Was never a fan, he was largely ineffective and those senseless chip kicks close to the line drove me crazy, giving the ball away, but he’s playing really smart rugby now. Quite happy for him to go OS as that will improve him, but equally hope that he still has a shot at WBs selection given current excellent form

It’s certainly an interesting year, with the pre season form guide being thrown into the air, and teams falling randomly into the ladder helter skelter.

I don’t like VAR and agree that this will do nothing to remove controversy. But it will at least provide something to fill the dead air. We often also don’t see the same camera angles in the stadium, so if we hear the officials reasons matched with the vision they are seeing it’s a marginal improvement to the experience… if we must use this painful technology.

Great fans, very engaged.

and next year … the U15s, and so on. I’m the same, although I do enjoy the EPL highlights for the twin narratives of ‘I hope Man City don’t win again’ and ‘I hope Ange does well.’

Finally they can get back to somewhere near the salary cap and breathe a sigh of relief next time the auditors come looking. They won’t need to pay them off anyway.

Tough, especially given his size, and smart player. What a career.

Along with the pile of cheese that was the Pope’s Exorcist Keary’s value as a player is another thing that Russell Crowe got completely wrong.

It’s just very sad. Honestly, I feel for the players. The pathways in this country are a joke, unless you have the right background you are stuck here. If they work their rings off from 5 years old and somehow get into one of the few spots available in a fully pro league, their reward is to play some fantastic and entertaining football that relatively few people care about for low wages (the majority of them) and there is all this negativity (not a criticism of the article which is spot on).

Well from our last WC squad
1. Nathanial Atkinson was in Scotland during the WC, but was in the A League for qualifiers playing for City.
2. Aziz Behich, a rusted on S’roo was also in Scotland, also at City for most of the quals and now back at City.
3. Jason Cummings, Mariners
4. Craig Goodwin, Adelaide
5. Kuol, Mariners
6. Leckie … our best player at the WC … City and still there
7. McLaran, the front line striker, City
8. Redmayne, the guy that got us into the WC, Sydney FC,
9. Vukovik, C Coast Mariners.

That’s 9 out of 26, most of them starters. More recently they have been playing A League heavy squads. So sure, the balance are still OS, but your ‘you don’t see any’ comment makes me think you go around holding an opinion with zero knowledge to back it up.

Am I missing some sarcasm (apologies if so). Plenty of the S’roos are in the A League, including during the WC.

But the networks don’t know what the talent is, because neither do the public as no-one is watching. This is an ‘if a tree falls in a forest and no-one is there etc…’ situation.

Sadly … largely due to the terrible and probably corrupt short sighted decision to limit rugby’s reach during the period of highest profile by creating a fake competition locked behind a paywall on a platform that few Australians cared for … if the Wallabies do badly, then no-one cares about any form of rugby.

I don’t think it should be this way, its cart before horse. But the whole set up is limited in terms of club-fan connection so the viability of the sport relies on the national team having some success. In the short term, the Wallabies need to win and we need to do everything we can to get them winning. It honestly can’t get any worse for Super rugby. Most of the stadiums are a graveyard and few watch on TV.

One option is using players from overseas. It won’t solve everything. Which players is a good question? But scrap the current rule and there is no need to weight things up, just plug gaps where you see them. If the Wallabies do have more success, that brings optimism back and hopefully the optimism leads to more interest in super rugby. If the sport can attract some investment we can work on grass roots development, an FTA deal and build a stronger local comp.

Yes I get that is their motivation. I was making a ‘they can’t see the wood for the trees comment’. The sport here faces a lot of challenges, those challenges seem to me to usually be caused by short sightedness, as is the case for the ALM here.

The ALM has bad crowds and few viewers. Every single thing they do should be geared at attracting viewers. But no … let’s just focus on the season (and onward we march to oblivion).

Couple of NRL guys have just made themselves unavailable. I don’t think there is a stand-down rule.
With the football, I see why the rule applies to the club. I suppose they assume that if it does not apply to both player and club then the club will pressure the player so the rule is there to take some responsibility off the player. But it seems like an unintended consequence situation. Its just odd to me that if a player does not want to play a game outside of the comp they are in that we punish them and the club. This is odd enough that the rule is not used overseas.

Which other codes? Rugby and the NRL I do not believe that you are compelled to play. Although its never an issue as they have very clear international windows. No-one was ever forced to play state of origin. Its not uncommon for players to say they just dont want to.

Australian football, eating itself as usual. Matter for him if he wants to play for the Nat’ team or not. Why on earth would we ever contemplate not allowing our current most marketable player to play his last four games in the ALM? Having the complaining clubs considered that attracting eyeballs is about the only KPI that the clubs should collectively care about at the moment.

I don’t know. Disemboweling yourself is a pretty rugged way to go.

He has not handled it well. Usually, these kinds of annoy the media press conferences just help any wavering Board members to sign off on the sacking. He was actually answering pretty well before he pulled the pin, could have kept it up that way for a few minutes at least.

I’d like to see an 8 team comp. A totally new comp. I don’t really care who joins. I’m not sure why your responding with this aggression, sort of pent up chip on shoulder stuff. Its not criminal to want a strong domestic comp is it? You seem to like how things are, good on you. But every opinion contrary to yours is about ‘hating’ NZ. It’s bog standard normal to want a domestic comp, the super comp is the odd one out here. Its a weird set up.

I don’t hate NZ, I was born there. But I’ve felt for 20 years that Australian rugby must have a strong domestic comp to survive. Having limited teams linked to a SA and NZ comp locked behind a paywall on a platform that few without arm patches accessed kept the game niche in this country. I’d love a domestic comp that includes Fiji (NZ can take Moana), and then we can have a super league post season, with Japan involved. Top 6 teams only, make it short, 2 three team groups and a final (max 3 games or 4 for the group winners).

Could not agree more. I am all for taking a range of steps to reduce injury to the head and neck. But I think there needs to be some common sense applied in the delta between taking responsible action and acknowledging that it is a high speed contact sport which will always carry some danger. It annoys me that some people ignore that fact and accuse anyone with a measured view of somehow not caring about player safety.

I could say a lot more, but I’ll add this on cards. If the action was purely accidental, then the fact of the card does not encourage different behavior. Because it was in fact not done on purpose. So you get no benefit out of ruining the contest. You can’t change behavior that was neither reckless nor deliberate. World Ruby in a rush to head off law suits seems to want refs to assume recklessness if not deliberate acts, so refs err on the side of a send off in what in many cases I would not even call fringe cases. Indeed, we have seen WR review and say the wrong decision has been made in both cases of red and yellow cards.

I don’t even like the 20 min orange card being trialed. I think there should be these options:

1. a straight red for the most egregiously obvious deliberate conduct; or
2. a yellow (warning) like in soccer, with a second yellow amounting to a send off.

With the yellows, they can be referred to a review post match by the ref for suspected deliberate dangerous conduct.

In the case of a an in game red, or a post match up-grade to red i’d like to see the absolute book thrown at them. Eigght game ban and 20-40k fine or the like. Because if you’ve set out to hurt someone, you;ve basically engaged in an assault. I don;t think we have the balance right. At the moment its, oh, I guess I need to give him a red. Game potentially ruined, player misses the next game or two. I;d like to see less harsh consequences in game for the majority of infringements, but the absolute book thrown at them for deliberate violent play.

I should have read your comment, just made the same suggestion. They are expanding those fields, massive construction underway as well … to include sports barely anyone in Vic plays, such as Rugby (I’m a big rugby fan … but come on). Would have made sense to have a ‘home of the Soccaroos’ there as well. They could also demolish the adjacent Football Victoria head office as well, I can say for a fact nobody is getting any use out that whatever happens in there. Put a national team pitch on it.

This is bad.

But what about the ‘Home of the Matilda’s’ and FV at Bundoora (La Trobe Uni). Fantastic grass pitch, superb, and other high quality synthetic pitches.

Reminds me of the old joke about jazz.

How do you make a million dollars playing jazz?
Well .. first … convince someone to give you two million dollars …

What AFL has is 120 years of tribalism. It has managed to grow that outside of the Southern States, to some degree, via a massive and relentless media buy in. Think about it, the sport grew out of Victoria largely and that meant that the administration was unified, their culture was unified and it happened naturally. They could then grow their sport from a solid unified place. You can’t just ‘replicate’ that. It happens organically. Football had the tribalism in the old NSL days, but no unity as it was spread over different States and the ethnic stuff kept people away, not to mention negative media that was financially wedded to the AFL or NRL. Its hard for football … the media is negative and biased. It just is. Its a circle, the media write negative articles or there is no media, people don’t come to games and there is no money, that drives more negativity. How do you suggest that football ‘replicate’ the AFL? Part of that is convincing every media outlet to actually cover a game they seem to despise unless there is a particular feel good story (#Go Matildas) unrelated to the week by week of the sport.

Explain how anything I said was not in any way critical of the NRL.