When Turbo got injured, every person watching the game with us predicted either Yeo or Murray to move to the centres. Martin can replace either of them while having two hookers still in the mix. He picks players on the bench that he has no plan for.

He needs to go. The tigers prop brought nothing, no aggression and less minutes, there was no point of him being there at all. And Moses and Luai play alike. would have been better if Reynolds was thereabouts with his cool head. RCG would have been a good prop, aggressive both in defense and attack, would have been a great replacement for Haas.

But even so…Reynolds and Walker have been tried and both have had nil impact at all on a team they were supposed to take control of nonetheless. What’s wrong with trying a new look? The Rabbitohs duo are going well but have you forgotten either or both of them have failed to put up a challenge against the top two teams as well? And got embarrassed at that?

So according to you and your love for stats shouldn’t that give an indication that Moses has done much better given Eels haven’t conceded 50 points yet?

Eels have lost 4 times and Rabbits 3 times but the points difference for Rabbits is lower than that of Eels and even lesser than Eagles. And Eagles have lost 6 times.

It’s surprising how you state over and over again Moses haven’t had any impact on any major games yet the ones you are rooting for have been embarrassed by the two top teams already.

A humble pie when Eels win a premiership? Mate you got very high expectations for a player you hate so much. How’s your team going with the premiership race thus far? I hope you do not have that high bar for your young players too?

Although, Moses might not be a selection everyone expected. Have you all forgotten that the next selections, especially of the Rabbitohs duo have already been tried and failed?

This is a dead rubber, maybe Fittler wants to see how Moses goes at SOO rather than see two old halves who were given their chances before with nothing to show for it.

Maybe he does well or maybe he does not but who gives a crap. At least if he doesn’t Fittler will know now that if Cleary or Luai are injured in the future then Moses is not the right replacement. He can then go back to Pearce/Reynolds/Walker who we know already aren’t great at SOO level.

Yes maybe but he hasn’t done anything yet on SOO level to be considered a “blow” on the selections.

It’s not like he was the one who won them the SOO last year that he all of a sudden is the missing piece to why Blues won.

AJ should have more claim as the custodian over Holmes and Ponga.

Yes awards…many players have won them as well and not all of them are great at SOO. His tries and goals jeez there a lot of players that have similar or better stats than that.

He is just a flashy player in patches and I don’t think he has proven to anyone yet that he is a key player to win games. Once he is figured out, that’s it, his gone.

All I’m saying is, he ain’t no “blow” for QLD. AJ Brimson did a good job for QLD but still isn’t considered because I don’t know why…perhaps he isn’t hyped as much?

Blake was awful defensively last year too. Niukore is not a flashy centre but he also doesn’t leak points pathetically like how Blake does.

The use of legs to hold of tries should be looked at. Kicking from the side of the attacker should be illegal but when the defender is right in front of the attacker and is attempting to place his foot under the ball to avoid it from touching the ground then this should be ok.
In the Olam’s try, the defender was attempting to place his leg under the ball but Olam placed the ball right on his legs dislodging it. The defender was virtually in front of him.

With the tackle and held call. There is no set rule that can control this. I mean, the refs call a “six again” randomly in line with what he feels the tempo of the game is at. He allows slowing of the ruck if the game is slow and gives a “six again” if the tempo of the game is fast and the ruck has been slowed down. There is no set time limit for players to adhere to. An example would be once a fullback catches the ball near his own try line, the tackler can be slow at getting up and play is allowed to continue but if this same thing is done and the attacking player is at the other try line the decision than comes down to just what the ref feels like.
If we have a set rule than it should be applied all over the park, at any time, always. To control this, my idea of the rule should be once ‘held’ is called the ref should give at least 3 seconds and perhaps an extra second if there are 2 or more tacklers. If the counting is up, blow the whistle, that’s it. This than gives the defender to at least have something to work with instead of bouncing off every player because he is afraid to concede a ‘six again’.

How is the Captain of the Year decided? I would have thought Gutho would have got that as well…

The thing is perhaps Wade wasn’t aware of the what the penalty was for. Besides isn’t it also stated that you can apply Captain’s Challenge when there is a stoppage? The whistle blew which meant it was a stoppage, Wade perhaps unaware of what the penalty was wanted to query it and challenge it.
I mean C.Smith had to request what the penalty (J.Bromwich offside of play) was for against the Eels before he requested for the Captains Challenge even after the allowable 10 seconds had lapsed after the whistle.
The players are on the field and especially the Captain is organizing his team constantly and while doing that the whistle blows and you expect him to just know what the call was for? He has the right to know what it was for in case he needs to apply the Challenge and I believe that was what Graham was doing.
The ref should have went with the six-again call. This would have been a fair call. Graham still is in his defensive line and Raiders getting a new set to attack.
The ref blows his whistle, indicating a stoppage but then states you can’t challenge a ruck infringement shows that the Captain Challenge and the Six-again rule needs a big fix.

Papenhuyzen, just like Slater play devastatingly well when Smith is around. There is no game I have seen of these two great players where there is no Smith and they single handed led a win for the Storm.

While I believe they have a team that may do well after Smith retires and Bellamy leaves, I would rather wait and see. Because I believe if Smith wasn’t around on Saturday, they wouldn’t have the leadership to have come back from that early deficit.

Of course it was an obvious decoy but Wighton can be seen attempting to tackle him and then falls away to milk the penalty because he realizes the ball didn’t go to that runner but the one at the back of him. He committed himself to tackle him. How can a straight hard running decoy be sure that his line will be on the outside or inside of a sliding defender and even though the rule is there, Wighton made the defensive choice to tackle him. It is evident by him raising his arm to try and stop the decoy runner.

I watched and thought the ref was being a little biased. It seemed as though in the second half everything was going for Canberra so as to ensure they have that last crack at finishing 4th on the ladder this week.

The obstruction rule needs to be cleared up. The Warriors try should have been a try. Outside shoulder, yes but everyone ignored the fact that Wighton went into that tackle by lifting his arm up. He actually was in the motion of tackling that decoy runner and wasn’t trying to avoid him to get to the other player.

This call and the high ball challenge all went the Raiders way when Warriors were in the Raiders red zone and both were wrongly adjudicated in my opinion.

So if Ricky is unhappy even though they won, he should be looking at the other calls that went his way that weren’t right either…

How can accidental occurrences be taken out if it is in fact an accident?

It is a contact sport, accidents are bound to happen. All the players know that head shots are illegal and most of what happens with players getting concussed are caused via accidents. If intentionally than for sure give them a hard penalty.

Million tackling techniques can be taught to avoid head contact but it is not straight forward because not all attacking players run at you the same way they do at training.

And if you want all head contacts (including the accidental ones) to be ruled out than what about those accidental occurrences were the tackler is actually concussed by an attacking player’s elbow, knee or hip bone, etc…? Does the attacking player need to be told to run differently too or be sent off?

Risks of this sport are well known. You are constantly colliding, you know that. Injuries are going to happen, you know that. Illegal hits are bound to happen, you know that, etc… We know rules are put in place to minimize risks but if you think there should be a perfect rule to be put in place to stamp all the head knocks out of this game, I’m sorry there is absolutely none.

The sin bin was fair because there was an obvious, although accidental, contact with the head.

I enjoyed the game but was a bit disappointed at the end of the first half were I thought the ref was giving away some 50/50 “6 agains” to try and bring Souths back into the game before the break.

And with that “non try” try. Why couldn’t the bunker just tell the ref it wasn’t a try? If they can overrule the line drop out call from the ref after the replays showed Souths touching it than I don’t see why they can do that for tries. Does these people need everything to be in black and white to rule on something so obvious as that?

In my opinion, either Grant or Mahoney should be the starting no. 9. Hunt is a great utility to have on the bench. Friend should just remain the player that couldn’t play Origin because of C.Smith instead of picking him for a game and dropping him again which I think is what’s going to happen.

Parra at least are having some consistency of winning games after a long while. Winning by 2 points or 20 points doesn’t matter for now, the key thing is they are working hard to get wins. Maybe after a couple of seasons of this kind of consistency they might be seen in the same light of a full strength Rooster or Storm but not yet for now. This team is at the right strength at the moment hopefully it can be consistent for a couple of seasons.

Besides, you only play what’s in front of you. And that was an injury hit Storm. If they had beaten the Eels people will be talking about Eels are hopeless and that Bellamy is the greatest coach but they win and the “ifs” and “maybes” come out.

It was a win against a top team whether injury list was long or not. What statement are you all after? I do not think any other team would have been able to score more than 20 against the Storm even at under strength.

All the Eels needed to do was to win. The last two weeks, they have played under wet weather which wasn’t pretty. It was hard for either teams to play in those conditions thus the low scores.

This expectation of a statement to be made against any NRL team is baseless. Storms didn’t make a “statement” against Warriors but nothing was said about it because they still won. Eels needed to improve their defense which went very well IMO. Their attack was good but so was the Storms defense. At least they showed signs of challenging and playing the whole 80 mins.

Storms are no doubt hit hard with injuries and so are the Roosters. If the under strength Roosters can still put on points against any team I don’t see why Storms would be using their injured list as an excuse that they couldn’t put any points on the board. This was, if any, the statement that the Eels made. Their improved defense keeping the Storm scoreless is no easy task.

Mary McGregor

Nicknames, I believe, for the most part is derived from the persons character and how uniquely he played. The nickname matched with this.

It’s hard to make nicknames for the players these days because all of them play almost identical. It’s hard to differentiate different players apart in the same role. The players with unique characters are forced to be in line with all the rules and the structures that it is hard to come up with the nicknames and we stick with initials and the adding of “y” to their last name.

The Roosters performance was very disappointing especially with all the errors and handing Storms great field possession every time.

While it’s not an excuse that Roosters have almost 3/4 of its first picks injured it should still remain as a reason of their current form. If Storm had lost, Storm supporters would be stating the absence of the Cams as a reason for the loss but they did well without them. Storm were missing just two players! The great forwards of this team were there and created a better platform for the halves and B. Smith to play off them. Roosters can have their first choice backs in place but without any platform for them, how can they play freely.

These two teams are great teams. But I want them to play each other at full strength again and when this happens the games are exciting to watch.

The resultant force (with the speed of the player running, the angle he is running, the angle the ball is released and the speed at it is thrown) results from all the velocities and angles and these will help us determine whether the “Laws of Physics” confirms the pass to be forward or not.

To know if the ball rightfully travelled forward due to Laws of Physics the angle of it being released from the hand is necessary to determine this.

Example: If you want to get across a fast flowing river about 10m wide in a dinghy and you want to get to exactly the same point opposite to where you are, you have to move at an angle backwards against the flow of the river. Otherwise if you go straight you’ll end up way past your desired point.

Therefore, say the player with the ball is running at 5m/s and he throws a pass straight across to a player at 10m/s who is 10m away from him. In one second the ball will travel 5m forward and is caught by the support player. Is this acceptable?

But say he initially passes the ball at 30 Degrees backwards. The result of this is the ball will end up being caught 10m perpendicular from whence the ball left the passers hand. In other words, it would be like a flat pass.

If he passes at less than 30 degrees backwards, the ball will travel increasingly forward to where the ball initially left the hands of the passer. At 20 Degrees backwards, the ball travels 1.38m forward and at 15 degrees backwards, the ball travels 2.41m forward until at a 0 degrees it becomes 5m forward.

Thus, I have stated the angle of the ball leaving the passer’s hands is important along with the velocity of the player and the released ball. You can’t try to enforce Law of Physics when the math is absent. And even in stating all the above, the variables I used are just some of them. A physics master will look at the shape of the ball, how it is thrown, wind conditions, etc…

So if you want to still apply “Laws of Physics” the basic accepted simple Math above can be used but then again it will require more variables and becomes more complicated.

Bunker will not waste time on trying to get all the algorithms for a system to determine all these and no way can a ref calculate this in real time so just drop this “Laws of Physics” argument. If the ref sees it as forward pass than it looks to have travelled forward from passer so let it be.

Is there any reason why Flanagan is not on the team? Injury? Dropped? Rested?

John, to determine how the ball behaves you need to know the angles and the velocities. Btw, a ball floating (rainbow pass) 5m in 1 second vs a ball shooting straight 5m in 1 second have the same speed but not the same velocity. The resultant force is never calculated using speed so your example is incorrect.

So if you want to know if the pass is forward or not you have to determine the velocity and at which angles it goes out to know whether scientifically it is a legit pass or otherwise. I say scientifically because people like saying “Laws of Physics” cannot be ignored here but Laws of Physics are proven mathematically and unless that can be proven, a referee judging by how it looks is good enough for me. Even Einstein needed to prove it by writing equations yet we expect the referee to calculate it while on the field.

It was a forward pass to Smith.

Walter, but using age as a factor is a great place to start because in general all human beings develop similarly at certain ages but then we do have exemptions. You buy children medicine and they have dosages with regard to age (and/or sometimes with weight). It helps to control something that may otherwise be fatal if not done right or the right advise not given.

In your experience, did the 13 year old get promoted to a higher grade because he looked like the 12th graders? Of course not because like you rightly stated his mental state wasn’t on the same level as the people who he looked like.

Isn’t this what the article is talking about. Sualii looks physically ready to be playing in the NRL but is he mentally ready though? Just like your example/experience, the physical nature not always reflects the mental nature of a being.

It is a Duty of Care to at least have an age limit of 18. If there maybe any exemptions then perhaps some form of evaluation must be done to the person such as psychological evaluations. It would be total ignorance and negligence if no limit is placed and everyone can come in as long as he has the right people to do it for him

You need the angles to determine the resultant force otherwise what variable do you use to determine the ball actually went forward or backwards from the hands first? In you example, you don’t know if the ball initially left the hands of the passer backwards or forwards or in a straight line.
Also, you need the velocity of the ball leaving the hand as well to know whether it travels the distance to the catcher quicker or slower. This helps determine the resultant force/distance in one second.