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Rugby league’s standout year for whingeing

Wayne Bennett. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
Expert
26th June, 2018
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Whingeing and rugby league go hand in hand. It’s a tradition that crosses club loyalties, international borders and sometimes even media outlets.

It’s no secret that the constant waves of negativity buffeting the game for years from both inside and out have had a lasting impact on the NRL.

A lot of people whose livelihoods depend on rugby league prefer the permanent ‘NRL in crisis’ narrative that actually bears zero resemblance to the state of things.

This year though, it’s ratcheted up like never before. The sheer weight of complaining about rugby league in 2018 is making the game and a lot of those working in it look like spoilt boarding school kids who have had their Fortnite privileges revoked.

There’s a massive library of people making idiots of themselves this year and I’ll get to them in due course, but for the sake of brevity let’s just look at the past fortnight.

We’d taken the natural progression from 2017’s ‘refs need to blow more penalties and the NRL is in crisis’ to this year’s ‘refs blow too many penalties and the NRL is in crisis’ and back again.

After the ferocious media campaign against players abiding by the rules of the game, State of Origin came along.

With a total of five penalties in Game 1, all was right with the world. Then came the inevitable backdown from the NRL on rule enforcement, and a return to ‘clever’ refereeing was celebrated by many.

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Maybe not so celebrated by Queensland, though. After getting buried by a try from a forward pass in Melbourne, the opening try on Sunday night was scrubbed in a highly contentious bunker call.

NRL video bunker

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All up, Game 2 had 14 penalties, a penalty try, a sin bin, and that highly disputable disallowed effort. Those numbers were cause for mass bedwetting during the NRL season. What made it different with Origin? What would the coverage have been like if NSW had lost?

Early Sunday morning, we reached the culmination of months and months of well-directed destabilisation aimed at the New Zealand and England Test in Denver.

I’ve written previously about the sooking and doom bringing that accompanied this Test and, as predicted, none of the horrible scenarios used to bash the event happened.

The game was a great watch enjoyed by just under 20,000 people and, apart from an electrical storm delaying some players getting back to Australia, things went well in a market that’s absolutely critical to the future of rugby league.

It’s Wednesday and there’s plenty of water to pass under a few bridges, but I can guarantee there will be more Origin players missing this week than players who went to Denver, whether they got held up by the weather or not.

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And before you whinge about how the Test wasn’t a ‘full on’ match, consider that as well as the higher altitude, it was 32 degrees and both sides held nothing back. New Zealand lock Marty Taupau called it “the toughest game I’ve ever played in rugby league”.

England coach Wayne Bennett’s post game presser was one for the ages, potting everyone who doubted the event and pushing the case for international rugby league.

Bennett has been a bit circumspect of late so it was fun to see him launch again. He sees through the sooking about taking games overseas because he understands that to survive, the game needs to be more than the sum of the NRL and Super League.

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We finish things at the women’s State of Origin on Friday night, a belter of a game that shattered a few misconceptions about quality and interest.

A good crowd got to North Sydney Oval and there were great TV ratings for the first women’s game under the official State of Origin banner. But it was also beset by whingers who wanted it played in front of 12 people and some stadium staff as a curtain raiser to the men’s game.

These folks meant well, but this thinking completely ran counter to the reasons for why the game was on Friday, and the wishes of the players themselves.

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That was just the entree, though. After the game, NSW lock Vanessa Foliaki and Queensland’s captain, Karina Brown, who have been in a relationship since 2014, embraced and kissed on the field, their moment captured and posted everywhere.

Rolling down the hill came the Maude Flanders brigade, complaining that the NRL had no right to ‘force this down our throats’ and that basically the world would be ending shortly.

I’ve always thought that NRL fans were slightly ahead of other sports when it came to social issues like marriage equality, Indigenous participation and dealing with racism (there’s a lot of work they need to do around domestic violence, but that’s a column for a little later). Sometimes your faith can take a knock and this was one of those times.
 
I’m hardly a misty-eyed idealist who just wants everyone to get along. Creativity and new approaches grow from conflict and debate. I can sook with the best of them too – just a couple of weeks ago, on this very site, when the NRL yet again quit on its rules crackdown.

But there comes a time when you need to either move past your problems, or work to find some a workable solution.

Sadly, it doesn’t look like anyone wants to do that. And for those of us who want a thriving, sustainable platform for rugby league, it’s a real problem.

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