Official Aussie NRL Thread

24beers · Mar 21, 2011

pecks said: ↑

Robert lui's missus tells me he can kick well.
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Gold

OZ Puncher · Mar 22, 2011

stiflers mum said: ↑

you smashed us.Ozpuncher called me a dickhead
for putting the Sharks in my top 8 but look at your forward pack Snowden,Douglas,Gallen,Smith,Tupou well done to
your team Wantsthecock:good
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I said you were high. :yep

pecks · Mar 22, 2011

I see the Titans have dropped Capewell.
Mr king of the trials will shortly be spending the rest of his career in the Queensland Cup where he belongs. :yep

teke · Mar 22, 2011

pecks said: ↑

I see the Titans have dropped Capewell.
Mr king of the trials will shortly be spending the rest of his career in the Queensland Cup where he belongs. :yep
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Prince should be joining him...anyone who watched the game would agree.

Now Carty has stacked the side with 2nd rowers, there are 7 in the squad this weekatsch Now they are going to be as boring as the Dragons

stiflers mum · Mar 22, 2011

teke said: ↑

Prince should be joining him...anyone who watched the game would agree.

Now Carty has stacked the side with 2nd rowers, there are 7 in the squad this weekatsch Now they are going to be as boring as the Dragons
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the more talented player of the 2 players in your avatar is
out for the season isnt he?
Dragons can only score off kicks:-( bit worried.

liger05 · Mar 23, 2011

I see Widdop has been moved to #6 at the Storm and by the accounts I have read is playing very well?

teke · Mar 23, 2011

stiflers mum said: ↑

the more talented player of the 2 players in your avatar is
out for the season isnt he?
Dragons can only score off kicks:-( bit worried.
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No the Titanium Kumul is back on the attack this Friday night on Channel 9.

Kev is out for the season :-(

Just a simple half arsed attempt to save a certain try and he cops a years worth of misery for it, poor fella.

liger05 · Mar 23, 2011

This English Dude obviously thinks Union is huge in Australia lol

http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/6733033/the-blessed-union-bears-fruit.thtml

This is the year that rugby league will be relegated to second place

It is the sporting equivalent of listening to the Sydney Symphony perform Mahler with the brass and percussion section locked in the green room; dining at Tetsuyas with the confit of ocean trout removed from the degustation menu; perusing The Latham Diaries after the expurgation of all the swear words; or, for the more metrosexually-minded of whom the former Labor leader is so scornful washing ones hair with shampoo but being starved of conditioner.

I refer, of course, to watching rugby in its amputated form, when only 26 men take the field rather than the full complement of 30.

League may indeed be a game played in heaven, as Mark Latham argued with unimpeachable masculinity in these pages a few months back, but it is union that will always draw the more appreciative celestial crowds.

Had I been writing 12 months ago, when the code was testing the patience of even its most faithful followers, I would have been defending the indefensible. Yes, would have been my emphatic response to the question J.R.H. McEwen posed two weeks ago, Has rugby become boring? In both hemispheres, the game had become such an unimaginative kickathon that the Super 14 tournament was in clear violation of the Trade Descriptions Act, and both the Tri-Nations and Six Nations had fallen into disrepute.

2010 was the year, however, when the game restored William Webb Elliss founding heresy to its rightful place: reviving the idea that the ball should remain in hand, and not be hoofed mindlessly from one end of the field to the other.

When played at its highest level, union is not only the worlds most brutal winter sport, but by far its most beautiful. Last year produced some mountain-top rugby, and as we welcome the start of the new season with the launch of the newly-expanded Super 15, 2011 should be even more altitudinous.

Robbie Deans resurgent Wallabies have been at the forefront of the revival. Humbly, I would even go as far as to suggest there are few finer sights in Australian sport right now than Quade Coopers lurching sidesteps, Kurtley Beales Ferrari-like acceleration and James OConnors precocious wing play. Add to that the darting runs of the scrumhalf Will Genia, the tackle-busting power of Adam Ashleigh Cooper, and the finishing precision of winger Drew Mitchell, and it is easy to see why the team is ranked number two in the world.

These are the show ponies, but the team has no shortage of workhorses either: Nathan Sharpe, the bullet-headed lock, all 115kg of him, and the skipper Rocky Elsom, another human battering ram. Then there is David Pocock, still only 22, an open-side flanker who could challenge the great All Blacks captain Richie McCaw for the starting jersey in a World XV.

True, on the end-of-year tour of the northern hemisphere, the Australian front row spent so much time with their faces buried in the mud that it looked as if they were attempting to tunnel their way back home an old joke, I know, but one that still warms the cockles on a frigid November afternoon at Twickers. Yet if the top-ranked All Blacks perform their quadrennial trick of peaking 12 months early, it is the Wallabies who could well be the beneficiaries at this years World Cup.

Certainly, this is a team with a sense of drama, as it demonstrated with at-the-death wins against South Africa in Bloemfontein and New Zealand in Hong Kong, the only time New Zealand suffered defeat in 2010. Likewise, the kickers who kept their nerve at the end of those classic matches, Beale and OConnor, point to the Wallabies fabulous potential. Not yet 23, Beale, OConnor and Cooper could feasibly dominate the next three World Cups.

But let us return to the battle of the codes. As part of his broadside, Mark Latham argued that league had prospered because administrators were quick to bring in rule changes to enhance the spectacle of the game. Here, admittedly, union has been slovenly, largely because of the stultifying conservatism of northern hemisphere coaches whose game plans are based on a slow and more defensive style of play.

Before last years Super 14 season, however, existing rules were reinterpreted to make play quicker, to cut down the number of stoppages, to curb the tedium of collapsed scrums and to reward sides trying to keep possession of the ball rather than kicking it away. By placing a premium on adventure, it produced more tries and some of the most superlative attacking and counterattacking play seen in years. Once again, and just in the nick of time, the relentless fluency of union, with phase after phase and attack after attack, has shone through.

To their credit, the administrators have achieved this while preserving the sport as the home of all creatures great and small, where a squat prop or towering lock can be just as effective as a lithe centre or flying wing. Though socially and educationally elitist in this country although not in my homeland rugger remains the most physically egalitarian of sports.
When it comes to the frills and trappings, union also reigns supreme, with the anthem-singing of the Welsh and French, the pipes of Murrayfield and the Swing Low, Sweet Chariot of Twickenham. League has no answer.

At this years grand final, the NRL could deploy an entire squadron of Black Hawk helicopters, with Ride of the Valkyries performed by the Berlin Philharmonic, but it would never compare with the wondrous Maori haka, with all its controlled fury and dignified rage. Global sport has no finer pre-match liturgy.

So union, thankfully, is on the up after coming close to bringing about its own downfall. For my money, the Wallabies are Australias most entertaining national team in any sport right now, while the All Blacks are the most talent-packed outfit on the planet, again in any discipline.

The great shame is that union does not have more of a following here or a higher television profile. When first I arrived, and was still oblivious to the regionalism and class- consciousness of Aussie sport, I was astounded by the story of a businessman overnighting in Melbourne. Hoping to enjoy the Bledisloe Cup, he turned on Channel 7, where he was startled to see Julie Andrews Do-Re-Mi-ing in The Sound of Music. A couple of years later, the same thing happened to me, when the channels Victorian affiliate once again ignored the Trans-Tasman showdown and screened Cool Runnings, a comedy about the Jamaican bobsleigh team.

Yet with your cricket team in decline, the mighty Kangaroos strangely fallible against the Kiwis and the Socceroos set to remain a second- or third-tier outfit, this could be the year of the Wallaby. In its recently rejuvenated form, I promise you there is no better footballing spectacle. Tune in this September, when the World Cup gets underway in New Zealand, and let us hope you get to see the men in green and gold rather than the Von Trapp family singers.

Nick Bryant is the BBCs Australia correspondent.
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His obviously not seen the latest pay tv ratings where even a Toyota Cup beat S15 Rugby Union in the ratings not to mention that after the World Cup at a minimum Quade Cooper will probably jump to League.

rusty nails · Mar 23, 2011

liger05 said: ↑

This English Dude obviously thinks Union is huge in Australia lol

http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/6733033/the-blessed-union-bears-fruit.thtml

His obviously not seen the latest pay tv ratings where even a Toyota Cup beat S15 Rugby Union in the ratings not to mention that after the World Cup at a minimum Quade Cooper will probably jump to League.
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does he know league has the haka as well??

liger05 · Mar 23, 2011

rusty nails said: ↑

does he know league has the haka as well??
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Obviously not. His cambridge/oxford educated and a Union toff where League isnt seen as 'real rugby'

stiflers mum · Mar 23, 2011

teke said: ↑

No the Titanium Kumul is back on the attack this Friday night on Channel 9.

Kev is out for the season :-(

Just a simple half arsed attempt to save a certain try and he cops a years worth of misery for it, poor fella.
Click to expand...

just stirring bad luck about Gordon.who is replacing him?

rusty nails · Mar 23, 2011

liger05 said: ↑

Obviously not. His cambridge/oxford educated and a Union toff where League isnt seen as 'real rugby'
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heres some of the best writing ive seen on the subject'

http://blogs.smh.com.au/executive-style/allmenareliars/2007/10/09/penaltiesinter.html

teke · Mar 23, 2011

stiflers mum said: ↑

just stirring bad luck about Gordon.who is replacing him?
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Esi Tonga is jumping on the wing although i expect Michaels to play there and Esi to go into left centre.

teke · Mar 23, 2011

Thursday March 24 - Teke Declares...

Dragons wont make top 6, struggle to make 8

COULDHAVEBEEN · Mar 23, 2011

teke said: ↑

Thursday March 24 - Teke Declares...

Dragons wont make top 6, struggle to make 8
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...and under the squeaky clean, not cheating this year, Storm too Teke.

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