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Joined October 2009
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Steve Mascord has covered rugby league in 15 countries and worked for most media organisations that regularly feature the sport, on both sides of the globe. He started off as an 18-year-old cadet at Australian Associated Press, transferring to the Sydney Morning Herald just in time to go on the last full Kangaroos Tour in 1994. He spent three years at Sydney's Daily Telegraph from 2006 before going freelance at the conclusion of the 2008 World Cup. Steve is the author of the book Touchstones, host of the White Line Fever podcast, partner in international rugby league merchandise start-up Mascord Brownz and proprietor of rugbyleaguehub.com and hotmetalonline.com. He is married to Sarah and spends most of his time in London.
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“I said to them that if they were keeping a particular player, it was either him or me. They said ‘we invested in him…
Is this first grand final in Brisbane, or the second? Is Wayne Bennett shooting for his eighth premiership or his seventh? On Monday, my…
So the Wests Tigers are holding onto Michael Maguire. I’m pleased with that. Coaches are convenient scapegoats and on most of the occasions they…
I don’t know about you but I’m pleased to see the rugby league grand final going back to Brisbane after 24 years. I can…
IF these days it’s all about engagement – I’ve been reading today about the 'outrage economy' – then without a doubt my most successful…
After losing a sudden-death finals series match to Cronulla on a seventh tackle try in 2013, North Queensland coach Neil Henry and captain Johnathan…
As the NRL considers three applications to be the 17th team, I’ve been given cause to contemplate the ‘rise of the club’ in our…
In the wake of reports Jack de Belin was in line to be St George Illawarra’s captain this week, it’s fair to say there…
As I near the end of the writing of my book Two Tribes, about the divided 1997 season, my tiny keyhole view into the…
Transfer gossip - the blood that carries the oxygen to the heart of modern professional sports coverage - bores me to to tears. I…
You’re expecting a rant, I know. When the news broke that Australia and New Zealand had withdrawn from the World Cup, Rugby Football League…
THE rugby league we are left with when Covid is finished with us won’t be the same as the one we had in February…
The last time I was in bed and could hear people celebrating a sporting victory in the street, it was September 24, 1993. That…
The idea that ‘rugby league is dying’ has been rightly ridiculed in recent days as a baseless trope - and yet watching Melbourne excoriate…
It's traditional of this column to start each year with a state of the league address and since this will be the final piece…
Doing an interview the other day, I kind of stumbled across a question that strikes at the heart of what we like about our…
Let's talk about scrutiny in professional sports. Generally speaking, players, coaches and administrators would rather live without it. Fans like scrutiny as long as…
Should Catalans Dragons have signed Israel Folau? Should they have been allowed to sign Israel Folau? This is the water cooler discussion on both…
“Living in England,” the Screaming Jets assured us back in 1992, “I don’t have to act like I’m having fun”. Strangely, the most English…
Is it just me, or are the NRL Nines and All Stars games sneaking up on us quickly and - more worryingly - rather…
mascordbrownz.com.au . We will restock before the weekend.
Why rugby league has got the Great Britain Lions all wrong
Great post Papi but I care about what I care about. At 50 I’m not going to start caring about something because I am told to. I cheer rugby league against other sports the way you cheer Souths. That’s my passion.
What rugby league really means to us
No. I like the actual thing of music infinitely more than I like the actual thing of rugby league. There’s light years between them in that regard. If I could get more paid work in music right now, I suspect I’d drop this caper completely. But there was a fork in the road 30 years ago and I took the one marked “rugby league”…
What rugby league really means to us
What a lovely post. It’s not hard for a comment at the bottom of a story of mine to outshine the story – happens all the time – but this is one of my favourite examples.
What rugby league really means to us
It’s just a game mate, something to do and talk to people about. A way to fill in time before you’re filling in a grave. Winning, losing, right decision, wrong decision … what does it really matter? If it doesn’t help you enjoy life, walk away! It won’t miss you if you don’t miss it!
What rugby league really means to us
Salford rarely get more than 5000 and on a Thursday night against another poor drawing team from the other side of the Pennines – with an accident on the M62 – I was stunned there were that many there.
Huddersfield hooker 'out cold' after tackle attempt gone wrong
The Roar are free to publish or not publish the column and set any parameters they wish. I’m free to submit a column on any topic that crosses my mind. If I’m bored writing about football, I’ll write something like this.
The thing no one wants to say about Israel Folau
I’ve got no responsibility to treat these issues proportionately. I am not an NRL or rugby league roundsman anymore. I no longer have the platform to do this even if I had the inclination. I write one column a week on The Roar. It works like this: “er, what can I write about?” I even ask Twitter most weeks. If I’ve not go a new idea I go back back to a thought I had before and did not write about. That’s what happened here. I don’t HAVE to write about anything and equally there is no obligation NOT to write about anything. The privileges of poverty.
The thing no one wants to say about Israel Folau
Pay this guy my pocket money this week. My column should be a comment under this, not the other way around.
The thing no one wants to say about Israel Folau
Yes mate it’s on Sky and people in the north have parties. I am going to Belushi’s in Camden tomorrow for a watch party but will be all Aussies. It is very, very big in the league community but the general public are completely oblivious to it – they’re oblivious to rugby league generally. It doesn’t transcend the sport.
Making trouble? It's a tough job, but...
now I’ve no desire to go too far down this rabbit hole but in the case of lots of prejudice and bigotry, it’s important to consider the concept of historical debt. Women can objectify men openly whereas the reverse is less and less true because men have always done it. Black Americans can use the ‘N’ word amongst themselves but whites can’t use it at all because they’ve always been the oppressors repressed. Who is doing it is at least as important as what is being done. One of the underpinning principles of the so-called PC world is the fact that we have to repay the debts of our forebears. I am completely OK with that. It DOES NOT go both ways. We have to accept it. I think it’s quite fair.
Making trouble? It's a tough job, but...
Please. I’m SOUTHERN English. I live in London.
Now that we're thinking outside the square a little...
And I say do it – even if it’s wrong in a wider context – and pay for doing the wrong thing because it’s right for this sport, right now.
The money the NRL makes from its behaviour crackdown will easily finance the lawsuits
Next World Cup is government funded and has placing itself at arm’s length from the domestic game. It’s much much better funded, if you look at it per-game, than even the NRL. The World Cup wants to transcend rugby league in Britain, not be a reflection of it.
How many rugby league clubs can fill a stadium with just their own fans?
At Mascord Brownz if a big game doesn’t have a program, we offer to do one – for free. The body running the game can post them on any website they like as an eprogram but then we print them and sell them because English fans love, as they spell them, programmes! If the host organisation wants to print them up, they pay and we profit split.
Those who try to revive rugby league's neglected icons deserve congratulations, not criticism
He doesn’t own them anymore.
Super League's new administration raises its head above the parapet
Imagine that Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Hobart and Brisbane don’t exist. There’s just Sydney. The AFL would even taken a big final to Sydney every year! Wembley is a tradition that goes back to 1928. Three generations of families have made the trek once a year – it’s unofficial Northerners Day in the capital, for 90 years with a few breaks! It’s almost an assertion that the country belongs to them as much as it does to southerners and they have as much right to the capital’s facilities as the people with the posh accents do. So that’s why they persist! But changes in media, pop culture, rugby league’s structure and popularity and many other things have left it in danger…
English rugby league grapples at Wembley with the impact of expansion
People watch Lacrosse and ten pin bowling in America. You think it has to be massive to “work”. We don’t want or need to be any bigger than, say, Major League Eating. Or Dodgeball. Rugby league’s ambition in America should be to be tiny. That would still be enough to poach players away from the NRL.
English rugby league grapples at Wembley with the impact of expansion
Yes, I was part of a group of journalists who spoke to Jason Moore straight after the game. Absolutely keen to continue and even add teams next year.
Singapore mud slinging shows rugby league's international imbalance
I am, in fact, extremely lame so yes – you’re right!
Are Super League really going to refuse entry to Toronto?
They’re talking about the owner, not the former CEO who is still a shareholder.
Are Super League really going to refuse entry to Toronto?
When a Premier League player represents his country during a Fifa window, do premier league clubs have a say in who is paying for the hire of the stadium or what the TV deal is? No. Releasing a player for international duty is a requirement of being a club in an international sport.
Rugby league is snubbing the entrepreneurs and chancers who created it
Yes! You got me!
Should eligibility for the World Club Championship be based on nationality?