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Here we go again. An outcry, a media frenzy. Immediate calls for the All Stars clash to be moved to another point in the season, possibly in grand final week. Why? Because Greg Inglis hurt his ankle.
If you made your living as a coach, I can understand it. It’s all downside.
Then, when you see hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of your talent lying on the sideline in pain, it’s natural to decry the game, it’s timing, it’s intensity.
But now that suggestions of a three month stint on the sidelines – fueled by a fake twitter account – have proven false, and everyone has calmed down. But let’s look at the facts.
It’s been three months since football. That’s a long time, and footy fans have been missing it. Holding the game in February ensures maximum exposure – it’s a black hole in the Aussie sporting calendar.
Check the back pages of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph today – a bit of cricket surrounded by NRL. The purpose of the All Stars game is the community work and exposure to race related issues that comes both in the week leading up to the game, and with the game itself. Holding it in grand final week would see that benefit lost under the sizable shadow of the decider.
Then there’s the question of holding a game of such intensity first up in the season. That a match including the stars of the game is too fast, too hard first up. Well, in this All Stars game there were more stoppages than peak hour – 11 tries, 32 errors and 24 scrums. And while there hasn’t been much contact work done, the players are fit, in the midst of a tough pre-season training schedule, and they are, after all, well paid athletes playing a contact sport. Injures will happen.
When a high profile (and injury prone) player like Inglis gets hurt, it’s a headine, but what you don’t hear about so much is the injuries that occur in other pre-season matches. For example, after the weekend’s games, Warriors prop Jacob Lillyman will be out for three months with a torn bicep, and highly rated Brisbane youngster Jordan Kahu will undergo a second knee reconstruction.
These things happen after a break, and first up games are always intense, All Stars or not.
The game is of huge benefit for the rugby league community, and is held a month before the season opener. That’s enough time for the more common of injuries (including, probably, this one) to be overcome.
Losing all the positives of the fixture to mollify coaches who fear injuries in a contact sport is selfish and narrow minded. Now that the contract with Skilled Stadium has run out, the real question is not when should the game be held, but where?
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