Club address today, includes capping television gambling ads at three per hour between 6am and 8.30pm and a total ban on radio during school pick-up and drop-off times.
Gambling ads would also be banned on social media and streaming platforms unless users are logged in, over 18 and have the option to opt out, while advertising using celebrities or athletes, odds-style ads targeting sports fans, and ads in sports venues or on players’ uniforms would be outlawed.
I remember the braying that rose up when that fat guy in the skinsuit with the wheelie bins came out at Suncorp for some halftime promo, a thing I am beginning to really hate. From that event alone, I say any reform of gambling advertising is going to be good for society, if for no other reason than advertising gambling seems to be the lowest possible common denominator use of the audio-visual medium. Amateur porn aspires to higher values. Expending any carbon to produce gambling ads should be considered a crime against the humanity and see Sportsbet in the dock at Den Haag.
Reducing or banning the advertising of gambling would have the second order impact of entrenching the incumbents. Hypothetically, if you came up with a revolutionary new way to fleece punters, you would not be able to acquire any customers except through word of mouth because you wouldn’t be able to advertise. You might instead have to hope that one of the established players then buys out your fleecing start-up. This is why we probably won’t see a great deal of pushback from the industry over increasing advertising regulation, as it tries to consolidate and exclude any future rivals to its own benefit.
The impact on the NRL bottom line is going to be mostly negative, but this change alone isn’t going to make a lot of difference. Gambling advertising is pretty much the only thing propping up sports coverage. Without that, it’s just McDonalds, Harvey Norman and Chemist Warehouse. If Seven, Nine, Fox, et al can’t sell airtime so ex-players can tell you about their multis, then they have less to spend on broadcast rights, but these regulations are very light on and will have the dual effect of not actually eliminating much advertising and increasing the value of that which remains, now being a more scarce quantity.
If it precedes further controls on gambling advertising, and I’d be surprised if Albo has the guts, then belts will have to tighten.
I hope they sign a deal soon, so we don’t have to keep doing this
PVL spent some time touching himself in public about the TV ratings, which I did not read. I’ve done better analysis —
— so what would be the point? Still, I blame The Sportress for bringing this to my attention:
“We’ve copped criticism for the six-again rule but only Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble don’t like the six-again. The figures speak for themselves.”
What are you talking about? Are Flintstone and Rubble meant to be easily understood as cavemen? Or are the cartoons themselves relics of a distant past? You may as well accuse people of being Denisovans or Luddites or democrats.
A reference to a show that first premiered nearly 70 years ago in black and white undermines the point I think he’s trying to make and is not the bleeding edge wit we’ve come to expect from the jester-in-chief. Remember how funny “Hello, Gil” was? Great stuff. What about “Bruno Cherry Ripe”? Or my personal favourite, “WA is a rusted-on AFL state”?
As with everything from the dumb side of politics, every accusation is a confession and I’d rather be Barney Rubble than the target of a spurious lawsuit.
If you prefer to read rugby league analysis that is both more insightful and less cringeworthy than the pre-packaged joke-like commentary from our glorious leader, you should consider subscribing to this newsletter. For one thing, I appreciated the realities of my aging husk and gave up on pop culture references ages ago.1
Around the grounds
Sea Eagles 52 defeated Dolphins 18.
Panthers 50 defeated Storm 10. The last time the Storm had a clearly losing record was round 5, 2018. It's been eight years since they had more losses than wins. That was more that year’s penalty crackdown because they still finished second that year. This year is probably different because there are plenty more stats, some reaching back to 2003, that adequately describe the gravity of the situation. Let's hear from the fans:
If you chose go short, welcome to NRL hyper rugby league, 2026 edition. Congratulations, do not pass go, concede 50 points. Give yourself an uppercut. Off with the head, on with the pumpkin.
Hull KR 24 defeated Hull FC 6. A mediocre game for the 250th derby, in which FC spent a lot of time threatening and very little time executing. Neither Hardaker nor Sezer have any creative juices left in them. When Rovers got down field, they scored. Whichever May is running around for Robins makes Brodie Croft look like Wally Lewis.
Cowboys 32 defeated Dragons 0. If nothing else, this game showed the floor of the North Queensland Cowboys. The ceiling may not be anything special, and this year’s six week Payten purple patch may coincide with a stunningly easy part of the draw, but there’s an underlying, basic sort of capability on display when Drinkwater, Purdue and co get it together to carve up an inferior team.
Broncos 26 defeated Titans 12.
This is not your grandfather’s crazy Titans. This is a staid, boring team and they’re still bad. The Titans got on the front foot for the entire first half, aided by some extremely favourable refereeing, and turned that into basically nothing. Gold Coast rolled down the field and then hit a wall and had no idea how to break it down. Even if the forward pass try had been given, the Titans were not in this game.
The lack of offence is what lost them this one and that’s one of the things that’s going to lose them lots of games. Another thing was Beau Fermor’s efforts on the Willison and Arthars tries and Chris Randall getting caught behind the ruck on the Paix-Mam double act. Those are experienced, non-QCup players that should have done better. Hannay probably needs three years to set this foundation and build into something competitive but he won’t be given that long.
Quiet news week
You know its quiet when Travis Meyn does a well articulated version of a League Unlimited expansion forum post, listing off the potential candidates for the 20th NRL team. For the record, these are a second New Zealand team, another Brisbane team, probably in Ipswich, Adelaide and “Pasifika”. Given how the Moana are going, I think we can safely bin that last idea.
In speaking with Shane Richardson, who is himself presumably at a loose end, Richardson makes the case for the Easts Tigers and Ipswich Jets working together:
“The Broncos aren’t servicing the area which is why the Warriors, Souths and everybody else is getting involved. There’s just not enough rugby league,” Richardson said.
“We had Ipswich and Easts going against each other (in 2021), but no one doubted that was the best way to go, even better than Redcliffe.
“Redcliffe have done a great job and I’m not being critical of them at all but the numbers for the west stacked up better than Redcliffe.
“There’s no doubt there should have been another team in that area to make sure we keep those great areas of rugby league alive from the west of Brisbane through Ipswich to Toowoomba.
“It’s now time that Easts and Ipswich get together. Ipswich have got the history but haven’t got the money. Easts have got the money.
If it was that obvious, you’d think the Firehawks bid would have been about Ipswich all along, instead of attempting to merge their bids a few weeks before the decision was officially announced, as a last gasp to prevent the Dolphins from gaining the licence Redcliffe were probably always going to get.
Turns out that was just a lead-in to this:
Ipswich bid boss Steve Johnson has revealed a United States private equity firm is keen to invest millions into the franchise if the NRL decides to expand to a 20-team competition.
Steve Johnson, who is chair of the Jets, was not actually quoted saying this, so who knows what that’s worth. What he did say was:
“We are 100 per cent still keen,” he said.
“We’ve gone away and worked really hard on our pathways in Ipswich. We’ve got our redevelopment happening at North Ipswich Reserve and all we need is a licence.
“We’ve got no shortage of backers. I’ve worked hard on that in the US and there’s a lot of rugby league people in Australia that have put their hand up wanting to be involved.
“We’ve had plenty of people reaching out because they see the nursery that is Ipswich, Toowoomba and the west that is lacking support.”
A later set of quotes can be best summarised as telling Easts to fuck off, criticising their lack of juniors - is PATRICK CARRIGAN a joke to you? - so that seems like a solid basis for re-drawing next year’s QCup rivalry round. There was this gem:
“We’re a risk-free option because we’ll only fail if the NRL fails. The numbers are rising and rugby league is the national sport of Ipswich and Toowoomba.
Just like Papua New Guinea.
Then PVL was asked for an opinion. If you read the story, you’d be given the impression the NRL was on the verge of awarding a 20th licence to the Ipswich Jets tomorrow. If you read the story carefully, you’ll see V’landys is saying what he always has: we’ll look at all options, including another SEQ team or another NZ team for that matter, we’ll talk to the QRL about it, it’s going wonderfully but we’re not going to rush this, we’re more focussed on the 18th and 19th teams right now and it won’t be until 2030 at the earliest. That is pretty much exactly what you’d expect. Note the extensive use of future tense.
“Their efforts have got to be rewarded at some point,” V’landys said of Brisbane’s western corridor bid.
Sure, that doesn’t seem like the best way of determining the merit of potential licences but what do I know? I’ve never once expanded the National Rugby League and PVL has done it three times now.
Then again, if you were going to bring a new team in for 2030, handing them a licence at the end of 2026 would give them a long runway to get sorted. That would be an opportunity the Dolphins and Bears were not afforded and while the Chiefs get longer, they have so much more work to do.
Other than that, this is all pretty thin gruel. I thought with the advent of the Dolphins and the return of the Bears, the hacks would have to find a new story to trot out every six months when they’re running on empty. It turns out that story is “Let’s get the Jets in already” every six months from now until 2030 or 2032. I, for one, can’t wait to write up basically this exact piece in the newsletter another eight or ten times.
Because ignoring all the pablum after AFL invasions of the heartlands - how did that go in western Sydney? - to restate the case for SEQ4 in the west: it’s not just fishing where the fish are, Ipswich has a slew of demographic factors in its favour. The region is fast growing, highly suburbanised and politically contestable.
The LNP have claimed the mayoralty in the last round of local government elections and with the state government want to turn Ipswich, traditionally a Labor area, as blue as Brisbane’s other exurbs, Moreton Bay, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast. One of the tactics to implement that strategy includes the current redevelopment of North Ipswich Reserve to 2,500 capacity with a view to upgrading to a modern 20,000 seater at some point. If the LNP can reasonably claim they delivered a NRL licence to the area, that’s not going to hurt them.
The counterargument is that this area is about as rusted-on for Broncos support as it gets. If Ipswich and Toowoomba are, at best, divided between the Broncos and the new team, all of the casuals, non-aligned and Broncos haters in SEQ were already swept up by the Dolphins, then the bid starts with a much smaller core of fans than either the Titans or Dolphins could claim, and the crowd numbers for both gives some pause in that respect, even if the Phins’ TV numbers are still reasonable. A Newtown-Ipswich Jets JV might skirt around this but it has its own conceptual issues to iron out.
There’s also no particular reason the NRL has to stop at 20 teams. That’s just a number Politis pulled out of his head. Abdo has also made it clear that there is no further expansion past Perth and PNG in this coming broadcast cycle, so there’s nothing doing until 2032-ish (or 2030, if the cycle is surprisingly short). Brisbane may be a post-apocalyptic wasteland by then.
If not, a north-ish Dolphins, a south-ish Titans, a west-ish Jets and the central, all-conquering, much-bigger-than-them-all-combined Broncos, feels like an easy sell to all the stakeholders who matter (the broadcasters), and a 22 team NRL gets you all the Sydney heritage you want, all the SEQ derbies you can handle and all the pins in the map you need.
Intermission
Kayo has made it difficult to screen record so you’re probably just going to get more photos when QCup doesn’t provide the juice. The new Kangaroo Point Bridge is good.
Click here for some footy content.
Hotseat
🔥🔥🔥🔥 Flanagan
🔥🔥🔥 Payten
🔥 Ryles
🔥 Ciraldo
🔥 Woolf
Congratulations to this week’s one-flame debutants, Jason Ryles of the Eels and Kristian Woolf of the Dolphins. We’ve already sacked one coach - finally! - and there’s a line of 3.5 sackings. I can see ourselves getting to three easily enough but the fourth is tricky.
Upcoming slate
Bit of a strange week of scheduling. All of the Queensland Cup, bar Sunday’s feature game, are kicking off at 3pm or 5pm on Saturday, which at least leads in to some decent non-Queensland NRL match ups on Saturday evening.
The two games worth watching are The Big Game on Friday night (not Dragons-Sea Eagles, which is toxic and hazardous to human health, I mean Cowboys-Broncos obviously) and the Sunday QCup feature game between the Tigers and Hunters.
A reminder that daylight savings has ended in NSW, so kick off times are back to normal.
The Dolphins have the bye. A sigh of relief emanates from north SEQ and Central Queensland.
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Nickelware
Read this
Aaron Bower - Super League’s rousing Rivals Round offers timely boost for takeover talks. Funny how there’s almost no coverage of this from the Australian-based media.
Eye Test - One stat every NRL club could fix as the Panthers dominance continues
Rugby League Writers - Brimson’s No Try, Casey McLean & Twidle On Debut
The Sportress - Waiting on a resurrection
Stereogum - We All Float On: A Weekend Aboard The Modest Mouse Cruise
Notes
Programming note: a reminder I’m overseas from this Friday. Service is expected to be intermittent to non-existent until I return on the Labour Day weekend. I am not sure how or if I will have time to watch any NRL. Apologies in advance. I do plan to issue a Bovine Bulletin later this week.
Margin watch: it’s about the same as last week.
One of the commonly understood consequences of the expansion of rugby league in general has been the decline in depth at clubs. One of the less understood factors is that the gap between the starting side and the reserve options is greater now, so the opportunity for mass cullings for poor performance is reduced because even an underperforming starter is still likely better than what constitutes replacement level now.
Browne Park, Rockhampton reopens on May 2. Interested to see how it looks on the TV.
Just for funsies: Australia’s most decorated soldier Ben Roberts-Smith arrested over alleged war crimes. Don't forget this.
“Yeah, he does old memes and undergraduate history references instead.” Shut up.