Yes, perhaps your examples in isolation are true but over the course of a game, and particularly over the course of a season run metres tell a compelling story.
Just like batting averages – not a perfect metric in isolation but they add up over time.

Metres gained is totally relevant! It’s the point of the game to push back the opposition.
Clearly a forward who runs 10 times for 150m is more valuable than a forward who runs 25 times for 75m.

I believe Green’s two most recent 1st class innings resulted in scores of 96 and 46 so not net form.

The great thing about The Roar is that when you read an article that makes you wonder how on earth the writer came up with such jibber, you only need to wait a day or so for another Roar article putting the opposite view.
And so it goes today, with the voice of reason coming in an article pointing out the myriad of successful moves up the order in the history of Aussie test teams. Boon, Simpson, Katich, Watson, Langer (who seems to have forgotten he once was not an opener). The only one that wasn’t a resounding success was Blewitt.
Being an opening bat is not like a secret order of Masonic rites. Common sense tells you that you pick the next best up and coming batsman. On any objective assessment (that includes potential, overall records and overall ability to contribute) Green is so far ahead of Bancroft it’s ridiculous so much ink has been spilt by jibberers in favour of Bancroft.

This is an easy decision. Cameron Green comes into the team.
It’s not about the boys club or sandpaper. The amount of gibber I’ve read in the last couple of days!
Facts:
Green test average 34
1st class average 47
Bancroft test average 26
1st class average 39
Green is miles ahead on the batting numbers. He’s a better, more talented bat.
But wait, that’s not all. Green bowls. Bancroft doesn’t. Green is a young bloke with the potential to be captain one day. Bancroft isn’t young any more and won’t be captain.
What’s Bancroft got? He’s an opener. That’s it. Opening the batting is not such a specialist skill that you’d pick the obviously lesser player because of it. Maybe it might make a difference if it were closer but it’s not close.

So much hate for Brian Smith!
I don’t understand why. The hate for 4 GF losses doesn’t take account of the relative quality of the players in the teams he took from nowhere to contenders. It’s a completely superficial analysis to say 4 losses = hopeless coach. Smith proved again and again he can take ordinary teams and get them to do extraordinary things. It’s like apples and oranges to compare Smith’s record with Wayne Bennett, who usually has teams packed to the gills with rep players.
The 1992 Dragons had no business being anywhere near a grand final. After making the GF in 1985, the Dragons went nowhere, did nothing and didn’t really attract star players for years. No-one expected that to change at the beginning of the 92 season. The dominant teams in 91 had been the Raiders, the Broncos and Penrith. The fact that the Dragons made the GF in 92 was in large part due to Brian Smith.
In that 92 GF, the Broncos were at State of Origin strength. While the Dragons had a team of journeymen and a sum total of three starting players that had relatively short representative careers: Ricky Walford, Mark Coyne and Scott Gourley. The battle of the halves tells the story: Langer and Walters v Noel Goldthorpe and Peter Coyne (many of you will be reaching for Google to figure out who the latter two were).
In 93, the Dragons were more seasoned, confident and hardened after their run to the GF from nowhere in the previous season, and with some young talent on the rise. But it was still a mismatch against the Qld SOO team in the GF. Indeed the Broncs that year were even stronger than the Qld SOO team because they had the games best prop (and star NSW player) Glenn Lazarus, pushing rep quality Qld SOO forwards to the bench.
It was a similar story when Smith took a young Roosters team very light on with rep players and which had come stone motherless last in 09 to the GF.
So of the three GFs that Smith coached, the only one where his team weren’t fairly significant underdogs up against hot favourites was in 2001 with Parra v Newcastle. If you want to ignore the absolute magic that Smith did in 2010 and 1992 and call him a useless loser on the basis of one GF in 2001, then you’re not seeing the forest for the trees.

I like it too – but instead of an indigenous team representing Australia, Qld and NSW should represent Australia. Qld’ers would love it – it would give them a chance to prove that Qld is God’s country.
Players like Tedesco would have to play for Italy – same for Samoans/Tongans currently playing State of Origin (wouldn’t affect current Origin eligibility rules though).

So what if less league players went to WW1?
To me, that just shows they were less indoctrinated into the Australians are British to their bootstraps crap that was prevalent at the time. If Australia had acted as an independent country, it would have stayed out of WW1 and would have been dramatically better off for having done so.
Australia’s population at the time was tiny. We could ill afford to send off nearly 10% of the population to fight in a war about European empires or in the Turkish sideshow. We incurred a couple of hundred thousand casualties and saw another couple of hundred thousand haunted for the rest of their lives by the hell on earth in the trenches. Australia incurred one of the highest, if not the highest proportional casualty rate because colonial troops were used as cannon fodder by the Brits.
Imagine how many leaders of government, commerce and industry the fledgling nation lost! And for what?
The opportunity for people to wrap Aussie flags around their heads at Gallipoli?

You’re loyal fan Tim.
The problem is that the guts of this article could have been written about the Raiders in at least six of the nine seasons that Ricky Stuart has coached them.

Disingenuous tripe.

You are a dyed in the wool rugby head. Do everyone a favour and put the “Please, rugby league is played in three nations…” line up the front.

I think the main thing rugby has going against it is that there’s a fundamental disconnect between, on the one hand, the exclusionary premise of rugby in NSW and Qld (it’s of private schools, for private schools and not just any private schools but only the most exclusive metro ones), and, on the other hand, the commercial imperative of trying to grow an audience. Fix point one and improvements might come on point two. But rugby (Australian rugby at least) can’t fix point one because being a snob is embedded in its origin story and grassroots DNA.

The amount of time that is spent on examining the ‘in-crowd’ and ‘out-crowd’ in cricket teams and the angst about a mean look or a bad mood reminds me very much of the last parent-teacher night I attended for a Year 4 child.

Chappelli is right of course that the recent old players have no business inserting themselves into the discussion. I suspect they’re upset because it marks the passage of time moving on. Their mate moving on means less access for them and means they move to being just another bunch of old has-beens like Chappelli.

Mind you Chappelli did exactly the same thing when he was still connected to players in and around the team and I think the treatment of Kim Hughes was one of the lowest points in the history of Australian cricket, at least since I’ve been watching since about 1980.

The obvious way to make a second Brisbane team work is to leverage off an existing geographical divide and fan base – take a leaf out of the Adelaide/Port Adelaide or West Coast/Fremantle book.
That means Ipswich or Logan or Redcliffe. Even better merge Logan and the Gold Coast team – play half the games at Logan and half at the GC.

The NRL’s handling of this was shown to be very poor in court today. Imagine making a big media song and dance about suspending De Belin and then having to admit that he hasn’t been suspended. Jesus wept!
Their case was already looking shaky before that admission because ‘no fault’ suspensions is asking for trouble. But the icing on the cake was announcing the suspension before they have officially made the decision to suspend.
I’m pretty confident that the NRL’s case is toast and De Belin will be playing this year – which in my view is the least worst outcome.
Policy on the run is rarely going to stand up to scrutiny. Next time the NRL might want to get a barrister’s opinion first even if they cop some short term heat getting their ducks in a row.

The NRL is not conducting any investigation in relation to JDB. In fact they have expressly said it is a no fault stand down. The examples you have given all involve the employer assessing whether or not there is any fault whereas the NRL has tried to impose a suspension without any fault.
The Federal Court case is not going very well so far for the NRL is it?

Multiple people are saying that in other workplaces, employees are stood down when they are charged – as if it is automatic for everyone. It is not! The proper process is for the employer to conduct an investigation and then decide if there is a sufficient basis for the person to be stood down. This was the case with Ben Barba and with Samantha Maiden. In contrast, the NRL has specifically said that they are standing down JDB based on ‘no fault’. That’s why the NRL seems to be on the fast track to getting their rear end handed to them in court

You’re very confident, aren’t you?
I find your argument entirely unconvincing.
In any event we’ll soon find out what the Federal Court thinks about the argument that employers can impose punishments on people who have not been convicted of anything and without making any adverse finding against JDB.

It would be a much smaller competition if they excluded all the players that have been stupid.

Its a suspension therefore its a punishment.

The principle is innocent until proven guilty. An ancient tenet of the common law. Worth nothing in today’s age of insta-lynch mobs.
I get it that it would be a bad look if de Belin played on for 18 months and was then found guilty of a brutal rape.
However it will also be a bad outcome if de Belin is banned for 18 months and is then found not guilty.
It comes down to weighing up which is the least worst outcome. In my view that is clear – because it would be worse for an innocent man to be punished for 18 months and in light of the presumption of innocence de Belin should not have been suspended.

Jesus wept! There is an unbelievable number of readers on this site that purport to follow league, but yet spit the dummy when someone writes about reasons to hate certain teams. What is wrong with you?
Hating the opposition – I mean really viscerally despising their existence has been an integral part of league my entire life. I go back to the 70s and who can forget the silvertails and the fibros.
Since Manly became useless, there is no reason to hate them any more so people have – quite reasonably – moved on to hating other teams.
I totally get the premise of the article that the worst GF is when there are two teams that you dislike equally. I would have been in this position if it was Sharks v Roosters as both teams are maybe 6 or 7 out of 10 on the hateometer for me.
The way for a Raiders supporter to really get into the GF is to look into your soul and decide which team you hate the most. I think you will find that is an easy choice.
Go the Roosters! The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Fek I knew this would happen

Tim – you realise you are on the same side of this argument as Phil Gould?

Your Raiders membership is forfeited immediately!!!!!!!

I thought Sutton did a very poor job in his last two games. In the Dragons/Rabbitohs game, he made an extraordinarily bad call to penalise McInnes for the fact that Cameron Murray was obstructing the ruck. Of course the Billy Slater tackle should have resulted in (at least) a sin bin.

Two big finals; two awful decisions. I sincerely hope I am wrong but I honestly expect the GF to be decided by a Gerard Sutton special (or two).

Good summary of Barry’s argument ????

Barry don’t try to put lipstick on a pig. You are arguing for retrospective rule changes for the benefit of Billy Slater. Retrospective changes to laws are unconstitutional in America and very much frowned upon by Australian courts. There is a very good reason for that: any time a rule or law is changed with retrospective application, people (or players, or teams, or coaches) can’t possibly know which set of rules they needed to comply with. Both teams went out to play last night with shoulder charges as illegal conduct. Whether or not that should be the rule is beside the point. If you want to argue the rule should be changed, fine, but that change can’t come into effect to exonerate Billy without being unfair to all other teams.
Also don’t try to tell me we would be hearing such extraordinary proposals as retrospective rule changes if it wasn’t Billy Slater involved. I’m not buying what you’re selling.