News that covers Rugby League in Australia.
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 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…
A sub standard crowd for an elimination final has watched the Manly Sea Eagles defeat the North Queensland Cowboys 22-12. This is a game that will be remembered for a very long time and for all the wrong reasons. First of all, as predicted Manly fans didn’t turn up in big numbers at all. 18kms…
Week one of the finals season was sensational, it was one of the best opening weekends of a finals series I can remember. I enjoyed every single game and in week two of the finals, I think we are in for more of the game. Can the Bunnies rebound after a terrible performance? Will the…
You know, 18kms isn’t very far. That is the distance between Manly and the Sydney Football Stadium. I’m the first to say that the Sydney Football Stadium isn’t the best place to get to if you don’t live in inner Sydney. I have made the journey there many times before to watch NRL games, State…
The Canberra Raiders have beaten the Cronulla Sharks 34-16 in front of 24,450 at Canberra Stadium. This was a really entertaining game to watch and early on the Raiders had it all over the Sharks. The Sharks love an arm wrestle though and for all the quality posession and field position the Raiders had, the…
The North Queensland Cowboys will face the Manly Sea Eagles next weeked after disposing of the Brisbane Broncos 33-16 and ending their 2012 season. This game pretty much went the way that I expected it too. The Broncos poor form leading into the finals meant they were no match against an in form Cowboys side…
The Melbourne Storm have blown the South Sydney Rabbitohs off the park in a clinical display in a huge 24-6 win in Melbourne. I said before the game that if the Rabbitohs were to win the match, their forward pack needed to step up and breathe fire for 80 minutes. They started the game looking…
The Canterbury Bulldogs have beaten the Manly Sea Eagles 16-10 to earn next weekend off and book a place in week three of the finals. The game was a brutal one that at times saw momentum swing from one side to the other. The Sea Eagles could not have hoped for a better start to…
I can understand why New Zealand Warriors fans are a bit worried right now. After watching another disasterous season with a disasterous coach at the helm and knowing they actually have a very good lineup that can go places with the right leadership, they keep hearing some worrying names being tossed in their direction. The…
The Sydney Roosters have announced that Catalan Dragons coach Trent Robinson join the club starting next season on what is a three year deal. Robinson was previously an assistant coach under Brian Smith in 2010 and linked up with the Catalan Dragons in 2011. He has done OK with the Dragons and his ability to…
The Sydney Roosters have announced that they have “parted ways” with Brian Smith today. This doesn’t come as a surprise after the season the Roosters had. I always got the feeling it was going to end this way for Smith. He was brought in to try and fix the club and rid them of a…
Bulldogs fullback Ben Barba has won the 2012 Dally M player of the year with in what is fittingly a run away victory. Matthew Bowen finished second in the count while Cooper Cronk finished third. Barba also won the headline moment of the year, the fullback of the year and the Provan Summons medal which…
If I was running the Australian Rugby League Commission today I would have called NRL chief medical officer Ron Muratore into my office today and fired him on the spot. Making Rugby League as safe a sport as it can possibly be has been one of the major goals of every Rugby League administration going…
When the season kicks off, everyone feels like they have a chance of winning the NRL Grand Final. Soon after though, reality starts to set in and teams that started off with high expectations find themselves on the wrong end of too many scoreboards. So who were the most disappointing teams in season 2012? Obviously the level…
While player managers scramble to the media telling everyone that will listen that the NRL salary cap should be raised immediatley, it seems the NRL itself is holding off on any such move. There are two major reasons for this. First of all, there are a number of clubs that could really use a jump…
The first week of the NRL Finals series kicks off this weekend and it is shaping up as the NRL marketers dream. There are so many big match ups in the first week of the finals and the new finals system should make things easier for fans to follow too. The NRL captains call was…
The NRL came out yesterday with a curious announcement that, one week out from the finals, it would send any shoulder charge that made contact with a players head or neck straight to the judiciary without any grading. This process is usually what happens with the most extreme cases of foul play and usually results…
With Rugby League in Australia now predicted to generate an average of $270 million dollars per year the game administrators have an opportunity to do something they have not been able to even think about for a very long time. Building a legacy. While clubs grants will be raised along with the salary cap, Rugby…
A words of advice kids. If every you find yourself in a position where by you have the financial clout to sponsor a football stadium and use its naming rights to promote various companies that you own, don’t buy the naming rights to a stadium that doesn’t have a major sporting team as its number…
Sonny Bill Williams has revealed that he already regrets his decision to return to Rugby League and if he had his time over again, he would never have agreed to join the Sydney Roosters three years ago and would stay in Rugby Union. As it stands right now Williams has a stint in Japanese Rugby…
Luke Lewis has revealed that he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer earlier this month. Lewis had neck surgery to remove his cancerous thyroid and is currently undergoing further treatment in an effort to recover. Lewis’ ordeal is a little reminiscent of Adam Ritson’s many years ago. A scan on an injury he picked up during a match showed up the thyroid abnormality…
The deal has been done and the budget is now set, so where does Rugby League go from here? For well over a decade Rugby League in Australia was just trying to survive. It wasn’t that the game wasn’t growing, it simply come down to the fact that clubs at first were spending way beyond…
The Australian Rugby League Commission has today announced that the broadcasting rights for Rugby League in Australia have been retained by Channel 9 and Fox Sports Australia. The deal will run over five years and is worth $1.025 billion dollars. $100 million dollars of that is advertising on Channel 9 and Fox Sports. This deal…
Ben Hornby has announced that he will retire at seasons end in a move that will hopefully allow the Dragons to go into a fully fledged rebuilding mode. In recent seasons I think Hornby has been a liability to the Dragons on the field. Playing in the halves, he lacked creativity, his kicking game was…
Brian McClennan has been sacked by the New Zealand Warriors effective immediately with assistant coach Tony Iro taking over the head coaching role for the teams remaining two games of the 2012 season. That McClennan couldn’t even see out his first season as the clubs head coach says a lot. McClennan stepped into the spotlight…
Over the last few months the South Sydney Rabbitohs have had a good run of form, and it led a lot of their fans to ask me if I rated them as a true Grand Final contender. The whole time I said I wanted to wait and see how they went against one of the…
With Ricky Stuart making the decision that he would stand down from his post as New South Wales coach we have seen a lot of maneuvering among potential replacements over the last few days. Brad Fittler, Laurie Daley and Trent Barrett have all be mentioned at the top of everyone’s list of candidates along with…
Last weekend the Penrith Panthers beat the Cronulla Sharks 21-20 in extra time. Both teams were missing a whole host of players and while the Sharks sit many places above the Panthers on the ladder, this contest looked to be evened out by a number of factors, the biggest of which was the Sharks poor…
Luke Lewis asked the Penrith Panthers for a release from the final two years of a lucrative contract. At the time many reasons were given, but I was one of the very few people that mentioned that the move would allow Lewis to capitalize on the remaining years of his playing career. A lot of…