The Death of Agro
'Tis the final event of the 20th century
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Vlandoball II (again)
Five years ago, I wrote a post about the set restart that, by my standards, went viral. I refer back to it often because it shows how the downstream effects were predictable, sufficiently so that an independent blogger with too much time on his hands thanks to covid and a chip on his shoulder, could see them coming.
In July 2021, I was not certain that the set restart was the monocause of the consistent series of blowouts. This was spun around by dishonest reporting (Brad Walter) to serve the ends of the NRL administration. Later research, mostly that conducted by friend of the newsletter, the Rugby League Eye Test, demonstrated the direct relationship between more six agains and more blowouts.
That’s not to say I don’t get things wrong. I had a false start on Vlandoball II at this time last year. The original piece has its issues and hindsight is famously 20/20. Since then, the situation has evolved with counter-rule changes and counters to those counters in the subsequent half decade that we’ve been talking about this very silly change.
The set restart came in after the covid restart in 2020. It was very clear very early that the six again was, at best, a gimmick. For the 2021 season, the Controlling Body expanded the remit of a set restart from “punishing” ruck infringements, and it is still not clear to me even now what constitutes a ruck infringement, to “punishing” being inside ten metres. We used to call that offside.
This had a predictable impact on the sport1, comparable to running a competition of expansion teams.
The subsequent reduction in 2022 to where on the field the set restart could be called, tamped down margins. While an average margin of 15 points per game was still inflated to recent history, and should be in the range of 12 to 14 points per game, it was tolerable. The geniuses who run the sport, while having no idea how it works, have expanded that zone to the full field bar a team’s own 20 for 2026. The effects have been felt immediately.
RLET has already been over the impacts on round 1. Everyone acknowledges the small sample size but if things continue in this vein, this season will definitely have some of the worst rounds of my lifetime.
Round 1, 2026, had a total margin of 160 points, or 20 points per game. This puts it at exactly the 100th worst round for average margin since 1988, of which there have been 939 in the regular season. Typically, margin gets worse as the season goes on and this is the second worst opening round since ‘88, beaten only by the 24.3 points per game of 2002. Perhaps that doesn’t sound that bad - finishing 100th or worse would have been a one-in-ten chance of happening by randomness - but it does not bode well.
More broadly, I do not understand how you can look at the recent history of this sport and not conclude that the set restart’s impacts are so negative that it should be discarded altogether. Any aesthetic benefits, which I assume is what proponents see but I do not, are more than cancelled out by 50-10 and 52-4.
Form should not be allowed to triumph over function. I hate it when form triumphs over function, so we are not going to relitigate this. Every possible argument was rebuffed five years ago and yet here we are, arguing with the same people who claim to listen to fans while very clearly not doing that.
It is bad. It always will be bad. The best solution is to eliminate it and the next best is to contain it.
Perhaps we should consider ourselves fortunate that the changes to the kick off were not also summarily passed through. What you would have wanted was to eliminate any way for a chasing team to stage a late comeback, obliterating the only close games we got in this round and exacerbating the blowouts. That it was even considered, and not laughed out of the room, is the most damning indictment of those involved.
This section has been really long recently
Around the grounds
Storm 52 defeated Eels 4. That’s a big ol yikes for both Parra and a number of pre-season storylines, including those peddled by this very publication, but then perhaps the least surprising thing in the world is a Storm team turning up to round 1 in something more like mid-season form. Eels put up the gloves for the first 15 or 20 or so but it got away from them as they are very much not in mid-season form.
Warriors 42 defeated Roosters 18. Has Tanah Boyd finally come good? It’s one game. It’s round 1. The Roosters players looked as shocked as anyone about how the game unfolded and the final result. On the balance, probably not. Something to watch.
Panthers 26 defeated Broncos 0. If that’s not the worst two halves of Brisbane football you’ll ever see, and the Seibold era did happen and the Storm pantsed the Broncos in round 23 last year, 22-2, then that’s pretty close. The median Titans performance would have been good enough to beat either of these teams but the Panthers were merely incompetent, failing to generate any of their own points and not being asked any questions by the Broncos, instead of being embarrassing. Walsh’s knuckleball kickoff was a nice touch, as was Mam’s punching the ball loose on Cogger, but that was about it. The rest of the game was awful. The reader can decide whether Adam Gee or Cooper Cronk had a worse performance.
Sharks 50 defeated Titans 10. This is by far the worst start of a new Titans coach, so that is encouraging considering how all the others have gone. Gold Coast were not just one but several steps off the pace and smashed out of contention for the win in 20 minutes. Round 1 and all that but yeesh.
Saturday statewide streaming. Souths Logan’s attack looked very slick against Wynnum. Tom Duffy might be good enough for this level. Is it possible that players improve? Huge if true. Sunshine Coast and Tweed played an absolute classic, with the lead changing hands until the Seagulls were able to break serve coming into the final quarter. Tweed held on, despite two sin bins for professional fouls in the last five minutes, including one before the final play of the game, which the Falcons promptly squandered the 13-on-11 opportunity. Norths looked a little surprised to be behind Mackay in the first half but managed to rectify that going into the break. The Devils got bashed out of the game by a more committed and skillful Cutters team, especially the athletics of Raydan Burns and Jimmy Ngutlik, a 25 year old from PNG coming into his second season of Cup.
Bears 22 defeated Dolphins 12. A waterlogged pitch and a steady stream of drizzly rain ensured that we didn’t really get a good idea of either team’s capabilities. It’s the kind of game you can slide in to the in-goal from five metres out and combine for nearly 40 errors. Moving forward, the Bears lineup looks stacked (e.g. Blake Mozer, Del Hoeter, various Turners and Bradleys) and other than two kick-offs out on the full, Burleigh were forceful, led by a defensive masterclass from Guy Hamilton of all players. The Phins made too many errors and didn’t do enough with their surplus of ball. Oloapu had a few nice touches, shuttling the ball out to Michael McGrath.
Rabbitohs 40 defeated Dolphins 30. What you don’t want to do is spend your Sunday afternoon sitting in drizzle, watching the Dolphins fall behind Souths by 18 points twice in the same game. Less than half the game was compelling and the Rabbitohs failed to really put the foot down and stamp on the Dolphins, denying us a round of record blowouts. The Phins pack showed a capacity for using tackling to limit the beefy Rabbitohs lads from marching down the field but conversely, also allowed them down the field with set restarts, penalties and poorly timed errors. Once in the red zone, Redcliffe were not able to defend. The Dolphins attack looked ok-to-good but denied themselves opportunities to level the game. I suspect this will be a recurring theme. Peter Gough sent up a try that I saw Latrell Mitchell had clearly knocked on from 100 metres away. What’s doing with that?
Super League highlight sprint, round 4. Something needs to be done about the alternative kits in this competition. Wakefield showed some enterprising play in the absence of Mason Lino to level the game at halftime and take the lead 20 minutes later (after one of the worst botches of a try you’ll see). Hull look bereft of ideas, other than what Lewis Martin offers. Leigh seem almost entirely reliant on Tesi Niu to break games open - he stepped Charlie Staines out of his boots - while Toby Sexton is looking more the part for Catalan, playing key roles in two spectacular tries as Les Dracs took the win over the Leopards. York conceded 16 points almost immediately before scoring 18 of their own. The second half proceeded in similar fashion but Warrington just edged the Knights out. Wigan kicked Toulouse’s derriere, finding a lot of joy down the Olympique left edge. Romanos, Garrigues and Wallace unable to get into position to tackle. Bradford a real early season success story but fell just short against a fast finishing St Helens. Leeds beat Castleford - Maika Sivo has the best highlight reel of anyone in rugby league right now - and Hull KR got off the mark, thrashing Huddersfield.
Last thoughts on Vegas
Unsurprisingly, the Vegas matches did not rate well on US TV. This comes after being moved to Fox Sports 2, which I gather is like being shown on one of those random shopping networks that have popped up under the FTA HD channels.
The matches were given ratings of 12k, 6k and 2k, down on 370k on Fox Sports 1 last year. These are basically zero, a statistical rounding error resulting from one person falling asleep with the TV on during the Dragons-Bulldogs game. More people watched these games in Adelaide than the 350 million people in the USA.2 It also seems that the Super League game outrated both NRL games put together, which has to sting given this is meant to be a NRL branding exercise but throws into stark relief how pointless that particular endeavour has been.
It is entirely possible that the NRL fully believed that they could crack the US market where so many previous administrators and sports had failed. Most people, and probably everyone reading this, understood this to be unrealistic. The US bookmakers are not obliged to share their revenue with sports, local Las Vegans avoid The Strip like the plague unless they are working or the Golden Knights are playing and it seemed unlikely a few clips from Gronk was going to convert a mass audience.
Nonetheless, I think Vegas is a success. The NRL can drop any inventory it likes into the spot and get a 10 to 20% premium on the ratings. They also receive local government funding otherwise unavailable. The reporters and some fans like the junket. It brings together the two hemispheres of the game in one place. The no pads, no helmets schtick seems to be as much as advertising to Americans, as it is communicating to Australians that this sport is good enough for export. Along with actually doing things, demonstrating that the NRL is a quality product via its actions are the two strengths of the PVL administration.
Whether the NRL intended for this to happen is another question. I tend to believe that bad process eventually outs, even if there are good results in the meantime. Unexpectedly finding a bunch of benefits while failing in your stated aim in a way that was quite obviously going to happen, is almost definitionally bad process with good results.
What kind of shelf life this has, I don’t know. The mooted global round seems poised to be a successor event, provided things like spiking petrol prices don’t kill consumer spending and send airlines bankrupt because a gaggle of morons in Washington decided to bomb Iran without consulting a map and discovering the Strait of Hormuz.
Peter V’Landys does seem to be completely insulated from the consequences of his decision-making. He is about to deliver $3 billion TV deal, maybe even $4 billion, and if the NRL walks away from Vegas and international sojourns in a couple of years, even admitting their failures (such as they are and that aspect seems unlikely), there will be minimal, if any, blowback.
Intermission
Upcoming slate
No Super League this week, as what’s left of English rugby league contests the Challenge Cup.
Broncos vs Eels, NRLM, Thursday 7pm, Suncorp Stadium
Between the Eels’ fairweather fans coming out of the woodwork and the Broncos continuing popular momentum, this will be a pretty decent crowd if the weather holds off. They will be treated to two sides licking their wounds and trying to make amends. If the Broncos manage not to drop the ball 4,000 times, they should win this game, but they may drop it 2,000 times and make it a contest.
Panthers vs Sharks, NRLM, Saturday 6.30pm, Bathurst
Bathurst is not where this game should be being held, not from the perspective of the quality of matchup nor from the perspective of a prime time Saturday night game. Are you kidding me? Expecting both Penrith and Cronulla to introduce rubber to road and see which of them has any traction. Very early in the season for this kind of critical match.
Magpies vs Bears, QCup, Sunday 3pm, Davies Park
Two first week winners collide, with the defending premiers visiting a side that had all the advanced metrics going for them in 2025, except for the win-loss column. The result will hinge on what the Magpies can put together. Another good week from Tom Duffy, and another abysmal performance on Thursday night from the far more experienced Broncos playmakers, and Duffy could be shockingly in the 19.
Thanking the payers
I'm never quite sure how to pass on my thanks when people sign up to a paid subscription or drop a tip on Ko-Fi, both of which happened in the last week. Email? Respond on platform of donation? Try to guess who they are on a different platform?
To be clearer about this, thanks are owed to EddyNZ, selfsec, MattyMcP25 on Ko-Fi and two dozen paying subscribers via Substack, including the most recent addition of Chris.
We've got to workshop a better name than “paying subscribers”. Email me your suggestions. “Payers” is too transactional, “subs” carries a bit of sexual baggage and Maroon Observer doesn't lend itself to a neat nickname, like “Gooners” does for Arsenal (there's that sexual baggage again).
Irrespective of what we call them, these people are the ones who keep this newsletter going. Perhaps you would like to join them?
Maroon Observer QCup Tipping Pervertship
We had half a dozen sign-ups. Currently, Dan from The Sportress holds the lead wth 4/7 and I am one tip adrift. Does this mean Raiders fans know ball? Perhaps. It is a long season and surely tipping the Cutters or Souths Logan won’t pay off every week.
Given the relatively poor start to the season across the board, there’s still time to join to compete for $50 first prize or $20 for last place (min 20 rounds tipped and I may reduce this to like 18 I guess): Maroon Observer QCup Tipping Sickoship.
Read this
Rugby League Eye Test - NRL Round 1 margins & set restarts, plus the return of expected points
Rugby League Writers - Tricky Trindall, Middle Defence & Sea Eagles Show Their Hand
The Sportress - Six, Again: Welcome to Hell
The Cruncher - What did the 2026 NRL Las Vegas matches show us?
Footy Industry - What League was number 1 in 2025?
Storm Machine - Game 742 – S29E01 Review
1 Eyed Eel - Storm Slaughter a Reality Check
Ant’s Slant - The Real DCE and Me
What You Get Is What You See - NRL Tactics Preview part 2 - Everyone Else Edition
Notes
Family of League: Jacek McLaurin Appeal. “On Saturday 21st February, Jacek “Yak” McLaurin, a rising young star with the Burleigh Bears, was playing in a trial match against the Tweed Seagulls when he was involved in a tackle that went tragically wrong. Jacek landed on his head and was airlifted to hospital, where he began fighting for his life. It has since been confirmed that Jacek sustained a catastrophic, life-changing spinal injury, where he currently has no feeling from the shoulders down, including fractures to his C4 and C5 vertebrae.” If you don’t want to upgrade to paid, still consider a donation here.
NRL world rallies around Warren Smith as beloved commentator’s absence explained
A note to acknowledge that the refereeing on display during its “crisis” years, as peddled by the likes of now-retired Buzz Rothfield, was far better than what we are seeing now. If the set restart continues to have the impact it seems to be having, then it is only going to get worse.
Brisbane media personality, broadcaster, and Agro puppeteer Jamie Dunn dies aged 76. This closes what would now be viewed as a strange chapter in the culture of Brisbane and Australia, and is not really explicable, despite having lived through it. If you were trying to explain Dunn and Agro to a zoomer, I’m not sure they’d understand the appeal of a bath matt/sex pest puppet helming a kid’s cartoon show, or why there was even a host at all, let alone its national popularity. Nor would they understand the particular type of fame generated from hosting the breakfast show on the most popular commercial radio station in town, or again, why there was even a host at all. In other words, I’m feeling my age and am also confused about the legacy left, if any.
Brains: Former American football players show higher risk of later-life memory and mental health issues. Sub-concussive hits are coming for a collision sport near you.
Evictions of homeless campers by City of Moreton Bay violated human rights, Supreme Court rules. Definitely a headline you want written about a local council.
Tropical low lashes Far North Queensland with up to 400mm of rain in parts. Seemed to get notably less coverage (and panic) than Alfred did last year but then, "They're wet, but they're ok, this is our rain season.”
Collingullie Wagga Demons Aussie Rules official steps down over sexist comments. Was tempted to make this some code wars fodder but this is so clearly old man dumbcuntery that it felt unnecessary.
Brief beer corner: On the Demise of BrewDog. Some context in the previous beer corner.
Superficial amateur political analysis
I think it is axiomatic to say that professional sport has a conservative streak. Part of that arises from the long bow of legitimacy drawn from the founding date of a given league to now, with an unbroken line of continuous successive champions. In sport, values only change slowly, even if those show up in landmark events, like legalising professionalism, that break with the past. This avoids disrupting the line of succession and the legitimacy of the current hierarchy that has glommed onto it. That has appeal to a certain kind of person who holds a certain kind of worldview.
Part of that is the cultural milieu around sports attracts a disproportionate amount of a certain kind of conservative: the American gentry, whose Australian equivalent is perhaps the boomer investment property landlord and associated crowd of real estate agents.3 They use their demographic and financial influence to react negatively and with great inertia to the ever evolving social paradigm in an increasingly complex society. That is, the kind of people who insist the women’s category of sport must be protected from the evil trans, despite showing absolutely zero interest in engaging with women’s sport on its merits.
There is a long history of reactionaries attracted to sport. Look no further than Henri Desgrange or the products of the Rugby school from the late 19th century and you can draw a wobbly line from there, through the mid-century flirtation with fascism, up to the likes of Scott Morrison and David Crisafulli.4
One way of looking at the above post is that the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy is the ideal person to deliver closing remarks at what is, in part, a trade mission from Australia to the United States under the guise of rugby league. Other speakers included the global VP for sports finance from Goldman Sachs, Andrew Liveris of the 2032 Olympic delivery, executives from the Raiders and Athletics, and Peter Hutton, who is a board member for Super League and the Saudi Pro League.5
Another way of looking at the above post is by googling Sarah B Rogers:
Rogers has arguably become the public face of the Trump administration’s growing hostility to European liberal democracies. Since assuming office in October, she has met with far-right European politicians, criticized prosecutions under longstanding hate speech laws, and boasted online of sanctions against critics of hate speech and disinformation on US big tech platforms.
Great! But that’s not why her name had stuck in my head. It was this admisison:
So I had several Gawker... I was a prolific Gawker commenter, and the reason is that I got married in 2009, and I was worried that if I got married, that my wedding announcement and my husband and my family and myself were all going to be dissected by these malicious internet commenters. And I thought about this the way that perhaps a future public diplomacy under secretary would, which is I thought if I can just have four Gawker accounts and sock puppet the thread and say good things about myself, then I don’t have to be afraid to get married because people, even if they bash me in public, I’ll be able to speak back. So I developed, you had to audition to be a Gawker commenter back then, and I developed this algorithm to be an impressive poster.
Rogers is a typical apparatchik of the Trump II administration, a holder of a highly incoherent worldview that centres on race with a posting brain that broke the wrong way from being Too Online.
In isolation, this wouldn’t be a big deal. It would be far more likely to create a big scandal by rejecting Rogers than would be created by going with the flow and I am not proposing to create one now. What would be the point?
However, piece this together with PVL’s plea for Trump’s attendance last year, Andrew Voss’ pathetic Instagram invitation for same this year6 and long running descent into talkback crankery, and something about Dana White attending7, lay it on the substrate conservative coding of sports, and contrast that with even a cursory understanding of what is currently happening in the US (vis a vis domestic occupation, establishing warehouse concentration camps, paramilitary kidnappings, preemptive strikes against sovereigns, engaging in school shooter behaviour as foreign policy and so forth) and a picture resolves into focus.
Putting aside the innate toadying and bootlicking of the NRL elite, which explains their desire to collaborate with whatever regime happens to be in power to achieve commercial goals that remain unclear, there is a decidedly anti-progressive streak to the NRL of recent years.
Remember the histrionics about the anthem? Remember when PVL tried to get an otherwise unqualified police commissioner on the ARLC, despite the police’s track record with e.g. Tom Starling, Latrell Mitchell and Jack Wighton? The handpicked board of the Perth Bears has two (2) Liberal politicians. According to the widely respected Roy Masters, problems of consensus can only be resolved by strongmen. These are little visible specks that strongly indicate an underlying fatberg of shitty politics.
One of the fun parts of getting into an otherwise tedious argument with a rugby union fan was dropping “union collaborated with Nazi-occupied Vichy France to eliminate League,” as told in Mike Rylance’s Forbidden Game, and dropping the mic along with it. However, as time passes, the (relatively) progressive, (relatively) inclusive politics of famously working class game are waning. Money, growth and middle age will do that and there’s a good argument that historical inclusivity was not as broad as we might like to think.
I’ve previously cited Tony Collins’ piece about Workington Man, published right before Workington Man went hard for the Tories in the 2019 UK general election, as a sort of bellwhether for the end of this political ideal. The ongoing process of LNP politicians and various Katterati publicly signalling allegiance to specific NRL clubs (Sharks, Cowboys, etc) speaks to a parallel trend locally. That 2026 seems to be revealing that a lot of the last decade of culture war seems to have been influenced by Epstein and his pedophile cabal only lends the whole thing another degree of revulsion.
Where does this end up? Dunno but it feels remiss to not at least point it out.
Some content
Things are getting desperate when clubs start to make pleas like this. Hard to imagine that’s going to meaningfully turn around what sounds like terminal decline.
There are plenty of larger forces working against Whitehaven, primarily the drying up of TV money to the lower divisions and the distance of Cumbria from the rest of the rugby league world (in part, causing their coach to resign), and perhaps the new league structure is not that accommodating (take note re: NRL reserves in QCup). While we normally point out that not even the ineptly-run Super League went under during covid, I do think the pandemic has weakened plenty of structures around the game that may just take a bit more time to collapse.
The best case scenario is the next TV deal is steady, which means the Super League clubs aren’t going to be any more interested in sharing cash with the lower tier clubs than they are now. Without a miracle, it’s going to get worse before it gets better, if at all.
Worth noting that we do in fact see margin inflation in NSW Cup and Super League post-2020, although QCup is a little more muddled due to local factors.
Remember how the NRL, as the first* sport to return from covid, was going to provide prime live sports programming for Americans?
*As long as you don’t count Bundesliga, Korean soccer, a bunch of competitions that never stopped, etc, etc.
The thinning of the boomers does not seem to be reducing this dynamic.
Albanese, too, but he is not a reactionary. That would be a category error. Useless, perhaps, and likely a bad politician that will somehow be prime minister for a decade.
Hmmm.
“Why would u want a pedophile at the game” one commenter asked. Great question. Mr Voss, your response?
Look, I didn’t care enough to read about that one.
I suggest "Observers" as the alternative name. Slightly edging out "Paid/Paying Observers" and “Marooners” (as a portmanteau) - yes, more associated baggage.