Something to think about instead of that sense of foreboding
It's my first cyclone and it may go right over my house!
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Vegas II
To no one's surprise, Trump didn't show up. Turns out he was too busy yelling at Volodymyr Zelensky for wanting help fighting a Russian invasion (???). The idea that would have been in any way beneficial to rugby league, I think, is a strange one. Trump is responsible for so much shit on a daily basis, his attendance at a random sports event in Vegas would be lucky to make the top ten on any given day’s news stories.
Even if Trump were a respected statesman-like figure, so what? The conversion rate from a potential spike in Google searches to fans engaged with the sport in a lucrative way has to be in the parts per million, never mind that Trump is so divisive as to automatically prevent half the population from considering touching anything his corpulence has approached.
Zelensky would have been the better invitee, would have been received far more warmly by the crowd, and was far more likely to turn up, even though Vegas was out of his way to rally help in Europe. That would have been a statement worth making, however, that would also marginally deviate from the conservative status quo and the NRL does not play in the space.
To be fair, I doubt anyone from the NRL knew the Big Z was going to be there but how about just getting Starmer and Albo over next year and they can trade tips on being ineffectual? Wait, what if Dutton wins in May? Never mind, we’re off to Saudia Arabia.
That unpleasantness aside, at the end of 2022, in my end of season write-up, I made the following observation about the women's World Cup:
There was an interesting idea that England is closing the gap to New Zealand and Australia. I think the disruptive effects of the pandemic explain the Kiwi Ferns relative lack of firepower and the Jillaroos chose not to take their absolute razor sharp best squad (although Brigginshaw put on a performance for the ages in the final). The thing is that while the NRLW is semi-professional and moves to make its rep-calibre players into full-time pros, there seems to be no similar movement in the women’s Super League. Other than some well wishers, it remains to be seen where the money is going to come from to allow that to happen. In its absence, I can confidently claim that England will be no closer in 2025 than they were in 2022 and probably even further adrift. Indeed, with Samoa, Fiji and Tonga likely to join the fray in France’s expanded field, England will struggle even more to clear the middle class and take it to the top end of town. It will be fascinating to see if anyone notices, let alone does anything about, this discrepancy.
Back then, the World Cup was notionally going to be in France in 2025 but now will be in Australia in 2026 but it seems no one picked up on the discrepancy I highlighted. Even if this is not a full strength side, England's lack of professionalism for their women was grossly exposed.
The thing about women's footy is that some don't take it seriously until they get embarrassed. Even if the powers that be don't think it matters, an 86 point loss in an international - a worse performance than the Orchids in Brisbane last year that had people wringing their hands and asking who is this for?! - means everyone can see how you live and that does matter.
The shocking thing about the game, both to regular observers and England's coach apparently, is just how much more athletic the Jillaroos, despite this being the start of their season, were than the Lionesses. Internationals are the only arena that provides this magnitude of physical mismatch but usually England can hang in there in the men’s. This time, the women were too slow, too weaks, while acknowledging there's very little they could have done about that, and woeful on the edge. If you had thought the squad was roughly NRLW level, then you might think you have a chance but while English individuals may be able to compete, the team as a whole might have struggled against the BMD All-Stars.
The thing that fixes this is money, of which the RFL has none, and time, which the RFL now has another year before playing real competition again. John Davidson wrote a piece in i about the NRL taking a stake in Super League. His assessment of what V'Landys values seems off - big city teams in big stadiums seems antithetical to the suburban grounds discourse of a few years ago - and I am not confident any serious investment will eventuate, despite the desperation of the English establishment.
The English clubs lack of the patina of prestige of their Australian bretheren, mostly due to the aforementioned lack of money, and so don't even attract the mediocre talents that manage to glom onto the NRL. This is evident by the frequent and major changes in strategy: Super League and RFL divorced, only to get back together again, then to bring in IMG and then not really do anything meaningful they recommended. Meanwhile, the Sky money dwindles and dwindles.
If the English can't stick to a long term concept, then what are they going to do with the NRL's money? Mostly, it would just be good money after bad. The best outcome would be for the RFL to subordinate itself and merge the Super League clubs into a globalised NRL structure. Additional geographical diversity might mitigate some of the worst effects of Sydney-centrism, even if the English brain geniuses can’t see past their own postcode any better than their Pacific counterparts.
Speaking of money, reader Ryan Dufty revealed that the NRL is getting about $1 million per year to take the circus to Vegas.
And that's fine, even if $1 million doesn't seem like a whole lot in the grand scheme but if that gets 25 or 30,000 people each dropping a couple grand on hotels and meals and tickets to attend, then that suits the Vegas authorities.
Yes, that is the ballpark of how many people attend Vegas. Last year’s official attendance was 40,746 but the above notes only 22,500 out of town visitors, which suggests a truly heroic, possibly Saudi-esque, number of locals turned up. This year’s attendance of 45,209 seems underwhelming when a) 50k were ‘expected’ for whatever that is worth, b) the NRL can invent whatever number it likes and the broadcasters will run it and c) the English crowd were actively courted to add to numbers. This is the best you can do with all that in your favour? Or are they choosing to lie less?
One then starts to wonder how much this is costing the NRL if only a little over half the number of attendees are, in fact, real people spending actual dollars. While the event is clearly spectacular and seems to do wonders for TV ratings, is the NRL recouping any of that or writing the cost off to marketing? “It’s costing us nothing. We broke even this year, if not a small profit,” V’landys said. Uh-huh, sure, fine, whatever. I will definitely take that on face value.
As for the future, Vegas is on the slate until 2028. As an inventory tentpole event and spectacle, I think it does the job, provided that the ratings boost is both sustained and paid for by broadcasters. As noted by Matt Bungard for ESPN, there are no victory conditions against which we can assess the virtues of the Vegas venture - we are not expanding to America in any meaningful sense, the promised rivers of gold from gambling do not appear to be forthcoming, was there even a Combine this year? - and we’ll see if the novelty wears off.
Chammas has already fired off a missive about the post-2028 future of the NRL kick off, listing stadiums in London that will not be available due to the Premier League1, but the idea is conceivable for California, Arizona, western Europe or wherever, should someone be willing to host 30,000 drunk rugby league fans and part with $1 million or more in return.
Maybe by then, England and the RFL will have got their act together to put on a competitive show. Oh wait, never mind.
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What to do about a cyclone?
As you will undoubtedly know by now, the Dolphins have moved their game to Parramatta Stadium and it’s become a Souths home game. For the Rabbitohs, the potential for selling tickets to round 1 in Parramatta on three days’ notice is apparently about the same financially as hosting the Dolphins at Accor in round 17.
What you might not have seen was the article published on News Corp at about lunchtime Tuesday, a few hours before the relocation was announced. It is quite something or, at least, something to think about while waiting for the wrath of God to descend.
For example, it is a very rugby league solution, when a fixture and a cyclone are likely to coincide, for the away team to fly even earlier to the place where the cyclone is:
To avoid any weather dramas, the Rabbitohs plan to leave Sydney for Brisbane on Wednesday, a day earlier than originally planned.
Not “hey, we’ll just come to Sydney for this one and you can come to Brisbane in round 17”, just “let’s get there even sooner”! The AFL canned its fixtures shortly after this published, so there was a fantastic opportunity for PVL to show everyone how manly he is by pressing on. “It’s just a little rain and wind, what’s the harm? Trump would never give in to a little hurricane,” but he chickened out. Free kick to the AFL/cyclone.
This snippet came courtesy of our all-Sydney byline (Pete Badel was unavailable to whip this into a BIOLOGICAL CYCLONE or a CYCLONIC FIRESTORM - not sure what he would have gone with):
South Sydney’s round one match against the Dolphins could be played before an empty Suncorp Stadium if flooding from Cyclone Alfred swamps Brisbane.
Ordering fans to stay at home is one option being discussed during top-level talks between Dolphins chief executive Terry Reader and Queensland Premier David Crisafulli.
Dolphins officials remain optimistic the match will proceed and kick-off at 7pm in Queensland, 8pm in NSW.
But Reader and Crisafulli have discussed a range of possibilities which include asking fans to remain at home and avoid travelling through flood-affected areas to attend the game.
It seems everyone finally got over their Vegas hangover and decided it was time to get to work. Possibly someone finally checked their phone and decided to see what this cyclone business was about but more likely, the Dolphins sent News an email on Monday and were like, “I need to get a story out about this cyclone” and the blearied eyed Sydney reporters said something like, “[Tim the Toolman noise]… oh. Well, just send me the copy and I’ll tweak it a bit and send it out tomorrow. That’ll be fine right?”
The NRL is closely monitoring the situation but would be highly reluctant to move or postpone the game due to lucrative broadcasting commitments with Fox Sports and Channel 9.
I like that the safety of fans and the integrity of the broadcast deal are given similar weighting in this decision making process.
The players will evidently do what they’re told. If you didn’t want your husband leaving you six months pregnant with two little kids in a flood prone area (I’m betting Newport) with nearly a week to prepare for an impending disaster, then you should have married someone with a real job that makes way less money, like an EQ live line technician or an SES volunteer, but you married Kodi Nikorima. Enjoying that Kodi high life has its price to pay.
Queensland’s Government – not the Dolphins or NRL – will make the final decision, which may not happen until Friday afternoon.
Note that the ABC reported at about the same time that the Queensland government had left it in the hands of the NRL. Eventually, someone somewhere made a decision but we’ll probably never know who was actually responsible for sanity prevailing.
Suncorp Stadium offers high-tech drainage and the match, as of Wednesday afternoon, was still scheduled to be played.
It’s not clear if the Ritchie and Kdouh understand how drainage works. If people can’t get to the stadium because of flooding, it’s as likely as not to be occurring in the low lying areas of Milton as anywhere. If that’s the case, the water in Suncorp has nowhere to go, hence photos from 1974, 2011 and 2022 of exactly that happening. Flood pumping installed at the stadium after 2022 is more likely to speed up recovery efforts than preventing major flooding because of, you know, how water works.
Also, how would players then get out after they’ve played a game in ankle deep water and gotten trench foot? I guess they could wade out and trudge up the hill to Roma Street. If that’s not an option, once stuck in the stadium, with no service operators present, I would give them about two to three hours before they resorted to cannibalism.
Then there’s whatever this is:
Cyclone Alfred has been upgraded and could cross the Queensland border on Thursday night.
The Queensland border with the Pacific ocean? That’s not really how people talk is it? Probably would’ve gone for “coast” personally.
The Dolphins hope the worst of the cyclone may have subsided 24 hours later, when the match will be played.
Those plans could change quickly if the cyclone doesn’t hit Brisbane until Friday morning.
That’s what you want to rely on. A cyclone subsiding so that the worst of it is over so you can play a closed doors NRL game. That means the Dolphins were really banking on Alfred having a change of heart and heading back out to sea. Which it didn't do, so someone had to pick up the phone to Redfern.
Government modelling suggests up to 500,000 homes could be damaged through Alfred’s force. The last cyclone to hit south-east Queensland 35 years ago
I was alive in 1990. Granted I was 3 but there was no cyclone. That’s the kind of thing that gets mentioned as you grow up, much in the way people talked about the ‘74 floods, which it turns out was the last actual time a cyclone hit SEQ:
The last tropical cyclone to cross the south-east Queensland coast was ex-Tropical Cyclone Zoe in 1974, which arrived less than two months after Cyclone Wanda caused the catastrophic 1974 Brisbane floods.
Anyway, kudos to the Sydney media for picking up this minor Dolphins-related story and not making it entirely about Souths.
What the bosses think
THIS MASTHEAD’s annual club powerbroker survey does little other than reconfirm for us that the men who run the sport have little in the way of imagination or insight to separate them from the average football fan. The framing of the questions is always hilariously leading, leaning heavily on talking points handed down from (I assume but I guess I could be wrong) the administration. Here’s a selection:
44 were sent the survey, only 25 responded. This is a pretty good strike rate but it has a selection bias. I have no idea what that bias would represent, possibly some form of early diagnostic tool for CTE?
Andrew Abdo is more popular than previous years. Perhaps he will not be eaten after all.
60% in favour of an investment in Super League.
39% think that Vegas will yield no significant financial benefit in the future. 48% thought the pass mark for attendance was 50k. Only 4% (so one (1) person) think Vegas should continue past its current contract.
60% support a shorter season of 22 rounds or less with 20 teams and 64% support a conference system. Have they thought through the implications of this? Probably not.
If you needed an example of a leading question, “Do you agree with the NRL’s decision to reject the Western Bears private consortium in favour of dealing directly with the Western Australian government to start its own team in Perth?” 84% Yes. Note that ‘yes’ is conditional on the second sentence fragment being met for the first one to be considered favourably.
Last but not least, 28% think PNG will fail but a further 40% don’t think it matters either way, provided the clubs are adequately compensated. Can’t you guys at least pretend to give a shit about something other than yourselves?
Intermission
Upcoming Slate
I'm expecting significant problems with playing QCup in a cyclone - there’s been no announcement from the QRL at time of writing - so have deferred any preview content. Cutters-Hunters might not be directly affected, unless PNG were planning on getting to Mackay via Brisbane after Wednesday. The only other game outside SEQ is Pride-Tigers and I don't know if the Tigers will get there or be able to get home again on Sunday. Hard to imagine Marsden High's pitch holding up for Magpies-Clydesdales after the rain forecast by the end of Saturday and we'll be doing well if Bishop Park isn't under Kedron Brook for Devils-Tigers on Sunday.
Provided we’re all still here, the usual watch guide will return next week.
Broncos vs Roosters, Thursday 7pm at Moore Park
The Roosters have a horrible playmaking platoon and an anonymous bench. The Broncos, fresh, motivated under a new coach and hopefully not too distracted, should be able to throw enough bodies in front of the handful of remaining talented Roosters (Crichton, Radley, Collins) to stymie any advance. Do it for the city, lads. Tip: Broncos
Dolphins vs Rabbitohs, Friday 7pm at Parramatta
I had a Gladiator II joke pencilled in here but now this game won’t be played under cyclonic conditions, unless Woolf really mucks up the preparations, Souths are going to get murdered. Who is Jake Humphries? Tip: Dolphins
Cowboys vs Sea Eagles, Saturday 6.35pm at Brookvale
Even though it’s only round 1, Manly provide a handy test for North Queensland early on. The Seagles look decent enough 1-17 and the Cowboys are carrying some question marks over the three-quarter line and whether John Bateman is in any way capable of playing first grade. We will see how Thomas Duffy goes on the big stage but he seems like a calm, service kind of guy (maybe in the Toby Sexton mould), rather than the game breaker that Tom Dearden will be, so let’s not get too excited for this Karl Lawton revenge game. Tip: Cowboys
Titans vs bye
Will anyone notice?
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Some good content
Five seems optimistic but go for it, folks.
RL Reads You Should Read
Good stats from Rugby League Eye Test: The smaller Vegas field continues to promote wider play
Rugby League Writers / Jason Oliver: Season Preview: Analysis & Player Notes and Checking In From Las Vegas, Owen Pattie & Another Panthers Trickshot
The Athletic (again!): Access all areas: Wigan Warriors in Las Vegas – banana and honey sandwiches, meditation and puzzled dog walkers
Beyond the Goalpost: Put it all on black...and gold...and green?
Campo: The changing shape of the NRL's pursuit of the American dream in Las Vegas
Storm Machine: 2025... ah shit here we go again
Notes
Good luck to readers in SEQ. Hope your roof stays on your house.
Correction: Ryan Dufty also pointed out that I had misread the investment properties aspect of the Controlling Body’s annual report. There are currently six, not nine, four in Queensland and two in New South Wales. Only one of these was an investment property in the financial year covered by the report, the Quest Woolooware. Several others have either been purchased subsequently, and will presumably show up in next year’s report, or are not “investments” but rather “buildings and plant” because they are operated directly by the ARLC, e.g. the Beetson Hotel on Caxton Street.
Ryan has also dug out the value of the sales of the Queensland properties, totalling some $68 million generated by your time and fandom going to the Gambaro family ($25.0 million), Centro Pacific Homes ($20.2 million for the Mercure Kawana Wates) and whatever Arran 21 Pty Ltd is ($22.8 million for the Mantra Spring Hill), instead of, you know, rugby league. Whether these prove to be good investments for the sport will depend on the return generated, which seems unlikely to be broken out in the annual report but we will all live that one day one of the alleged journalists in the game will ask some questions and be leaked some answers.
I am not getting excited about the Raiders running over the Warriors. Do it a couple more times then we’ll talk.
I did tip the Sharks to get over the Panthers, assuming the latter would start slow ahead of a long season, and they fought their way back before running out of ideas. The Panthers’ round 1 results over the last four years are: beat the Cowboys in ‘21, beat the Sea Eagles in ‘22, lost to the Broncos in ‘23 and lost to the Storm in ‘24. Doesn’t bode well for the league or the Sharks.
I liked the Panthers’ black and gold jersey. Starting to wonder if they're going to realise that should be their primary colour scheme or maybe the pink jerseys they wear for Women in League, with teal and white or black as an alternate strip. The brown and white scheme was too close to Manly when they entered the comp and I never really understood the appeal of the black and traffic light combo.
Phins announce Tom Gilbert as captain, an extension for Kurt Donoghoe and the signatures of Sebastian Su'a and St Helens’ Morgan Knowles. The latter screams Lidl Tom Flegler because he ain’t coming back, it seems.
ICYMI: I was on a podcast about brain damage - Spotify and Apple.
NFL is out of season for Premier League, so Tottenham and others have no issues hosting those game days but it’s going to require significant, i.e. financially unviable, upheaval during the season.
Best of luck in the days ahead, my Maroon fam is at Burleigh these days, thankfully up the hill a bit.