Hasn’t Crighton been a revelation! I think signing Farrah has done more harm than good. Would’ve preferred to see Cook playing 80 minutes.

Yeah Klemmer’s got a touch of the Mark Geyers about him, but with a bit more guidance that MG wished he could’ve had in his playing days. I’d like to see somebody step up and engage the fans like Gallen did. Hayne does it at the ground, but doesn’t speak to the media anywhere near as much and can’t say anything too controversial since he plays for a Queensland club.

Kurt “He’ll Do” Gidley

Exactly. If a team misses the 8 because they had 1 game without their stars, they don’t deserve to be there.

“But it hurts the product…”

Well I saw some pretty good games over the weekend. And I’ve seen some real stinkers in other times of the year….

I think they got the timing wrong picking players at the end of their purple patch instead of when they were at their peak. Adam Reynolds was NSW’s best halfback from 2013-2015, but wasn’t picked until 2016 when the Bunnies started missing the 8. They persisted with Farah, despite Ennis being consistent at club level. Tedesco has been the game’s best fullback for years, but only got a run from game 3 last year. etc.

Controversial opinion, but I honestly believe that Paul Gallen is NSW’s greatest ever captain, or at least in my lifetime.

I’ve directly seen Laurie, Freddy, Joey, Bedsy & Gidley wear the C for NSW. All good players and good team leaders. But none were particularly inspiring to the man in the street. Daley, Fittler and Johns all played tremendously and lifted when it counted, but they played it very safe in their media commitments. I honestly can’t ever recall Buderus or Gidley ever even speaking to the media. They just always seemed, and I mean no disrespect by this, to be earning their paychecks and little more.

But Gallen really seemed to take his role as captain seriously. You got the feeling that he didn’t just feel responsible for leading the 17 men on the park, but the 7.5 million people who live south of Tweed. He just inspired fans of the Blues like no other captain has. He’d come out in the media before a game and announce that he’d be taking the first hit-up. What better way to lead a team than by leading the team.

He’d take pot-shots at Queenslanders in interviews. Some might say childish, but it got the animosity flowing. He punched Nate Myles in the face, not because Myles niggled him, but because (as Gallen put it) he was standing up for his team. Many say (me included) that Gallen stifled NSW attack by hogging the ball when it should’ve gone to the 6 or 7, but at least he was trying to steer the ship when it had no rudder.

I’m no Paul gallen fanboy and I find plenty to criticise him about, but I don’t think it’s coincidence that NSW has enjoyed its best ever ratings and attendance, despite an almost decade-long losing streak. It’s because Gallen made us proud of our state. I hope Cordner can step up in the same way.

As a Souths fan the frustrating thing is this:

Newcastle is hardly a star-studded team, but watching them each week you can see them giving 100%. They want the win.

Souths are a star studded team full of internationals, Origin stars and Premiership winners who took out the title only 3 years ago, but they play like they’re only giving 50%. They just don’t care, but for the brief moments they switch on, they’re a good looking football team.

Extremely frustrating.

Agreed. I think the affect of Origin on the NRL season is over-played. 17k at AAMI Park for Storm v Cows and a full house for Sharks and Bulldogs before Origin 1. It’s a great opportunity to see future stars and Saturday was a cracker of a game.

In a certified Origin miracle, the Blues have now spent five days inside Star City casino without losing James Maloney in a game of craps.

Haven’t NSW been playing craps for 11 straight years?

I’d make room for James Tamou. Somebody needs to drive the team bus.

I’m sure there’s a joke to be made about David Williams too…

They’re still trying to get the smell out in Terrigal.

@Nemesis,

I really don’t think you should be insulting others’ understanding of statistics when your own understanding seems to be pretty superficial at best.

It’s not about adding up 1 & 1 to get 2. It’s about understanding what 2 means and what we can learn from it.

As Perry and Paul2 have tried to illustrate above, you don’t have the same people watching every single game. On Friday nights, for example, I’d be willing to bet that very few members of this audience are between 18-25. I know from my own experience that I’s not possible for me to watch the 6pm Friday NRL game and Saturday nights are usually spent with the wife, but I’ll make time for my team and I’ll usually watch the 4pm Sunday game.

You can’t say “I assume that people from other sporting communities don’t watch NRL & AFL” and then quote cherry picked numbers with no context or analysis and claim that your hypothesis is supported by “facts and data.”

Player kicks an amazing 40-20.

Crowd goes wild.

Ref says to opposing captain “Did you still want me to check that alleged dodgy play-the-ball from 4 tackles ago?”

The next 90 seconds are spent pouring over inconclusive video footage.

The crowd snores collectively.

Ref’s call is upheld. All momentum lost. All intensity gone.

_______________________________________________________

Team earns a line drop out.

Opposing captain: “Can you please look for a knock from dummy half in the fourth tackle?”

Ref: “Sorry you should’ve raised it at the time.”

OC: “Yeah but I had to chase their winger down over 70 metres. I didn’t have time to confer with my teammate who saw it and then address you. I had to stop a potential try.”

Ref: “Rules are rules.”

I totally get where you’re coming from, but I don’t buy it. A poor call may give an attacking team an extra set (for example) but the defense still has an opportunity to defend.

That’s what used to bug me about the Cowboys getting robbed in the finals. Yes Cronulla scored on the 7th, but they went on to score a lot more points after that. Yes, you were potentially dudded when scoring against the Roosters, but maybe you shouldn’t have let them put on a gazillion points in the first half.

Players have to be accountable.

That’s true. They can. But they also have an easy out that let’s them defer responsibility and they don’t shy away from using it.

“But, if the figures allegedly include significant numbers of people who play Sokkah & Basketball then it means only a small percentage of Aussie Rules & RL grassroots community watch their own elite domestic competitions.”

You can’t honestly believe this do you? You can’t seriously be suggesting that if a reasonable number of football players watch NRL/AFL then there mustn’t be many people from the NRL/AFL communities watching them.

Is it so hard to believe that the vast majority of the NRL/AFL communities watch these codes on TV and the remainder of the viewers are made up of couch potatoes and fans of other sports?

For an intelligent person you are making some incredibly sweeping statements and using a lot of straw man arguments.

Today I learned blokes play Beach Volleyball.

My old man’s touch footy team had the team motto printed on their jerseys:

It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, but how many beers you have after the game

Forgive me Nemesis, but I find it really, really hard to believe that a fair number of AFL/Rugby watchers don’t play other sports. Viewership for these sports is enormous, yet participation is low.

The way you have interpreted the statistics is very impressive, so I just want to make sure I’m following along.

“data suggests the vast majority of this 1 million playing football ARE NOT watching other codes.”
So we’ve got the tv figures and the participation figures, where is the data that says participants of one sport don’t watch another sport?

NRL/AFL has higher viewership than participation. Football has higher participation than viewership. This obviously proves that only AFL/NRL fans watch these sports. Sound reasoning.

“If a significant portion of the Sokkah grassroots community (& Basketball grassroots community) is watching AFL & NRL, then it means there aren’t very many grassroots Ozzie Rules & Rugby League people watching AFL & NRL.”
It’s hard to argue with that. If players of other sports are watching NRL/AFL, then obviously not many NRL/AFL fans are watching their own sport. That’s just scientific fact. Indisputable.

I think I understand now. You can only enjoy one sport. It’s all clear now.

Thanks for providing details about TV ratings. However, I was asking about participation figures.

Regardless, your assertion is based on the notion that people are either Football fans or league fans or AFL fans etc…

It doesn’t acknowledge that people enjoy more than one sport.

But what if there is no natural stoppage in play in that time?

“So, it’s a complete nonsense to suggest semi-pro competition was the reason the media has been, and continues to be, openly hostile towards football.”

That’s not what I’m suggesting at all.

My suggestion is that Australian sportsfans (prior to 2005) had apathy towards the game for the following reasons:

– semi-professional status, whereas the VFL and ARL were the top leagues of their sport in the world
– an uncompetitive national team, whereas the Kangaroos and Wallabies were world beaters.
– Lack of coverage in the media
– And yes, I would argue that the division of football teams along ethnic lines was a big turnoff.

The media may be hostile towards soccer, I dob’t know, but I think that the vast majority of non-football fans in decades past were simply apathetic towards soccer, rather than hostile.

I’m a big, big fan of the captain’s challenge and I envisage it working like this:

Firstly, it’s only used in a try-scoring situation. Any other time players need to play to the refs whistle, just like they did when they were juniors.

Each captain only gets one incorrect challenge (and an extra one during golden point).

When a try is scored, the captain has 20 seconds to challenge the call. This gives him time to talk to his players who were near the ball to see what they think. Hopefully, a benefit of this will be that players will be honest and display good sportsmanship. “No I didn’t get to him in time. He grounded it cleanly.” etc.

When deciding to challenge the call, the captain has to nominate his reason. For instance, he believes the ball wasn’t grounded correctly or the player put a foot out. He can only nominate one thing to look at.

When reviewing the decision, the bunker will only look at what the captain has nominated as his grounds for challenge. For instance, if he believes the try scorer was offside, they can’t check through to grounding or look for an obstruction.

If the captain is correct in his challenge, he gets another one. If not, there are no more challenges.

On another note, as an improvement to the fan experience at the ground, I’d remove all replays of a try until after the Bunker has given his ruling. Currently, by the time the decision hits the board, the crowd already knows the answer. Imagine the anticipation of waiting for a decision come up on the board with no idea which way it is going to go.

The only way to overcome this is to remove the grey area as much as possible. Most of the calls that fans get upset about aren’t necessarily wrong, they are just 50-50.

I’m with you Jimmmy. I don’t think it’s a good experience for fans. A stoppage in play occurs and then the captain requests we go back 3 minutes to check if a player lost control of the ball for 0.5 seconds. I don’t think that’s enjoyable to those in the stands.

Solid rant Oingo, but I feel like this is actually less adjudication because the refs call it as they see it and captains will only challenge if they know for sure the ref got it wrong.