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With Round 22 drawing to a close, there are still 12 teams capable of making the top eight in 2016. But who cares, right? Jarryd’s back!
Everyone wants to talk about how the Titans are new the premiership favourites, and how Mal Meninga is going to break the bad news to Darius Boyd about his Australian jumper.
Well, almost everyone. Here are ten things I’d rather be talking about than Jarryd Hayne.
1. The finals
Lost in the euphoria of the Aussie hero abandoning his American dream and taking his talents to Main Beach was the fact that we are only one month out from finals football. 16 teams have been busting their collective guts for almost six months in the hope of hoisting the Provan-Summons Trophy, but the NRL couldn’t give a rat’s arse.
Unless your team used to contain Hayne, now contains Hayne, or will soon come up against Hayne, you don’t rate a mention.
I find this bitterly disappointing, but not altogether surprising.
The NRL has always felt uncomfortable in its own skin. They simply have no confidence in the product they’re selling, and so are always looking to add value. Instead of celebrating a season’s worth of effort and commitment, and promoting the upcoming finals series, all attention is zeroed in on Hayne-cam.
Such short-sighted, reactive thinking is a key reason why the NRL remains light years behind the AFL in terms of promoting their brand – while Todd Greenberg has a crook neck from always looking over his shoulder, Gillon McLachlan gets eye strain from looking too far into the future.
The resurgent Raiders
So let’s talk finals football, and there’s no better place to start than with the Canberra Raiders.
I have never rated Ricky Stuart as a coach. He won a premiership riding Graeme Murray’s coattails in his first season with the Roosters, and hasn’t done much since. However, I will gladly concede that he has done a phenomenal job since arriving back on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin.
Unable to land marquee talent like James Tedesco, Stuart instead focused on strengthening depth throughout the roster. And if he couldn’t find the right players in the NRL, he broadened his search to include the English Super League, which has yielded outstanding talents such as Josh Hodgson, Iosia Soliola and Elliott Whitehead.
Now, after a couple of seasons spent shaping his roster, Stuart has the Raiders firing on all cylinders.
For the better part of the last decade, Canberra have been known as a side capable of scoring bags of points, but without the defensive discipline to mix it with the big boys. Well, Round 22 certainly put that theory to bed.
Heading into the contest against the Raiders, the Sharks hadn’t lost in 16 games, yet the Green Machine halted their fabled streak with extreme prejudice. Up against one of the most potent attacking sides in the competition, the Raiders held their nerve defensively, and continued the offensive fireworks that have made them more captivating than a Donald Trump’s Twitter account.
No team wants to face Stuart’s side in September.
Up, up, Cronulla
Despite their loss, the Sharks are having a spectacular season – any time you notch up 15 consecutive victories, you’re doing something right.
This has to be the year Cronulla finally break their premiership drought, because they won’t be presented with such a golden opportunity again.
Their roster is a perfect storm: expensive, ageing veterans like Paul Gallen and Luke Lewis are playing at a high level, their bargain basement signings like Ben Barba and Chad Townsend are outperforming their contracts, and their talented rookies like Jack Bird and Valentine Holmes are making massive contributions while playing for peanuts.
This won’t last. The veterans will retire, the rookies will sign massive deals elsewhere, and the others usually prove their success was a fluke, hence their position in the bargain bin.
The Perfect Storm had a happy ending, with George Clooney’s character mercifully succumbing to a watery grave after two hours of salt-crusted dialogue. Judging by their consistent brilliance in 2016, the Sharks’ season will end on an equalling positive note.
The weather
How about this rain….
Women in League Round
As I watched the Broncos run onto the field on Thursday night, I thought they must have got their washing mixed up with the Melbourne Storm. Why were they wearing purple?
It wasn’t until I heard a throwaway remark during the Channel Nine commentary that I realised it was actually Women in League round – and the ten-year anniversary to boot.
Women are making significant contributions across the game, from Yvonne Sampson and Lara Pitt in the media, to Raelene Castle and Marina Go in the boardroom, and Belinda Sleeman and Kasey Badger with the whistle.
But where was the promotion? Retro Round saw current and former footballers playing silly buggers with fake beards and mullets, but the best we can come up with for Women in League Round is a change of font colour on NRL.com?
I applaud the NRL for the many initiatives directed towards celebrating women in rugby league, but if no one hears about them, what good are they?
The hot, steaming mess that is the Dragons
Gee it must be hard to be a Dragons fan. In the sodden slurry of WIN Stadium on Thursday evening, St George Illawarra produced what can only be described as 80 minutes of water torture.
Their attack was needlessly expansive in the slick conditions, which only compounded their underlying lack of timing and precision. Coach Paul McGregor’s one-dimensional gameplan threw up more block plays than Andrew Bogut, and when this tactic failed, Benji et al had no Plan B. It was hard to watch.
Unfortunately, this is not a new problem for St George Illawarra. The team’s transformation into the rugby league equivalent of vanilla yoghurt started before the ink was even dry on Jamie Soward’s premiership tattoo. For years, the Dragons have lacked dynamic attacking players, instead fielding a team of workmanlike plodders who are never short on effort, but simply don’t score enough points.
And judging by their recent recruitment drive, which started with a play for Cooper Cronk and seems likely to end with the re-signing of Benji Marshall, fans shouldn’t expect much to change in 2017.
McGregor appears out of his depth. He has tried nothing and is all out of ideas. Perhaps it’s time to give Ivan Cleary a call.
The Olympics
Apparently the Olympics started the other night. I had to sift through the sea of Hayne articles on the Fox Sports website to be sure, but I can confirm that over 11,000 athletes have converged on the ghettos of Rio de Janeiro to fulfil their Olympic dreams: their actual, long-held, and secular Olympic dreams.
And now that that Michael Slater will no longer be commentating the diving, there is no reason left not to watch.
The rise and fall of Anthony Milford
Over the first ten weeks of the competition, Milford was untouchable. With confidence oozing out of every pore, the wiry Queenslander racked up ten tries, nine line breaks and eight try assists, which helped Brisbane to win eight of their first ten games.
And then, as suddenly as it came, his confidence vanished. It was as though Freaky Friday descended on Suncorp Stadium, and Milford traded bodies with Jeff Robson. Not since golfer David Duval suffered a career-ending case of the yips have I witnessed a professional athlete lose it so quickly.
Although much of the Broncos’ sharp decline over the last two months has been attributed to Origin fatigue, Milford’s dip in form is just as culpable.
In the ten games since pulling a Jamie Lee Curtis, Milford has managed only a single try, four try assists and a solitary line break. It’s no coincidence that Brisbane has won only three of these games, leaving them precariously placed on the periphery of the top eight.
Unless Milford can break free of this mid-season malaise, the Broncos’ season is all but over.
Tom Trbojevic
Although the pronunciation of his surname is enough to give Ray Warren laryngitis, this Scrabbler’s dream has set the rugby league world on fire of late.
His gangly gait has proven very difficult to contain, as evidenced by his eight line breaks, five try assists and three tries over the last couple of months. Standing at an impressive 19 hands, Trbojevic’s combination of speed and size draped over a skeletal frame is reminiscent of a young Greg Inglis before he discovered the Melbourne food scene.
But what’s most impressive about this young fullback is his involvement. While other prominent custodians can drift in and out of the contest, Trbojevic demands the ball early and often, functioning as another playmaker in attack.
Forget Matt Moylan, James Tedesco and The Plane, this kid is your next NSW fullback.
How bad the Aussies are at playing spin
Not a rugby league topic, I know, but still one that deserves more airtime than the location Jarryd picked up his latest flat white.
It boggles my mind how the Aussie top order has failed to address their inability to play spin bowling! What has it been, around 30 years we have had this problem?
We had the greatest leg spinner of all time at our disposal for around 15 years, and currently have the greatest off-spinner of all time as a bowling consultant, yet we are still losing Test matches within three days!
Usman Khawaja, should have gone to Spec Savers.