Could not agree more with this, I have heard enough of the smug brothers and their sense of entitlement. They are not a hard luck story that anybody should have any sympathy for, these two are the embodiment of what is wrong with some league players. They have everything a lot of us dream of and yet they seem to feel we should all apologize to them for what they have done.

I think the media needs to take their fair share of responsibility for the lack of crowds at this years finals and articles such as this are part of the reason. The main reason it appears Ryan hates all of these teams is that they are not in Sydney. The Storm are bashed for everything we ever do. Yes we cheated, yes we grappled (how many years ago was this now), we have been punished for both now its time to move on. The Broncos are from north of the border so must be hated as the foreign devils that they are. The Warriors are from overseas so are treated the same despite being one of the best teams to watch when they are in form. Now it appears Manly are also foreigners because they are from the other side of town.

The media has been bashing all of these teams all season talking them down as destroying the game in varying ways. The problem is that now the Benji Tigers are out the only teams left are the teams the media has bashed all year trying to drum up support for the local boys. Is it any surprise the neutrals don’t want to watch games involving the evil empires that remain.

The sooner the media realizes this game is bigger than Sydney the better. The disappointment in the voices of the commentators on Nine when the Warriors won was noticeable, and it should not be. We should be celebrating the fact that the four remaining teams in the comp are representing the four biggest markets in our competition, instead we are focussing on Sydney and why Sydney hates a Sydney team and why Sydney should not support their fellow Sydneysiders.

Unfortunately it is the “pretty” players that will always be winning the Dally M while the media are the ones voting on the award. The only real surprise this year I think is that Jarryd Hayne was not in contention.

I don’t think the ref should be voting like in the other code that shall not be mentioned on a league page. They should be concentrating on doing their job, they struggle enough with that now. Maybe the touchies or video ref could vote, they don’t really watch the game at the moment so maybe this would get them interested.

Exactly my thoughts, no Bulls, no me. Heat, pffft, pathetic.

Never any doubt we would be loyal. Inglis holds onto the ball off the kick in the last two minutes of game II and the match would have been decided by a foot race. The way the Sydney media is beating this up we got thrashed by 30? We were outplayed but still just one dropped ball away from victory.

Harrison did have a quiet game II, fell just shy of 50 tackles, he didnt do anything pretty but he did his job. Parker looked good despite copping a cheap shot from the menace on his first hit up (looked like a square up for the game 1 fisticuffs?). I would love to see Dallas there but nobody deserved to be dropped for him.

Was at the Mason redneck game but last years Game 2 has surpassed any previous origin I have attended. It didn’t matter that it was one-sided, 51 of the 52k in the crowd just wanted to see the Blues steamrolled. Even in the 78th minute the atmosphere was brilliant as nobody wanted them to score (was a bit of a let down when they did).

“State Of Origin has lost its lustre”, you lost me there. State of Origin is as big as it has ever been, despite Qld dominating for the last 5 years (no complaints here) the majority of matches have still been close and only last year did we finally get a clean sweep. I don’t mind the idea of an origin for the NZ players but to tinker with Qld v NSW should be considered sacrilege.

One thing I have noticed is that all these crazy schemes to “fix” origin seem to be coming from south of the border. There is nothing wrong with it, Qld are dominating now and in 5-10 years it will be the other way around again (remember the early noughties you blue fans).

So disappointed with FIFA today. The World Cup is an event that the host country should earn, not buy.

If the USA had won I could understand but the only logical conclusion of how Qatar won is money.

There is only one place blame can be attibuted for this situation and it is the NRL. Storm have worked for months to clear the players they needed to get under the cap. When this was done they had some room available so they recruited some fringe first graders to fill their squad all because GI was off to the Broncos and they didn’t have to pay for him. Now despite working with the NRLs assistance to get back under the cap they are told that things have changed and the legal costs have to be included under the cap.

They are just making this up on the run. Fair enough it should be included in the cap but they have known about this bill for months and the NRL have been monitoring everything the Storm have been doing in relation to the cap since the rorting was found. Why didn’t the NRL tell them before they signed new players that this would need to be included?

GI didn’t want to pay cause he didn’t hire the QC which is fair enough and the Storm cannot pay because it puts them back over the cap and obviously they don’t want to be there again. The NRL has screwed this one up badly and is risking losing one of the top players in our game because they are still making decisions on the run.

Go the Dragons, but only because I hate the Roosters so very, very much. Winning is never boring, if your doing the winning. To bad there couldn’t be a non-Sydney team for all us “outsiders” to cheer on.

As for any suggestion that the Storm missing from the premiership detracts from the title, that is a joke. The Storm have no right to be competing for it and their cheating should not lessen the efforts of whoever wins on Sunday night.

In the past their jobs involved calling the plays (obviously) and to also offer insight on the players, tactics and the game in general. In the last couple of years though the commentators seem to be trying to find a good sound bite at every possible opportunity. The “great” Gus Gould is the worst for it. He will watch a video replay, see it is going to be called no try and he pounces on his opportunity to shine. “Surely they won’t rule this out”, then the inevitable red light whirls on screen. “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO”. I am watching the game to watch the game, not to hear him spout his little catch phrases.

I don’t understand the players associations stance on this issue. What is the player going to say to defend himself, particularly in Baird’s case? If there was an avenue to appeal it would probably go something like this:
– Perez and Baird both deny they took a dive
– The review panel looks at the replays again
– Players claim inner ear infections affected their balance
– Panel refuses appeals and the suspensions are upheld
Why waste everyones time and money with an appeal process when it is not required and the evidence is for all to see. To bad if you have two home games coming up, that is the luck of the draw. The clubs knew the rule was there and they knew the consequences. Good on the FFA for taking a stand on this, I hope it continues and is used for divers all over the park, not just in the box or when it affects the outcome of a game.

I have often wondered why the NRL has not approached EA to make a console game. I remember they did this in the 90s and it was brilliant. EA already make a Rugby game so most of the basic graphics, physics and animations are already there. It would just need stadiums and players to be edited and some basic rule tweakings and AI settings to be changed and you have got yourself a game. Surely this would be an even cheaper option to get it made.

This argument is even more relevant when you consider that Channel Nine also has the option of broadcasting the match on GO. The old, “it won’t get ratings” nonsense is out the window when you consider they will probably have a re-run of The Nanny on at the same time. It is the same for Friday and Sunday games into the other states. Obviously they won’t be setting any ratings records but surely more people would want to watch a game then The Flinstones or I Love Lucy.

You would think Channel Nine would want to promote their own products but they continue to just push it under the rug. I know Channel Ten don’t have much else to crow about but they constantly promote the AFL, simply because they know the more people interested in the game, the more will watch it on their network.

The Roar are looking great this year and it is good to see that Ange has been vindicated for sticking to his guns. It seems clearing out the old legs has really freshened up the team and allowed them to actually turn that usual attacking dominance into some results. It is only very early days but the signs are definitely looking good.

Can’t wait to get out to some games but with the local season still going for a few more weeks, we keep having games at the same time as the Roar 🙁

Good luck to you GI, would love to have seen him stay but if any of the big four had to go, he would be my choice. On his day he is devastating but he doesn’t touch the ball as often out in the centres as the other three do week in week out. He will fit in well with the Broncos though and they will be hard to beat next year.

For the Storm, hopefully we can finally start getting ready for next year when we will come back and win our second legitimate premiership. This will inevitably be followed with howls of “they weren’t punished” and “they are still cheating”, but it will be hard to find a more motivated team next season than the Storm. Also, with Bellamy free from origin and his record now questioned, he will also has a big point to prove. Bring on next season, the quicker this year is forgotten the better.

I think that that the leagues would be OK if this ever was raised. The clubs are all entering a competition run by their respective leagues. I know the NRL and AL (not sure how AFL works, I think its the same) offer a certain number of licences to interested clubs to take part in their competitions. A-League is a particularly good example for this with the spot the Heart and Rovers have been given. There were two or three different consortia in each city bidding for the licence.

The different clubs all apply for the licenses within those competitions knowing fully that as part of participation in the league they will abide by the leagues rules, this includes the salary cap.

The only way I can see for a team to successfully challenge a salary cap would be to form a break away comp that runs without a cap. This won’t happen though because there aren’t enough stable clubs in any of our highest leagues to prop up an entire competition of rebel franchises (look at how long Super League lasted).

It’s good to see Gallop’s decisions have been vindicated. He has copped a lot of crap for this whole situation and it wasn’t any of his doing. He seems to be like the referee in this whole fiasco. He has seen the storm are about 12 metres offside and he is getting abused by everyone in the stadium for having the hide to penalise them.

Good to see the directors that had a part out the door. GI and Cam have some questions to answer about those second agreements they signed but other than that it is good to see the players weren’t in on it. The players agents also have some questions to answer. The reason the players didn’t speak to the auditors was on the advise of those managers, could this be because the managers know something they shouldn’t?

Somebody needs to audit News though. You cannot tell me that if part of highly successful business is losing 6 million a year you just let it happen without keeping an eye on what they are spending. Convenient too that they have only released an edited version to the public that completely absolves them of any wrong doing. I still smell rats in the club and until all of them are cleaned out (board, news, players) the club can’t move forward.

At least now though they can start the clean out and build for next year where the Storm will be back. Maybe not as good as before but they will be a force to be reckoned with again. GO THE STORM

Most of the issues you mention should really be the responsibility of the coaching staff to coach out any bad RL habits that won’t translate well when used in RU. I assume these players have been in the RU system for a couple of years now and you would think they should know by now what can be beneficial in one game and not the other.

The US have to be favourites for 22. Nth America is due for a cup and the time zone, though still not great for European audiences, is friendlier than ours. Qatar will only get the cup if they bribe enough members, they do have the cash to do that though (I know that is a cynical view but lets face it, it happens). Russia/England will be a chance to if they miss out on 2018, Europeans would happily vote for another cup in their region. Our problem is their are so many bids from Asia that will split the votes. If we were the only ones we would have a powerful voting block behind us but with this vote spread so thinly I can see it going to the US, with the Europeans the next in line.

I would like to thank NSW for again giving the Queenslanders a reason to fire up. First game they bagged Locky and said he was to old, ever since he has been in brilliant form. Then we couldn’t play without Smithy, so Ballin stepped in and we carved up.

Now with a game under the belt and the potential for the side to be a bit underdone coming into a game they don’t need to win, the Blues give us a great reason to fire up. First the rule change for Jaryd and now for Izzy, this is why we hate NSW. And the arguments the NSW are putting forward are just childish.

I personally think we should not have picked him but now we have, I hope he gets a hat-trick. C’mon you maroons, make it 5 in a row in game two and then a clean sweep in game three. I know oikee will be with me on that…

You have to give the Storm an F for their off field antics, that is fair enough but on the field they haven’t played to badly. I would at least give them a B- for not completely throwing in the towel. Considering how much we are over the cap though the team is underachieving and probably should have only lost one game so maybe a C.

It is about time the bidding team showed some common sense. Unfortunately, the fact we stayed in so long I think showed just how poorly run this bid has been. Anybody who knows football knows 2018 is going to Europe, that is just the way it is. It may not be a rule set in stone but it is always going to happen.

So excited today, it is so hard to concentrate on work with the big night ahead.

Brazil are looking strong, as always and I get a feeling they will be playing either the Argies or Italy in the final. The Italians have been very quiet and haven’t looked that strong, which is about the same as the last world cup so I am sensing a bit of an ambush from the Azzuri. Would like to see Spain win but they choked at the Confed Cup so I am wondering if the choking monkey really is off their back or not, winning Euro is big but it ain’t the World Cup.

For the Aussies, I am leaning towards us missing out but if we do sneak in I can see us having a good go at the old enemy and if we can take them to penalties we are through for sure.