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Opinion
Another wonderful weekend of NRL has rolled by, and another major milestone was celebrated.
Congratulations to Jarrod Croker on playing his 300th NRL match. It’s a special milestone that only a few (46) have reached, and Canberra did a great job of generating a sense of occasion for this important match.
It was even more significant because he is only the 13th player of the modern era to perform the feat with a single club. I started to wonder what sort of stellar team could be formed in the imagination by that elite group.
There would be plenty of selection dilemmas. Would you put Darren Lockyer or Billy Slater at fullback? Andrew Ettingshausen would be one of the centres, but which Croker, Jason or Jarrod, gets to fill the other spot? Would you appoint Cameron Smith or Sam Backo as captain?
The toughest decision would be who to put in the second row. There’s a lot of plodding second rowers on the list, and who would you choose if the only options were Luke Ricketson, Simon Mannering, Mitch Aubusson, Nathan Hindmarsh, Corey Parker or Paul Gallen?
This must be how NSW selectors are feeling as they scramble to get a squad together for Origin 2.
Sadly for most of these players when they reflect on their long careers, the milestone games are not always their happiest memories. We are all quite used to reading headlines such as “No magic in match 300 for Parramatta Mr Nice Guy”, or “Broncos spoil Paul Gallen’s 300th Sharks match”.
Too much pressure is placed on these players in the twilight of their career to somehow inspire their teammates to achieve milestone victories.The current system simply isn’t working. It’s not fair and something should be done about it.
Especially when we have the farcical situation of a player sitting out a match so they play their milestone match at home. What genius thought of that?
My proposal is to have a Milestone Round. This would be a special round where the achievements of all players celebrating milestones during that season could be properly celebrated.
The games would all be held at one venue, and every player celebrating major milestone during the season, for example, first match, last match, birth of a child, 300th game, they could all be placed on the back of a ute and driven slowly around the ground while being interviewed by Phil Gould with ‘Simply the Best’ playing loudly in the background.
Between both teams in any particular match you could probably find 15 or 20 players with some sort of worthwhile milestone, and this sharing of the spotlight would help reduce the pressure on any one player.
I have stolen the idea for holding all the games at one venue from Magic Round, which I attended for the first time this year. There was a large crowd and people seemed to enjoy it, so why not do it more often?
Brisbane seems keen to hold on to Magic Round, and so perhaps Milestone Round could be rotated through some of the less glamorous corners of the NRL universe, such as Canberra or Penrith or Las Vegas, locations which have traditionally struggled to attract tourists.
Couldn’t we at least try?
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