The off-season used to be a time of healing. Players would rest their battered and bruised bodies after a long season of inflicting punishment on themselves and their opponents.
Surgeons rubbed their hands together with glee as footballers lined their hallways, with an endless supply of knees to be cleaned out, shoulders to be tightened up and muscles to be reattached.
After six months without the weekly brutality of rugby league, players were fresh and ready to tackle a new season. However in 2016 it seems the injury bug has bitten early, as several teams gingerly limped out of Round 1.
The high-profile nature of the injured absentees gave the opening round of the NRL season an almost anticlimactic feeling. Parramatta fans will feel especially deflated after waiting almost 25 years for their Kiwi messiah, only to see him succumb to a dodgy hamstring before even lacing up a boot.
The list of unavailable talent spans all clubs and positions. In fact, you could probably field a highly competitive squad made up of those riding the pine for Round 1.
So what’s different this year? Why are our best and brightest spending more time with the team physio than with their wife and kids? The intensity of the pre-season program is a likely culprit. The summer schedule is bulging with the Auckland Nines and World Club Challenge sitting alongside the Indigenous All Stars clash and traditional trial fixtures. Even rugby league tragics would struggle to digest this much football before the cricketers have even folded away their coloured pyjamas.
Most agree that having all these fixtures during the preseason is too much, but the question of what stays and what goes is a sensitive one. The Indigenous All-Stars match has a degree of cultural importance which would make scrapping it challenging. The Auckland Nines is dripping with cash and TV ratings, which the NRL devours like hungry children home from fat camp. The World Club Challenge promotes international rugby league, something most involved with the game reluctantly deem as important for the future of the code.
Those at NRL HQ seem decision impaired at the best of times, with rumours from Moore Park that John Grant establishes sub-committees to finalise sandwich fillings. The likely outcome is for all fixtures to remain, players to suck it up, and fans to keep their fingers crossed.
Manly’s season gone to the Dogs?
Given the negative impact the Mitchell Pearce controversy had on women’s perceptions of rugby league, it was encouraging to see the Manly players take a proactive approach by having their wives and girlfriends play in their stead against the Bulldogs on Friday evening. At least it seemed that way.
After the Sea Eagles spent the off-season playing Super Coach with their NRL roster, Friday night at Brookvale Oval was billed as a new dawn of Manly football. Personally, I have predicted big things for the Sea Eagles in 2016, and was full of anticipation to catch a glimpse of the rugby league Frankenstein Trent Barret and Bozo had created over the summer.
Instead, viewers endured a torturous 80 minutes from a Manly squad who played like they were introduced to each other in the sheds before the game. From the outset, they lacked discipline and concentration, with cheap penalties and elementary handling errors gifting the Bulldogs possession with obscene regularity. The Sea Eagles committed nine penalties and accounted for 13 errors, meaning they handed possession or a new set of tackles to the Dogs every 3.6 minutes.
Many a Manly detractor has preached that you cannot simply stack a team with new talent and expect them to hit the ground running. And while there is no substitute for game time, Barrett had five months to get these blokes functioning as a cohesive unit. Yet the ill-discipline, constant dropped ball and repeated break-downs in defence are hallmarks of a team unprepared for Round 1.
In stark contrast, Canterbury were ready. Many worried how an enormous Bulldogs forward pack would handle the fatigue associated with a reduction in the interchange from 10 to 8. No problem. Des Hasler has got his forwards to trade quarter pounders for kale smoothies, and the boys shed kilos faster than a maternity ward. The svelte figure cut by Sam Kasiano was particularly noticeable. And while the Bulldogs were not sensational, they didn’t need to be. Manly served up the game on a silver spoon, and the Dogs hungrily devoured it.
New study reveals that adding attacking firepower fails to remedy holes in defence
The New Zealand Warriors have long been known as a potent attacking side held back by suspect defence and maddening ill-discipline. A belligerent Andrew McFadden chose to gloss over these defensive short-falls, instead signing home grown magician Roger Tuivasa-Sheck and creative dummy half Issac Luke to add to the attacking brilliance of Shaun Johnson.
It was Groundhog Day on a warm Saturday afternoon in Campbelltown, when the Warriors opened their season with a potent attacking display held back by predictably suspect defence and maddening ill-discipline. I thought I had accidentally tuned into a 2015 replay until Roger Tuivasa-Sheck streaked down the right side of the field to ensure his weekly inclusion on the highlight reel.
Round 1 against the Tigers was supposed to be a gimme for the Warriors. Minus their regular halfback and hooker, the Tiger cubs simply did not have the cattle to compete with their star-studded Kiwi cousins.
Instead fans were treated to a vintage New Zealand Warriors display. Cheap penalties and rookie defensive errors invited their opponent into the contest. Just when the game felt out of reach, a penny dropped somewhere and a stunning comeback was underway. An ankle-breaking Shaun Johnson sidestep, a bullocking barge-over from a centre with the dimensions of a small block of units, but ultimately falling agonisingly short of success.
For their part, the Tigers played with refreshing enterprise in attack. The stellar performance of the much maligned Mitchell Moses parted a sea of critics in arguably his finest in first grade. James Tedesco was outstanding. If he can replicate these performances with any degree of regularity, not even Laurie Daley could leave him out of the NSW side. Fans of the besieged joint venture will ooze arrogance upon returning to work on Monday. Steer well clear of them.
A nerdy German bloke once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. At some point, the Warriors must address their defensive deficiencies with more conviction than the token signature of Ryan Hoffman. If not, coach Andrew McFadden is destined for a stint in a padded cell.
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pixelchaos
Guest
The VIDEO QUALITY of the NRL match highlights on the NRLdotCOM website is a JOKE. Kind of makes the NRL the laughing stock of professional sport. Is that how the NRL is trying to gain more fans? One can hardly tell the players apart. That's how internet video quality was about 15 years ago. Who runs that joint? Dinosaurs? 15 years behind the times. Laughing stock. HAHAHA
The Barry
Roar Guru
I see where you're coming from but really wanting to see full squads in round one is as arbitrary as saying i want to see full squads in round 7 or round 23 - it ain't gonna happen. JWH and Ballin are still recovering from last seasons injuries. The bulk of this weekends injuries weren't caused by how under or over prepared the players are. Sezer, Reynolds and Segeyaro fractures. Lichaa, Kahu, Austin got their legs caught awkwardly in tackles.
Tom Rock
Expert
Perhaps it is just the frequency and brutality of the contact sessions, be they in preseason training, trial games or All-Star style exhibition fixtures, which is responsible. Regardless, seeing clubs run out in Round 1 minus star players leaves a sour taste in my mouth. And then seeing the caliber of players, many maddeningly NSW hopefuls, felled before the first round has concluded is alarming. Hopefully just a bad run. I am hesitant to suggest it, but the processes in place in the NFL are aimed at reducing this very issue. They place punishable restrictions on the amount of training a team can perform in the off-season. All teams will then begin preseason after a league-wide scheduled date, and the amount and types of practices conducted are monitored by the league. This was instituted by the league as, if coaches had it there way, training would commence the second their team was eliminated from playoff contention. Player welfare was given a back seat to winning, and people's livelihoods were on the line. Now I think this is a tad extreme for the NRL to institute, but perhaps some limits to the amount and type of off-season training is worth a stray thought.
The Barry
Roar Guru
I agree with your last paragraph. I hold my breath through games like the all star game, but at the end of the day I believe in the concept and the cause so I have to accept the risk. I think the NRL has done a good job with the pre season. Trial games don't really get the NRL in the paper but the nines, all stars and WCC do. If there's evidence that players are more likely to be injured playing those games then there needs to be some investigation as to whether they continue or are played at a different time of year. But your list clearly demonstrates that players are just as likely (much more likely) to be injured at training or in trials as they are in the pre season games.
Tom Rock
Expert
Happy to admit the team of unavailable talent on display did not necessarily fall foul during those particular contents, but rather in the preseason as a whole. The line-up would not have had quite the same punch if filled with blokes like Jayden Hodges. So please excuse my creative license. And yes, a broken jaw happens purely by accident, and is not a reflection on how prepared or fit a player is. However it can be a reflection of the intensity of a content, which is the point I am failing to make. Subjecting players to less physically demanding games prior to a season starting may, and I stress MAY, reduce the number of injuries suffered during the preseason. The end game of this rant is simply that, in my personal opinion, fans would prefer having their star players fit for the NRL season than seeing them win a WCC match. But that is just me.
The Barry
Roar Guru
I actually saw the Buehrer game where he broke his jaw - my bad. But your overall point still falls down because 14 of the 17 players you picked didn't take part at all in the nines, all stars and WCC games regardless of their intensity. A broken jaw doesn't happen because a player is unprepared or fatigued, it's purely an accident.
Tom Rock
Expert
My argument is not about the quantity of football being played in the pre-season, but rather the intensity at which it is being played. I agree that teams would be suiting up for traditional trial matches if not playing in tournaments such as the WCC and All-Stars, but find it hard to believe teams like the Cowboys would exert the same energy in taking on the Ipswich Jets compared with a televised game against Leeds. If the players are to be believed, there is certainly more at stake in WCC games than simply fine tuning defensive formations for the start of the NRL season. Round 1 should be a clear indication that, with the body shapes now dominating the NRL, games of rugby league at that level of intensity are resulting in a higher rate of injuries. If the NRL is serious about addressing player welfare and burnout, than adding to the existing schedule is counter intuitive. And for the record - Beuhrer broke his jaw during the Nines, you must have missed that game.
The Barry
Roar Guru
"Most agree that having all these fixtures during the preseason is too much..." The following players in your team didn't take part in ANY of the nines, all-stars or WCC matches: JWH, Farah, Buehrer, Cordner, Watmough, Moylan, Foran, Reed, Maranta, Morris, Stewart, Klemmer, Ballin, Elgey, G Burgess. T Burgess played in the all-stars only and Munster played in the nines only. So if we calculate 17 players across three formats you're nominated team has taken part in just under 4% of the pre-season games available. So, I'm really interested to hear how the "bulging summer schedule" has contributed to these players being injured... Regardless, the other thing about the nines, all-stars and WCC is that players would be playing in trial matches anyway. These games are in place of trials, not in addition to them. They don't create extra workload for the players, they create the opportunity for league to be marketed and get (positive) media attention in the off season. I watched a lot of the nines, the all-stars game and all three WCC games. I didn't find it difficult to digest at all...I was stoked that footy in whatever form was back. The argument that there's too much footy for fans to digest is strange. There's two days of carnival footy that you can tune in and out of. A couple of weeks later the all-stars game is on by itself. A couple of weeks after that there are three games from the UK across an entire weekend...all of it good footy and all of it something different from the NRL grind we'll be facing. How short are our attention spans if that is too much footy and how will we cope with eight games / five nights a week for the next seven months?
Squidward
Roar Rookie
Well said
Dean - Surry Hills
Guest
Hopefully Austin bounces back quickly. I’d like to see Aidan Sezer partner him. It looked like the combo was working wonders prior to Blake leaving the field. QLD have had the greatest of benefits over the years with the Slater, Cronk, Smith spine playing together weekly, and many players from the Broncs and Cows doing likewise. Just 3 clubs for the bulk of the team make-up helps immensely with cohesion and understanding between players. Laurie should be aiming for a few pairings at the very least.
Dean - Surry Hills
Guest
Tom Rock
Expert
Cheers Dean. Yeah Laurie's selection process worries me at the best of times. Although at this rate he may struggle to put 13 healthy blokes on the field. I had high hopes for Adam Reynolds and Blake Austin as the halves duo this year. That potential pairing lasted less than 60 minutes...
Dean - Surry Hills
Guest
Great read TIOWAAT. John Grant is a cheese n' pickles man, but he's unsure whether to continue his purchases from Coles after their recent dumping of his favourite well priced home brand variety. Maybe he'll wait until the same Bega cheese is on sale to make a bulk purchase. In other news, he wants to know if there are any quality CEO's currently on special? PS. Never be too sure of who Laurie will or won't select, regardless of form.
Black and Gold Never Fold
Guest
Brilliant article! News Limited send him a contract. Tigers to make the 8.