- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Opinion
After the successful launch of the Dolphins, the time is probably right to keep expanding and a team representing the South Pacific makes a lot of sense to me as the next NRL franchise.
And as long as it’s done right, the NRL should look at adding a couple more teams in the near future as well to go to a 20-team competition.
When it was done in the 1990s it was a bit too early and whenever you expand you dilute the talent but there’s plenty of very good players running around in the Queensland and NSW Cup competitions (and the South Pacific Islands) who could more than hold their own at the next level.
If the next team is based in Cairns as the Pacific’s team and plays a few games each year in Papua New Guinea or places like Samoa, Tonga and Fiji, I reckon that could be a winner.
CLICK HERE for a seven-day free trial for your favourite sport on KAYO
I’ve had the good fortune to go to PNG a few times with the Prime Minster’s XIII squads and they’re the most passionate fans up there about rugby league.
(Photo by Charlotte Tattersall/Getty Images for RLWC)
Given PNG’s introduction to the Q Cup in recent years and with their footprint, it makes sense.
But they’ve also improved their stadium infrastructure as well and there’s a lot more foreign investment in PNG and Australian government support are all part of that.
Expanding to 20 teams, as long as it’s done in the right timeline, four or five years down the track, it will bring in a lot more TV revenue.
Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow celebrates scoring with a phins up Dolphins salute. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
The Dolphins winning their first two matches is a fairytale start for them and you can already see they’re playing like a true Wayne Bennett-coached team.
If you look at all the stats in the game, Canberra dominated but the Dolphins rolled up their sleeves and kept it simple and the Raiders probably tired a bit in the closing stages coming off a game in the heat at Townsville the previous weekend.
The Dolphins hung in there and deserved to win.
Tom Gilbert was everywhere for the Dolphins with 163 running metres and 37 tackles and Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow is a great finisher, scoring two of their tries. The Cowboys didn’t want to lose either of those two but circumstances have led them to the Dolphins and they’ll be huge for them this season.
None of the teams who are undefeated or the ones who’ve lost two in a row should be getting too high or too low at this early stage of the season.
For the most part the games have been pretty tight and we’ve seen a few upsets because teams have been stretched already by injury.
Canterbury did really well to win comfortably in Melbourne over the Storm but you take away Cameron Munster and Xavier Coates from a team already missing a fair few regular first-graders and not even Craig Bellamy can keep the wins coming.
The Roosters are another team that’s dealing with a lot of injuries and even though they beat the Warriors, they were far from their best.
Parramatta are down on troops and letting in 30 points against Cronulla is not something you see too often with Brad Arthur-coached teams.
Will Kennedy, Matt Moylan and Braydon Trindall came up with some nice plays a few passes off the ruck to split them open. The Eels’ edge defence was less than satisfactory, to put it in polite terms.
The Knights produced one of their most courageous efforts in recent times with a backs to the wall win against the Tigers.
They had to overcome the loss of Kalyn Ponga and Jayden Brailey to HIAs, some serious injuries, one player in the sin bin and a player sent off to hold on for a well-deserved win.
It was fitting reward to retain the Allan McMahon Shield who was the Knights’ foundation coach and he would have been proud of their effort on Sunday.
It’s back to the drawing board for the Wests Tigers, who have struggled to find any creativity or fluency in attack.
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
There was some concerns about Penrith maybe fading this year after the lost at home to Brisbane in Round 1 but even though it got a bit tight at the end, you could see their key players orchestrating things nicely in their win over Souths.
The cream rises to the top and it wasn’t a great surprise to see Nathan Cleary, Isaiah Yeo, Jarome Luai, Stephen Crichton and Brian To’o get them back on a winning track.
They only conceded two tries against the Broncos and another two in the win over Souths so their defence is still rock solid.
Penrith have got the bye this week which is good timing for them after having the World Club Challenge in the pre-season and Cleary and Luai seem to have a couple of niggling injuries as well.
Reece Walsh has given Brisbane an extra dimension to their attack which you can already see from his first game at the club in the win over the Cowboys on Friday night.
He set up a couple of tries and scored one and with him combining with Adam Reynolds, Ezra Mam and Billy Walters, they’ve got a strong spine if they can all stay on the field.
They were too reliant on Reynolds to create their attack last year but Walsh can ball-play himself or he can be the runner hitting a hole and with his pace, he only needs a sniff of an opportunity and he’s gone.
It has been great to see so much support for Latrell Mitchell since Thursday night when a young fan made those unsavoury comments.
On the World Cup tour last year with the Kangaroos, I got to see how much of a leader he is. He spoke in really passionate terms about what it meant to be in and around the Kangaroos. He’s well spoken and passionate and we need more in the game like him.
Any fan who abuses a player on racial grounds has no place in the game but when they’re a teenager, I think education is more important than extreme punishments like a lifetime ban. I saw Nicho Hynes’ comments about wanting to get the young fellow into the Indigenous All-Stars camp so he can learn about the culture.
If an adult does something like that, I’m all for heavy sanctions but there needs to be some compassion when the person is so young.
Hopefully with better stadiums, more cameras and better education we see incidents like this become less common.
Michael Hagan is a former dual-premiership winning first grade player and current assistant coach of Australia's Kangaroos team. Hagan played 183 games for Canterbury and Newcastle and represented Queensland five times. He transitioned into a successful coach and took the Knights to a premiership in his first year in charge back in 2001. He went onto coach 205 NRL games and six times for Queensland in Origin.