Roar Rookie
Joined September 2010
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With the seasonal shift well and truly nigh, our attention begins to shift away from football to summertime, barbecues and cricket. Yet, for many…
With one regular season round remaining in the ANZ Championship, the stars have aligned to give the competition some final round games and a…
[caption id="attachment_19972" caption="Sonny Bill Williams in action in Rugby League, Boxing and Union "][/caption] In what seems to have become an annual case of…
With the NRL gambling controversy continuing, the strategic maneuvering being performed by the bookmakers, the sport industry, and now the government is game-changing. In…
[caption id="attachment_5924" width="400" caption="Brett Finch with the ball during Representative Rugby League, Country v City match at WIN Stadium, Friday, May 2, 2008.AAP Image/Action…
The 2010 NRL grand final was billed the ‘Sydney derby’, with the media marketing all sorts of geographical and culture divides to define and…
[caption id="attachment_32784" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="New Zealand players celebrate after New Zealand\'s Shane Smeltz, partially visible at second from left, scored a goal, during the…
While Tasmania held off Queensland in the inaugural split innings one day match fixture on Wednesday, the real winner was Fox Sports. But will…
With talk of the Independent Commission set to increase as the expected implementation date approaches, the annual Tom Brock lecture illustrated to me that…
Australia have been priced $1.22 favourites to win this year’s Four Nations tournament, which is an insult and vast underestimation of New Zealand’s recent…
http://www.foxsports.com.au/league/nrl-premiership/bookmakers-warn-gambling-problem-must-be-tackled-head-on-in-wake-of-arrest-of-bulldogs-ryan-tandy/story-fn2mcuj6-1225999947408:
“Leading bookmakers Alan Eskander and Michael Sullivan believe the NRL must ramp up their integrity services in the wake of the Cowboys-Bulldogs match if they are serious about stamping out suspicious betting activity on the sport.”
http://www.theage.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/bookmakers-call-for-nrl-safeguards-20100422-tg00.html
“BOOKIES around the country stung for more than $500,000 in wooden-spoon betting on the Storm are calling for an integrity officer to be appointed immediately to oversee betting in the NRL.
Leading bookmaker Michael Sullivan said Sportingbet paid a product fee to the NRL and wanted assurances about the integrity of the game in the wake of yesterday’s dramas.”
In other sports:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/bookmakers-question-brownlow-integrity-after-round-8-votes-lost/story-e6frf9io-1225878648057
“BOOKMAKERS have questioned the integrity of the Brownlow Medal after the AFL admitted it had misplaced the votes from the Round 8 Melbourne-West Coast clash.”
Q- And how would calls for tighter integrity controls – to prevent corruption by players and officials – constitute “blaming” anyway?
A- The issue here lies in the fact that the bookies have played a major role in weakening sport integrity by its further expansion into exotic betting and rather than accepting criticism for the impact these exotics have had, they shifted the focus onto the sport for needing to do this that and the other to improve THEIR integrity. While the word ‘blame’ has been carefully avoided, accepting no personal responsibility (as an industry) while saying that sport should improve its integrity is a form of subtle blame.
“If you look at the major corruption cases involving betting, they’ve almost all occurrent in markets where bookmaking is illegal. In the NRL case the bets were in cash, which is almost as bad”
A- Cash is indeed bad, and once again from a legislative perspective, forcing people who wish to bet with TAB to have registered accounts would make a whole heap of sense from an integrity perspective. However, without figures I think it would be fare to say that a significant share of TAB turnover (id say over 30%) comes from cash and therefore the TAB would fight tooth and nail to avoid such legislative change.
Don't blame the game, blame the bookies
Your view strikes me as somewhat sensationalist.
Compare the current state of the soccer in this country compared to pre-Lowy times and its easy to see the game has made giant strides in a short period of time. I find it hard to fathom why so many people are anti-Lowy when you took at where the A-League is now compared to the old NSL. Also consider how much of his own money he has tipped in, even into areas which have little commercial benefit such as Westfield’s sponsorship of the W-League.
Without Lowy, soccer would be nothing in this country and while I dont refute that his time may be up, he will leave the game with the legacy of a leader who helped bring the sport back off its knees, at least temporarily.
Lowy's legacy is much worse than it looks
Thurston, Lyon, Jennings and M Minichello got ruled out yesterday too. Taking the list of centres out to: Hodges, Inglis, Folau, Lyon, Jennings.
By my reckoning, that takes Australia to its 6 and 7th preference in centre pairing of Gasnier and Cooper?…Still not a bad 6 and 7th choice! but still nowhere near as lethal as Australia’s best team in recent years…
Why are Kiwis such Four Nations outsiders?
Sheek,
Penrith returned to training last week while another eight clubs return to training this week. The rest are no more than another week or two away. Therefore I don’t see how a summer competition would impinge on player holidays. In practicality, such a competition would be built around club pre-season training schedules with the lure of prize money potentially used to cajole clubs in providing reasonable squads.
The ‘poor diddums’ are ultimately consumers, and I believe that there are enough of them to be interested in such a product to warrant the event/s, particularly in regional centres who are deprived of NRL matches or even visitation. If Ben/Marmin Barba + Dane Nielson played in a NRL touch footy gala day in Mackay, I believe the crowd would still be 75% of what they were able to achieve for the NRL game…and they wouldn’t need to worry about the logistical issues.. Ignoring the financial side, considering the ‘out of side, out of mind’ factor, I believe touch football festivals involving NRL clubs/players in country towns could be just as a effective in promotional value as City vs Country, without having anywhere near the workload impact that fixture has.
How about an NRL touch rugby summer comp?