A record year for the NRL, both on and off the field

 
Steve Kaless Roar Guru

By , 9 Oct 2009 Steve Kaless is a Roar Guru

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Anthony Minichiello makes a break for the Roosters: NRL Round 26, Roosters v Cowboys, Sydney Football Stadium, Sunday 6th September 2009.

Anthony Minichiello makes a break for the Roosters: NRL Round 26, Roosters v Cowboys, Sydney Football Stadium, Sunday 6th September 2009.

As the 2008 NRL season was drawing to a close, England coach Tony Smith labelled the NRL ‘boring’ due to the wrestling tactics and grapple tackles used by teams. Regardless of the grapple, 2009 proved to be far from boring.

Bipolar might be the best way to describe a season that reached great heights as quickly as it found new lows.

Maybe a horror film with a fairy tale finish might be another way to view a season in which players’ bad behaviour was splashed all over the pages but crowds ticked through the turnstiles and watched on the box in record numbers.

Nothing would test the capacity of cyberspace like the retelling of all of league’s off field incidents, so I’ll gather if you are reading this, you may have a handle on them yourself.

But quickly …

Manly pair Brett Stewart and Anthony Watmough got the tutt tutting and shouts of “Shame” off to a flying start with their actions at Manly’s season launch.

Who would think at that point that things would go so badly off the field that by the time we got to Nate Myles’ infamous incident in the hotel corridor, it would largely be met with laughter at the sheer absurdity of the whole thing.

Myles claimed that he was an unfortunate victim of taking a wrong turn in a hotel room, sleeping naked and a tricky bowel. All of which is like pointing to the 3am hot dog after a stonking night on the turps for your troubles the next day.

At least Myles wasn’t alone in his contribution to charity at the Roosters.

If in years to come anyone happens to look back at the donations the Roosters made to charity this year through their fines, the club may be compared to Mother Theresa, such was the frequency of their alms.

When you have a coach fining himself at a club, and repeat offenders like Jake Friend having their contract extended rather than shredded, it makes you wonder what the hell is going on.

Even after the season, the Roosters are at it again with Sisa Waqa (see what happens when you recruit these troublemakers from rugby!)

But perhaps the best way to put it in perspective is to say that the Roosters had such a bad season they even managed to prevent the Sharks from coming last.

The Sharks went to hell and back, then remembered they’d forgotten something and decided to head back down again.

But memorably, the Sydney Morning Herald decided it would tell the world at large how to fix the Sharks problems with a panel of experts including PR guru Max Markson.

His advice was to change a lot but “Keep Tony Zappia at CEO, he is a good operator.”

Zappia and his shadow boxing promptly gave us the next dozen headlines and also perhaps showed why journalist’s poor pay is often justified.

Yes, off the field it was all about the game getting “another black eye”, which was a phrase that seems to have permanently entered the rugby league writer’s lexicon.

Thankfully, when Karmichael Hunt left for AFL, it was a “body blow”. I was then kept awake for three nights trying to figure out which was more serious.

But despite it all going wrong off the field, it was largely going right on it.

The grapple was effectively tackled (if you’ll pardon the pun, it’s been a long season) and the two referees system looks to be a winner.

The crowd figures proved the game’s knockers and the armchair economists wrong by posting the second ever highest average (16,051) as well as records for aggregate attendances during the regular season and finals.

TV ratings also remained strong, with a record for Origin viewers created from the opening game in Melbourne.

On the field, St George and Canterbury both had memorable seasons in the first 26 rounds before coming unstuck in the finals.

The top eight was then largely comprised of the usual suspects.

Brisbane would have been satisfied with Ivan Henjak’s debut, while the Knights overachieved before imploding as Brian Smith shuffled off to Bondi.

The big disappointments were the Warriors (Stacey Jones’ comeback a damp squib) and the Sharks, both of whom were semifinalists in ’08 and barely competitive in ’09.

The minor premiers became the first team eliminated with two loses since McIntyre began, a big shock given their form during the season, not a big shock that the side in question wore the Red V – surely modern day rugby league’s equivalent of the hangman’s noose.

But while the season seemed to show that the salary cap was creating an even competition, the Melbourne Storm still ran out on Grand Final day. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact I’ve never once read a Storm player saying he’s achieved everything in the game.

Melbourne seems exempt from the Grand Final hangover. Their winning culture has to be admired.

So rugby league goes into an off season with a Four Nations, European Nations Cup and Pacific Nations Cup all looking to build on the foundations created from the World Cup.

With talk of an independent body looking to take control of the game before the 2010, fans of the game will be hoping the code has lots more of the good stuff that was on display in 2009.

And much less of the bad.

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