If Burgar had of played the head once, a penalty should have been awarded. 3-4 times in the one ruck, blatantly trying for nothing but the head? Red card, any day of the week. Thank you.

One of the biggest problems I find is the inconsistency between each and every different referee. I don’t know of another professional sport where there is such a vast difference between how the referees adjudicate the game. Entire game plans are re-written depending on who is named as the referee. It is unbelievable. The IRB needs to have all of the representative officiating bodies together for an annual convention where they go over the rules and verify interpretations so that everyone is on the same page before each domestic season. I realize that each hemisphere has different seasons but there is an overlap of offseasons where the referees can talk and see what rules need tweaking. Then prior to each domestic/international season the teams all get informed on what has changed.

The IRB must set a worldwide agenda in officiating and have a responsibility to make sure each and every referee that represents the IRB have at least something akin to a similar philosophy on the game.

Mungehead, you’re exactly right. Clever coaches prevail. Dumb coaches flail. It is obvious that Deans cannot implement his own legacy and traditions, he just rides the coat-tails of others. Unfortunately for him, this means that with the Wallabies, his success feeds directly from the success of the coach he replaced, which isn’t much success at all. He was lucky in his gig as Crusaders coach, he was placed in a perfect environment for success and rode it out. He doesn’t have that luxury with the Wallabies, he has the players, not the programme. If he hasn’t had success with his programme yet, then he isn’t going to, and so we need a new coach with a different programme to come in and change things up.

In my mind, all the inconcsistency of the Wallabies goes to show how ineffective Deans is as coach of this team. If he were a good coach he could get somekind of consistency, whether it be consistantly good or consistently bad. Consistency is a sign of a decent coach. The way the Wallabies play at the moment reminds me of a team of uncontrolable teenagers. Some weeks they come out all guns blazing an look like they could set the world in fire then next week they just don’t want to be there.

We need a coach that can control the young and arrogant stars and keep them in focus. I think Deans’ best move was to put Horwill in as captain, but he needed to do it a year ago. Horwill hasn’t got the authority of captain yet, and that will take a few games, probably not until after the RWC. Deans needs to openly declare to teh players that each and every position is wide open and only consistent play at a reasonable level of excellence will suffice to keep any player on the park.

I don’t know why, but all I see JOC as is a trouble-maker. When he was out of the starting line-up we looked like a cohesive team. JOC had something to prove and so when he came on against Italy he played like it. Now he has his position back, he’s back to playing like he doesn’t care. I get the same feeling from quite a few of the players on this team. They play their hearts out when their position or reputation is on the line, but once they have shown their brilliance they go back into their shell and play just well enough to look half-decent. The coach should be able to see this and use it and demand excellence every game.

I don’t understand why Dingo doesn’t use JOC and QC as impact players after 50-60 minutes. They don’t have the maturity required to play a full game, but as seen in the Italy match, if you put them on once the opposition have tired a little, then the game opens enough for them to become instant game-changers. Also, if by having QC on the bench then the Aussie defence can stand up for the first half and not have to worry about covering for a defensively inept player, which means they can focus on their real jobs. JOC needs to go back to school and learn to kick conversions and penalties. He takes way too long to set up and I am sure that is part of the reason why his accuracy is down. if he just went ahead and took the shot there’d be less time to think about it. Less thinking, more doing. I would rather see Australia back their abilities on the ground and go for tries than trust JOC to kick penalties. And if we can’t trust our #1 kicker to go for penalties, then going for the 5-pointers is the only option.

I just think more maturity is needed in the side to get heads down and do th hard work to set the stage for the backs and upstart young blokes to show their stuff.

If the NRL introduced a review system for every try, it would make my life. The rule would have to include, however, that the entire play from the last stoppage of the ball (so tackle or penalty or whatever that may be) is up for review, not just the last pass. This would cover all those tries that get scored off a phase that included a forward pass.

I love this idea. It would also suggest that the try-scorer must be the one to attempt the conversion. There is a place for kickers in the tactical run-of-play kicking game, but to add that extra element of strategy I would love to see this.

For example, forward X draws a penalty at 40m out dead in front, game is relatively even. Do you risk the forward taking a pot shot at goal (assuming he isn’t the best kick around), or do you take the ‘safer’ option of tapping the ball and trying to close in a but and either concede another penalty from an easier position or score a try. If it was a guy you had more faith in kicking the penalty you would probably take that option.

There would still be a place for the tactical kicker and the drop-goal kicker, but the added risk in always kicking for points would be a definite excitement maker. Imagine a Ben Alexander or Stephen Moore being penalised with seconds left at 30m out on a gentle angle. He must kick it for the win. Imagine the excitement that would create. It’d be a much better way to see a game end than seeing Dan Carter just go through the motions.

I know they allow other nationality players in there league, so does the NRL, if you’re good enough to play it doesn’t matter where you come from. My point was that it is not the NRL’s responsibility, just as it is not the Super 15s responsibility to grow the international game. It is in their interests, but it is not their main goal. It is in AFLs main interest that it receives international appeal so that they have another piece to sell to the market.

I’ll take the Patriots over the Jets for the AFC East and Steelers over the Ravens for AFC North. San Diego should ease into first out in teh AFC West, but AFC South is a mess. If Manning plays the majority of the season, the Colts win. If he doesn’t, I’d tip the Texans, but wouldn’t be surprised if they got done underperforming and the Titans creep up. The South could have a 7 to 9 win team going to the play-offs.

AFC North will be interesting to watch, with Flacco due for a breakout season. If the Ravens can figure out how to put together a working offense anything is possible for them, but I still don’t see them moving the juggernaut that is the Pittsburgh Steelers of their perch atop the division. Big Ben is a class QB with a very decent receiving corps and all-conquering defence. If Polamalu is fully recovered from his ankle ingury at the end of last season then they should continure to steam-roll through to the play-offs.

I think Mark Sanchez is going to have a dismal season and the Jets will ride their defense to a wildcard playoff. Plaxico Buress will fail in his comeback to the NFL. There are no other offensive weapons other than Santonio Holmes and Shonne Green on the Jets. Their defence is outstanding though and should remain a force.

Chad Ochocinco is not a locker-room problem. He is a guy that has a lot of fun, but is a very serious footballer. He played up in Cincinnati because his team was abismal and he had nothing better to do. All his antics were on-field, he has no off-field issues. Albert Haynesworth is a freak and I hope to see him return to his form before the Redskins turned him into a waste of money. His off-field concerns will be well controlled in New England and so long as he can stay fit enough for 1st and 2nd down duty he should be up there in Pro-bowl selection territory. I see Tom Brady having another MVP-type season with #85, Welker and the TE corps creating havoc for DCs everywhere. The new-look Patriots defense look the goods on paper and should, through the defensive genius Belichick, start to look like a Super Bowl-calibre force.

My tip is for a Patriots vs Steelers AFC Championship with the Patriots winning through to teh Superbowl against either the Packers or the Saints.

Superbowl: New England Patriots win over Green Bay Packers.

I will admit I am a Pats fan, and I hate the Jets.

I think I understand it as there is 1 or 2 extra weeks of finals footy. 1-6 are non-elimination seeding games to determine the teams that get home games and draw favouritism and such. 7-12 are qualifying finals to determine the remaining two spots in the 8. Then the 13-18 teams get to play for priority draft picks. So rather than losing/tanking your way to a #1 pick, you must win at least some games.

I would assume come the end of the regular season the tables are reset and games commence. The teams then play for everything. All games have bearing and importance and meaning and consequences.

This is what happens when a team is struggling. Every year the bottom teams cop a beating. It was Melbourne and Richmond and North Melbourne in previous seasons, Melbourne still cops it a bit. It is just Port’s turn.

It’s not so much money-driven, just that you get a greater amount of players playing to their fullest because they have a good incentive. You see if every year, a player is in a contract year, plays the best season of his career and get to sign a massive new contract with a big guaranteed figure, then the next season his play drops right off, he got his money so he doesn’t need to prove himself anymore, but come the next contract year, you see him up there again going his hardest. The NFL is signing a heap more 1 and 2-year deals now to keep the average players playing their best football. This culture though is a breeding ground for hunger and disloyalty, as players want to play for teams they have a better chance to start on the field rather than play for their current team where they are a 2nd or 3rd string player.

In the AFL good players want to play for successful teams because they get tied to success. I doubt anyone wants to move to Port Adelaide or Gold Coast or GWS without getting financially compensated. However players will take a fair pay cut just to be involved with Geelong, Hawthorn and Collingwood. In my opionion, if the AFL adopted the NFL-style non-guaranteed contracts you’d see the good teams losing thier stockpile of good players and the quality would be more evenly distibuted. Good teams would lose a bit of depth, but bad teams would gain good players, so the good teams are brought back a bit and the bad teams are caught up. Parity within the competition is more achieveable.

The occasional gross tackle or kick to the body/head is not really calling it a contact sport. Soccer is classed as a non-contact sport because you aren’t physically tackling the player, but taking posession of the ball. I do understand there are times when there is contact, I did play the sport some time ago. (I also play field hockey which is classed as a non-contact sport, but I have been sent to hospital a number of times, and seen many others sent as well, due to contact to the head via stick and/or ball.)

I’d like to see 20 mins hard-limit, no time-on. Umpires have a ability to call play on if someone stands with the ball for too long, so time wasting wouldn’t be any worse than it currently is.

I also like to see 17 rounds, but that’s not going to happen. I could settle for 20 rounds, play everyone once, plus 2 derbies, plus a grudge match round. Grudge match round could be a totally exploitable commercial round where you get teams that have created recent hatred with each other like Collingwood vs St Kilda or Geelong vs Hawthorn, or when a marquee player moves to a new club, like when Chris Judd moved to Carlton automatically made West Coast vs Carlton a grudge match.

Enlarging the squads reduces quality. You end up with more guys that couldn’t get drafted playing. Yeah, sure, a few are going to come through and be out-of-nowhere superstars, but more often than not you get mediocre or worse players just filling spaces.