NRL Round 8 preview talking points: Bin everyone, don’t let a coin toss decide a game and remember, sport is not war

We’ve got a big round ahead of us which promises some quality matchups, and let’s rejoice in all of these players riding the pine. Here come your Round 8 NRL midweek talking points.

Bin them early and bin them often

Everyone’s got something to say about the wave of sin-binning flowing over the NRL, so who am I to stay out of it?

Since I started writing for The Roar years ago I’ve been screaming for refs to use the sin bin more to punish foul play (go back through my stuff and look, if you want to read some quality gear). So it’s heartwarming to finally see the NRL taking action to protect players.

Even more heartwarming is seeing established grumpy coaches like Craig Bellamy and Trent Robinson potting their punished players for being stupid rather than hiding behind predictable ref bashing.

Will it last? Probably not. We’ve seen this movie before. At some point, the NRL will hang the referees out to dry and we’ll all go back to wondering why players aren’t benched after knocking someone out or injuring them with a dropped hip.

So for now, let’s just enjoy the disciplined ride.

Bring in the NFL’s overtime rules

It was a great game in Newcastle on Saturday as the premiers knocked over the home team 16-15 with a golden point field goal to halfback Nathan Cleary.

There’s no doubting the Panthers’ set in overtime was magnificent and they deserved the shot at goal. But do the Knights really deserve to defend one set and not have a chance with the ball because they lost a coin toss completely unrelated to the on-field action?

I think both teams need at least one shot, that’s fair. The coin toss can decide who gets the ball first. It’s easy to incorporate what the NFL did with their overtime rules – they changed their rule so both teams get at least one possession, even if the team that has the first possession scores.

If neither team scores with their one set? Play out the 10 extra minutes and if they’re still tied, call it a draw in the regular season. If it’s a finals game? Golden point until one team wins.

Simple! And you could implement it tomorrow.  

 (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

No war talk this Anzac Round

A reminder ahead of this weekend’s events – footballers don’t ‘pay the ultimate price’, they don’t ‘go to war’, and they don’t fight side by side ‘in the trenches’.

Rugby league players make sacrifices and they’ve got strong team comradeship, but not one thing they do compares to the life of a soldier. What they do is play rugby league.

A jersey that costs $160 (with barely any of that going to charities) adds no value, cheapens the purpose of the round and as we’ve seen, leads to some of the biggest piles of bullshit ‘controversy’ in the NRL media.

Almost everyone who’s going to or watching a game this weekend has no genuine concept of what it’s like to live during war, or as an active participant in a war. We should be grateful for that.

This weekend is to pay our simple respects to the almost 103,000 Australians who died while serving, to those who serve now, and to understand how lucky we are to be where and what we are.

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Injuries are starting to bite

“My team has truckloads of injuries” has been bubbling along in the comments for a few weeks and as the season moves on we’re seeing the absences of key players starting to take hold.

Teams with big injury lists can fight and grind for a week or two, but as players who wouldn’t usually be in the first team are exposed more and more to the speed, brutality and fatigue of first grade, they’re starting to fade out.

While teams like Canterbury are desperate for injured players to return, the real discipline is not to freak and bring players back before they’re ready, because that will cause longer-term troubles.

Good games this week

We’ve got fantastic games up and down the board this week.

Thursday promises to be a beauty with the Bunnies and Panthers facing up at Accor Stadium, while Friday has a standalone primetime game with the Eels and Broncos up in Darwin.

Saturday’s doubleheader sees the undermanned Bulldogs up against it when the somewhat resurgent Sharks visit, and then the embattled Cowboys have simply a must-win home outing against a Newcastle team that is giving its all every week.

Sunday afternoon’s Dolphins and Titans match-up is one that will be a great investment for later in the season – both teams have eight points and a win will be valuable when finals places are decided. Later on Sunday, it’s Manly heading to Campbelltown to take on the rested Wests Tigers, and you’d expect the Sea Eagles to take their second win on the trot.

Anzac Day features its two semi-traditional games, with the Roosters and Dragons at Allianz in the afternoon with both sides stung by poor performances last week. The night game is in Melbourne when New Zealand visits Melbourne, a 3rd versus 7th which might well be a top-eight shaper.

Nelson Asofa-Solomona. (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)

Round eight random thoughts

– Say what you like, but your preview talking points do not resile from declaring the Melbourne Storm as being ‘back’ last week.
– Manly and the Storm had to be the worst game of season 2023, a stop-start penalty fest full of moronic acts and dumb footy. Let’s avoid that in the future, shall we?
– After a diabolical start the Eels are on the fringes of the top eight and really need to claim a scalp against Brisbane in Darwin.
– Crowds continue to boom, with the reliable ‘FootyIndustryAU’ reporting the game broke the 1 million fan barrier last week and there were five games over 20,000, which is incredibly rare for the NRL.

What’s got you talking ahead of this weekend’s games, Roarers?