NRL pre-season finally brings back the biff

With the pre-season underway, NRL supporters and Clive Palmer can sit back and enjoy what we’ve all waited months to see – exhausted sweaty athletes fumbling easy catches, missing tackles, getting annoyed with each other, and inevitably going the biff.

You see, pre-season matches are always a trial, in every sense. As a fan they’re the equivalent of stopping by a far-flung roadhouse at 11 o’clock at night for whatever deep-fried monstrosity is fermenting in the bain-marie.

The only reason you do this is because you’re so hungry that you’ve starting to shoot wishful glances at passing roadkill. You know you’re likely to feel regretful later on, but hey, it fills a gap.

Thankfully, then, among the general drudgery of two teams impersonating the South Tweed Koala under-8s, there are some fantastic fisticuffs to be enjoyed.

Sure, the whiny nerds on morning TV might bemoan it, but fighting and trial matches go together like Sterling and Kenny, always have done, and can you really blame the players?

They’ve been busting their hump all off season doing ridiculous activities like running up sand hills and flipping tractor tyres, only to be herded onto a bus for a four-hour trip out to some dumpy ground out in the sticks.

The dressing sheds are as big as Lang Park’s broom cupboard, the demanding locals look like something from The Hills have Eyes, and worst of all it’s always hotter, steamier, and generally more uncomfortable than a sauna with the 1978 Western Suburbs forward pack.

That is unless of course you’ve won the NRL grand final the year before, in which case you’re rewarded with a 42-hour flight to wintry England where it is instead cold, drizzling and uncomfortable.

This drop in temperature doesn’t result in any less biff however, and the World Club Challenge is a goldmine for niggle enthusiasts. Sure you can moan that the game is played at the wrong time of year, needs a revamp and does everything bar appoint the Duke of Edinburgh to favour the Super League side, but you could never accuse it of lacking niggle.

Take a side still nursing hangovers from the grand final, then stick them in front of chanting lunatics and a battle-hardened team who have been told since they were 10 years old by anyone with an Aussie accent that they’re ‘roobish’, and you’ll get some fireworks.

Phil Gould lost one with Penrith twenty years ago, and he still can’t order an English McMuffin without letting go a few four-letter words.

It was with interest then that I spied that the Brisbane Broncos and Melbourne Storm had moved a trial match to Hobart. While perhaps not a move entirely out of left field, given the Storm’s first ever trial match was played in Tasmania, the trip to the pleasant summer climes of the Island state appeared a masterstroke.

Not much is doing on the pro sports scene now that the Big Bash has wound up, the state doesn’t have an NRL side so there are potential fans to win over, and to top it off rugby league is actually played during summer in Tasmania, with the local grand final preceding the trial.

By all reports there was a decent crowd of 11,752 who rolled up to watch an exciting, high scoring affair.

This is all well and good for the boys on the new commission, but by all reports the game contained absolutely zero biff or cheap shots. Nothing (despite Petero’s best efforts). This is extremely disappointing behaviour from two clubs whose fondness for each other is straight out of Spy versus Spy.

If the TRL ever wants to rally the cause for its own Tassie team, then it’s going to have to take pre-emptive measures in future to ensure some of the good stuff.

I would suggest making sure the floor of the dressing sheds has been thoroughly flooded prior to use, coating the game balls in some sort of industrial lubricant, and finally handing out a few thousand special edition vuvuzelas pre-match.

These measures will ensure a rock ‘em, sock ‘em trial the locals will be talking about for years to come.

Now that the punch is done, bring on season 2012.