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It has become increasingly clear that some NRL clubs are not taking the Auckland Nines tournament seriously. The Melbourne Storm and Penrith Panthers squads are especially laughably thin.
The Canterbury Bulldogs halves are staying home, the Canberra Raiders aren’t sending a single frontline forward and Wests Tigers have maybe four players who will line up in Round 1.
Meanwhile, a whole swathe of NRL stars including Greg Inglis, Johnathan Thurston, Brett Stewart, Brett Morris, Ben Barba, Robbie Farah and Michael Jennings are all giving it a miss.
In fact most teams seem to have taken the approach of sending the bare minimum of top tier players along with some fringe first graders, some recent Under-20s graduates and some relics of a bygone era.
To be fair some teams are sending top tier talent. Recent recruit Anthony Milford should make the Brisbane Broncos entertaining to watch and Test and State of Origin players like Shaun Johnson, Daly Cherry-Evans and Josh Dugan are slated to turn out for their respective clubs.
But frankly why would teams risk those elite talents? The St George Dragons in particular seem to be playing with fire in picking a player who is not only indispensable to their club but also has an injury history as long as his inked up arms.
Sure there is a cash bounty on offer for the winning team but that doesn’t come close to offsetting the interruption to training regimes and the significant injury risk that comes with playing a fast-paced, pseudo-competitive tournament two thirds of the way through preseason.
Players such as Curtis Sironen, Luke Keary and Lachlan Coote – none of whom have been selected to play in the tournament this season interestingly – all had their 2014 seasons interrupted, or in Coote’s case ended, by injuries sustained during the Nines. Indeed Coote not only lost a season but his absence allowed Michael Morgan to flourish in the fullback position which had been earmarked for Coote.
The oft-used counter argument is that injuries can happen at any time – in any match or any training session. This is certainly true. But why add more opportunities for injuries to occur? All the evidence suggests that at least some clubs are reluctant to risk key NRL contributors in Auckland.
The official Auckland Nines website bills the event as ‘The Greatest Weekend’, but regardless of whether one feels that the tournament is a great showcase of attacking rugby league or a pointless hit and giggle with colossal injury risks, the reality is that the tournament will very quickly lose credibility if top tier players continue to shun it.
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