Twotans
Three references to memes that are decades old but otherwise more of the same
Welcome to The Maroon Observer, a weekly newsletter about rugby league, Queensland and rugby league in Queensland.
The non-expansion expansion era
It is incumbent upon those of us who are not beholden to deadlines, editors or any kind of quality control or supervisory oversight, to continue to peddle our particular pecadillos. Eventually, through the power of sheer brainwashing and too much time on ours hands, we will prevail. I’ve been on this front for six years already, what’s another decade? I’m not in here with you, you’re in here with me, etc, etc.
So, yes, more set restart chat. Over the weekend, the vibe, such as it is that I’m exposed to, seemed to move away from the ongoing crisis of the NRL’s own making. Average margins reduced to a “mere” 15.8 points in round 3, down from 20.0 and 18.5 in rounds 1 and 2 respectively, and that took some of the heat out while the media apparatus, palpably relieved, gets distracted by someone jangling their keys elsewhere (e.g. meeting room names).
For the record, through three rounds, 2026 still leads 1995, a season in which four new teams were added, by an average margin of 18.1 to 17.4.
To borrow from our friends at The Sportress:
In an attempt to back Peter V’Landys’ re-expansion of the set-restart law, he engaged what we in the business call a ‘false dichotomy’. This is a logical fallacy in which Stick suggested that we could either have more six-agains, more tries, and more fun, or less of all of these things. In Stick’s words
You’ve got to make a decision yourself as a fan. Would you like to be a fan of an opposition team where you’ve got a team that just wants to keep on wrestling and wear the referee out to the stage where the referee just doesn’t give any more penalties? Or would you rather it just be play-on with the six-again? You make the decision yourself as a fan. I know what I want.
The problem with the correctly identified false dichtomy is that Stuart’s fundamental premise isn’t even sound.
Points scoring has been rising over the last few seasons but scoring is not occurring at the rate that we saw even last year, without this stupid change to the set restart. Points are being scored at a rate that is a little higher than the norm but not that much higher.
You’re suffering through this until the discipline improves and not even getting a points scoring extravaganza. 1988 season, in which three new teams were added, scored 50% more points in the first three rounds but managed to keep the average margin two points narrower than 2026 has so far.
The problem is not the volume of points but the lopsided distribution between the two teams. While an average margin per game can conceal some oddities, the range of margins shows the same impacts on the game.
The categories used here are entirely arbitrary. The proportion of “blowouts” is relatively static, but the number of “big wins” (four to six scores) is grossly inflated to any other comparable time in the NRL era. This has come at the expense mostly of the “medium win” (two to four scores), with a lesser impact on the “small win” (two scores or less).
The point of comparison for margins or point scoring or unpredictability for this season is not any other time in the NRL era - at least so far, but it seems likely 2021 will catch up later in the year - but to 1988, 1995 and 1997, seasons in which the introduction of multiple expansion teams, or entire new leagues, significantly altered the status quo.
Not only are you not getting the promised points-splosion from this rule change, which would undermine the directive to maximise time of ball in play in any case, you’re not even getting the fun of watching new teams run around the field or the feeling that there might just be something to this rugby league thing.
Instead, like 2021, 2026 feels like a sullen march to an inevitable conclusion, occasionally punctuated by a close game of questionable quality.
Be a crank
Unlike the NRL, The Maroon Observer is having a very good start to the year. I’m not here to talk subscriber counts again but it does feel like the newsletter has found a bit of reach via word of mouth that is generating some momentum that keeps new people trickling in. I am extremely pleased with that because each time number go up, so does dopamine. Thank you all for your hard work on producing that word of mouth.
For those of you not yet subscribed:
Around the grounds
Broncos 18 defeated Storm 14. That was a premiership winning performance if I ever saw one. Which I did. Last year. Over the Storm. Brisbane have won three in a row over Melbourne, the first time that has happened since 2004. The Broncos decided they could fuck around for one game, two games, even two and a half games but drew the line at fucking around for three games. Not today. We should have known Jordan Riki in headgear was going to get them across the line and when he did in fact cross the line, we all knew this was on the cards. Look at me, I’m the hoodoo now.
Dolphins 38 defeated Sharks 10. While the Dolphins notionally pushed up the score in garbage time at the end of the game, I felt the margin actually reflects the gap between the two teams for most of the game. It just took Redcliffe 70 minutes to wear Cronulla down and feast on the gooey innards. The Sharks are not a good six again team. Imagine carrying a pack that wasn’t tough enough to smash through 2023 to 2025 but can’t hack the pace of 2021 or 2026. Not great.
Cutters 24 defeated Capras 10. Maybe its the thrill of the regional area rivalry but is there a bit of something about this year’s Cutters? Mackay withstood a very frustrated Central Queensland in the not-so-friendly Friends of Coal Bowl and showed what I think is becoming a trademark turn of pace to win the game. I don’t want to fall for a 2024-style hot start but let’s put a pin in them as a potential Regional Team of the Newsletter of 2026. The Capras, on the other hand, don’t look great. It could be a long year in Rockhampton, as it usually is.
Dolphins 36 defeated Wynnum 16. Redcliffe already have that air of smooth competence that we usually only see in one or two teams each season. While it may be a luxury to play Trai Fuller, Tevita Naufahu and Karl Oloapu in Cup, the Dolphins still went out and did the hard work to dominate possession and crush Wynnum Manly by 20 points. While the margin did get closer at times, it wasn’t really ever that close. The Seagulls’ own star studded roster killed themselves with errors. Gehamat Shibasaki looked depressed just being there, barely involving himself in the game and taking only some small pleasure in a Trai Fuller error.
Cowboys 30 defeated Titans 16. A shootout with no consequences. This was an abysmal game and I am ashamed to share a state with both of these teams. The Cowboys’ general air of ineptitude was only saved by Jojo Fifita finding himself turned around not once, but twice, defending his own goal. The rest of the Titans’ performance was at this exact level - it is hard to believe Mo Fotuaika was once an Origin calibre player - so bravo for North Queensland for not maiming themselves quite as significantly as Gold Coast did. Reed Mahoney needs counselling.
Statewide split screening, round 3. Blackhawks showed a bit more grit and resolve in the Tropical Tango than we’ve seen in the early season but ultimately the class of the Pride came to the fore, much to the annoyance of Townsville. Norths scored two late tries but missed both conversions, which fortunately for the Devils only resulted in a draw, instead of a loss, with the Magpies. Jack Ahearn is back to his usual effortmaxxing. Burleigh and Tweed played out a bizarre Gold Coast derby, with each team scoring exactly 28 points, all of Burleigh’s in the first half, then all of Tweed’s in the second, with the latter’s coming in a run close to the end of the game, also ending in a draw. That late run is less than you would like to see in the defending premiers’ defence. I have no idea why Adam Christensen got pinged for dissent - he rubbed the marker on the head - or why there was a whistle blown before that but the potential game winning penalty goal was missed anyway.
Super League highlight sprint, round 5. York got themselves 14-0 dickheaded by Wigan but showed impressive resolve to only finish a cheeky field goal short. Sign Junior Nsemba now. Toulouse Olympique were horribly outclassed by St Helens, although managed a few late tries to make it respectable. Lewis Murphy sent Ashall-Bott to the shadow realm, Soward-style. Early victim of the Roosters’ zero tolerance drugs policy, Jayden Nikorima scored two tries for Bradford, who made dispatching Huddersfield look a lot harder than it needed to be. How quickly is the air going to come out of the Willie Peters bubble if Rovers, you know, keep losing? While Hull KR did only give up at the end, with a Sol Faataape assist for Les Dracs’ victory, but a loss is yet another loss. 72-6: Cas are in trouble.
Kiwi state cup
If it is not already clear to you, the media apparatus is a voracious monster that demands constant feeding. Novel takes - the novelty is far more important than the quality - are required, every single day, to fill the weekdays of people who are utterly bored by their jobs (hello!) until they can watch the actual games on the weekends and also, separately, otherwise enjoy their lives.
To that end, this newsletter is like a parasite. I prefer to think of us as one of those birds that cleans the crocodile’s teeth, more symbiotic than parasitic, or a kind of bivalve, filtering the ocean, but if I’m honest, male anglerfish or remora or tape worm would also be appropriate metaphors. I take the takes, repackage them with jokes or (much more rarely) praise, and then post it to your inbox for you to laugh/deeply consider.
Thus we have NZ State Cup:
Former NSW coach Brad Fittler believes a new NRL team based out of New Zealand would be monumental, but the nation would benefit more from a new competition to sit under the Warriors.
“I think what we need to do is get a competition over there,” Fittler said.
“Establish a competition, so we have more players – playing at a higher standard.”
In principle, I agree with Fittler. He reasons that:
Fittler says the talent stemming from New Zealand is at an all-time high.
“Add onto that all of the players from over here that will want to go over and play,” Fittler said at a Harley Davidson launch on Wednesday.
“It’s obvious, just their genetics, they’re just built for rugby league.
Sorry, Harley Davidson launch? Feels like the lede was buried there.
Fittler goes on to become increasingly phrenological and seems to have been restrained from breaking out the calipers to take skull measurements, however, I don’t think that undermines his essential point.
The problem is, that in the pursuit of having something interesting to say to feed the media void, we have no real idea of how realistic this proposition is, or how well it would fit in to the existing New Zealand rugby league landscape. Is this a good idea worth speaking into existence in the first place?
Providing more semi-professional rugby jobs close to home seems ideal for attracting players from New Zealand’s rugby union system, a process that is going to have to become increasingly common as rugby league’s rapidly expanding competitions need vaguely competent bodies to fill jerseys. This proposition should be an easier sell with the pending discovery of El Dorado: La Ciudad d’Or in the new broadcast deal, should the NRL choose to invest, and the week-to-week, year-long competition having its advantages over the completely stuffed Super Rugby format.
That in itself becomes a problem for a nascent NZ state cup-equivalent. NSW Cup is always going to be the stronger competition because that’s where the overwhelming majority of NRL clubs invest their resources and that is not going to change without a significant cultural revolution - some kind of Little Red Book and numerous struggle sessions would probably be required - in the boardrooms of NSW clubs. Clubs like the Warriors, and now the Storm, who might otherwise have had some flexibility about where to put their second tier talent, will prefer to participate in the NSWRL competition because Proverbs 27:17 and all that. That leaves the question of what the realistic pathway is out of NZ state cup to the NRL?
Presumbaly a second NZ team would aid a solution, by having a visible goal for up-and-comers and creating an opportunity to restructure the sport in Aotearoa, but Warriors’ questionable participation aside, this would also exacerbate the labour issues by creating even more jobs to be filled. More bodies drawing a paycheck but not working at a high enough level to be useful, commercially speaking at least.
Perhaps the best case scenario is that the NRL becomes so bloated that there are no more diamonds in the rough in the next tier down because they’re already in the NRL. In that situation, the three state cups may converge to a similar level of talent. But then, that may not prepare players for the rigors of NRL which would have to be supplemented with gap years in Europe, and you’ve just shifted the burden of player production to district A-grade or created further impetus for national reserve grade.
I doubt Fittler had any of that in mind when he opened his mouth but those are the things we like to consider here at The Maroon Observer, while we cleanse the seas of phytoplankton:
“Hmm, if we add the NRL teams to QCup, that makes 18. You could throw in Helensvale and Wide Bay to round up to an even 20 and then split into a two-tier ten comp with pro-rel. Would that work? There wouldn’t be significant commercial difference between the tiers and it would be very funny when the Twotans get demoted but might sharpen up the top end… hmmm. Also would a residents all-stars game be better for grand final day than the reserve grade super bowl? Some of the prelim finals losers might be more motivated than the premiers…”
Intermission
Normally, we would try to feature Queensland Cup highlights in this section but there are so many QCup graduates running around Super League these days, it’s practically the same thing. Former Wynnum Seagull and be-mulletted redhead, Caius Fatili, puts up the bomb, which does not have any depth on it, to be collected by former Falcon and Broncos legend, Tyson Smoothy, who puts in a real kick that is collected and grounded by some English kid, en route to Wakefield’s 18-14 victory over Leigh.
Caius Fatili kicking: the essence of #BigManSZN. Is it time to bring it back?
Sunshine Statewide
Following a successful inaugural season in 2025, the NRLQ Series returns with an expanded format, providing even greater development opportunities for Queensland’s emerging stars.
Launched through a partnership between the NRL and the Queensland Rugby League, the competition brings together Under 21s squads from the Dolphins, Broncos, Titans and Cowboys in a home-and-away, round-robin tournament.
Designed to bridge the gap following the QRL’s junior representative season including the Mal Meninga Cup (Under 19s) the NRLQ ensures young players continue their progression in a high-performance environment aligned with NRL systems.
The season will now be 12 rounds long with a final to be played at the end. That means some of these teams will end up playing each other five times. Given the flexibility of rosters used last season, the teams at the start of the campaign and those at the end are likely to be quite different, so we will see if the repetitiveness matters but I suspect it will make for a confusing experience from the sidelines.
I had expected last year’s NRLQ competition to be a bridge between statewide competitions and a returned national youth adventure in 2026. Given that sanity seems to have prevailed on that front, I will pay greater attention to this year’s edition and rotate it into the Monday night split screen review.
NRLQ kicks off on April 2.
At the risk of making this an exclusively PVL vs The Law newsletter
Last week’s not so brief history of V’landys’ legal issues was meant to only cover lawsuits that have happened in his time as ARLC chairman. It turns out one is still very much an ongoing case (h/t jonnyforeigner):
The Australian Turf Club has claimed Racing NSW owes it nearly $10 million in withheld payments as the high-stakes court battle between the two took a fresh twist on Friday.
The Sydney racing club spent months fighting a move by Racing NSW to sideline its board, enjoying victory last week when a judge ruled the regulator's appointment of an administrator was invalid…
According to court documents, Racing NSW agreed in 2023 to a monthly rather than a quarterly payment schedule to assist with its cash flow, and to top up TAB distributions to the club to $80.4 million each year. The top-ups totalled $12.2 million in the 2025 financial year.
But in an email sent to then ATC chief executive Matt Galanos on July 31 last year, Racing NSW chief executive Peter V'landys said the monthly frequency of distributions and the top-ups were both discretionary and "a gesture of goodwill".
The monthly payments continued to be made late last year but they ceased after the ATC took Racing NSW to the NSW Supreme Court in December, challenging the regulator's intervention in its affairs.
Pretty sure PVL’s various legal teams have tried this exact gambit before and failed but why not give it another shot? Seems likely there will be agreements that, if not written down, are demonstrable by a pattern of behaviour, that the TAB money Racing NSW collects has to be distributed to racing clubs in New South Wales. Let’s see if it pays off, Cotton.
But V’landys has an even more extensive history in the courts in his capacity of czar of NSW horse racing, as brought to my attention by Rooner Ryan. It is beyond my amateur legal skills to summarise effectively but the cases stretch across the unfairness of the termination of an employee, disputed costs associated with a workers compensation claim for a severely injured jockey, arguing that Racing NSW purchasing two properties for the care of ex-racehorses is so benevolent that they shouldn’t have to pay stamp duty and making grabs for broadcast rights of racing in NSW that Racing NSW does not have the right to sell.
These all went about as you’d expect. Perhaps the most simple summary of the V’Landian approach to the law is from Oberg vs Racing NSW (2021):
At the conclusion of the hearing in this matter, which was fought with regrettable ferocity, the only substantive issue in dispute was the applicant’s entitlement to weekly compensation in respect of a short closed period between 17 December 2020 and 26 December 2020.
Racing NSW lost but the case, “fought with regrettable ferocity,” was over the princely sum of about $500. Think about all of the time wasted by lawyers, by the Personal Injury Commission, the employees of Racing NSW and you’d get a much greater cost than $500. Irrespective of the merits of the case, reasonable executives with multi-million dollar turnovers and public reputations know when to cut their losses.
Racing NSW were also criticised in that determination for not providing documentation. This was not the only example in which there is negative commentary about the organisation that V’landys has run for 20 years. NSW Supreme Court Justice Bergin noted in 2005 in Racing New South Wales v Sydney Turf Club & Ors [2005] (my emphasis added):
The legal principles to be considered for the justification of the appointment of an administrator were not part of the discussion evidenced in the notes at which this strategy was proposed. Neither could they be. This was not a principled approached but rather strong arm tactics to forcecontracts upon clubs operating pursuant to statutory and contractual obligations. A fair minded bystander would be left with no doubt that this was a further step along the way for the plaintiff to implement the resolution it had passed on 25 January 2005 irrespective of the views of the clubs…
What is troubling is that in exercising its powers the plaintiff seemed to forget that it had to be fair to interested parties whose rights may be adversely affected by its conduct and decisions. The correspondence between the Chairman and the Chief Executive in particular demonstrate business strategies with the use of military epithets to describe the planned outcome suggesting that the war could be won. The Chairman expressed possessory interest in the “network”, claiming that he had two gorillas trying to damage “his network”.
Sounds familiar. As is this from Beith v Racing NSW [2007] NSWIRComm 82:
According to the applicant, from March to May 2004, Mr V’Landys introduced various changes in relation to reporting lines and roles generally. These included:
(a) General Managers were advised not to attend Board meetings.
(b) Authorisation procedures changed so that Mr V’Landys approved every payment.
(c) Mr V’Landys was to attend individual budget meetings.
(d) All managers reporting to the applicant were to report to Mr V’Landys on an ad hoc basis.
(e) Budgets were controlled by Mr V’Landys…
(g) Officers of the Respondent were to undertake tasks which were historically the applicant’s tasks to undertake such as obtaining quotes for renovation of the foyer and enlarging Mr V’Landys’ office.
(h) Mr V’Landys was to approve all expense and travel requests. This had been previously done by the applicant for Managers.
(i) A new Annual Leave approval process was introduced whereby all leave was to be approved by Mr V’Landys. Previously this role was undertaken by Managers.
Back in 2019, I already had the shits with coverage of the sport and V’landys’ rise to power. I remember begging someone, anyone, to publish a profile of this sweaty, stingy, clueless guy that wasn’t “this man is a Greek god”. The profiles, the dirt, the criticism all existed, but it was all couched in the world of horse racing. If you didn’t know about it, or didn’t want to know about it, then it was as if this pattern of behaviour was not previously established. Shame on me for not doing a better job of Googling, I guess.
The playbook employed by V’landys at Racing NSW is not that dissimilar to what he’s deployed for the NRL. A commercial focus on what we might call the elite end of the sport has generated plenty of money, which in turn secures his position with most stakeholders. The rest, including the media, are trivially easy to buy out with a couple of free lunches that serves as carrot. If not, the threat of legal action, despite a frankly abysmal track record, will be the stick.
The non-elite part of the sport is neglected, which has a detrimental impact that creates a story more complex than “it’s the race with the biggest prize money” or “the NRL is the biggest sport in the Pacific”, so the media is unable or unwilling to connect a to b, let alone to c, to let you know that attendance at NSW races and horse stock is declining1 or that Queensland’s legacy clubs are under threat from a vertically integrated model. Rather than a god-like vision of administrative competence, V’landys has found the exact gap in the sports-media complex to crawl through to keep himself cocooned at the centre of public life.
Upcoming slate
Broncos vs Dolphins, NRLM, Friday 7pm, Suncorp
The defending premiers pulling themselves out of an early season funk with a great win over the Storm, and the visitors comprehensively dissecting the Sharks, gives this game a level of stakes we might not have assumed it would have a week or two ago. It’s no 2023, when both teams were 3-0, but it’ll do. The main question of the game is whether the Broncos can score more points than the Dolphins have fans in attendance. Haas is out, Molo and Flegler return and Gilbert might be getting back to his old self, so feels like a good opportunity for Redcliffe’s pack to stamp their authority on the Broncos’ awful, awful bench.
Wynnum vs Cutters, QCup, Sunday 3pm, Kougari
The Seagulls may not prove to be much this year. Between too many Broncos affiliated players that don’t look like actually breaking through to the NRL and an unwholesome back row of Bayley Sironen, Brendan Frei and Jaiydn Hunt, the roster lacks a certain pizzazz that Ryley Jacks is unlikely to bring. Nonetheless, Wynnum will be sufficient yardstick to see what this Cutters team can do. Let’s see if Barber, Ngutlik and Burns can produce something while trying to go around the Seagulls’ right side. It’ll be better than watching Blackhawks-Tweed.
Junior competitions
Once again, I have neglected the junior statewide representative competitions. There are only so many hours in the day but the semi-finals for U17 and U19 women’s, and the U17 men’s competitions (Cyril Connell) are this weekend. The Blackhawks are in three semi-finals, matched up against the Magpies in both women’s competitions, and Wynnum in the Cyril Connell. The other side of the bracket has Wynnum vs Easts in WU19, Bears vs Clydesdales in WU17 and Devils vs Falcons in Cyril Connell.
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Maroon Observer QCup Tipping Pervertship
Rory still leads the competition but consistency is key. Four out of seven each week is apparently pretty good because tipping is a harsh mistress. Every single person tipped the Devils, which I find funny for some reason.
To that end, I'm just going to offer everyone a suggestion: don't tip the Clydesdales. When I write “I'm getting all these jabs in now so I don't have to watch the Clydesdales anymore,” like I did last week, that means they're shit.
Here's another tip: don't tip against the Hunters at home. It's FORT Moresby for a reason. The Hunters have one of the best home ground advantages in rugby league.
Stats pop
In honour of the Broncos’ victory over the Storm, I am working on the next Stats Drop, which is going to be about 14-0 dickheading. While I have a lot of data about scoring events, it turns out a lot of it wasn’t much good. From just over 2,000 games played between 2016 and 2026, about 250 to 300 didn’t have the right scoring events to add up to the scores.
Some of this was my fault but a lot of the blame resides with NRL dot com, who seem to have belatedly addressed some issues with how their data was presented on the website. I spent my weekend cleaning this up, so the NRL events data in The Dataset™ is now much more accurate and complete. Rooners can access this via The Almanac.
Player ratings and advanced stats are going to need a half dozen rounds before we have a decent enough sample size to set a replacement level and start calculating Taylors properly. I do have a live regression going for this season, which I have not had previously, so we’ll see how that goes.
Nickelware
Read this
Teko - The NRL’s Record Year: What They’re Telling You, and What the Numbers Actually Say. Interesting analysis of the annual report.
Rugby League Eye Test - The NRL’s setrestartmaxxing era and the value of consecutive play the balls
What You See Is What You Get - How to watch the set restarts in NRL Round 3
Rugby League Writers - Bulldogs Deception, Panthers The Benchmark & Tristan Sailor Highlights
Storm Machine - Game 744 – S29E03 Review
One Percenters - Has the AFL broken footy? Yes, yes, yes, AFL, yes, but nonetheless, there are common themes.
Notes
Ben Te’o quits as Broncos assistant. I’m sure people will be very normal about this thing that happens every couple of years in pretty much this exact fashion.
This week in PNG: “Owner of the Lae Snax Tigers rugby league franchise Ian Chow has threatened to withdraw the six-time premiers from the Digicel ExxonMobil Cup if the PNG Government does not explain the alleged transfer of land titles for the softball ground at Bisini, Port Moresby, to the Australian Rugby League (ARL).“
PNG Prime Minister witness to Hunters victory over Clydesdales
England: Five clubs show opposition to Wood
Dolphins members have to enter in to a ballot to get seats for round 5 against spoon-presumptives Manly. A ballot, like it’s the tickets for the 100m final at the Olympics. Other random thought of the weekend was whether it would be possible to add another grandstand to Dolphins Oval, bring capacity up to 5k and move more Dolphins home games, especially against NSW clubs and the Titans, to Redcliffe. Probably on the northern end?
Far North Queensland residents re-open businesses after ex-Tropical Cyclone Narelle. Given all the pants pissing we did in SEQ over ex-TC Alfred last year, including in this very newsletter, it is good to see the FNQ take a much more severe battering and bounce back even faster.
Which NRL team performs best in the wet? It’s very funny to me that this perfectly optimised SEO post still gets lots of hits despite being 7 years old and concluding “it’s probably just random”. The Phil Birnbaum post is definitely worth a read though.
Superficial amateur political analysis (light): South Australia elects some ONP in Labor landslide, allowing Bernardi to liken immigrants to cattle. I like this framework from 2016 - The three-party system - because it accords with the current destruction of the UK Tories and LNP. All the ghouls of the 2010s - Bernardi, Joyce, Christensen, etc - have all turned to ONP, following the voters turning their back on the Libs. Fun fact: after resigning from Parliament, Christensen then ran on a Mackay local government ticket with FOG Steve Jackson, before resigning last year. The Left is stuck at 12%.
Not something I personally have an issue with but seems bad if your job is CEO of the horse racing regulator.