The great game of rugby league, saturated in rich heritage and underpinned with a revered history, will forever find itself jousting with the feisty and youthful beast of progression. The sport has been constantly churned through the stamping press of time and subsequently embossed with evolutions like video technology, floodlit night games, convoys of on-field…
The New Zealand Warriors are expected to announce that Matthew Elliott will coach the club for two seasons starting from 2013. This is a disastrous decision that will cost the club players, sponsors and fans. It is a decision that will lead to the complete erosion of any advantages that the Warriors have built over many years of hard…
Well the club seasons on both sides of the world are over, and with no Four Nations to look forward to, I think it is fair to say that the silly season is already upon us. I know, I know, we have some internationals still to play in Europe, but still, lets not ruin a…
My oval-shaped pigskin heart almost flat-lined on the weekend thanks to a Sabbath sans rugby league, but with the aid of an unheralded sliver of light that poked through the vile post-season darkness, I was able to survive and tell my tale today. The saviour smelt like oil and bourbon and aggressively attacked my ear…
If the 2012 season showed us anything it was that a great coach is worth their weight in gold to any club. With top coaches now commanding million dollar salaries, clubs are more than aware that a top coach controls the entire destiny of a club. A coaches performance can make or break a club, not just…
“I was with Ray until the end.” Sam Haron wasn’t anyone special or significant to the greater public. He was an average person enjoying his life. In 1933, he managed to begin the greatest dream of his life, to tour with the Australian Rugby League Kangaroo’s to England, on board the S.S. Jervis Bay as a Rugby…
The Leeds Rhinos have defeated the Warrington Wolves 26-18 to take out yet another Super League title. The game wasn’t all that great in terms of quality but English fans seemed to enjoy it. Both teams had their chances to go on and win the game but at the end of the day Leeds experience…
So here we are again, back to Old Trafford to completely fuck up Manchester Uniteds FA Cup run! Some years it is hard to chose who is going to win the Grand Final, and this is one of those years. On one side you have the Leeds Rhinos, a team that looks completely busted. They…
You always have to watch these media types, they will give you one side of the story, but leave out the other. Earlier this season the NRL put out a set of guidelines that teams needed to follow that outlines how much time NRL players and coaches should spend being available to the media and…
The title says it all really. Not again. Not again as the Bulldogs who, in my opinion, were certainly the cream of the crop throughout the season came crashing back down to Earth after audio of someone within the club calling out abusive comments to a media contingent. Compounding the matter, the comments were of…
The Melbourne Storm are the 2012 Premiers after defeating the Canterbury Bulldogs 14-4. The Storm came into the Grand Final in great form and simply looked to be playing on a completely different level to the Bulldogs. In a game that was dominated by brilliant coaching by from both sides, the execution the Storm showed in attack…
So here we are, Grand Final week and in a few days time lives will be changed. As a fan this whole week reminds me of 2003 when my Penrith Panthers made the Grand Final. I was never nervous at all, just confident.I enjoyed that entire season and I wouldn’t change a single thing about…
Two battle-dusty sheriffs stand at opposite ends of the ANZ corral in the Wild West, wearily upright among piles of the steaming fallen as the only remaining gunslingers from a drawn-out bloody battle carried out over 1 score and 6 rounds. And a couple of finals. Both wear an engulfing tattoo of strain on their…
Rugby League applies a weakening choke-hold to news outlets on grand final week as it provides only a solitary game’s worth of inspiration to the poor souls empowered to lay literary bricks in column space. It is no more apparent in 2012’s decider with lonesome crickets chirping in the judiciary room at NRL base camp…
The Wests Tigers have announced that Tim Sheens will not coach the club in 2013. At this stage he is still an employee of the clubs though. That move will be to avoid having to pay out the remainder of his contract, something the club simply can not afford. It has being reported that Sheens…
Canberra Raiders youngster Josh Papalii has turned his back on New Zealand after being recruited by Queensland coach Mal Meninga to represent a state he once used to live in. Meninga has openly talked for a year about pressuring Papalii to turn his back on the country of his birth and that was helped along by the…
The Canterbury Bulldogs will take on the Melbourne Storm in the 2012 NRL Grand Final after beating the South Sydney Rabbitohs 32-8. The Bulldogs got off to a great start with an early try but from that point on it was all Rabbitohs. The Bulldogs looked right off their game, they dropped a lot of…
It’s week two of the Super League Playoffs and lets hope this weekend we see a game or two that isn’t over by halftime. I don’t think any of the teams that will play thios weekend really have a chance of winning the Grand Final. Leeds might once again come home with a wet sail…
The Melbourne Storm have destroyed the Manly Sea Eagles 40-12 in what was nothing short of an ambush! Manly basically got off to the worst start possible and looked really sluggish throughout the first half. Dropped balls, silly mistakes and a leg injury to Steve Matai knocked the Sea Eagles right off their game. If…
Have you ever wondered why it is only in recent years that clubs have pushed fans to buy club memberships in big numbers? Well its simple really… You see, when you get one of the plum jobs going around on the board of a football club, you want to keep it! Have you ever walked…
There is a lot of angst among media types at the moment in regards to the access they get to players and coaches and the quality of answers they get when they are fortunate enough to interview these people. I can see where they are coming from and to a certain extent, I agree with…
No one gives a stuff about teams that lose in the semi finals. They get so close to being in the Grand Final, and yet they are not even a footnote in history when it comes down to it. This week we have four teams all with stories to tell about their journey to get…
Okay, so the title of the article is done, time for polite to fuck off! Background: I’ve been a Balmain fan since 1988 and a Wests Tigers supporter since their inception. I say fan for Balmain because I loved that club. I say supporter for the latter, because as much as I want to tell…
On Thursday the 27th of September the 8th Australian Rugby League Immortal will be announced in Sydney. The current list of immortals and the year in which they were given the honour by Rugby League Week magazine are: Clive Churchill – 1981 Bob Fulton – 1981 Reg Gasnier – 1981 Johnny Raper – 1981 Graeme…
There’s a young bloke called Jack. He is just like any another other four year old boy. However last October Jack was diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is a genetic disorder that leads to muscles basically wasting away. Approximately 1 in every 3,500 boys worldwide is effected by this disorder that usually…
This is supposed to be the best of the best… Wigan 46 Cataland Dragons 6 St Helens 28 Warrington Wolves 6 Leeds Rhinos 42 Wakefield Wildcats 20 Hull FC 46 Huddersfield Giants 10 The closest winning margin during round one of the Super League Playoffs was 22 points. The average scoreline was 40.5 vs 10.5….
Conflicting reports today that winger Beau Ryan will leave the Wests Tigers and head to the Cronulla Sharks really to me sums up the way the Wests Tigers are being run at the moment. Its confusing. I wrote earlier this year that I felt the biggest problem the Wests Tigers had was that they had…
The Rugby Football League’s licencing system has come under fire recently after the financial collapse of the Bradford Bulls showed it up for what it really was. The grading of clubs in such black and white terms was completely ridiculous. Putting clubs into different categories was always going to lead to problems simply because so…
Well, the incredible success of my web site continues as today, LeagueFreak.com smashed its way through the 2.5 million hit barrier. It is just the latest achievement in what has been a big year for the site. A move to a new web server and a complete site re-design has seen the site take a…
The South Sydney Rabbitohs have smashed the Canberra Raiders 38-16 and are now one win away from making the NRL Grand Final. This was a really tough game early on and you got the feeling that Souths were more prepared for the early exchanges than the Raiders were. It was only about 15 minutes into…