Still rate NZ Brett? Or are the Aussies just suddenly outplaying themselves. Rankings do not reflect reality. Need a test league.

You know what? Kiwis get into these contests to a far greater extent than Australians, so why not send an Australia A team to compete against them and if they beat that team 70% of the time we might look at it

Who have NZ just been playing and on what wickets to have that many top ranking batsmen?

Test rankings are not a great metric for how good a test team is. 30 years past the time where a yearly test league should of been set up.

Cricket administration is awful. Bbl could be biggest sports league in Australia. Test League the biggest in the world…

Instead marquee tests being wasted on NZ ????, qualitively not even a good Australian state side.

Hi Jeff,

After stalking your comments because I have nothing better to do, hate to break it to you that your ancestral wherrit was not the first “white woman” in WA. In the early days, AANSW as it later became known made treks over the blue mountains, discovered gold and sent it via what would later be part of the WA landmass to the Dutch East Indies to trade it before Wentworth crossed the Blue Mountains. There were comfort women on board the ship. Just informing you that your ancestry is historically irrelevant.

Who even thinks in terms of being the first “white woman” anyway. Aborigines here for scores of millenia, disrespectful to them. Think you ought to be banned.

Hi Micko, still not in the same league as a full strength NSW team of the 90s. Should not be marquee tests. CA can flog this series all they want.

Wayne Holdsworth would have been the greatest NZ test player of all time. Very fast bowler. Many Australian players that never played tests or only a few from Mathew Elliot to Peter McIntyre would have been NZ all time greats.
Very unfair that NZ have a test team. Market too small for test cricket, quality too poor!

Who under 30 even remembers Randwick? What do people in the eastern suburbs even watch? They dont watch the roosters… perfect niche for a club like Randwick to creep into.

Why would there be any rivalry with NZ at test cricket? They have always been second rate, the only contest is when Australia have also been second rate.

WA probably have a stronger team than them, QLD definitely do. The shame is that more Australian players do not have the opportunity to become pro players because of the quirks of geoppolitical history that gave NZ nationhood and hence test status.

Arguably NZ and Zimbabwe should be kicked out of tests, with NZ players getting the opportunity to play for Australia (not many of them would).

It is sad that we cannot get genuine test nations down here to play this summer.

So true. Castle is clearly the best administrator, and the issues she is dealing with are unprecedented and entirely unpredictable.

Hopefully better than the last 10 years.
Hopefully bring back stalwart clubs with big names into the professional fold including Randwick, Gorton, Wahroonga Rats. All clubs that could draw crowds on a week to week basis not out of place in the French competition or the English competition.
Can it get out of the GPS bubble it has been in since 1908?
Now the international game is coming to bale it out, this might be a contingency strategy.

“Is there room for two more teams to join the NRL, or is relocation of existing Sydney teams the answer?”

More teams mean more t.v. content, even if it is only pay t.v., means a free to air broadcast on Saturday for the first time since the 90s. Second Brisbane team and either a Perth team or 2nd NZ team depending on what is the better prospect. No relocation, relocate the Gold Coast or Canberra if you are going to do that. The only Sydney team worth relocating is Easts, which despite being the club of the decade, still have no fans.

With the big stadium experiment, it is simple, just have the marquee Sydney games of the week at the sfs on a Saturday and at Homebush on a Sunday, otherwise play suburban. If people know there is a good football game to go to before a night out in the city, a lot of random people would just go.

“How does player movement need to change going forward?”

Need to stop penalising clubs that have junior leagues that produce good players or produce them themselves. Salary Cap incentives to keep those players that grew in their league or were developed by a specific club.

No comparison.

Yasmin is a foreigner who has no intention of integrating into Australia(as evidenced by the fact that she cannot be bothered Anglicising her name). Her opinions were to link something completely irrelevant, economic refugees and what is done to deter them for sound reasons, with persons who literally performed blood sacrifice for the existence of our nation(however nuanced the causation might appear to be), as though the aforementioned plight of a handful of economic refugees was superior to focus on, on Anzac Day, than to remembrance of people who by their hundreds of thousands were willing to sacrifice their lives for Australia. Yasmin was someone paid for opinions to produce content by the ABC, and as a role model for moslems by the government. Her actions were interpreted as being from a foreign body to Australians, and to the interest of a foreign body other than Australians, at the expense of the Australian taxpayer. That is treason, which has a questionable relationship with free speech. Nor does it mean that just because she has the right to free political discourse, she ought not to be judged for what she said on the basis of her capacity to fulfill her job as a “personality-female working moslem role model-professional pest” at the taxpayer’s expense.

Folau is actually an Australian. Folau’s comments were the regurgitation of millenia old Christian dogma. They are a part of a belief structure that he personally did not create. Secondly, and more importantly, none of it was relevant to his job which was to hit holes on a football field.

So can people stop mentioning Yassmin in the free speech debate, she was judged based on what she said, which was arguably treasonous, but not prevented from saying it. Her opinions were a relevant part of her job. Neither of which applies to Folau. Folau is a footballer who believes God condemns persons that commit gay acts unless they repent. Not a position of scientific enquiry, just a matter of belief… Folau plays football for a living based on his ability, was not someone who gained his position like Yassmin on the basis of her race and religion(when there are many better commentators in Australia, just not ones relevant to persons trying to push feminism in Islam), but by a genuine meritocracy.

“And to blame Castle for not arresting 15 years of mismanagement in 18 months while she was dealing with a man child and a parasite, is absurd.”

So true, R.A. is in a better position than it was when she took over. International Rugby has decided it is going to bail the ARU out by giving it preferential treatment. Hence why Rennie was “encouraged” to coach the Wallabies and why France is touring Australia instead of NZ in 2021. Also why there is talk of taking a rugby world cup back to Australia. This is the Castle strategy, be so poor a performer in a traditional market for an organisation, that the rest of the organisation is prepared to divert resources to the performance of your market. She is brilliant.

“Folau is gone for the cost of insurance excess. Doesn’t matter what you think it looks like, the sponsors are happy and it was cheap. That’s a win every day of the week.”

1) Sign a player to a multi-million dollar contract.

2) Pay it out to him not to play.

#winningraelenecastle

“This has to be satire. Or some bizarre response to Rhys Bosley’s well articulated piece.”

Yes, agree, the authour’s tone of writing is sciolism to the comprehension of what a CEO does and reminds me of the rancidity of the skank of the residue of a dead kangaroo’s un defecated remains.

“Not sure how a CEO can get anything meaningful done when folau did what he did and cheika acted like a petulant child when his boss tried to minimise the damage he was doing.”

1) Yeah totally Folau’s fault. Who would of thought that there were sincere Christians in Australia and a Rugby Australia CEO ought be able to ameliorate their organisation to this reality like it already had been since it was founded? How dare Folau! Especially after she re-signed him to a multi million dollar contract. How could Castle be expected to get anything meaningful done?

2) How could it be Raelene Castle’s fault that she backed Cheika to take Australia to the World Cup by not dismissing him, and than did not back up whatever he thought was the best approach to winning the cup? Imagine that, a coach determining the psychology of the team that he wants to compete… Surely something that a CEO should white ant without getting rid of him and than blame him for the result.

AFL might take off if you market it as a free, funner form of cardio to types that like running half marathons. But otherwise, we don’t like Victorians telling us what is Australian and what is football, when many of us had ancestors here probably playing disorganised types of football well before Hume and Hovell (the forgotten man) ever made the journey south.
Why are all these AFL guys on this thread anyway?
And what is this “pincer” nonsense? It happened already in the mid 90s to early 2000s and it ended up being Stalingrad? Alright I cannot believe I am humouring stupid analogies. The ARU will be lucky to make 15% on t.v. rights a year that the NRL makes, currently they are being offered a little over 5% from foxtel. Their quality of football is also questionable given that Folau did not really stand out in the Maroons backline, and he was the best player in Wallabies backline for years. Rugby Union is in a lot of trouble at the moment in Australia because it has been poorly administered since O’Neill left, and before he came back. The only thing that is working for them atm is shute shield, which noone on my side of Sydney has even noticed the renaissance of.

“perhaps has more geo political/influence than anything is the Chinese govt sponsoring an upcoming intl 9’s RL tournament in Samoa.”

Hi, 9’s is a waste of time for anything other than a great way to get cardio fitness. Much better than just going on a run. Do not understand why they promote it at all.

Very, very concerning about the Chinese government being involved with anything to do with rugby league. It is also very odd, because Union is obviously the establishment sport in the Pacific Islands, notwithstanding that their league international teams are probably better than the union international teams now. Dislike that the Chinese government can think they go anywhere near the Pacific, it is obviously our sphere. They probably get away with it by saying that it is just about the Taiwan being a nation thing, but it is not. They will want naval bases there long term and probably the capacity to exploit resources on the barely geologically surveyed South Pacific ocean. They are insidious and it has been tolerated for two generations.

Hi, not until Castle resigns. Had a closer look at the guys who have revived the Shute Shield. They should be running the ARU. Doubt this ever would have happened under their watch.

Hey, employers cannot use contracts to smother poltical discourse, otherwise employers would use it to smother labor. The people’s right to choose their representatives is enshrined in the constitution, and pertaining to that is the right for free political discourse and free speech. That trumps any contract law.

Hi Cathar, I am not an expert on any of these things, thanks for informing me. I think Indian Australians and Chinese Australians in NSW and QLD are the big 2 groups to focus on from a market perspective. 1.7 million Chinese Australians and counting and the Indian Australian population is only going to get bigger if the long term geopolitical strategy of Australia is to ally with India, as it has been since before September 11th. Look if Waleed Aly can get a spot on prime time t.v. because he is deemed to be a role model to discourage terrorism, the NRL should look very closely at ways to engage Chinese Australians that might otherwise be part of a pro-China faction. It makes a lot of sense from a market perspective too. Chinese Australians will probably be the wealthiest segment of the population soon. Obviously there are people in Australia from all parts these days, and it is great to engage them, but there are so many people in China and India.

I was down at local A Grade footy last year for a Sydney club watching a night game, and I looked around last year and noticed it was almost all Anglo-Celtic or Islander. I only realised this because there was an East Asian man there and I realised that I could not remember having ever seen a north East Asian person at anything to do with social football ever.. This is despite the fact that Hurstville, only 10 minutes on the train away, is a little China town. Not good.

Yeah look it was ridiculous what happened to Folau for posting what is mainstream Christian belief. Part of me wonders if it was about getting the remains of his contract paid without having to play, which is what Georgina Robinson reported top lawyers think he got from the ARU.

“Not your employer’s business if I am a prominent employee who can affect the brand image in a significant way?”

1) 100%. If it not relevant to his job, which was running through holes, not the employer’s business. If Chabani employs mostly immigrants, and this negatively affects their “brand image” in some American states, you are saying that they can arbitrarily sack their workforce. Or far more dangerously, you are arguing that union members can arbitrarily be sacked if having a unionised workforce is deemed by the boss to negatively affect the brand image. What you are suggesting is that phrase from Doctor Zhivago that the political commissar makes about being judged politically after the civil war is over. Toxic stuff inappropriate in a liberal society.

2) I remember after Charlottesville, persons participating in the rally were stalked, and fast food restaurant employees lost their job based on it. Culture of doxxing is toxic for those that partake in it. The thing to remember about major companies is that they will always do what they can get away with, whether it was Carnegie or Bill Gates, and America, from where much of this culture is franchised, is now only 60% European and no longer has a WASP majority of Brits and uitlanders. They have to sell their products to non Europeans in the domestic market. The reality is that if you are willing to pay $10 extra for a product for it to be made less efficiently but in a manner which is politically appropriate for you personally, that is your business.

Not improbable if God was programmed into the simulation for whatever reason.

TBH the gods in the epic of gilgamesh that perform the inundation kind of sound like a bunch of gamers.

“So maybe God’s word gets a little update now and then depending on the times you live in. ”

It got updated by Jesus and I think that is it, my man. He was supposed to be the son of God. Not a regular hombre evaluating what is appropriate for their contemporaneous zeitgeist. You either believe it or you don’t.

Personally I always liked the letters of St Augustine:

“these idols, though devoid both of feeling and of life, do, by the mere image of the members and senses of beings endowed with life, so affect weak minds, that they appear to live and breathe, especially under the added influence of the profound veneration with which the multitude freely renders such costly service.”

“In truth however, I believe that perhaps you do not value these sacred rites any more than we do, but only take from them some unaccountable pleasure in your time of passing through this world:”

What you are really advocating ruckin oaf seems to be paganism?