Great post. Writing prejudicial BS and the claiming satire, is just the excuse of a poor writer who is only balanced in the sense he has a chip on each shoulder.

Unfortunately the Roosters have 15 Premierships, not 14.

Wally Lewis was an Australian Schoolboy who toured England with the Ella brothers in 1977 and only stopped playing Union because he had to make a choice as Union were going to stop picking him if he kept playing league as well.

JDB apparently has significant legal bills and if he is being offered significantly more elsewhere he may choose to move on to resolve this.

Pretty hard to disagree with you.

Great analysis.

Best article I have read for a while, I look forward to more examples of your brilliant and dry wit.

This seems like far too logical and considered for a discussion regarding the referees, far better to have Phil Gould’s hyperbole and conniptions that contradict his own earlier statements.

Spot on with your assessment. These comments by Roosters supporters are rank hypocrisy as they would be the first to complain if the shoe was on the other foot.

Why was Taylor’s participation a disservice?

Nice article, enjoyable to read something positive on Roar!!

Pretty hard to fault your logic on any of these.

Ummm Mal Meninga was a 107kg centre, Mark Gasnier was a 100kg centre, Matt Cooper was a 98kg centre. The trend towards larger centres had happened well before Inglis.

No doubting Luis Suarez’s sublime football skills and his ability to not only deliver goals but critically to deliver assists that help other players deliver goals. A real shame for his standing in the game that he had a few moments of brain fade with biting, otherwise who knows the regard he would be held in when his career is over.

Nothing like a gracious victor.

Spot on, Mary cops alot of criticism but he has developed a strong squad and he bleeds red and white.

I thought the concession that was given to the Swans (which I think has been revoked) was an allowance in recognition of the relatively higher cost of living in Sydney versus Melbourne. I am not sure that really applies in this example as on that the basis the Sydney NRL clubs should have a higher salary cap than the Storm which would not be equitable in an NRL context.

Firstly, crash rate versus population is lower in Germany with unlimited speeds on autobahn so your assertion that crash rates are reduced by speed limits is problematical at best.

Quoting the original poster:

The comparative effects of those illegal drugs on an individual are substantially worse than alcohol.

So you are saying that assualt on women and children as a result of legal alcohol is not as bad as the issues resulting from Drugs? Nice and evolved that is. Women and children can be bashed by alcohol because that is comparatively less serious than impact of drugs?

Except Illawarra are no longer part of the SGI Club, the only football team that is part of the Joint Venture is St George.

Using your logic Souths record is cleared because they have a new owner and Manly’s history is cleared as well.

So your answer remains successful clubs get punished to fix a problem? So Souths should go back to being broke like Manly and having few fans attend so they don’t get moved. On that logic Parramatta should be moved. Regional support for Parramatta outside of Sydney is the second or third highest in the league and their district could easily be covered by Panthers and Wests Tigers.

Cannot say I disagree with any of your nominated players or their supporting rationale, its part of the excitement before the season proper kicks off.

Look at the statistics for assaults and rapes made on women while the assailants are under the effects of alcohol and you will find that the rate is much higher than that of illicit drugs. So your statement that ‘ “alcohol is worse” crap’ is in fact egregiously incorrect and ill informed. Similarly if you look the numbers of kidney failures due to alcohol and lung cancer due to cigarettes which are both legal drugs you would be surprised.

You are entirely within your rights to dislike illegal drugs and to wish for their removal from society; however you would strengthen your argument if you applied some rigour and science to it rather than structuring your argument as an attack on liberalist millennial and forecasting a society break down.

Weaponising terms like Liberal and Millennial creates and division and antagonises others. Social and fiscal conservatism are structured reasonable positions that people of standing have managed to represent and popularise without resorting to base weaponisation of terms.

In Australia we had Menzies, we had Fraser and we had Howard. In the US they had Theodore Roosevelt Eisenhower and John McCain off the top of my head. These gentleman all represented the conservative cause with distinction but they didn’t influence and change their countries by attacking anyone who disagreed they argued their position robustly and they welcomed free speech and converted people to their belief with cogent and structured polices. Howard didn’t win large majorities as Prime Minister by attacking sections fo the country who didn’t vote for him he did it predominately through cogently presenting his position and winning a majority of voters to support him.

The reason the AFL have an illicit drugs policy has nothing to do with them caring about illicit drugs. Their policy came later than that of the NRL and was because they received pressure from the Government of the time (which may have been Labor but I could be wrong) that because of the millions that is kicked into sport they should have an illict drugs policy and without one their government funding might be reduced. Previously the AFL based on player welfare favoured a less reactionary model looked after mental health of players. This standard of conduct that is glorified is completely artificial and has been constructed as a result of political influence and exists for base commercial reasons rather than role models, setting an example or looking after sponsors.

When you respond, please look at my arguments with science and rigour. I have not disagreed with your position nor have I have disagreed with conservative social values. Where I disagree is with a vitriol lead argument based on supposition and opinion, present a fact based coherent argument and I suspect a lot of people like myself will rush to agree with you and support your position.

I welcome your comment regarding where are my statistics. Firstly where are yours for your statement? Secondly why should I do your work for you because you choose to make fact based lead to an argument without any facts or statistics of your own.

I look forward to your spirited response and welcome a rigorous structured and respectful debate as opposed to vitriolic, passive aggressive rants which do nothing to strengthen and foster social conservatism

Dragons training facilities are already predominately in Wollongong and they have a strong relationship with the University of Wollongong.
So you are saying the club with the second most number of premierships, the most number of Immortals, has a large successful football club in Sydney, sells a large amount of merchandise in Sydney has only a lose relationship with Sydney?
Under this model Souths get rewarded for having the most members of any Sydney Club, selling close to the most merchandise of any Sydney Club (apologies to Souths supporters if it is the most) and has become a financially strong operation gets rewarded for its hard work by being moved away from its traditional heartland because they would be immediately successful elsewhere? That seems a bit disingenuous and actively discourages clubs to improve their financial performance and operations.

I have a real problem withe the continual assertion that Dra0gons should merge with Cronulla (not having a specific go at the author its more a general whinge. In and around the Super League era the Dragons actively pursued a merger with the Roosters and when that didn’t work out they reached out to Cronulla.

Post Super League the Sharks took the view that because they were on the Super League side and they owned their home ground, the merger should be on their terms. The proposed merger would play out of Shark Park, maintain the Sharks name and play with a jersey that was a mixture of both teams. So no more Dragons, no more games at Kogarah and no red and white. Not surprisingly the Dragons were not in favour of that and they subsequently reached out to Illawarrra.

A deal was able to be struck with Illawarra and a merger occurred. One of the conditions of that agreement with the NRL was that a third party (ie Cronulla) could not be forced on the Dragons and they received a guarantee of a contract for a period of time (I think it may have been ten years).

So the Dragons have genuinely pursued a merger with three different teams and finally bit the bullet and undertook a merger. During that time the club made hard decisions and they are in a stable financial position. Concurrently the Sharks had the drugs issue, the Coach Flanagan Issue and they likely have a salary cap issue. They are struggling for sponsorship.

Yet every time this gets discussed the Dragons keep getting discussed as merging with them. The Dragons offered the Sharks a merger which was for all intents and purposes declined and the Dragons bit the bullet and merged with Illawarra. We have already made our contribution to the reduction in teams. Surely the sharks have to look at merging with someone else or alternatively moving.

The distance between Kogarah Jubilee and Win Stadium 66kms or a 60 minute drive, this has been managed and fans from the Illawarra and St George camps are accommodated.

The distance between Shark Park and the Sydney Football Stadium is 24.7kms or 30 minutes. The Sharks can quite reasonably look for a merger with the Roosters as that is half the distance the Dragons manage successfully.

The Dragons reward for biting the bullet and actually merging should not be a forced merger with a partner that has time and again made it clear does not want to consider a merger.

Vent over.

Not sure I agree with comment that not even the 12 apostles would draw a bigger crowd at Wigan that the Roosters.
In 2011 Dragons v Wigan drew 24,628 which given capacity of 25,133 stated in article is close to sell out.
In 2010 Storm v Leeds drew 27,697, in 2009 Manly v Leeds drew 32,569, in 2008 Storm v Leeds drew 33,204.
I wonder if the difference is that in those years the English teams felt they had a strong chance of winning and therefore fans turned out, where as the Roosters 2018 side was such a strong side that marginal fans were not as keen to go to the game as they thought their team would probably lose?
In Australia I suspect the Broncos can fill their stadium week in and out and that may be it?

Yeah I still have my 1992 Penfolds jersey and my 1999 Integral Energy jersey and both still look great at a game when they get pulled out.