Perhaps Slane. I’m still struggling with the notion that somewhere in this wonderful country, there exists a place so small as to regard a particular code of football, in a country where four are played professionally, as “an essential part of being Australian”. As opposed, say, to a really prominent part of the life of someone from that part of Australia. For added laughs, ‘many people’ in NSW and Qld – home to over half of the population of the country in question – ‘don’t really comprehend’ it.

You guys have a great game – and by extension Australia does. I’m not an AFL fan but I think its great we have an out and out domestic footy code. The fact that I prefer a variety that has a domestic scene and a bit of an international flavour in RL is an accident of birth and geography and nothing more profound. Of Why you need to go around cloaking yourself in this nonsense about how profound and indigenous and meaningful it all is, I will never fully understand. But it is endlessly amusing, and revealing.

“An essential part of being Australian, as much as speaking with an Australian accent or observing ANZAC day”

This is the biggest lol of a laughable thread

Did it ever occur to you that the part of the cultural fabric you are referring to wasn’t the sport itself, but the things it represented, the values it instilled and reflected, place it occupied in your community? This very phenomenon you describe – feeling like following your particular sport is some kind of essential or defining component of your local culture – happens the world over with a huge variety of other sports. Including in Australia with rugby league, rugby union, and other sports. It is just preposterous to pretend that AFL occupies some sort of higher plane in that regard – and symptomatic of a pretty blinkered and insular view of the sporting world.

Funny Lazza, because I’ve always found that I can chat to people across the globe about the common experience of passionately supporting a team or club or sport, even if the sports themselves are different.

I’d say that the ability to do so is what makes you “really a sports fan”, but that might come across all judgey

Slane

“Mate, you’ve picked one line I’ve said and taken it out of context to make an argument against something I’m not even saying. I never said it was the reason we love the sport in the first place.”

That wasn’t my intention, but you have to admit that “We love the sport BECAUSE it’s our indigenous code” seemed pretty clear cut.

Truth is we are all just reverse engineering reasons for liking the sport we happen to like. Which is why the code wars get a bit sad after a while.

“We love the sport BECAUSE it’s our indigenous code”

No you don’t slane. You love it because you grew up with it and the people around you also love it (these are perfectly good reasons). Same reason many people love rugby league or rugby union in NSW, or love soccer in Brazil, or any other major sport anywhere else. The fact that it is indigenous has precious little to do with anything. It might get you all warm and fuzzy telling yourself stories about how superior your fandom is because the game you follow happens to have originated in Australia, but let’s not confuse that with why you follow the game in the first place.

Lawrence is struggling in part because as of 2012 the Tiger’s left side attack has been a complete disaster, with Marshall gradually losing the plot and the loss of Dwyer and Ellis. Watch Lawrence’s career highlights – there are some moments of individual brilliance, but a lot more examples of him running excellent lines outside excellent ballplayers and using a combination of his pace and hard running to get over the line. The fact that has disappeared over the last few years I think has much more to do with the fact that the Tigers attack has been generally horrible than Lawrence’s injury or form (although both of these have clearly also been factors). He is an excellent target for ballplayers and a finisher – and there has been very little to finish for several years.

He is clearly struggling at the moment (although the last couple of rounds have been better) and his hands and front on defence have always been capable of letting him down.

But he is a local junior and arguably the most whole hearted player at the club. We have converted him into a battering ram and he has not shirked it, during a period at the club where just about everyone else has at times. The Tigers should stick it out and give him time to come good. That might happen at centre, but will rely on the team coming good around him. If he heads into the pack at least he’ll have a bit more control over his own form and future.

I’m not sure that the differences are that superficial Carl.

Where were the suburban grounds in Melbourne located pre stadium consolidation, relative to the MCG/Docklands?

In Sydney the teams have spread over time in successive waves of expansion to cover growing areas on the city’s outskirts, or outposts that become connected to the main metro areas. Canterbury in the 1930s, Parra and Manly in the 1940s, Cronulla and Penrith in the 1960s.

As a result you have a number of teams whose supporters are based primarily in areas that are 20/30/40km from the nearest likely ”central” stadium – and that is without factoring in hopeless or non existent public transport. The differences with the situation for AFL in Melbourne are not superficial. We’re not talking about travelling an extra 10, 20 or 30 minutes. Try an hour plus, particularly on public transport.

This is obviously less of an issue for the old inner city teams whose supporters have spread out geographically and generationally – its no coincidence that the Rabbits, Dogs and to a lesser extent the Tigers have been more inclined to take up the major stadium option.

There is no point mandating competitive scrums – even if there was a way to enforce it, who wants twenty scrum resets / penalties a game a la rugby union?

But what they can do, easily, is enforce the basic laws around scrimmaging (players actually binding, not breaking early, feeding the ball somewhere in front of the lock) so that teams that want to use the scrum as an attacking opportunity, or are willing to push to contest the ball every now and then, are not disadvantaged.

At the moment scrums are basically a glorified tap restart with six opposition players standing offside, which helps nobody.

While I’m pontificating, here’s my nomination for number 11: penalise players breaking early from scrums. Uncontested scrums (Warriors notwithstanding) are marginal enough as it is, without having to see locks and second rowers breaking as the ball is fed to stop any prospect of the scrum being a genuine attacking opportunity. Penalise it and give the set piece plays a chance!

I agree, which is why I don’t think it is really a “common sense” issue, although it is certainly a good one to raise.

The live crosses to bookies and commentators quoting odds, etc, are arguably more of an issue for Ch 9 than the NRL. We saw this last year with the future about Waterhouse on the Ch 9 panel post games. Obviously the NRL has a stake, so to speak. Trying to weigh any harm to the image of the game, or harm from infuriating people who don’t want odds shoved down their throat every five minutes, with the extra cash that Ch 9 is presumably willing to pay for the opportunity to give airtime to the bookies, would be very tricky even empirically, let alone trying to factor in any broader damage from gambling socially..

The NRL and 9 have stepped back a bit since last year which is probably the right response.

Personally I think the bigger issue in the gambling space is pokie money. We can quantify that money directly and we know that given the broader social damage, taking the cash from the licensed clubs borders on unconscionable. There is no easy out given how reliant some of the clubs still are on this revenue, but part of it is increasing the NRL grants to clubs – which has been done in large part due to the increased money the NRL is able to get from Ch 9 selling airtime to, amongst other people, bookies. Swings and roundabouts..

Ryan

Just on number 1. Presumably for consistency you’d extend that to grants from licensed clubs, and be reluctant about accepting whatever component of the TV rights deals is premised on Ch 9 et al accepting advertising from the big gambling houses.

Either way, we’re probably talking tens of millions of dollars a year here. Any notion of what the other revenue streams that might make up this shortfall are?

You’d want to be pretty sure that the alleged costs associated with gambling-related revenue are extremely high before turning your back on that amount of cash. Human costs of pokie revenue I will grant you, but that’s an issue that goes far beyond the NRL.

Hope you enjoyed the game Richard.

Certainly a few reasons to be optimistic after last night. On the other hand, the key difference between the two teams was same old same old. Two ridiculous plays – Rangi’s kick in the first half, and Ben Westwood’s fourth soft penalty in the second – led directly to the two tries that were the difference in the end.

Apart from that though England were right in it, despite some shocking calls against them and missing their two best available forwards (not to mention Burgess) for the whole second half.

I thought the pack was really solid, Roby had one of his better international games, Reed and Hall really good out wide and Tomkins just outstanding.

I think Sinfield show it all last night.

On one hand he kicked well early and provided that great pass for Ryan Hall’s first try (speaking of which, how good was Hall’s finishing?).

But later in the first half on the left he absolutely murdered a chance ith a forward pass. And a couple of times he was too busy shouting instructions when a play was still going to react in time to an offload, which led to turnovers. As far as safe picks go, he isn’t that safe.

They were brave last night though, everything went against them in the second half – decisions, luck, injury – but they stuck tough and showe enough to put a fright through the Aussies. Trick now will be backing that up against NZ.

I can understand that sentiment Rodney, it is certainly hard to front up again and again to support a raging hot favourite in the Kangaroos – I suspect plenty of Aussie fans would be happy enough to see England get up if it meant some good football. For a game or two anyway.

As for the Aussie rugby league fans who don’t respect / couldn’t give a stuff about the international side of things – well, their loss. I don’t care how bad England are going – in our game it doesn’t get much bigger or better than the Kangaroos at Wembley. If you can’t get excited about that you aren’t trying.

It has definitely been a rough decade for hardcore fans of the national team but I don’t think it is all doom and gloom for England looking forward. They do have to break this depressing habit of making the same mistakes over and over though – something that is harder than it sounds when your player pool is already limited (given how big soccer is in the UK), and when some of the best young guys are in union.

Part two will be slightly more optimistic! Should be up here tomorrow, or check for it at http://www.footyfootyfooty.com

Except that it is a record.

From the article above “Taking a rough stab, 1.1 million viewers in Sydney, 850 thousand in Brisbane and 300 thousand in Melbourne seems to be a reasonably conservative ‘par’ for Game III.”

That was bang on for Sydney and around 50K under in Brisbane, Melbourne. Record capital city and national ratings overall – a good result for a game that looked well and truly over after 30 minutes.

“…Why would any Kiwi be interetsted in a game between NSW and QLD?? Sure, there’s a bit of interest…”

Contradicting yourself in adjacent sentences doesn’t exactly bolster the credbility of your argument Rigster.

Plenty of Kiwis will be watching SOO. And when the ARL eventually figures out a way to get around TV scheduling / timezone difficulties even more will watch when they get around to actually playing a SOO match in NZ (a la previous games in Melbourne).

The two (ratings and participation) aren’t necessarily independent Bondy.

As far as gaiining some (albeit limited) RL traction in Melbourne, State of Origin has been an important product for the NRL/ARL. ALong with Kangaroos test matches the rating for these games have been decent down there (full breakdown of Melbourne Origin ratings for the last 8 years is available here: http://www.footyfootyfooty.com/2011/06/origin-3-record-tv-ratings-on-way.html)

Combine that with big numbers for recent grand finals featuring the Storm and you have more of a chance of generating some decent growth in RL (including participation) down south.

Depends what you mean by ‘livened up’ Luke.

It gives the journos a few “Reece SImmons” type stories to warm their (and our) collective cockles, and artificially compresses the competition ladder by unfairly disadvantaging the best teams.

On the other hand it attracts lower crowds, lower TV audiences and less interest.

There were a few close games this weekend but the high quality matches have been few and far between again this rep season.

Chill, Gil.

This is at least as well written and amusing as most of the light pieces written in the print media these days (although admittedly that is setting the bar pretty low). Unlike most of the joke news in the papers, at least this is actually…a joke.

Although personally I think the explanation has more to do with fruitloopery than malfeasance: http://www.footyfootyfooty.com/2011/06/ricky-stuart-fruitloop-ometer-origin.html

Was this rumour even spread through “social media”?

From what I’ve read it was just another half-baked rumour kicking around the traps with the gossip journos like Weidler and Rothfield. They win either way – either they “report” it as a rumour without names, or they “report” about the rumour’s existence. Either way it seems to be the same old story of dodgy information in traditional media sources, not something taking off like wildfire on Twitter.

Professional sporting clubs should ban their players and staff from giving stories to gossip journalists who are more than happy to give these sorts of rumours more credence than they deserve.

Scott,

The only guy who rivals RIcky Stuart in terms of getting a free pass in the media is Tim Sheens. And for all Sheens’ struggles at the selection table at club level, at least he gets his teams playing decent attractive footy every now and then.

Stuart has been the same story everywhere he coaches. In his own words he just tries to “squeeze all of the juice out of the lemon” (we did a piece on him on this issue after his departure from Cronulla last year: http://www.footyfootyfooty.com/2010/07/ricky-stuart-fruitloop-ometer-lemon.html).

At every level he picks and favours players who he thinks he’ll be able to build a culture for, to squeeze the most out of. He’s openly noted that he doesn’t believe in simply picking the best players when it comes to Origin. But usually it just doesn’t work, particularly over an extended period of time with the same players (as at Cronulla). Even at Origin level, you might be able to get away with getting blokes really fired up for 3 games every year, but if you are leaving out more talented players like Hayne, Farah etc you are well behind the curve before a ball is even kicked.

Cheers Scott.

On Cronk, he’s pretty versatile as far as halfbacks go. I think he’s been good for Queensland in recent series, and he can cover most backline positions in a pinch.

Gillett might be a better option – he’s still got another few weeks on the sidelines though doesn’t he? And T’eo looks to have re-injured his arm tonight.

The composition of the bench is interesting. Quite apart from issues of who you would prefer at starting hooker (Farah any day of the week for me), I can’t believe NSW picked both Dean Young and Mick Ennis for Game One. Despite the predictable praise of Ennis from the Ch 9 guys I don’t think he changed the game that much for NSW when he came on, despite the Queensland forwards obviously tiring. Compare Gidley carving the Maroons up around the ruck in Game Three last year. The Blues just didn’t try it this time around. Maybe with Gidley back for Game Two they’ll take another look.

Equivalent write up for NSW here if anyone is interested: http://www.footyfootyfooty.com/2011/05/origin-one-nsw-stats-that-matter.html

For mine this Test was far less entertaining than most others which have gone before it in recent times – all of which would have had more penalties. See last year’s Four Nationa final for starters.

The unnecessary piggy back penalties you sometimes see in the NRL are frustrating, but so is a game destroyed by the referees refusal to police the ten or the ruck. We saw the results last night – a pretty flat game from both teams. I’d prefer Silverwood’s approach last night to an NRL style blitz – it is a Test match after all, they’re meant to be tougher to crack – but there is a happy medium, and last night he didn’t hit it.

Agree with you there JohnB. Obviously there was a pretty signifiant element of off-field rivalry between the codes factoring into the Sailor/Rogers/Tuqiri swtiches. And while they largely delivered what the ARU wanted (headlines) they might have got more value elsewhere. Every NRL team would have at least one or two decent club level players or young guys with potential who aren’t on massive dough who could make a go of union. Schifcofske and McLinden are great examples, and you could probably add Chambers and Vuna (and Ryan Cross, for that matter).