It was meant to go like this.

Wait no let me double check that. It was meant to go like this? Are you sure? Like…this?

It was meant to go like this, but even this is a bit much. Tanking in the purest sense of the concept. We are going to be bad this season, why are you booing me, I’m right?

Shane Flanagan made sure to temper the expectations of the Dragons faithful during the preseason, trotting out a vague company cliche along the lines of “development year”, “tough lessons” and various other coachspeak tropes the embattled often fall back upon, except those are usually reserved for July after a spate of injuries, not in the sunny afterglow of a February preseason canter.

The honesty from Flanagan was disarming, because for years we as the cattle are often fed from the same trough over and over again. If you’re not here to win the premiership, why are you even bothering etc etc.

I never begrudge fans for lapping up the eternal pool of optimism in preseason, it’s a clean slate after all, but unfortunately for our friends of a Red V persuasion the fountain of hope had a big floating turd right in the middle.

I’m not one for ladder predictions but I certainly wouldn’t have had the Dragons anywhere near the top 13 or 14 this season, and the rebuilding year validations are only really acceptable if you’re, well, rebuilding the squad. The Dragons Round 1 side, which lost in Golden Point to a myopic Bulldogs attack over in Las Vegas (which may prove to be the highlight of their season at this rate), featured two players who weren’t in first grade last season.

One of them was Setu Tu, a mature aged rookie winger who has since been dropped, the other was big name half recruit Daniel Atkinson, who has failed thus far to shoulder the hopes of an entire merged fanbase. Two inexperienced players who signed with the Dragons in the hopes of furthering their careers through opportunities, supported by a squad dripping with the stench of the previous decade long bed of misery and mediocrity in which the club has been sleeping.

Following the blueprint of Nicho Hynes to Cronulla from Melbourne, the Dragons hoped a similar elevation in role and responsibility from backup to starter for Atkinson would prove beneficial. The results so far have been…statistically insignificant? It would be unfair to sentence him to the gallows already, the forwards aren’t helping him out and to be honest neither are his fellow spine members, but the nature of top level sport is results mean everything. Should Atkinson have been billed as a saviour signing? No, probably not. Was he? By some sections of the fanbase, yes he was. Does that open him up to criticism, both valid and otherwise? Sadly yes.

As a staunch defender of the Azzurri I believe there’s a player in Atkinson. He’s a viable utility option in the NRL, some players just aren’t built to be full time halfbacks. He’s shifting to the five-eighth spot this week (look he’s wearing a new hat), he’ll get time given his status as a new signing, but I can’t imagine many halves with his comparable lack of experience thriving in this environment.

Everyone knows the definition of insanity, and maybe it is through that lens that we examine the season thus far and spare Shane Flanagan of serious ire because, again, he did basically tell everyone to cool the jets, but outside of halves prospect Kade Reed and a couple of exciting forward prospects like the Couchmans, Loko Pasifiki Tonga and Hamish Stewart, there isn’t exactly a next generation barging down the door to supplant the old guard.

Clint Gutherson has been a first grade stalwart for over a decade now, and his robust style of play and endless effort appear to be showing on the legs, the odometer cranked up to full nines as he lopes through game after game at fullback, a sickening metaphor of the passage of time playing out on main street as Jaxon Purdue skipped past him in North Queensland’s rout of the Dragons at fortress Kogarah, if fortresses were made of pillows and blankets.

Flanagan was right to subdue hope, but that’s cold comfort when the product is as miserable and bland as what is currently on display. The worst place a sports team can exist is the part of the Venn diagram where bad doesn’t cross over with fun. The Gold Coast Titans historically are quite bad, but also sometimes fun! The Dragons right now are very bad, and very unpleasant stylistically. Atkinson is in the trenches fighting for his life behind a forward pack that would struggle running downhill in the Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake1, Kyle Flanagan is being rushed back from what looked like a broken face, Gutherson is out with a soft tissue injury that is forcing the Dragons to play a fullback they are actively trying to get rid of, and Damien Cook feels like the desperately tired daycare teacher trying to hold it all together on the brink of mental breakdown.

The futility explains the very public pursuit of Dolphins backup fullback Trai Fuller, who may be a career reserve grader (and far older than the casual fan might realise), but is undoubtedly a different change of speed to what the Dragons currently have, in that he actually does have speed, which matters now more than ever in this fast forward version of Peter V’Landys’ game of wizard chess.

(A note is slid across my desk by my editors)2

Trai Fuller told the Dragons thanks but no thanks? How utterly dire. From the outside looking in, the Fuller chase felt like a real last ditch move from a regime trying to cling onto the last frayed thread of the rope dangling over the edge of the cliff, and Fuller has come along and kicked the rope off. It says a lot about where the club is currently that the fans were so excited to potentially add a 29 year old reserve grade fullback just because he was a slight departure from the morbid futility that is currently enveloping the club.

The Dragons do have a really cool fullback. He just goes to another school. In a different state. This is like when your imaginary friends hate you too.

The road travelled doesn’t get any less gloomy any time soon. The Dragons run into Manly this week, and while they might also still be a bad team, they are in the midst of the scientifically proven dead cat bounce and just put 52 points on the Dolphins. The Dragons have scored 68 points all season. It’s a real race to 10 points against the merger right now.

The Dragons are marching to Westeros. I just hope that unlike the show, the leader of these Dragons isn’t slain by their lover that turns out to be their nephew.

End messy analogy.

Kill it all with fire.

Long live Jorah Mormont.

We’re still in January, the bright lights and mystique of the sacred Preseason Challenge is several weeks away and yet, rugby league has wasted no time in delivering a story so nonsensically idiotic that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was spun up by Grok with a Betoota Advocate prompt for a rugby league headline.

Zac Lomax, you may be familiar with his name, as a representative winger for NSW and Australia, took the leap of faith1 and signed with World Series Cricket wannabe vanity project Rugby 360, a sportswashing endeavour disguised as the pursuit of sporting excellence or whatever, knowing the consequences2 of such a decision would be a punitive decade long ban from the NRL.

The R360 story first began emerging last year as a breakaway competition sought to disrupt the stodgy homogeneity that had become of rugby union (allegedly anyway, I have no desire to watch the 15-man code having attended a rugby school and had the Gilbert forced down my throat at every sports assembly). The competition, due for commencement in 2028 and backed by British royal family member and 2003 World Cup winner Mike Tindall, aims to tour the globe in a Formula 1 style calendar of exhibitions.

Sounds riveting.

Anyway, I’m not here to provide opinions on R360 or breakaway competitions or British royals because quite frankly, I don’t care about any of them, and while the actual existence of this competition was always, in my mind, tenuous, the threat of players (and more accurately, player agents) having their head turned by ludicrous sums of hypothetical oil money was ever present. It had the potential to tear away at the NRL without ever actually coming to fruition.

Enter Zac Lomax.

Lomax, along with other names like Payne Haas, Angus Crichton and Ryan Papenhuyzen, headlined the target list for the competition for various reasons, and while Papenhuyzen actually did leave Melbourne (reasons for which would later emerge to be personal and not R360 related), none of the other names came to any endgame for the rebels, except Lomax, who walked out of the Parramatta Eels one year into a four year deal to link up with the competition, or so we thought.

I don’t know what goes on in the boardrooms of Riyadh but apparently what was whispered to Lomax through linen robes lined with wads of Saudi Riyal spooked him enough to abandon the project, return to Australia and beg for forgiveness by doing the one thing sure to get the entire Australian rugby league public on board with his plight…request to join the Melbourne Storm.

Remember that ten year ban for anyone who signed with the competition? Yeah that was a load of horseshit. Lomax has come back whimpering with his tail between his legs and the ARLC have fallen for the puppy dog eyes schtick3.

Reading about the situation, apparently the ban doesn’t apply to Lomax because he never technically signed with the rebel competition, although I’d argue the intentions of his release were abundantly clear, but anyway that isn’t the issue here. I’m not against the return of good players to the league, and Lomax is obviously a good player4, but the biggest issue here is the rights of the Eels.

Upon his release, it was agreed between both parties that Lomax wouldn’t be allowed to negotiate with other clubs upon his return should that eventuate. I don’t know the exact terms, but I imagine it would be something along the lines of exclusivity for the length of the deal he signed, which was due to expire after the 2028 NRL season, giving the Eels leverage should R360 predictably tank spectacularly.

Now that we’re in this timeline, the Eels and Jason Ryles, shockingly, want nothing to do with Lomax. After all, he was a marquee recruit who was playing career best footy on the wing, was a NSW representative for the club, and one of the few bright spots in an otherwise disappointing season, abandoning the ship after one season to sign with a mirage in the desert. With the money vacated by Lomax’s release, the Eels have snapped up Brian Kelly (a player I will never stop believing in) and are believed to be targeting forwards, a more valuable and rarer commodity than above average wingers in the eyes of Jason Ryles.

Melbourne have offered the Eels $200K in compensation for the Eels to allow Lomax to leave, a figure which would eclipse the fee paid to the Tigers by Canterbury for Lachlan Galvin, but the Eels have dug in and claimed only a player swap would be worth entertaining, for a name like Stefano Utoikamanu (an Eels product), Jack Howarth or Xavier Coates.

The Eels are within their rights to dig in and play the hardest of hardballs here, otherwise what would be the point of agreeing to the terms of the release in the first place.

The NRL’s apparent willingness to step in and grease the wheels of any potential negotiations is where the system begins to get rotten. According to reporting, the NRL is ready to intervene should the Eels continue to reject offers that are deemed “reasonable.”

Two things here.

1. Who is deciding what a reasonable offer is? These are one in a million circumstances for the NRL, there is no precedent, or a shaky one at best.

2. Why does the NRL feel they have the right to tell the Eels what they should consider reasonable?

To me, point two is the more important one in upholding any faltering illusions of the game being run democratically. It isn’t within the remit of the NRL to tell Parramatta how to handle their distressed asset.

For my basketball fans out there, consider the vetoed trade that would’ve sent Chris Paul to the LA Lakers in 2011. The NBA was coming out of a labour lockout that delayed the start of the season (which would ultimately be shortened), and the league had purchased the New Orleans Hornets (the team Paul played for at the time) due to the previous owner struggling to meet financial demands and cover losses.

That vetoed trade was a watershed moment for the NBA because it shone a light on how powerful the owners were. The trade was reported and a framework agreed; and then called off due to pressure from other owners for the league to step in and cancel the deal, all in the space of about four hours. The official line of reporting spoke about how owners were concerned about the movement of money and the new collective bargaining agreement citing player movement and bird rights (basically a team’s ability to go over the salary cap to re-sign a player, NBA jargon is a labyrinth, it would take too long to get into it now).

That ordeal was a mess, but if you squint hard enough you can at least see a base layer of justification given the league was, at the time, in charge of the franchise in question, even if the reasoning for the sudden retraction of the deal was fraught at best.

The NRL has no greater stake in Parramatta or Melbourne than any other team and stepping in would be an overreach of power. The precedent it would create for the NRL to lean a heavy hand on the shoulder of the Eels would cause irreversible distrust in a system that already treats contracts like the day-old newspaper fish and chips are served in.

The league stepping in would not only be criminally unfair to Parramatta’s self-made bargaining position, but it would also totally undermine any semblance of authority given the previous comments from Peter V’Landys about those who seceded to rebel overtures.

You absolutely will be banned for life if you signal an intention to sign for R360…except if I can find a technicality to help you out because I’m a great guy.

I’ve gone on record in the past to say that I don’t necessarily care about whether the Australian test team wins or loses for a multitude of reasons. The lack of visibility with the team, especially in the last 5-10 years, has made it harder to generate any meaningful connection to the team. That’s not necessarily to say I hope they lose, more indifference at their results.

That obviously doesn’t count when we play England, and this Ashes1 tour has me as excited for an Australian team as I have been in maybe my entire lifetime. I think the tantalising promise of seeing what a Walsh-Munster-Cleary-Grant spine is a large part of that intrigue, as well as seeing what chaotic nonsense a right side of Hudson Young, Kotoni Staggs and Mark Nawaqanitawase would get up to (hint: a lot of shenanigans).

The prevailing sentiment of people here on the home front was that the Kangaroos would, and should, put 50 on what was described as a tired and decrepit English side (not by me, because I don’t watch Super League, but by those who do). AJ Brimson was a curious omission given all the fanfare around his defection, as was regular NRL first grader Morgan Smithies, regardless of what you think of his impact as an NRL player.

I maintained an air of hesitancy around such bold claims mainly because of the realities of this being the first tour match after a month-long break for the majority of the squad, with a spine that hadn’t played together (Cleary had never played with Walsh, who himself hadn’t played with Munster since 2023’s State of Origin series, since which a lot of water has passed under several bridges).

Australia took a bit of time to get into what I would describe as any particular flow, seemingly content to punish England through the middle and hit the edge forwards on short balls rather than sweeping out the back early, which is what we call in the business the good old fashioned “setup” for when the inevitable Cleary out the back to Walsh materialised.

News flash, once it did, England were about as equipped to deal with it as a house in Cairns would be to deal with sudden snowfall.

The avalanche broke whatever feeble resistance the creators of rugby league had meekly offered up, turning into a downhill stream of Australian chances, even accounting for frustrating profligacy for those of us bleary-eyed and peering at our screens well past 1am on the east coast (whether you observe daylight savings or wrongly don’t).

A 26-6 scoreline flatters England but really it tells the tale of a side using the first test as a honing session, and I’m loath to call this first performance anything more than the absolute baseline for this team moving forward in the rest of the series. If Kevin Walters and the Kangaroos are serious on both building as much rapport as possible with the presumed side ahead of next year’s World Cup as well as embarrassing England in front of their own fans, then no changes will be made. This is a serious tour, the Kangaroos jersey should have some aspect of reverence and rarity, changes unnecessary after the most comfortable of wins.

Some people think Mitchell Moses should come into the side for Cleary ahead of the game at Goodison Park Hill Dickinson Stadium, to which I say, boo you. But before someone inevitably cries bias, allow me to expand.

By the time the World Cup kicks off next year at Allianz Stadium in Sydney, Moses will be 32, and Cleary 28. Cleary is coming off one of his “quieter” club seasons from a success standpoint that resulted in him making his sixth consecutive preliminary final and winning Halfback of the Year, all while playing in more games than Moses has managed in the last two seasons combined. The reality is Moses just hasn’t stayed healthy, and while he’s obviously in the upper echelon of playmakers in the NRL, it hasn’t translated to much success for the Eels (who have won 10 of their 21 matches he’s played the last two years). Is that a harsh way to assess Moses? Maybe, but the fact is that stuff matters when it comes to winning representative caps, especially when the halves are maybe the most stacked position for Australia (Tom Dearden is the new Ben Hunt De Facto Middle Forward Tribute Act, and Ethan Strange is wearing a suit).

The other argument is Cleary was…fine? Again, it was his first game in several weeks plus playing with a new fullback, as well as Munster and Grant, who he hadn’t played with since the 2021 (2022 to be pedantic) World Cup Final. I thought he kicked well and given the way people describe his attacking instincts anyway, I would imagine deferring a lot of the creativity to Walsh and Munster would be an ideal balance for the side. Cleary does the organising, Walsh attacks the space off his outside, and I actually quite liked a lot of the variations from the Kangaroos in mixing up Munster and Cleary as both first and second receivers.

Anyway, it’s a real first world problem when you’re arguing over which elite halfback you should pick while England are scraping together the remnants of the 2019 Canberra Raiders.

Comfortable could also be used to describe the ruck at Wembley, with the amount of players that seemingly fell asleep in the play the ball area. I don’t want to talk too out of turn about the state of the Super League and the game in England as a whole, but if this is the standard of refereeing they’re accustomed to then…I prefer not to speak.

I don’t know what was more nonsensical, the constant pleading from the referee (whose name I shan’t be bothering to learn in hopes I never have to see him again) that the players needed to be quicker in the ruck (your job is to penalise their illegality, not simply point it out for the benefit of us at home), or the arduous and now prehistoric review process sending up clear tries because the referee was too scared of the bright lights to make a call live. People may not have liked the NFL-style auto-review post-score system the NRL has introduced with the Bunker, but it sure as shit beats reviewing Angus Crichton’s first try for reasons such as “I can’t do my job.”

The first game of this series was very much a business trip for the Kangaroos. With Grant Atkins patrolling the ruck and the implied increase in chemistry across the spine after their first run out together, I’d be tipping a much more clinical and swashbuckling performance in Game Two.

My personal feelings out of the way first, I hated it!

No one is going to feel sympathetic for me or Penrith (and nor should you), but there is something somewhat gratifying to the neutral to see the all-conquering Panthers lose to golden point tries in back to back weeks thanks to spurring individual brilliance (and in the Canberra case, not realising you can tackle the airborne player after the ball bounces).

Alas, this game was more about what we learned from Canberra because of the now six years of data points we have on this Penrith side.

So what did we learn?

If you cast your mind back to Magic Round where Canberra used all the powers of voodoo and pixie dust available to them to eke out a victory against the Melbourne Storm via the assistance of two penalties in possession by the Storm, the general consensus opinion following that game was one of a “they can’t keep getting away with it” persuasion.

At some point there’s a certain element of destiny to what Canberra is piecing together this season, between the emergence of Ethan Strange and Kaeo Weekes as legitimate superstars and lesser lights like Morgan Smithies, Zac Hosking and Simi Sasagi all stepping up into expanded roles. The pixie dust is apparently limitless.

Let’s reflect on Simi Sasagi for a moment because he’s a really appropriate microcosm of how Canberra have operated for the last decade plus. Cast your mind back to all those big money, Hollywood signings the Raiders have made.

If you thought of a name you are a liar.

Canberra operate in the margins in murky, shadowy silence, filling their roster with diamonds in the rough and unwanted workers desperate for a chance.

Kaeo Weekes found his way to Canberra due to his first grade path at Manly being blocked by the likes of Tom Trbojevic and Tolu Koula. Ethan Strange was plucked from the Roosters SG Ball side. Zac Hosking was deemed surplus to requirements at the Panthers after being dropped late in their 2023 charge to the premiership. The most famous of all these is Joseph Tapine, a mundane player swap for Mitch Barnett from the Knights all those years ago.

Much like Sasagi, an unheralded reclamation project paying the ultimate dividends.

Sasagi debuted at Newcastle in 2021, playing 17 first grade games for the Knights over the next two years before spending the entirety of 2023 in NSW Cup with no prospects of first grade football in a back row room stacked with talent like Kai Pearce-Paul, Dylan Lucas, and the aforementioned Barnett, among others.

In those 17 games, Sasagi started 14 of them from the bench as a rotational forward, with two games as a starting centre and one randomly on the wing. His signing for Canberra drew as much attention as a full sleeve tattoo on King Street in Newtown. The Newcastle to Canberra pipeline is so well trodden it makes the Silk Road look like an abandoned alleyway.

Since the start of last season Sasagi has featured 29 times for the Raiders, 19 of which came this season. He has been basically an automatic selection in the side since Round 10, with his versatility a real benefit to Ricky Stuart, allowing him to play as an edge forward, in the centres, or even in the middle if really needed.

This isn’t about Sasagi as a player though, because he’s a cog fitting seamlessly into a machine right now, a wacky machine that wouldn’t look out of place on Joseph Herscher’s YouTube channel, sure, but a functioning machine nonetheless, however insane the pulleys and levers get.

Canberra, operating in the NRL’s wilderness, only have each other. Banded together by isolation and rejection, hell hath no fury like a man scorned as the saying goes, and Canberra certainly have been playing this season like they have someone’s nose to rub in it. The high profile backflip of James Tedesco, or maybe Jack Wighton leaving for Souths to win a premiership. Has anyone checked the ladder recently?

There’s an exuberance, a swagger, and a borderline arrogance with how Canberra play, and it reminds me a lot of Penrith in 2021 when they hadn’t won the big one yet but had already begun their transformation into the NRL’s villains, starting with…a game against Canberra.

If you remember this incident, Tapine had been waiting to sub back on as Penrith scored a try right in front of him in the corner. Stephen Crichton decides Tapine should be part of the celebration and drags him in and a 21st century melee (read: nothing) eventuates. Every villain has an origin story, and while this one has taken some time to develop, it’s been years in the making.

Never forget the “Weak Gutted Dog” game, where Penrith ran a scrum play with a minute left to let Jaeman Salmon crash over to tick the score past 50 after Ricky Stuart lambasted him in a press conference due to unpaid childhood dues.

Never forget the original last minute madness game, in Bathurst in 2017, where Penrith scored two tries in the dying stages to run down Canberra and all but consign them to missing the finals. That Bathurst game still wakes up Raiders fans in cold sweats, this will go some way to exorcising those particular demons.

Canberra had been taking names all season, but they hadn’t played Penrith yet, and as much as the wins can stack up, there’s always going to be that underbelly of society that questions your credentials until you stack yourself against the best, even if the best may not be as fearsome as they once were.

Canberra’s “Miracle in Mudgee” was proof of concept for the Green Machine. It was a realisation that they can indeed go down into the gutter and fight the sewer rats. Maybe they didn’t need to prove it to themselves, but the tape is now out there for all to see.

More importantly though, it’s reassurance that sometimes all you need is a fleeting moment of brilliance to erase 82 minutes of bone crushing intensity. Penrith and Canberra played themselves to a standstill, a gladiatorial contest fit for the first weekend of October, played out at an intimate country venue like a Taylor Swift tour in 2013.

A half step, a moment’s hesitation, that’s all the clearance the great teams need to punish the opposition, and Canberra have morphed into that right before our eyes this season. It’s only flukey if it happens once and Canberra have now built up a rolodex of batshit insane finishes in 2025 that most other teams would take 15 years to fill.

Maybe it wasn’t a miracle.

Maybe it was destiny.

Why change a winning formula?

That’s the question that was lobbed at Canterbury earlier this season during the carousel of playmaking perpetuity, where Lachlan Galvin said some very not-nice things about the Wests Tigers before jumping ship to Belmore.

I’m not going to rehash my thoughts on how Galvin, the Tigers or his management handled the breakup at the time because it was frankly unbecoming that it dragged out as long as it did (with a little help from the kindling that is the media), but if you do want to hit yourself over the head again and relive that saga, read below.

Anyway, to the Dogs, Galvin coming in threw the proverbial cat among the pigeons, as the initially scatterbrained approach of Cameron Ciraldo led to bench utility Galvin, half-turned-hooker Toby Sexton, and the benching of Reed Mahoney.

Changing two spine positions halfway through a game is a strategy fraught with risk at the best of times, even before accounting for the Bulldogs’ propensity to sputter through games at time from an attacking point of view, maybe their closest mirror to the Penrith dynasty they so keenly and openly try to emulate. Penrith get criticised for their attacking futility at times, but the blunt force trauma is all part of the plan.

Penrith get away with it now because *gestures at the last four years*, the Bulldogs don’t…yet.

The Bulldogs own a 6-4 record in the Galvin Era so far, the first game of which was a softball against a sputtering Parramatta side before surviving a fast-finishing South Sydney in Galvin’s first start with Matt Burton missing.

The following two games were what got the knives sharpening, an 8-6 loss to Penrith branded as “game of the season” and “of a finals intensity”, followed by choking away a 16-0 halftime lead to lose to the Brisbane Broncos, who themselves still aren’t really sure what they are (I started writing this piece two weeks ago, before the Mam and Reynolds injuries, so keep that in mind).

The criticisms of the Bulldogs during that stretch were, in my opinion, fair, because they were willingly tying one hand behind their back with the constant merry-go-round between Galvin, Sexton and Mahoney. A decision needed to be made one way or the other between Galvin and Sexton, and live with the consequences.

Toby Sexton has had a really nice year for the Bulldogs, and it’s a snapshot into the cruel nature of the NRL that the halfback of a side firmly entrenched in the top two was cast aside through no fault of his own for the opportunity cost of acquiring one of the brightest prospects in recent memory.

A person’s opinion on Galvin as a prospect goes a long way to determining how they analyse how this situation is playing out, and the value of prioritising long-term development and futureproofing the club over a single fleeting moment in the sun. By that same token, flipping Sexton to the south of France for Galvin might be a lateral or even backwards step as the rest of this season plays out, but it’s pretty clear this move isn’t intended to raise the floor of this team as currently constructed, but rather to smash through the ceiling in the next 5-10 years.

Development isn’t linear and there’s no guarantee that betting on Galvin to the extent that you’d effectively be turning the remainder of this season as a trial run when you’re top four with very real premiership hopes in the hopes of elevating in years to come will prove to be a winning strategy. However, as morose as the Bulldogs now look with ball in hand, their defence is still one of the best in the league, and defensive habits are repeatable, while offensive futility is far easier to work on. You can’t make people want to tackle.

With the benefit of a preseason and settled spine with Mahoney also moving on, the premature integration of Galvin into the Bulldogs may prove indeed to be a recruitment boon.

At the other end of the table, there’s been a similar element of shuffling the deck chairs at Parramatta with Dylan Brown first dropped to create opportunity for long term prospect Joash Papalii, then puzzlingly reintegrated into the squad at centre.

Brown is obviously Newcastle-bound in 2026 on a contract and decision I wrote about previously. Brown reportedly had the chance to leave early before deciding to stay and see the season out.

Whatever you think of the Brown deal from Newcastle’s point of view is largely irrelevant now, but it did create the always fascinating subplot of how a club treats a player who isn’t part of the future (thanks to the NRL’s brilliant player movement system).

There’s always an argument that the player on the way out should be, blacklisted is probably too strong a term, but effectively phased out of the squad to take a look at players who may be there long term (hence the Papalii reference above). That’s a position I usually default to being against only because I saw it firsthand with Matt Burton and Penrith in 2021.

When Burton signed for the Bulldogs there were immediate calls for Penrith to release him early, both for the good of his development and the harmony of the squad. Burton obviously wasn’t released and ended up becoming a premiership winning centre, scoring a try in the Grand Final before departing for Belmore.

Now, the situations between 2021 Penrith and 2025 Parramatta are vastly different, and it doesn’t take someone with an online Harvard degree to figure that out, but it has made me soften on the stance of “pick your best 17 regardless” in the face of a player leaving.

When the decision was made to stop playing Brown in first grade (starting with him playing at hooker in Round 19 against Penrith), Parramatta were anchored to the bottom of the table with no prospect of playing finals footy. In that situation, turning the rest of the season into a glorified preseason and accelerating some development in the process is probably the right move.

Whether you think Joash Papalii is a genuine prospect in the halves is a different issue entirely, and I do appreciate how all these young gun outside backs coming through are all magically halves shoehorned out of position (Jaxon Purdue springs to mind). However, taking the lumps now when the games aren’t as high leverage (Mitchell Moses spray aside) is far better than getting to Round 1 next season and having an “oh shit moment”.

Just quietly too, there’s a lot to like about Parramatta’s spine moving forward with Isaiah Iongi, Mitchell Moses and Ryley Smith, even with the question marks about Papalii at six and whether signing Tallyn Da Silva to a long-term deal after Smith’s breakout season was astute roster management.

Rugby league is a circular game, as evidenced by a top four side and bottom four side masquerading as cheap facsimiles of each other, doing the awkward dance of “which halves pairing will we pick this week?”

The Bulldogs provide the more interesting case study, and it’s fair to wonder if they have indeed submarined any potential chance of a premiership this year by deciding on drastic personnel change midway through the season, but betting on raw talent is always a side of history I’d rather be on over remaining comfortable with a workman.

The way Galvin left the Tigers and the Bulldogs immediate stumbling with him in the side has also done nothing but help grow the legend of Toby Sexton, who again, had a fine season, but the rewriting of history with him as the centrepiece of the renaissance is fanciful and ultimately disingenuous.

It feels like every year now, we get a story about a top line player who is considering shunning the Kangaroos in order to play for their heritage in the summer international season.

Brian To’o made headlines back in 2022 when he first declared that he would play for the Kangaroos at the end of season delayed World Cup over in England, at the behest of his parents, before reneging on that initial declaration later that year to front up for Samoa alongside all his best friends.

From January 2022:

Now I’m going to ignore the somewhat problematic nature of effectively reducing the Kangaroos into a PlayStation trophy achievement on a career mode save, but that’s the reality the Kangaroos have created for themselves. A lack of fixtures and visibility for the team to the general population has severed the link to community and reduced them to a mere background figure in the landscape of rugby league. It’s quite rare for the number one ranked team in the world to be the side character in the story, and yet here we are.

Australia beat England in the 2017 World Cup final 6-0 thanks to a Boyd Cordner try in the first half. In between that game and the first game of the 2021 World Cup (a 42-8 victory over Fiji in Leeds in mid-October 2022), the Kangaroos played a grand total of…four fixtures, two each in 2018 and 2019, with a global pandemic in the middle.

The pandemic presented the perfect excuse for those in charge of the sport to quietly suffocate the international game in favour of their interests in the real money spinners (State of Origin). It’s no secret that while Origin brings in seismic amounts of dosh through broadcasting arrangements and gate receipts, international rugby league is, by comparison, the sullen younger sibling who insists on private cello lessons halfway across town at great expense to the parents.

The Pacific Championships are funded by the NRL and the Australian federal government. Back in 2023 the Albanese government committed $7 million over the subsequent two years for the end of season tournament, with then-Kangaroos coach Mal Meninga citing development of rugby league in the lead up to the 2026 World Cup as a driving factor.

The 2021 World Cup, played a year later than the branding would suggest, is the clearest example of the shifting attitude towards the international game, given it took one sneeze in a pub in Huddersfield for the NRL to effectively boycott the tournament, citing “health concerns”. While I don’t doubt there were players that had legitimate qualms and would have opted out of competing if given the choice, it felt too rushed a decision to threaten to postpone or “we’ll take our ball and go home.”

I have little doubt that had the tournament gone ahead in 2021 with the caveat of players opting in, that while you may have gotten some players who chose to not go, the tournament may have been in danger of actually being competitive, but I digress. The NRL and ARLC hold all the power in the support so whatever they say goes, and Australia’s thorough pantsing of the likes of Scotland and Italy would have to wait twelve months.

Back to the original impetus for this article, the likes of Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow (who has represented Samoa before), Tino Fa’asuamaleaui (who has represented Samoa before) and Payne Haas (who has not) are all reportedly considering “abandoning” the Kangaroos end of season Ashes Tour of England (for which they would all be surely picked) in favour of representing Toa Samoa in the Pacific Championships.

During my research for this I made the mistake of clicking on a Courier Mail comments section and…well you get the idea. I hope the trio mentioned above enjoy handing in their Australian passports and obtaining work visas…

I’ve written before, several times in fact, my thoughts on the balance between those that play State of Origin and then choose to represent a Tier 2 nation internationally when Brian To’o officially declared for Samoa in 2022, citing the duelling identities of representing your community (western Sydney) and culture (Samoa).

The discourse has predictably gone circular around this issue, with former Blues coach Brad Fittler putting his hand up to lead the yearly chorus of “if you play Tier 2 you should be banned from Origin” rhetoric, as if that would solve anything.

The problem, as I mentioned above, is twofold. One, yes the Kangaroos just don’t have the same cut through to the generation of young players coming through that they did 20 years ago, and that’s largely down to, again repeating myself here, a sheer lack of fixtures. I’m not professing to know the solution here, but a few token games at the end of a seven month season where half the players end up needing surgery anyway really isn’t enough to rebuild the mythos in the jersey.

The other aspect is something that the Kangaroos can do nothing about, and that’s the rise in Pasifika representation across the NRL to the point where a lot of these players grow up together in the same community, attending the same churches and gatherings, playing the same junior football together, growing up together. It’s no different to the enclaves of Italians and Greeks and Lebanese and Vietnamese scattered throughout Sydney.

Samoa making the World Cup final would have been an unthinkable concept not ten years ago, and now a host of the best players in the world are counted among their diaspora. Even if you want to be cynical and point to the intention of the draw of the last World Cup being to lob England a supposed softball by having Australia and New Zealand on the same side of the draw, the point is a Tier 2 nation run on hopes and dreams shattered the mirage of English hope thanks to an outside back kicking a field goal.

You know what else drives this? Success.

Think back to when Jason Taumalolo made the call to defect full time from New Zealand to Tonga. Not only did his stature as the best player in the game at the time help attract others to do the same for Tonga, but then the snowball effect began, culminating in their famous defeat of Australia in November 2019.

Samoa is the same prototype, just later, and with a group instead of one central figure.

When To’o, Jarome Luai and Stephen Crichton all declared they would play for Samoa in the World Cup in 2022 (at the time you have to remember they were all real chances of being picked in an extended Australian squad at least), that was Samoa’s formative moment from Tier 2 also ran into genuine international mover and shaker. They cited the Taumalolo example, as well as the leadership of elder statesmen like Junior Paulo and Josh Papalii, when deciding to represent the island nation.

Since that moment, more and more players have swung or are considering the move, like the headline trio in this article, but also guys like Murray Taulagi and Jeremiah Nanai, who were both in the Kangaroos squad for that World Cup before representing Samoa later, or Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, who chose Samoa over NZ on his return to rugby league.

A small part of me also wonders what it would have been like for the Samoan players in the Australian squad during the World Cup seeing the scenes and the groundswell of support the Samoan team garnered on their run to the final. I don’t doubt there was a definite element of FOMO in regard to being on the other side of the fence on that one.

There’s been a lot of sneering rejection of the notion of Kevin Walters being appointed the Kangaroos coach, namely from people who, in my mind, completely miss the point of what being a representative footy coach should actually be about.

Is it jobs for the boys? Yeah, sure, but who really cares? Rugby league in an international context is uniquely positioned because of the cream at the top and the expectations associated with everyone below.

Coaching a team like Tonga or Samoa is all about reconnecting players to their ancestral homeland. The motivation of family and history is far more powerful than any tactician’s whiteboard spewing woke nonsense like overlaps and block plays.

If your issue with the Kangaroos is that players don’t seem to care, then wouldn’t someone like Kevin Walters be the perfect candidate to try and shift that notion? Maybe it’s a sociocultural problem that’s beyond fixing, but getting in everyone’s favourite uncle to razz the fellas up for a couple of weeks and beat the living shit out of a few Poms will be a nice entree to the summer if nothing else.

My read on this from afar is that Walters is passionate and cares about the job, which isn’t to say Mal Meninga didn’t but sometimes a fresh voice is needed. The people that extrapolate his time as Broncos coach with this appointment are misidentifying the requirements of the role. This isn’t a club role, he doesn’t have to be the mastermind behind tactics seven days a week. This is a glorified camp counsellor, but with elite athletes and lots of beer.

To provide a cross-sport example, look at the Socceroos. Soccer is a more tactically dependent sport than rugby league but the tenets of international play are largely the same. Ange Postecoglou is perhaps Australia’s most successful footballing export (unless you ask Daniel Levy that question), and yet he was truly awful as the Socceroos manager because he overthought the role, his intensive and painstakingly detail-oriented ethos falling flat when dealing with a country of players who have made a living on bringing Tony Pulis’ Stoke City ball to the international stage.

On the flip side you have Graham Arnold, a manager who could often be described as turgid or boring during his time with Sydney FC, but as a national team manager, a great fit, because he was nothing if not an emotional leader, not bothering with tactics and instead telling the boys to go out there and kick the shit out of the opposition, and bringing a few Scotsmen along for the ride. The enduring image of Australia’s World Cup run to me isn’t the Mathew Leckie goal against Denmark, or the scenes at Federation Square, but rather the moment that spawned it all, in the middle east against Peru, when Andrew Redmayne saved the winning penalty and the camera panned to Arnold mobbed by his staff, his fist raised high in elation above the scrum. That man understood that to lead Australia in international football was about leading an army, not cosplaying as Johan Cruyff’s Clockwork Orange Dutch team.

Ok soccer tangent done.

Reports out of Redfern have indicated Cameron Murray, who has been sidelined all year with a torn Achilles suffered in preseason, is training hard in a desperate bid to make the Ashes tour. Ignoring the fact that I’d probably advise against picking a guy who probably won’t play any first grade football this season, that’s the mentality we supposedly want from the Kangaroos.

Messing with the State of Origin eligibility rules and the tiers of international rugby league won’t fix anything. It is possible that the Kangaroos jersey and everything associated with it is irreparably damaged to the point that it will become increasingly rare for those with ancestral homes elsewhere to choose to don the green and gold.

But if anyone can get a bit of that magic and spice back into the jersey, then Kevin Walters isn’t a bad first call.

For those of you loyal subscribers that have been along the journey since the very start, you nay remember (if you’re a sicko anyway) that one of my first newsletters was about the week to week growth between the first two games of Isaiya Katoa’s NRL career back in 2023.

Fast forward two years and all the public angst from Penrith at losing him has not only been justified (that debate ended a long time ago), but Katoa is entering that rare pantheon of massively hyped junior prospect that doesn’t completely wither away at the first sign of remote scrutiny.

Development isn’t linear, and for every success story like Katoa there’s dozens of cautionary tales that litter the road of bones between the Ched Towns Reserve and Kayo Stadium. Modern sports, not just rugby league, have become obsessed with chasing the next big thing instead of consolidating the proven quantity.

Not to get too into the Penrith developmental pathway weeds but there were real life people with the real life opinion as late as the beginning of 2024 that thought the Panthers made a mistake retaining Jarome Luai over Matt Burton after the 2021 season.

The mystery box is always better than the boat. The mystery box could even be a boat!

The growth of Katoa, to repeat my earlier line, hasn’t been linear. As with any 18 year old exposed to the rigours of a full NRL season a year after spending the majority of his time in Jersey Flegg (the Panthers demoted him from NSW Cup after he signed with the Dolphins), he faltered late in his rookie season.

His second season started similarly strong, before eventually finding himself dropped, the reasoning of which can be debated. Was it form related or Wayne Bennett spelling his young prodigy to protect superfluous miles on the legs early in his career.

This year though, the Glenmore Park product has gone to another level, spearheading one of the most vibrant attacking juggernauts in the league along with star fullback Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow, powering the Dolphins to the highest scoring points total in the league thus far (yes they’ve only had the one bye).

When I watch the Dolphins play, the eyes are naturally drawn to the sweeping, alluring attacks out wide with Tabuai-Fidow swooping on to a ball out the back and getting downhill, using the weapons in the outside backs like Herbie Farnworth and (the now-injured) Jack Bostock, but it all starts with the guile and craft of Katoa on the inside.

The great halfbacks play with several tones, the ability to control tempo has never been important in an era that is faster than ever, with in-rushing defensive lines and back rowers constantly hunting for playmakers’ ribs on the inside, spatial awareness and the ability to play slow-to-fast and fast-to-slow has become a premium trait, something that halves can go lifetimes without mastering, something Katoa appears to have a handle on far beyond his years.

I don’t want this to sound like I’m trying to justify jazz music to someone who only listens to drill rap, but the point of difference with Katoa isn’t an elite running game like a Mitchell Moses or Jahrome Hughes, he doesn’t kick teams to death like Nathan Cleary, and he doesn’t play off the cuff with the unpredictability of a leagues club salt shaker like a Cameron Munster.

His point of difference is…he does all those things.

Katoa might not be the best in any of those categories aforementioned but they all make up the various arrows in his bottomless quiver. The special part of Katoa’s game is that each of his unique traits help build off each other. We so often hear things about how a good running game can set up a passing game, and vice versa, and that may be true with Katoa, but it’s the unconventional nature and his ability to read and break tendencies that bely his years in the game.

“Ball handling” is a term I’ve struggled with in the past when it comes to American football with respect to evaluating quarterback play. Analysts will speak about ball handling in terms of how the quarterback sells play action fakes to collapse defensive boxes, how well they can sell one route before moving to a second read, and how they move defences with their arms, all before the ball is even cast in the air.

In that similar vein, Katoa may be the best pure “ball-handler” in the NRL already, although I am leading head first with this take having not run through the list in my head, but I truly don’t think there’s a better player at moving defenders with little intricate movements and pass fakes like the young Dolphin. If AND1 mixtapes were such a thing in the world of footy, the array of fakes, jinks and stutter steps purveyed by Katoa would fly off the shelves at any western Sydney or northern Brisbane Sanity branch.

If you go back and watch the game against the Rabbitohs from the weekend, where the Dolphins dropped yet another airstrike on an unsuspecting Taliban stronghold (I watched 12 Strong with Chris Hemsworth last night forgive me), and you’ll notice the deliberate way which Katoa engages the defensive line.

Playing sideways is often used to describe negative halfback play as it allows defences to slide and contain, with playing straight a trope often parroted by commentators when attacks struggle to break down a defensive line, and Souths hardly have the defensive fortitude of a marshy field in Champagne, France (I watched All Quiet on the Western Front on Saturday night, been on a real war movie binge lately, again, forgive me), but Katoa plays with a horizontal nature that feels like he’s sucking in a bad defensive decision and reacting to it.

He hides the ball when crabbing across the field, feigning dropping it off to an unders runner, before sparking a shift after one defender collapses when they shouldn’t (slow-to-fast). He attacks and digs into the line, before deliberately stopping, propping, and reading the next defender, hitting the short ball or playing out the back (fast-to-slow).

I’m not going to sit here and get too into technical detail about the intricacies of Katoa’s play because frankly that isn’t my forte and the best in the business, Jason Oliver from Rugby League Writers, has already broken down Katoa in far more detail than I ever could here.

All of this is to say, with the news that Katoa has been invited into the NSW Blues camp ahead of the decider as a train on player, his ascension is beginning to really smash through mainstream consciousness. It says a lot of the standing in which he’s considered by those in the upper echelon of the game that with both Jarome Luai and Nathan Cleary under various injury clouds (they’ve both since been passed fit to play), Katoa was almost the unanimous first drop selection should either be forced to miss.

With the volatility surrounding many halves situations around the league, the Dolphins have landed perfectly in the eye of the storm. As it turns out, raiding one of the best junior nurseries ahead of your inaugural season was a fruitful strategy. You wouldn’t fill out your brand new mansion with furniture off Facebook Marketplace would you.

Katoa will be reading out the Glenmore Park Brumbies in a pre-game video team list ahead of an interstate rumble soon enough should he wish to go down that avenue.

His play this year has made that almost a formality, a 10 year veteran trapped in the body of a teenager, and there’s no greater compliment.

When the team lists were announced prior to State of Origin Game II I scoffed at Billy Slater’s apparent inflexibility to change away from something that so obviously didn’t work. Reuben Cotter staying on the edge, starting Trent Loiero, shuffling Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow and Valentine Holmes around, it all felt very Titanic in execution. I was even going to call the piece “Birdbox” a clever reference to the Sandra Bullock horror film, it was a real thinker.

And then so many things kept changing and injuries mounted and I scrapped the piece entirely and just let the chips fall where they may.

Well, fall they did, Queensland winning Game II 26-24, but this isn’t really about what Queensland did or didn’t do well, no this is more about some of the insane discourse that, like clockwork, follows a New South Wales loss.

Glancing at the raw numbers, if you didn’t watch the game, you’d be forgiven for being puzzled as to how the Blues managed to pull defeat from the jaws of victory in this one. According to the NRL’s match centre, the Blues had 55% of possession, were in possession for seven more minutes than the Maroons, outgained the Maroons by 158m, including 111 more post contact metres and a greater average set distance, missed a similar amount of tackles (33 to 31 in Queensland’s favour, defensive enthusiasts avert your eyes), and made the same amount of line breaks.

All the power stats were in the Blues favour, and the attacking creme was more or less a wash over the course of the 80 minutes. The reason the Maroons were able to outlast the Blues bid for the greatest Origin comeback was in no small part due to the margin afforded them by a collective brain explosion not seen since the infamous “Sin Bin Sunday” between the Roosters and Rabbitohs.

The signs were ominous for the fate of competitiveness when Brian To’o scrapped a try early, the Blues rolling down the field and that potent left edge humming, but what followed that was perhaps, and I say this as someone who watched a lot of late 2000s Penrith Panthers and who grew up in a Tigers household, the dumbest thirty minute stretch of football I have ever seen from a professional side, no less a rep team coming in as heavy favourites.

In between To’o’s try in the 9th minute and Kurt Capewell’s try in the 37th to make the score 26-6, the Blues committed eight penalties (one of them being Utoikamanu’s retreating obstruction for Cleary’s no try), gave away an additional two set restarts (I actually thought it was more upon review of the play by play), and several more handling errors deep in their own end.

The Blues weren’t given a chance to exploit their athletic strengths in the middle of the field because they were too busy getting sucked into the weeds, a first half reeking of complacency given how simple the Game I victory at Suncorp proved to be, the words of Paul Vautin ringing in the Maroons ears to be sure, but maybe the Blues read that press too and expected a similar level of resistance.

When the Blues put the boneheadedness away and, to use a cliche, got into the grind, they were predictably tough to stop. Queensland’s middle didn’t have the facilities to handle the meterage of Payne Haas, Brian To’o, Zac Lomax and middle forward Hudson Young, the work in the middle setting up their elaborate shifts left where Latrell Mitchell had a field day setting up Brian To’o’s first Origin hat trick.

The Blues fall victim to the unwanted stat of losing despite scoring more tries, and the goalkicking woes which didn’t haunt them in Brisbane came to collect their rent in Perth, an AFL city, but there’s no points for missing in this arena.

And thus, given all that, I would say I’m surprised by the sentiment of now wanting mass changes ahead of the decider at Accor in three weeks, but I’m also not because this state eats its young and doesn’t know how to reset after one bad game.

This team is more or less the majority of the same guys that won a historic decider last year at Suncorp and smothered the Maroons again in Game I. Letting a bad thirty minutes define your series and mark the cards of so many of those heroes from last year is just fuel to the constant diatribes from north of the border about “not getting Origin.”

The Blues played the worst period I’ve ever seen and still probably did more than enough to win that game, such is the dominance they can exhibit when they get out of their own heads. If Zac Lomax could kick straight, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Sideline conversions are hard but when you were nails a year ago these are the expectations you set.

Nathan Cleary was playing hampered, a mystery groin injury revealed post game, and he was clearly not functioning at normal level but was still causing problems when he dug into the line and played out the back to Jarome Luai and Latrell Mitchell.

Connor Watson's spell not his finest hour in the arena either, immediately coming on and trying to do too much, consistently attacking short sides on the right edge when the big shift was in place to the left, the edge that had gashed the Maroons all night.

In terms of changes for Game III, there’s no reason to throw players to the wolves. I wouldn’t have picked Stefano Utoikamanu in the first place, and I’d monitor how Keaon Koloamatangi goes (if he plays this weekend after having to withdraw from the Game II squad with a facial injury), but making mass changes to this side just reconfirms all the notions that the Blues constantly live in a state of panic.

Jarome Luai (who Reuben Cotter said postgame didn’t eye gouge him) and Zac Lomax got away with fines only so there’s no need to parse through the tapes and wonder if throwing Isaiya Katoa or Luke Metcalf in for a decider debut is the right idea. This team will be largely unchanged barring injuries or Laurie going full space cadet, and that’s the right call.

Calm down.

The Blues won the first match of the 2025 State of Origin series 18-6 at Suncorp Stadium, the first time a team from south of the border has won consecutive games at Lang Park since 1997-1998, a feat that should be celebrated irrespective of how shambolic the current Queensland side performed.

Now I’m not going to give any sort of blow by blow recount of the game because you can find any number of those on the major media outlets and I don’t really think just telling you what happened has any real value. Instead let’s focus on a few key things that my untrained eye noticed.

Firstly, let’s start with the victorious Blues. All week we heard about the journey Max King had trodden to get to this point, from finding his faith to struggling with a number of serious injuries, including a heart issue called supraventricular tachycardia that took three operations to correct, and a pretty gnarly foot issue stemming from a bone growth underneath his Achilles tendon that had him all but medically retired and living back at home in the Hunter.

Based on the goalkicking last night you’d think that foot issue was contagious. Nathan Cleary shanked three kicks (admittedly all from the sideline or near enough) before being hooked for Zac Lomax on the final try much closer to the posts (Lomax proceeded to hook the ball well left too). If the Blues had felt like it, they could have scored 40 and I don’t think anyone would have blinked, such was their overall dominance.

Back to King, yes I used his foot injury to set up a jab at the goalkicking, but in all seriousness he had a fantastic debut. Whilst he wasn’t a selection I necessarily had on my radar I was all for him getting his shot, and he responded with 21 tackles and 106 running metres in only 39 minutes off the bench. Heavy impact for a player who I don’t necessarily associate with being able to play that bench impact role a la Spencer Leniu, but credit to him for building on the great start the NSW starting middles had.

Speaking of, not much more needs to be said about Payne Haas at this point. 156 running metres from 18 runs, 30 tackles without a miss, constantly skittling unsuspecting Queensland defenders and generating easy ruck speed by dominating the contact. The quad injury he was reportedly battling through all week may as well have been a papercut on his shoulder the way he powered over the Maroons, a worthy man of the match.

In concert with Haas though was Isaah Yeo, the new captain who I felt had his best performance in State of Origin, especially in the first half. He finished his night with 13 runs for 146 metres and 5 tackle busts and made 32 tackles without a miss. Most notably though was his willingness to run early and run often. So often in Origin Yeo has been content to play the role of passer in the middle, and it would have been hard to criticise him for playing that role again given the presence in the middle of Haas and Mitch Barnett, but Yeo added to the triumvirate by constantly beating the first man, falling forward and getting over the advantage line, churning out post contact metres and generating quick play the balls. He had 16 ball receipts in this game and only threw three passes. For context, in his last game before Origin, against the Cowboys, he had 37 receipts and threw 18 passes. I’d have to go back and watch again but it felt like a lot of his runs were set up runs late in the tackle count before a kick, and the NSW halves were rarely under any serious kick pressure as a result of the work of him along with Haas and Barnett.

Speaking of the halves, I thought they were both fine. Nathan Cleary maybe ran the ball a couple of times he shouldn’t have but overall I thought he was constantly probing the Maroons defence, resulting in 10 tackle breaks (more than double the entire Queensland forward pack) and several half breaks and offloads, including keeping the ball alive for Zac Lomax’s first try. He commented post game that there were some moments he’d like to have back (and yes the goalkicking) but that he was confident that his partnership with Mitchell Moses would only get better as they worked each other out. Moses was a bit quieter and maybe didn’t have the imprint on the game he would’ve liked but with NSW finding so much joy down their right edge their vaunted left side wasn’t the priority. He did also only kick the ball four times, a reminder that having “two kicking options” is largely overrated, but he did his job without being spectacular.

My last NSW note is on Stephen Crichton. Sure, Lomax will get the headlines for the two tries and rightfully so, but I thought Crichton’s defence in shutting down the Maroons left edge attack was pivotal in helping the Blues survive the sin bin period. Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow had maybe his quietest game in Origin, although to be fair the rest of that edge was an out-of-position facsimile of a real rugby league team.

Ok, now for the Queenslanders, and a nice segue into the fears I had for them heading into Game I. In my “analysis” on the team selections, I had the following notes about Valentine Holmes and Reuben Cotter. I’ll lump them in together because the fact they played on the same side is pertinent, so bear with the wall of text.

I was wrong about Holmes playing right wing, the Maroons decided to station Xavier Coates out there to try and jump over Brian To’o, a tactic that is mooted every year and rarely results in more than 1-2 semi-interesting contests (sin bin aside).

That meant the left edge was comprised of a front rower playing second row, a fullback playing centre, and a centre playing winger. I hated the Cotter selection on the edge from the start because to me he hasn’t ever really shown that versatility to play out there save for one desperate Origin performance a few years ago. I’m not that interested in his lack of running metres because very few modern day edge forwards are high volume ball runners (and Billy has scapegoated one of the few he could pick), and I thought Liam Martin had a fantastic game with his kick chase and line speed as Cotter’s direct opposite, and he ran for less metres than Cotter’s 51.

My issue is because that entire edge was a piecemeal construction of mismatched talent from the start, they were targeted early and often by the Blues, to very good returns. On Zac Lomax’s first try, the good work starts on the Blues left edge with Haas keeping the ball alive and Cleary breaking a tackle to spread the ball wide, but Queensland have enough numbers to feasibly shut it down. Once Stephen Crichton receives the ball, Holmes shoots up from his wing spot for no real reason to try and shut the play down, and is easily juked out of his shoes by the Bulldogs skipper, turning what was even numbers into Tabuai-Fidow isolated in a 2v1. Crichton draws and passes, and Lomax strolls over untouched.

On Lomax’s second try, it’s really simply backline movement from the Blues that strips the Maroons for numbers. The world’s easiest block play, Cleary holds the pass just long enough for Tabuai-Fidow to get interested in jamming in to the lead runner Crichton, leaving Edwards unmarked out the back, another simple draw and pass and Lomax is over again.

That Maroons left edge was suffering from defensive lapses and miscommunication all night. You could see them all unsure of when to jam, when to slide, when to trust the man on the inside, and all of that stems from a lack of familiarity in positioning. The Blues left edge attack was lauded as the more damaging edge with Latrell Mitchell and Brian To’o, but they didn’t need to feed that edge as often with the easy gains down the right.

My only other real general note from the Maroons was just how disjointed the entire spine looked. Kalyn Ponga was passive out the back, while it looked like Harry Grant was playing with a Rubik’s Cube out there at times, his brain scrambling to figure out what to do, some of his passes from dummy half either too slow or to the wrong option. A panicked offload to Cherry-Evans shut down the main Maroons kicker on the fifth tackle, so Grant put in what I can only describe as a box kick from dummy half for Coates that was far too deep and To’o marked easily in goal.

The Maroons halves, by extension of the frantic play from dummy half, were fairly anonymous. Munster lacked his usual tackle busting verve while there’s now the humdrum swirling around the future of Cherry-Evans in the side. For two halves with a decade of big game experience both at Origin and Test level, as well as Grand Finals, this was as directionless a performance as you can get, even accounting for half the Queensland forward pack doing their best Stay Puft impersonation.

One sparkling light for Queensland, Robert Toia wasn’t overawed at all by the situation. Debuting at Suncorp as a Queenslander no doubt takes a lot of the nerves away but he stood up to Latrell Mitchell, never letting him really settle with ball in hand. Him and Jeremiah Nanai did as good a job as could reasonably be expected marking that potent left edge. Ball in hand Toia had some nice touches, especially the flick to Coates for Queensland’s only try, and he was able to steal some easy yardage with the forwards getting pummelled whenever they spread the ball right. Certainly the most impressive Queensland debutant, but a low bar given Beau Fermor got token minutes at the end with the game dead (or as dead as an 8 point game can be) and Trent Loiero had as much impact as a wooden gate against a rolling stone.

There will be changes for Game 2…well there should be changes anyway. The Blues should change absolutely nothing, but I’d be…maybe not shocked given it’s Billy, but mildly surprised if something isn’t done, especially around some of the culprits on that left edge and the middle forwards living on borrowed time (looking at you Fotuaika and Loiero).

Game II is in Perth, where NSW have an average winning margin of 32 points (in two Origins), let’s see if Queensland can arrest the slide and force a decider.

The painful blow of a lego footstep.
Crashing your hip on the point of the bench.
An alleyway skip behind a dive bar,
The swirl of an unmistakeable stench.

Mud in the park on a miserable day.
Sneezing, no tissue? Hands covered in goo.
Leaving the beach after no waves to catch,
A seagull uses your head as a loo.

The first day at work after a long break.
Your favourite show gets cut from the air.
Paperwork dropped on your desk from the boss,
Your head goes limp in a show of despair.

A rough week ensues, the footy is on.
March on to the hill to cheer the boys home.
A listless display of inconsequence.
A beer can is launched, connects with your dome.

The punters get rowdy, the team, forlorn.
Players attempt to thank, to no reward.
Spit sprays the air, the crowd loudly lambasts.
A presser littered with token steps forward.

Crashing the collective head on the wall.
A tedium of aimless backline sweeps.
A last tackle hit-up, a kick gone dead,
The millionaire custodian weeps.

A lame duck head coach, scratching for answers.
A saviour inbound, from the cellar.
Thirteen million damn dollarydoos,
A decade, to avoid being dwellers.

Emergency board meetings, just for show.
Yeah yeah yeah? As the song goes, heads will roll.
Inaction breeds contempt, the din loudens,
Strained faces in the stands, each loss takes toll.

Local heroes desert, return, inflict.
Lauded with honours, success found offshore.
Messrs Young and King, hunters sent away,
While old dogs remain, a wizened dull core.

Young tyrants will farewell, lessons not learnt.
The belt will keep rolling, never to cease.
These plains will stay fertile, yet people starve.
Talent from home, cast away with the breeze.

Docks will stay singing with chatter and hope.
Whispering tales of fresh ambition.
The drums may dull but the beat never dies.
Promise reborn, of its own volition.

Yet the present is rainy, cold and grey.
But crowds remain, if hardly jovial.
For this is religion, a lifetime bond,
Attending your very own funeral.

So back to life’s trials, mundane or not.
Back to the trivial, the daily slop.
Go through the motions, fast forward to church,
For Mass is on Sunday, Knights are on top.

The patrons pour in, let’s do this again.
Amnesia from last week their greatest trait.
The bell tolls again, the battle resumes,
A hush descends; disciples can just wait.

One final sad three syllable war cry.
New-cas-tle, advance the blue and red wave.
This team may mirror a ship stuck ashore,
A return to the ocean all we crave.

**

I wasn’t originally planning on doing any analysis on the State of Origin squads but after NSW was named last night plus I slept on the Queensland leaks (which were confirmed this morning), I had to put something out there.

Welcome to the snackbox, quick thoughts of little consequence.

New South Wales

I’ll start with my home state of NSW because I feel like there’s less to dissect here. If you read my team that I would’ve picked that I put out last week, you’ll know that I’m overall fairly happy with the state of affairs.

The big talking point is obviously Terrell May’s exclusion from the squad, but while it may be a shocking omission in terms of raw form, reading the tea leaves means it was hardly a surprise to see his name nowhere among the 20 named by returning Blues coach Laurie Daley.

Once you made peace with Terrell being persona non grata, it became a question of who would fill that extra middle forward spot, and Laurie appears to have given the nod, at least for now, to Bulldogs front rower Max King. The former Titans and Storm (yes I don’t remember him there either) prop is averaging a career high 151 running metres per game, well up from his previous high-water mark of 119 per game last season, to go along with over 32 tackles per game at a 96% efficiency. Tackle efficiency is a funny stat because it credits players joining a tackle as second and third men in but the point is he’s become a real forward leader for a pack that is currently considered among the best in the league.

I don’t know if I would’ve picked King, but he’s certainly a more inspiring selection that both Jake Trbojevic and Jacob Saifiti, who both went down with injuries in the final game before selection. Whether he would’ve been picked if one of those two had been fit is a question we’ll never know the answer to.

The other selection quandaries fell pretty much as expected. I have found some of the discourse around the selection of Dylan Edwards and Reece Robson somewhat perplexing, only because of how crucial they were to last year’s success. I wouldn’t have been shocked if James Tedesco had garnered the custodian’s spot ahead of Edwards but the Penrith fullback has still had a good year, if not the incandescent year Tedesco is having, and Robson was never in any serious danger of losing his spot despite the presence of perhaps more talented rakes in Api Koroisau and Wayde Egan.

In terms of other outside back news, the predicted teams that omitted Brian To’o all look just as stupid now as they did three days ago, so good work all, and after watching Tom Trbojevic bumble around lamely on the weekend, you cannot trust him to hold up in Origin. Couple that with Jacob Kiraz’s untimely injury and the outside backs picked themselves.

I would’ve probably picked Jarome Luai over Mitchell Moses for the five-eighth role but again, it’s really a toss-up. I think Luai’s game is probably better suited to being a secondary playmaker to Moses but by his own admission his form for the Tigers has been below where he’d like.

The only other deck chair I would’ve shuffled is to start Hudson Young over Liam Martin because of the latter’s ability to play middle and edge versus the former’s specialist nature as an edge forward but again, minor quibble.

Stefano Utoikamanu’s presence in the extended squad is my only major beef with this squad. I don’t know if Laurie has watched any Storm games this year, but Stefano is still the same player he was at the Tigers, except now he’s putting up middling numbers for a good team as opposed to a bad team. He has all the talent in the world but he’s actually running for less metres than either of his last two years with the Tigers. Contrast that with other middle forwards like Keaon Koloamatangi, who was best on ground last night for South Sydney against Wests, and his inclusion feels underwhelming.

Payne Haas and Stephen Crichton are both managing minor injuries but according to the latest report from friend of the program (although he doesn’t know it) NRL Physio Haas’ scans came back minor so he should be right, and Crichton’s injury is something he’s been managing for a bit now so he should be ok too, but Campbell Graham is lurking after another strong showing on the weekend.

All in all, knowing what brain galaxy stuff Laurie Daley is capable of, this squad is pleasantly lacking nonsense.

Queensland

When I wrote about the NSW team I would pick, I said I wouldn’t have a go at the Queensland squad because I would just pick guys like Brad Schneider and Kobe Hetherington, such is my lack of journalistic integrity.

Turns out I wouldn’t have been far off?

(Sidenote: Love the retro Windows graphic here.)

Let’s start in the outside backs. When the leaks began springing last night as is tradition, and Sydney Roosters youngster Robert Toia’s name began to surface as a potential ‘bolter’, I assumed it was just some funny business to shroud the real team in secrecy. Toia is a tremendous talent and has represented Queensland at Under 19 level but my Origin policy is the same as my Test cricket policy. You don’t go around handing out free caps because they might pay off down the line. Now I’m not saying that’s Billy’s thinking, but it’s tough to reconcile picking a guy with a handful of first grade games in an average side when someone like Xavier Savage has been in scintillating form for Canberra and was apparently never a shot, or extended squad member Jesse Arthars, who has been good not great for the Broncos.

Or, if you were really intent on throwing in a youngster to the Suncorp furnace, what about Jaxon Purdue, who’s had a fantastic year for the Cowboys playing out of position in the centres, certainly a better year than Toia at least.

Of course, this is all stemming from untimely reported injuries to both Murray Taulagi and Selwyn Cobbo, who both picked up apparent knocks that ruled them out of the opener, but are we sure that they both would’ve been picked anyway? Logical convention would’ve stated Cobbo in the centres and Taulagi on a wing, but I’m not convinced that’s how Slater was leaning even before the misfortunes.

To shoehorn Toia in, Valentine Holmes has been selected on the wing, a position he plays regularly in representative football sure, but playing on the wing for Australia against the likes of Scotland and Italy is a bit different to State of Origin. Since 2020, Holmes has played six first grade games on the wing, and none since Round 14 of 2022, while his last Origin game on the wing outside of last year’s decider (which went so well for Queensland) was in the 2021 series. For someone who has lost a step, and who doesn’t play the position, it’s a huge gamble on past performance for Slater to trust the Dragons centre, who I’m presuming plays right wing given Coates is a left winger for Melbourne. That would shift Holmes not only from centre to wing, but from the left side to the right, two big changes that feel unnecessary.

The other main talking point is the forward pack, and the omission of a certain Corey Horsburgh (I sound like a Raiders fan talking about these snubs and I hate it) to fit in such luminaries as Origin debutant Trent Loiero, who famously gave away a penalty in possession at Magic Round to negate a Storm match winning field goal. There’s those good habits Billy preaches.

The Queensland pack is sparse on quality, I get it, but picking Horsburgh felt like such an easy win. Outside of Tino Fa’asuamaleaui and Patrick Carrigan (who himself has been kind of ok only this season), the rest of the pack is picked on the merits of years past, like Lindsay Collins and Reuben Cotter, who are both well under 100 running metres a game this season. It says a lot that Jeremiah Nanai, who was dropped by the Cowboys earlier this year, has worked his way back into the frame and is probably the least offensive forward selection, something that would’ve been unthinkable six weeks ago.

Beau Fermor has been in great form for the Titans but can only get a bench spot while Cotter, who has been disappointing in the middle, is starting on the edge, a position he hasn’t played at club level ever, and has only played five times at all (three games for Australia in 2023, including the 30-0 Pacific Championship Final loss to New Zealand, and two Origins). And don’t even get me started on the exile of David Fifita, which yet again seems from afar like the coach playing favourites.

This is a forward pack that doesn’t exactly scare me as an opposition fan. Granted, I know better than to cast aspersions about any Origin side either way because of *waves at history*, but again, I can’t read this squad and help but think that Queensland have missed a massive trick not picking Horsburgh on pure aggression alone. Queensland will need someone to stand up to the likes of Payne Haas and Mitchell Barnett, and I just don’t know if, outside of Tino, there’s anyone that can go with him.

Max Plath and Lachlan Hubner have both been in terrific club form and would’ve been, in my mind anyway, justifiable selections on form rather than rewarding the mediocrity of the forefathers in the middle like Fotuaika, and both have been better this season than Loiero, and while I know his club form has been spotty, I’d still trust Jaydn Su’A more to do a job on the edge than a shoehorned Reuben Cotter.

But you know who can play middle and edge and is in great form and has played Origin before? Corey Horsburgh. Yes I keep coming back to him, I am genuinely floored he’s been left out entirely.

At this point I’m not sure what the plan is for Tom Dearden in the utility spot either. The tale of Origin lore is picking a half with no real plan in the utility role and then just throwing them on with 5-10 mins left. Dearden is having a good year but I don’t really see his utility value as someone who could play pinch minutes at say hooker, especially with Ben Hunt out. He may be a toiler in every sense of the word but Kurt Mann could consider himself unlucky not to be in the Connor Watson role.

Overall, it’s a puzzling spate of decisions from Billy Slater, all no doubt validated by the company line of “we’re Queenslanders.” If I was a betting man, I’d say it won’t really matter the talent in the backline because these forward packs seem like a colossal mismatch but again, I’ve seen weirder shit in Origin before.

**

Turns out this snackbox was very much American cafeteria sized. Hope you’re hungry.

We’re one round of footy away from the Origin sides being selected, so what better time to join the masses and throw out a side that I’d pick for the series opener than right now?

In years past I’ve done both NSW and Queensland, but I’ve decided to keep it below the border this time around. If I was a Queensland selector I’d pick Kobe Hetherington and Brad Schneider to tank the side, such is my high levels of journalistic integrity.

For a Queensland perspective, check out if you’re somehow reading this and aren’t subscribed over there for true northern sicko analysis.

Full disclosure, I’m not predicting anything here. This is the side I would pick if I was somehow in charge, so I look forward to being very mad on Sunday night when the leaks come in and what Laurie has picked isn’t even remotely close to what I want, such is the petulance of the modern-day fan.

FULLBACK

To me, how much you weight incumbency is going to shape a lot of your own personal decision for the fullback slot. James Tedesco is enjoying something of a renaissance year this season despite the Roosters overall struggles and has firmly established himself again as the best fullback in the sport after losing his Origin and Test spot to Dylan Edwards over the last 12 months.

Edwards, on the other hand, was the man of the match in the decider last year and has had a pretty good year individually for Penrith despite the side’s overall struggles.

One thing I will say is that while the incumbency should hold not-insignificant weight from last year’s series, Laurie Daley won’t be wedded to those that performed so I wouldn’t put any changes past him.

If Edwards was having a bad year I’d be more inclined to pull the trigger, but as of right now I’m sticking with him. Were Laurie to go with Tedesco, then that’s fine by me as well, this is, in my mind, a genuine coin flip.

CHOICE: Dylan Edwards

CONSIDERED: James Tedesco

WING

I am using this forum to address all you mainstream media outlets running your predicted Origin sides with your “experts”.

If you have Brian To'o out of your NSW team for Game 1, then respectfully, you are an idiot, you deserve to have your head dunked in a toilet, and your pen licence revoked. I’ve seen, staggeringly, multiple sides now without the Penrith winger in it for reasons around him coming into camp underdone, having only just come back from injury.

While I can rationalise that thinking, even though I vehemently disagree with it, to then turn around and pick Zac Lomax (who himself is only just coming back from a fairly significant foot injury) and Tom Trbojevic (who can’t be trusted to stay fit for more than 27 minutes at a time) is insulting to the St Marys product.

To’o has been one of NSW’s best since his debut in 2021. Concerns about his lack of height against Queensland’s aerial wingers have been largely overblown. There is no good reason to exclude him from this side, even if he’s only going to get one game in before selection.

The other winger follows a similar logic in that he performed well last year but is only just returning from injury. Jacob Kiraz is having a stellar year, but if Lomax gets through this week then I’m comfortable throwing him in there.

At this point I just cannot comprehend picking Tom Trbojevic. When fit he’s maybe a top five player in the NRL, but that’s a caveat that gets stretched thinner and thinner with each passing season. I don’t trust him to handle the rigours of wing play in Origin anymore, and there’s better centres.

CHOICES: Brian To’o, Zac Lomax

CONSIDERED: Jacob Kiraz, Tom Trbojevic

CENTRE

Maybe the most automatic position group to be selected in the entire squad. Stephen Crichton is on fire for the Bulldogs right now, and his stint to drag his side back into the game and ultimately overrun a very good Canberra side was nothing short of immense.

After skepticism at being handed the leadership reigns, he’s really grown as a leader and role model for a resurgent Bulldogs side, and is now being spoken about as a genuine contender for Blues captaincy (which I would not do but alas).

On the other side, Latrell Mitchell has returned to Souths and resumed the role as one of the game’s genuine superstars with his ability to win his side a match on his own irrespective of what position he’s playing. Add to that his outstanding performances whenever he dons the Blues jersey and these two picks are automatic.

For completeness I did consider Bradman Best just for another option given his stupidly good Origin record thus far but he’s not ahead of these two plus he’s now injured. I also always look for reasons to try and talk myself into Kotoni Staggs but he’s a guy whose Origin chances may well pass him by after his sole appearance.

See above for my Tom Trbojevic opinion, I know he’s performed in the centres for NSW but he’s not that guy anymore, not ahead of Crichton and Mitchell anyway.

CHOICES: Stephen Crichton, Latrell Mitchell

CONSIDERED (seriously): Bradman Best

CONSIDERED (not seriously): Kotoni Staggs, Tom Trbojevic

FIVE-EIGHTH

The one spot where incumbency won’t really matter is halfback because Nathan Cleary, if fit, is going to be picked, which leaves last year’s halves pairing of Mitchell Moses and Jarome Luai battling it out to retain their spot in the side in the five-eighth position.

I’m admittedly biased towards Luai, but I do also think he’s more suited to play the secondary role to a dominant playmaker than Moses is. We’ve seen Moses play at second receiver before, at the Tigers, and while his halfback was admittedly Luke Brooks, the results were mixed to say the least.

I’m not necessarily picking Luai because he’s played with Cleary hundreds of times before, because I think we’ve seen that in Origin before as well and those results have also been mixed, but I just don’t love the theory of a Cleary-Moses pairing.

In all fairness, this is very much like the fullback discussion where I don’t think there’s a wrong choice per se, but my proclivities have me leaning towards Luai. Were they to pick Moses I wouldn’t argue, but whoever misses out is going to be very hard done by indeed based on the strength of last season.

CHOICE: Jarome Luai

CONSIDERED: Mitchell Moses

HALFBACK

It’s going to be Nathan Cleary guys, just accept it. I get his Origin career might be underwhelming given his club accomplishments, but sometimes he gets spoken about like he’s Mitchell Pearce.

CHOICE: Nathan Cleary

PROP

Payne Haas is one of the props, I’m not even going to waste time expounding.

The storylines around his front row partner that have been swirling around in the last few days have been utterly absurd.

First, let’s address the Terrell May conundrum.

His exit from the Roosters in the offseason was shrouded in secrecy and half-hearted attempts at explanations from those who follow the club but aren’t necessarily around the club. The article that came out about May not necessarily loving footy with a passion seemed to paint him as someone not worth investing in because of a perceived lack of trust that he would respect his trade, but the results on the field have rubbished that line of thinking.

When Buddy Franklin moved to the Swans from Hawthorn he stated it was as much to get away from the Victorian media and the fishbowl that was Melbourne, and live in relative (used loosely here) anonymity. He was once asked how much footy he watches in his spare time, and his response was something along the lines of none, or very little.

I’d wager there’s far more players than you think that treat footy as a paying job. A privileged job, to be sure, but a job with all the normal stresses and day to day lulls, magnified a thousandfold due to salaries and public interest.

The bottom line is Terrell May has been performing as a top two prop this season. Questions about his defence are frankly silly, and the insistence that a lot of his runs are empty calorie is downright insulting. You want empty calorie runs? Look at Jake Trbojevic’s output.

I cannot believe there’s genuine human beings who look at this side and the form in the year 2025 and try to argue there’s still a spot for Jake Trbojevic. I do not care if he’s good around the boys, you do not pick cheerleaders for Origin. The Blues got away with it last year, if they do it this year I may jump off the Tasman Bridge.

My other starting prop would actually be Mitch Barnett. While I don’t buy the theories about May not being picked because you can cover his impact and he needs long minutes anyway, I still would start Barnett because I think his game suits the opening stanza of an Origin encounter a bit more. I’m still picking May but off the bench, Haas plays his usual long minutes, May comes on to replace Barnett around 20-25 and plays the game out, Barnett can give Haas or Isaah Yeo (lock spoiler alert) a breather and also provide edge cover if necessary.

My other prop off the bench is Spencer Leniu for the headcase destroyer role, which he excelled at last series. Not much more to say here, except if you can’t pick May in your Origin side for some vague character concerns, but are more than happy to pick Leniu after his choirboy twelve months, then I can’t help you.

There’s also been far too many sides predicted that have just handed Stefano Utoikamanu a spot, I assume on the basis that he plays for the Melbourne Storm now and not the Wests Tigers. Have you actually watched the Storm play this year? Stefano may be worse than his Tigers stint towards the back end, he’s been thoroughly underwhelming, but people fall in love with the talent that should be there, plus the good team biases.

As for the Jacob Saifiti rumours, just…no.

CHOICES (starting): Payne Haas, Mitch Barnett

CHOICES (off the bench): Terrell May, Spencer Leniu

SECOND ROW

Three must go into two here, with Hudson Young, Angus Crichton and Liam Martin all vying for the edge forward spots. While I think Crichton and Martin are both very deserving of starting, I’m going to start Young and Crichton, with Martin off the bench, and bear with me.

Some of the best footy Liam Martin has ever played, outside of the Grand Final last year where he rightfully won the Clive Churchill Medal, was at the back end of the 2021 season, when he was mainly coming off the bench for Penrith and splitting his time between middle and edge, with Kurt Capewell and Viliame Kikau as the team’s starting edge forwards. Granted, that approach didn’t last the full season because Capewell got hurt and Martin ended up starting the last few games, but impact bench forward is not a role unfamiliar to him.

Martin has fallen victim to the love of Supercoach points when people analyse his game, because he isn’t a guy who racks up huge numbers in attack, but he tackles all day, runs hard when he does get the ball, and annoy the shit out of his opposite number. He’s a bully and a mongrel, someone players love playing with and hate playing against, and excuse the cliche, but a perfect “Origin player.”

Young and Crichton are both more specialist edge forwards capable of big minutes and rare attacking plays with ball in hand, whether it be a sharp line run or a dainty offload to a surging support player, they’re both embodiments of the old cliche of “stuff happens around them.”

Crichton was the Wally Lewis Medallist last series and cannot be dropped, and while the Roosters have been hit and miss he has not, and Young has been a key part of the Raiders surge up the ladder this season, although he didn’t cover himself in glory during the Bulldogs comeback last week.

I did consider Haumole Olakau’atu as well but he’s a bit behind this trio, especially given Manly’s recent form dip, plus he doesn’t offer as much bench value as a specialist edge forward.

CHOICES (starting): Hudson Young, Angus Crichton

CHOICE (bench): Liam Martin

CONSIDERED: Haumole Olakau’atu

LOCK

Isaah Yeo is the captain of this side, and with Cameron Murray out for the year there really isn’t anyone worth discussing.

CHOICE: Isaah Yeo

HOOKER

I won’t bury the lede here, I’m picking Reece Robson, but I do think there’s an interesting discussion around the Blues hooker.

Would I consider Robson among NSW’s best three hookers? No, probably not. I think Api Koroisau is the most talented in a vacuum and both Connor Watson and Wayde Egan are having great years, but that’s more personal preference than anything.

I do also think Robson’s contributions last season were somewhat overshadowed and overlooked by the halves and the other forwards. He was an immensely important part of the game plan with his ability to soak up pressure in the middle of the field, and his service, while maybe not as crisp as a Koroisau or an Egan, certainly was of an acceptable standard.

Much like Edwards, there may be flashier and more talented players than Robson, but he got the job done and deserves to hold his spot, I don’t think the other options have been so much better that they’ve demanded selection.

CHOICE: Reece Robson

CONSIDERED: Wayde Egan, Api Koroisau

UTILITY

There was a time where I would’ve said that utilities are pointless because coaches don’t use them right so just pick four forwards, and then last season happened and Connor Watson showed tremendous value to the Blues.

He’s had another great year so far, and with his ability to cover hooker, middle forward and edge in a pinch, he may have that utility spot on lockdown.

I did consider Ryan Papenhuyzen after an article that came out earlier this week about a possibility of him fulfilling the bench utility role but Watson has more positional versatility and outside an injury in the outside backs I’m not totally sure how you’d use Papenhuyzen, and I’m not a huge fan of picking for injuries.

I also considered Scott Drinkwater for the sheer fun of it.

CHOICE: Connor Watson

CONSIDERED: Ryan Papenhuyzen, Scott Drinkwater

RECAP

1. Dylan Edwards

2. Brian To’o

3. Latrell Mitchell

4. Stephen Crichton

5. Zac Lomax

6. Jarome Luai

7. Nathan Cleary

8. Payne Haas

9. Reece Robson

10. Mitchell Barnett

11. Angus Crichton

12. Hudson Young

13. Isaah Yeo (c)

14. Connor Watson

15. Spencer Leniu

16. Terrell May

17. Liam Martin

18. Ryan Papenhuyzen

In conclusion, this is the team I would pick, but I am extremely scared of what nonsense Laurie Daley may pull on Sunday night.

Last week the NRL, in conjunction with the WA government, announced that the 18th franchise would be based in Perth and carry the Bears moniker, after the North Sydney club were exiled from top-flight professional rugby league following the 1999 season. A failed merger with Manly ensued under the Northern Eagles banner before ultimately disintegrating after 2002.

Manly remained, the Bears were out entirely.

By now the history of the Bears and their demise is fairly well known among rugby league fans, from their last premiership being in 1922 to their capitulation stemming from a failed move to the Central Coast as a result of stadium dramas. The Northern Eagles era was a disaster, let’s not speak about it.

The scenes at North Sydney Leagues Club last week when the return was announced were genuinely heartwarming, even if I myself have no emotional connection to the Bears or any memory of their existence (I was three after the 1999 season), but the joy it brought those people was palpable, even if I’m not buying that ridiculous 200,000 membership number, turn it up Billy Moore.

Are there Bears fans who fell out of love with the game due to their expulsion that will return with the new venture? Yes. Are there lots of Bears fans who adopted new teams and won’t return? Also yes, and probably more than the former.

But as with any expansion proposal that goes through, eyes immediately turn to its viability and how its eventual success will be measured.

Putting a rugby league team in Perth is an absolute no brainer, let’s start there. Perth has a history of rugby league with the Western Reds, and a strong contingent of east coast transplants, plus a strong contingent of English born immigrants. According to the 2021 census, Perth had a population of almost 170k English-born people, ahead of even Sydney at barely 150k. Perth may be an AFL town predominantly, but it carries a rich sporting landscape that can sustain a rival code.

There have been six regular season NRL games played at the new Optus Stadium in Perth, each drawing crowds of over 30k, while the two Origin games played there pulled over 59k people each. The interest is there, whether its curiosity or passion isn’t really relevant.

But support from the people of Perth is never going to be a question. If there’s one thing people from Perth love more than Perth itself, it’s things from Perth.

The Perth Wildcats have sustained one of the strongest followings in the NBL for over 40 years thanks to their sustained success and connection to the local community. The Perth Glory were one of the most well-supported and attended teams in the A-League in the 2010s, and people actually care about the Big Bash League with the Scorchers.

The old saying that “Perth people will go to a letter opening”, while demeaning to the city because it implies there’s nothing else to do, rings true. The people of Perth will back a local product if there’s a good reason to.

Financially, there’s opportunities for benefit with the additional broadcast slot an 18th team brings, although that will no doubt be thrown into disarray when PNG enters as the 19th team whenever that may be, and no doubt the WA government has thrown up some delicious tax incentives and funding to secure the licence. If there’s one thing we know about PVL, he is a shrewd and cunning businessman (jumps at the first dollar sign).

I actually see a lot of similarities between this Bears expansion into Perth and the landscape I live in. For those unaware, I’ve lived in Hobart for six years now, and perhaps the only more parochial group of people than Western Australians are Tasmanians.

When the NBL expanded into Tasmania ahead of the 2021-22 season, it came off the back of almost two years of local interest and lobbying to the governing body. I remember putting my name down on an expression of interest form for a team in Tasmania as early as mid-2019. The announcement of the JackJumpers, funny name aside, gave the Tasmanian community something to cling to and something distinct to call their own.

Prior to the introduction of the JackJumpers, the only sport Tasmania had was cricket, save for a couple of token Hawthorn and North Melbourne AFL games a year hosted in Launceston and Hobart. The JackJumpers instilled a central focus and unified a state. The fact it was basketball genuinely didn’t matter. And you know what happened? They were good STRAIGHT away.

The JackJumpers made the Grand Final series in their first year in existence (getting swept by a loaded Sydney Kings team, including a closeout match with half their squad missing due to COVID-19 protocols, what a time), before winning their first championship in their third year. JackJumpers tickets have become harder to find than a marquee player willing to move to Canberra (sorry), MyState Bank Arena basically selling out the season in advance.

The JackJumpers case study proves that it doesn’t matter what the outlet is, the people will still shop there.

The success of the JackJumpers has also forced other sports’ hand. Following on from the momentum in the state generated by the basketball team, the AFL capitalised by announcing their expansion plans into Hobart for the 2029 season, although that is somewhat contingent on the construction of a new stadium (sound familiar Bears fans?).

Expecting the Bears to match the JackJumpers initial success, however, is foolish and fanciful. Not only is Hobart a much shorter trip from the mainland east coast than Perth is, making it more desirable for short term relocation, but the nature of basketball talent being worldwide makes attracting players easier.

The Bears are going to have their own struggles signing marquee players, let’s be realistic. If Canberra can’t secure a signature worth a damn when they’re only a three hour drive from Sydney, what’s the expectation for a city on the other side of the country? The Dolphins couldn’t sign any notable Queensland players despite the lure of Wayne Bennett and a Brisbane residence.

Will players move? Of course they will, but I’m boldly going to claim that those predicted 2027 team lists will be more wrong than right.

It’s a short runway into their professional debut, assuming 2027 is the actual commencement date. If we learned anything from the Dolphins expansion, a team needs the time to get all the overheads in order. We’re under six months away from the Bears legally being allowed to negotiate with players and thus far all we have is a proposed home ground.

The Dolphins have also been bandied about as an example of a team being competitive right away. Now I’m all for rewriting history when it suits, but the Dolphins have come 13th and 10th in their first two seasons. Sure they won their first three games, including that rousing victory over the Roosters in their club debut, but only won six more games the rest of the way, including finishing the season winning only two of their last 12 games. They crashed hard, and no early season mirage hides that.

Tempering expectations to ensure long term viability is the Bears best chance. This shouldn’t be viewed as a short term investment, but rather a rare and brave foray into a non-traditional league market, something not done since the introduction of the Melbourne Storm almost 30 years ago.

I also went back and forth on the latching on of the Bears but I’ve decided I’m all for it, provided they allow the new club space to breathe and grow organically. There’s no need to play a meaningful game at North Sydney Oval, a ground so outdated it makes Leichhardt Oval look like Allegiant Stadium. Have a ceremonial trial there once a year, sure, but the Bears will be in Sydney frequently enough to usurp the need to play in a tinderbox.

If the price for Western Australian expansion is the Bears moniker and a token trial at NSO, then that’s a price I’m willing to pay. The history of the Bears means nothing to me personally but using it to expand into a genuine growth area feels like a smart move. It gives a club an established history and supporters (just not 200,000 of them), while allowing space for a new generation of footy fans to be converted.

**

Rugby league fans love rugby league, but if there’s one thing rugby league fans love more than rugby league, it’s drama, and oh boy is there enough drama to fill an entire season of Jerry Springer with the Wests Tigers this week.

For what it’s worth, the Tigers are no strangers to things playing out in the media, and acrimonious exits for key players are almost woven directly into the fabric of the entire institution that is the merger. With every passing public incident fans raise the question, what deal with the devil did the Tigers make for 2005?

A lot has been said in the days since the initial breaking news earlier this week about Lachlan Galvin wanting to test the open market, followed by a confusing club statement flatly stating Galvin would not be at the club past the end of next season. At the time, it felt emotional and short-sighted from the Tigers to close the door so abruptly with so much water to pass under the Iron Cove Bridge. Why alienate any chance of Galvin extending, a lot can change between now and when Galvin hits the open market on November 1st (a ridiculous system by the way but I digress).

Then the media storm happened.

By now you would have seen the articles floating around which I can only really describe as a smear campaign by Galvin’s management against the Tigers, Benji Marshall and the senior leaders at the club. Doubts over Marshall’s coaching style and what he can offer Galvin appear flimsy rhetoric at best. As a 19 year old kid with barely a season of first grade under your belt, what would you know about the style you need?

The assertions that Galvin was frustrated at playing second fiddle to Jarome Luai also laughable and flat out false. For starters, Luai is the club captain, playing first receiver, and is a four time premiership winner, two time State of Origin series winner, and World Cup finalist as the driving force of a Tier 2 nation. A resume most players can only dream of boasting over the course of a career, and one Galvin is light years away from earning. The entitlement is one thing.

But…he’s also not been the backseat playmaker. In fact, Luai has done all he can to accommodate Galvin’s natural ball dominance and running style. The narrative emanating from the Tigers start to the season is how Luai hasn’t quite fired yet.

Galvin has averaged 56.8 ball receipts per game this season, compared to Luai’s 44.8. Receipts are an imperfect statistical measurement, but it backs up the eye test of Luai standing back and letting Galvin be more assertive in attack and living with the results. The Tigers have done everything they can to accommodate Galvin and make him feel like a leader in this team on the park. From Benji handing him the keys as an 18 year old last season to Luai’s comments last year after signing about his excitement to play with the Campbelltown product, you can’t accuse the Tigers of not trying to appease him.

As Luai mentioned today in his media availability, every player has a right to look after themselves financially. Elite sport is a short career, and athletes have limited earning potential. Luai himself acknowledged his decision to leave the Panthers dynasty to sign a big money deal at the Tigers to help set up his family for life.

As Jalen Rose famously says, keep getting dem cheques.

And it’s those comparisons that have annoyed me the most.

People have been quick to try and absolve Galvin and his team by using the history of Jarome Luai, Api Koroisau and Sunia Turuva against them. All three of them signed for the Tigers in advance, for more money or better job security. What they didn’t do is then use the media to indirectly criticise every key decision maker at the club.

Luai has emerged as a central figure in all of this given he signed for the Tigers before the start of the 2024 season (again, quality transfer system we have). At the time, there was a minor public spar between himself and Ivan Cleary around comments Cleary made about whether Luai was worth the money he was seeking, comments which Luai later admitted he took to heart but were ultimately fair.

Luai was excused from training one preseason day after signing the contract to process it. Sunia Turuva was dropped for a week after signing with the Tigers because Cleary felt he wasn’t in the right head space to play. Both then responded by having great seasons en route to helping Penrith win their fourth premiership.

Luai himself used the motivation of proving everyone who said he wasn’t a lead playmaker wrong by having his best season in first grade, stepping into his future halfback role a year early due to Nathan Cleary missing time with injury. He not only kept the Panthers afloat in Cleary’s absence, but he was a huge influence in NSW winning the Origin series, including a Blues decider win at Suncorp for the third time in history.

It’s a long bow to compare the exits of those three from Penrith to what Galvin is doing now.

Now to be totally fair, I am also fairly certain a lot of this is management driven. Isaac Moses is well known in rugby league circles as a…”fierce negotiator”, among other superlatives. He’s previously been de-registered by the NRL, while certain clubs flat out refuse to deal with him. He has his tentacles in at Manly, hardly themselves a pillar of organisational security, it’s not hard to believe a lot of the rhetoric coming from Galvin through the media is the advice Moses is giving.

Not even glancing at the Tigers record offer is a bit on the nose, even if all parties knew it was a lame duck contract. Sometimes a bit of performance goes a long way in the public eye.

There’s a certain element of naivety on Galvin’s part too. He may be getting some incendiary advice and burning bridges (Fonua Pole has been posting through it) at the behest of his management, but all it does is reflect poorly on him.

As for the bullying allegations and the idea of a pile on by the Tigers players in their antics on social media, spare me. In my mind, you lose all sympathy when those claims surface in the media, whether you intended them to or not. Forgive me for not feeling overly sorry for him that his teammates weren’t thrilled by the idea that he thinks the coach is an idiot and he feels stymied behind far superior players (which as I said above isn’t even the case).

We were all stupid, young 19-year-olds once, but this comes with the territory when you get into bed with Tony Soprano.

Given the Tigers have been a major rabble for the better part of 15 years, leakier than a paper mâché sieve, the united front from the players has to be refreshing for their fans. Too often players have used the Tigers as a doormat or halfway house to better things (Mitchell Moses, James Tedesco), or a chance at one last low effort payday. By signing guys from Penrith like Luai, Koroisau and Turuva, there’s a hope the shift in expectations filters down to those only used to losing, and this period is the start of that new beginning.

Luai has said Galvin would be welcomed back into the team if the coach feels he’s in the right frame of mind for it, but for now it’s in everyone’s best interests to take some time apart.

I do think people get too entrenched in their judgements on Luai from the immature player from earlier in his career, when it’s clear his last 12 months have seen a lot of maturation. Being relied upon at Penrith on a week-to-week basis helped, as did being handed the captaincy for Samoa.

It’s clear the players view him as a leader both on the field and emotionally, and that brash showman is evolving. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have the “fuck you” fastball, but the Tigers need confidence and direction, and his leadership this week has been a big part of it.

Wherever Galvin ends up in the future, he better be ready for an orchestra of boos from the Tigers faithful. Fitting that on the week of Easter, he’s nailed himself to the cross.

The Australian Kangaroos were rocked internally by a selection BOMBSHELL this week as Broncos and New South Wales superstar prop Payne Haas let slip that he was considering representing Samoa (through his mother’s heritage) in this year’s end of season Pacific Championships, rather than go on tour with the Kangaroos to England should he be selected.1

Maybe it’s because I’ve spent less time on social media recently outside of defending the Detroit Pistons from the NBA’s draconian rules about “fighting”, but I haven’t seen a lot of the worst-person-you-know kind of takesmanship about Haas potentially abandoning the green and gold. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist, because I’m almost positive it does, but maybe it’s been buried under all the Ghibli nonsense and porn bots.

Anyway, when this news filtered through my mind was immediately cast back to when Brian To’o announced ahead of the 2021 World Cup that he was choosing to represent Samoa, the country of his parents’ heritage, ahead of Australia. To’o’s decision actually came as somewhat of a shock at the time because all the reporting up until that point had indicated To’o’s parents were keen on their son representing the Kangaroos if given the chance because of the opportunities Australia had provided their family.

I actually wrote a longer piece on this very topic over on the parent site at the time, so feel free to click away and check it out here, a lot of what I’m about to cover is basically an updated rehash of those original points.

Administratively, rugby league does very little right. The player transfer system is a bureaucratic mess and the conflict of interests in the media are rife. Why is Gus allowed to run a club and have a podcast talking about all the other clubs, for instance?

But the current tiered setup around international footy is a rare win for the sport given the unique opportunities it presents for players to represent their heritage and cultures seamlessly.

If you’ve been reading my work for a while now or just know me and my general stances, you’d be aware of my thoughts around the argument for making Samoa and Tonga Tier 1 nations (staunchly against). A Tier 1 nation isn’t about talent pools, but about infrastructure and administration in the game at the local level. If you can make a compelling argument to convince me that Samoa or Tonga have enough foundational resources to run a competition to a professional standard, I’d be more than happy to hear it.

Subjectively though, the current setup is just a cool wrinkle and a unique opportunity literally no other sport provides. For what it’s worth, I am somewhat against Origin being opened up to players from England/New Zealand, I do think it has to still mean something, and I’d rather it not devolve into a glorified All-Stars game. You know what’s at stake when you choose to represent England or New Zealand. Victor Radley knew what he was turning his back on.

The difference though is that England and NZ have the capacity to be able to have exclusivity, something the Pacific Island nations don’t. While I don’t doubt there’d be players who would choose to stay with Samoa/Tonga and forego Origin, there’d also be a heap that choose the latter. Making Tonga and Samoa Tier 1 cannibalizes both pathways and helps no one long term.

Australia isn’t struggling to find enough players to fill a squad (although to be fair the forward stocks were grim last year with all the injuries and yet they still won).

I could go on about my opinions on the structure all day but to circle back to the reason I decided to write this bonus in the first place, the idea that Payne Haas choosing to play for Samoa is “un-Australian”, miss me with that shit.

People will point to State of Origin being a selection trial for the Kangaroos. While that may be true historically, it really hasn’t been the case for a number of years now. Lindsay Smith made his Kangaroos debut in the Pacific Championships Final last year, despite never playing a lick of representative football before that (Alex Johnston, Sione Mata’utia, Chris Lawrence etc), and there’s plenty of other examples of the Australian cart being put before the Origin horse.

City-Country was a selection trial for New South Wales Origin, and yet no one seems to care that that’s gone down the drainpipe (I care, bring it back, I miss my mustard and blue city boys).

The fact is the Australian Kangaroos play so infrequently now that the jersey has sadly lost its prestige. There are generations growing up now who see the national side play maybe 2-3 times a year at most. The simplest way to instill national pride in the jersey is representation and frequency.

Take Jarome Luai for instance.

Back in 2021 he burst onto the representative scene with a scintillating debut Origin series, in which NSW comprehensively won the first two games by a combined score of 76-6 (Game Three redacted from the records).

During that time, selection conversations were heating up for the World Cup at the end of the season (before it was eventually postponed by 12 months due to COVID-19). Luai, who at this point had already represented Samoa internationally, had re-affirmed his commitment to Toa Samoa.

Kangaroos coach Mal Meninga followed up with this stance when asked about the mix for Kangaroos five-eighth, and the difference between Luai’s case and that of Josh Papali’i, who at that point had also committed to Samoa for the World Cup.

I can respect that Meninga is doing his job as the Australian coach, and that is to ensure he has the largest possible talent pool to pick from.

But this quote annoyed me at the time and it got pushed back into the front of my mind with the Payne Haas news this week.

Jarome Luai, as he points out himself, was raised by Samoans, in a Samoan household, attending Samoan church. He feels Samoan.

He was also raised in Mt Druitt in Sydney’s west. He feels like a New South Welshman.

The great thing about the system is players like Luai, To’o, Haas, and Papali’i can represent their local communities and their cultures.

The fact that it was framed as though because Luai was young that he owed it to Australia to give himself to the Kangaroos while Papali’i had earned the right to pick and choose, is complete nonsense.

It is that sort of entitled commentary that drives people off the Kangaroos to an extent. Now, Mal is a god among footy circles, and he has no trouble convincing people to follow him (local politics aside), and I know he didn’t mean anything untoward with these comments, but there’s an easy leap to make.

If you were someone like Luai back in 2021, would you rather tour with the Kangaroos as the 5-6th choice half (remember Nathan Cleary, Ben Hunt, Cameron Munster and Daly Cherry-Evans all ended up in the Kangaroos squad, along with chief water boy Matt Burton), maybe play a random pool game and beat up some minnow (Scotland) and collect a winners medal despite riding the pine, or would you rather tour with a team representing a vibrant culture where you’re guaranteed big minutes and where you’d be treated like a deity.

Tough call.

It’s often said that that Samoan run in the 2021 World Cup served as a catalyst for those looking from the outside in wanting to represent the side in the future.

Guys like Murray Taulagi and Jeremiah Nanai, who were in the Kangaroos squad that tournament, have already swapped over, while now there’s rumours of Payne Haas and Tino Fa’asuamaleaui following suit (Haas was injured and didn’t feature in the World Cup).

And for what it’s worth, it can go the other way too. Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow played for Samoa at the World Cup that year (injuring himself in the first game blowout against England) and has since represented the Kangaroos.

Rugby league does so few things right. Let’s not over-litigate players’ cultures.

As I sat perched on my sofa on Thursday night watching the Panthers make schoolboy errors and get rolled by South Sydney to the tune of a flattering 28-18, I had flashbacks to the stone hands of Waqa Blake, the frustration of the hooking carousel of Sione Katoa and Wayde Egan and Mitch Rein and late-career Peter Wallace, the bomb squad of 2010 that promised so much but ultimately delivered so little (relying on a Travis Burns and Luke Walsh halves pairing was fraught with risk, who could’ve known?)

Penrith were supposed to have moved past this era of clownery and boyish nonsense. No more five year plan or paying players to go away.

The Penrith Panthers have made mince meat of the NRL for the better part of five seasons now (2020 NRL Grand Final shell-shock aside). It’s a mark of that dominance that now the side from the foot of the mountains has started 1-3, the obituaries are filing in (not really but hyperbole sells).

After a quality win in Las Vegas with a new halves combination in Nathan Cleary and Jack Cole against a Cronulla outfit desperately trying to disprove their fraudulence among the general NRL pub watcher, the Panthers have gone on a cursed run, getting stunned by the North Sydney Bears wearing Sydney Roosters uniforms, gutting out a tough loss in Melbourne sans Dylan Edwards and Cleary, before faltering in “comical” fashion to the Rabbitohs.

Are the Panthers cooked?

Full disclosure to those who may be newer around here but I am what you could call a “Panthers fan”, so if you thought I was a bastion of neutrality due to the level-headedness of my takes, my sincere apologies. The reason I preface this discussion with that is so you may choose to interpret these as copium if you wish, but bear with me.

The losses outside of the Melbourne game have been bad, it’s true. The Panthers had basically the full complement in that shock loss to the Roosters (Edwards leaving partway through with an injury aside), compounded by committing a bevy of errors so basic and boneheaded that the St Marys Saints Under-10s would blush.

I considered writing this piece after the Roosters loss but wanted to let things develop further before planting my flag either way.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the Panthers of 2025 are not yet, for lack of a better word, cooked.

Now let me defend my utterly vanilla position.

Every season since the 2021 Grand Final we’ve lamented the losses the Panthers have had from a personnel perspective, and the laundry list of players they’ve lost has been published ad nauseum, but this season has felt somewhat different to years prior.

Gone is the quiet leadership and middle dominance of James Fisher-Harris. Gone is the boisterous swagger and off-the-cuff fireworks of Jarome Luai. Where there was a confidence that the machine could regenerate after the losses of guys like Api Koroisau, Viliame Kikau and Stephen Crichton, all of a sudden it felt like Windows 95 being overtaken by…the next Windows.

Not my best metaphor.

The Panthers attack has looked chaotic and clustered at times, but this is also a team that didn’t care if it took 20 rounds to cave your skull in. Blunt force trauma is as good a weapon as a bullet to the eyeball.

The defence though, now that’s fallen off a cliff, particularly out wide right where Izack Tago and Paul Alamoti have been repeatedly targeted by wide sweeps and shapes. The Panthers have conceded 118 points through the first four rounds of the season, a shocking number unthinkable for the reigning premiers. Only the Cowboys, Roosters and Eels have shipped more.

It took them until Round 9 last year to concede that many points.

It’s been a patchwork spine to start the season. Between the injury to Edwards and the concussion to Nathan Cleary, Ivan has turned to guys like Thomas Jenkins and Trent Toelau, capable reserve graders who are nice to have around the squad in a pinch but shouldn’t be relied upon in volume.

And yet they still could have, and maybe SHOULD have, won against South Sydney.

As alluded to above, the Panthers were labelled comical by the head coach for the litany of errors that plagued the side in the first half, whether it be forced offloads coming out of yardage, basic handling errors, a failure to secure a high ball, and childish penalties.

Now I rarely do numbers, and I’m not about to bend into the stream of advanced consciousness, I’m not PythagoNRL (who you can read here), but some basic numbers to illustrate my point.

Against the Rabbitohs, the Panthers had 200 more total running metres, more post contact metres, averaged five metres more gained per set than Souths (which might not sound like a lot but it does stack up), had 16 offloads to 4 (attribute that to caution abandoned in the second half), and more than double the kick return metres.

Watching the game it did feel like every time Souths were made to work away from their own line, Penrith were restricting the metres well. Moses Leota has had a quiet start to the season but this was his best game so far. The move of Lindsay Smith back to the bench also helped shore up the middle once Leota went off, and while I’m sure the club had grander plans for Isaiah Papali’i than rotational middle forward, he’s there out of necessity right now.

The problem was that while Souths struggled to make metres through the middle, there was always the release valve, either through a shift left to exploit the Panthers right side, or a needless penalty.

The Panthers also felt the absence of a noted kicking game, with Souths outkicking Penrith by over double. The boot of Jamie Humphreys getting Souths out of danger in their yardage sets a noticeable difference to the scratchy long kicking games of Jack Cole and Trent Toelau, and while I’m not the biggest fan of Brad Schneider, in retrospect it looks like Ivan pulled the wrong reign there by not starting him over Toelau.

The Panthers, as they always do, kept themselves close, and the middle form began to shift in their favour in the second half once they tightened up the dumb errors, but the damage was done.

You can’t expect to win in this league at the best of times when you hand your opposition consistent territory on a silver platter, especially if you’re a team in as much flux right now as Penrith integrating new parts.

No one is going to feel sorry for Penrith as they work through the kinks, but the avenues for improvement are there. The return of Cleary and Edwards will help, especially if the middle performs again like the numbers showed against Souths minus the ludicrous discipline early, and while I know the pair were present for the bad Roosters loss, the Panthers love one questionable defeat a season at full strength (see the Tigers at Bathurst).

Maybe Blaize Talagi comes in to the side as the utility given Daine Laurie’s struggles. Maybe Casey McLean or his older brother Jesse earn a recall now that Brian To’o is out for a month with a hamstring issue. The Panthers have had a charmed run of injuries up until this point, the years of good karma are finally catching up.

But the violins aren’t playing on the decks of the ship yet, and it’s going to take a lot more for me to think this side is well and truly sunk.

Theseus will ride again.

Being broken up with on live television is never easy, I assume.

News came filtering through on Monday evening that Manly skipper and club stalwart Daly Cherry-Evans had informed the northern beaches club that the 2025 season would be his last in the maroon and white, but it was yet to be decided whether he’d play on in 2026 for a different outfit or retire.

Now I’m not the biggest fan of DCE as a personality and how he’s portrayed himself over the years, but there is something comforting about the concept of a one club player, a dying breed in the modern game due to the ever-constricting salary cap, freedom of movement, desperate teams throwing the bag at stump throws (cough Dylan Brown cough), and the constant chase for the next mystery box breakthrough.

But more so, it’s highlighted a fatal flaw in Manly’s retention strategy behind the scenes, and it coming to a head on live television with the Manly CEO texting in Fox League to say they’re going to offer him a two-year deal reeks of desperation. Manly entered the pot with a two and a seven, and DCE called the bluff.

Think of the carousel of talented young halves that have departed the shores of the Corso over the last few years for a variety of reasons, like Jamie Humphreys, Kaeo Weekes and Latu Fainu. Letting an entire generation of talented playmakers walk is fine when you have the incumbent old reliable holding down the spot.

So how did it come to this?

Well to answer that, it depends on who you believe.

Appearing live on Channel Nine’s 100% Footy mere hours after the tsunami hit the Collaroy Plateau, Cherry-Evans claimed that this was a decision he had been mulling since December, and the reason for letting the club know now was to give them time to move on and plan.

(Me gesturing wildly to the list of halves they’ve lost above) hardly great succession planning, is it?

Cherry-Evans is a Manly legend, that much is obvious. Since helping the team to the 2011 premiership as a rookie half, he’s gone on to appear in 332 first grade games for the Insular Peninsula (Sydney jokes) outfit, a club record, surpassing Cliff Lyons by playing his 310th against Penrith early last season (a game you may recall for a dropped intercept that the Bunker ruled a Manly try no I’m not bitter why do you ask).

It’s been reported that Cherry-Evans sought out interest in other clubs towards the end of last year, but when the music stopped, there weren’t any suitors. Now that could be for a number of reasons.

Maybe clubs were wise to his ruse of trying to drum up an extra buck out of Manly so didn’t feel compelled to waste their time offering him a contract.

Maybe clubs weren’t thrilled at the idea of paying top dollar for a 37-year-old halfback a year out from when he’d pull on the colours.

Whatever the reason for the dusty market, that inaction around the league inspired Manly to also cool their jets on a new contract offer, which they claim was to allow the skipper time to think about his future.

It’s the classic playground he said she said.

Is Cherry-Evans offended at Manly’s apparent disinterest in falling over themselves to offer him the largest pot of gold in Narrabeen and throwing a public tantrum as a result? Maybe. It’s not as though he’s ever been involved in a public contract dispute before by dragging a desperate club through the rapids before cutting off the string when Manly came with a new bag of cash.

Hang on, I’m being handed a note. Ah, well, anyway!

Manly powerbrokers treating NRL 360 as a talkback radio show by texting in their contract offer once the DCE news broke is equal parts hilarious and tragic. Reading into that alone, it looks like they’ve been stunned into action, thinking Cherry-Evans was playing the mind games all along. I can imagine Tony Mestrov sitting on his balcony with a glass of red in hand dong a crossword1 when someone charges in with an iPad to frantically show him the headline.

“Get me Braith Anasta on the phone now!”

“But sir, that’s not Daly’s agent?”

“Forget the agent, I’m going straight to live television.”

I guess texting the offer to the actual show Daly was appearing on would appear snivelling and even more wormish, rather than the very emotionally level-headed tact of texting the OTHER show. That’s negotiation baby.

Despite the public denials I’m not ruling out this isn’t a mega ploy from Cherry-Evans to extract as much cash as possible from Manly for his final NRL payday. It’s not like his word doesn’t carry a lot of weight or anything (the same note is being frantically pushed back into my periphery).

Should he actually depart, the Dolphins make more sense to me than another retread Sydney club like the Dragons or Bulldogs. A Redcliffe junior in his early days before moving to Mackay, his dad has ties to the club, playing hooker for them in the BRL in the 1980s. He’d be a perfect mentor for young starlet Isaiya Katoa, and there’s countless examples in sports of the right veterans elevating the floors of young teams and dragging them into meaningful games.

Or he could go to the Roosters and their bottomless pit of money.

If this isn’t a massive smokescreen and he does leave Manly I’ll feel sorry for their fans but not the club, because it would be proof of complacency, which I guess would be well deserved. Deciding to not offer your most-capped player a reasonable extension because his market was quiet is just poor management.

Good clubs get ahead and act, bad clubs wait and react.

Now they have to hope the rugby union convert Joey Walsh is the Messiah that was promised.

Manly, you are…NOT the club Daly will be at next season.2

Over the last few days, reporting has come out that the NRL will soon begin the negotiation of their next broadcast rights deal, with suggestions that the NFL model is of particular inspiration in how it is essentially auctioned off.

For those unaware, the NFL is played on Thursday night, Sunday afternoon and night, and Monday night, every week save for some odd weeks around Christmas where some Friday/Saturday games leak in (those days are usually reserved for college football).

The guts of the NFL season is during the Sunday afternoon slot, with the majority of the games taking place across the two main broadcast partners in Fox and CBS, with the standalone night prime time games on Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights essentially auctioned off as premium packages and presented as their own affair.

It can result in up to 4-5 networks having the rights to the NFL, with Fox and CBS joining the likes of ESPN, Peacock and Amazon (and I’m probably forgetting others) in hosting certain games, a real smorgasbord of executive dick swinging around the bargaining table for Roger Goodell and his cronies.

Just a quick interlude, and somewhat ironically given the topic of this edition, but I have toyed with the idea of making these bonus editions a paid-subscriber perk, but I haven’t done that for two reasons. One being I haven’t set up the paid system anyway, but also I haven’t done enough bonus editions yet to warrant asking for money and I’m trying to keep it free anyway, plus taking your money would mean I’m obligated to give you bonus content and I kind of like this casual thing we got going on.

There’s a poll at the end of the article under the share and subscribe buttons (please click them too by the way), if I was to commit to more bonus musings, would you become a paid sub? The Tuesday edition will always be free, and I’m really only talking like a couple bucks a month here, I’m thinking out loud. Odds are my innate laziness will win out and the freedom reigns. Apologies for long ramble, back to American sporting landscape analysis.

America is a weird landscape when it comes to broadcasting. Admittedly I’m not as across the minutiae of NFL brodcasting as I am say, NBA for instance, but I imagine there are similarities in blackout laws and local markets, or general restrictions and access, if not in execution then at least in intention.

The NBA has its own streaming service, NBA League Pass, which has an American and international version. The international version is great, all the games in one place at what I, a basketball sicko, would deem a reasonable price.

The American version sucks major balls, because of blackout laws.

Blackout laws prevent streaming services from showing you an event if it deems you are in the local area. For instance, if you live in Los Angeles and wanted to watch your hometown Lakers play against the visiting Phoenix Suns, you would either have to tune in on cable TV (think a set top box or old school Foxtel, not even Kayo), or physically go to the game. It’s that latter point that is the intention of the blackout, to try and drive ticket sales and fan revenue to arenas and into team owners’ pockets.

Watching a game on the opposite coast? No problem. Why would you want to watch your Lakers on streaming that you’ve paid several hundred dollars for? Here’s Orlando vs. Charlotte instead.

The NFL operates slightly differently when talking about the main Sunday slate. Instead of lockouts there’s regions, and your area determines what game your local Fox/CBS affiliate will show, so you’re basically forced into that game.

If you want freedom of choice? Guess what! Yep, you guessed correctly, there’s a streaming service for that, whether it’s NFL Sunday Ticket, YouTube TV, Roku, the list goes on (they could all be the same thing I genuinely have no idea, I have the NFL GamePass on DAZN, which in itself is a piece of shit platform but I digress).

My overall point is the pointing to the NFL model as an inspiration for the broadcast deal is laughable in that it accomplishes all the wrong things (which makes sense for this current administration I suppose).

Take this excerpt from the Courier Mail.

Pardon me?

Pray tell how you’ve managed to manufacture a beneficial relationship between the number of teams increasing and the broadcasting revenue.

I’m not going to sit here and argue for or against the merits of expansion because I simply don’t care enough anymore, it’s going to happen and there’s no sense fighting it, and I’m also not naive enough to think the NRL isn’t a lucrative product as is, but hear me out for a second.

Right now the NRL is in the perfect sweet spot of broadcast slots. You have eight games a week, all spaced out enough and in their own slot. Casual fans can sit down and watch all eight games if they so please and it wouldn’t be an issue.

The schedule is so set in stone that the rigidity brings comfort. You know you have your Thursday 8pm, your Friday matinee, Friday night lights, Saturday afternoon, evening and night, and your Sunday double header (subject to change from 2/4pm or 4/6pm depending on how early in the season it is and how hot it gets).

Gone are the delayed broadcasts and Queensland having a different live game to NSW, gone are the red buttons.

That repetition is a benefit currently, because the average fan knows when the product is on. The amount of games is a benefit because they all have their own window. Watching every NRL game is imminently achievable, something that cannot be said for the NFL or NBA (or the EPL, MLB, NHL…I’m getting off track).

The scary part of the reporting is the openness to fragmenting the product that appears to be occurring at the ARLC.

As mentioned, the NFL operates on selling key assets as standalone packages, like Sunday Night Football for NBC, Monday Night Football for ESPN/ABC/Disney+/whatever the fuck other subsidiaries they have, and so on.

Yeah no do not like that at all.

The NFL deal might be worth $113B because they’ve divvied up the portfolio as such, but it’s an absolute shitstorm in the States and the fans hate it. It’s actually easier to watch the NFL in Australia than it is in Texas, which is absolute nonsense.

Cannibalising the broadcast deal and selling individual assets might make the NRL more money in the short term, but I don’t think it’s a viable long term growth strategy. Not only does the NRL not have remotely the level of global cut through the NFL has (which I don’t think even PVL is brazen enough to suggest), but lopping off primetime games and Finals to sell to say, DAZN for instance, cuts out the casual fan, which should be the biggest growth focus.

Rusted on sickos like me and you reading this will probably bite the bullet and tack on another service, we’ve probably already got 5-6 in rotation anyway, but you can wave goodbye to a casual Victorian chucking on the footy during the break in an AFL game.

Gone are the halcyon days of every sport being on Fox Sports, I understand that. We won’t get the glory days of the NRL, AFL, Big Bash, NBL (ESPN), EPL (Optus Sport), A-League (Paramount Plus), Champions League (Stan Sport) or Super Rugby (Stan Sport) under one roof again.

Answer me this. If the NRL does adopt a quasi-NFL model and auctions off big ticket items to streaming and PPV platforms, is there anything actually worth selling?

State of Origin and the Grand Final, for instance, are both protected currently under the anti-siphoning laws for events of national significance, meaning that for Australians, free to air networks get the first crack at buying the rights, but that only covers aerials, not streaming and digital rights, so in theory, the streaming rights could be sold overseas.

For instance, currently the State of Origin is broadcast on Nine, and the digital rights are held by 9Now (or 9InAFewMinutes if my experience is anything to go by).

Does that make a material difference? Probably not.

But what is the benefit to an American provider, Disney for instance, ponying up for an asset that will most likely result in a loss on the balance sheet. Or conversely, what leverage does the NRL have to even sell that digital right given the laws in place for Australian viewers. We’re getting into areas of the broadcasting margins I don’t wish to operate, all I know is it seems like a lot of fuss for minimal payoff.

The A-League has suffered in popularity in no small part due to their full time migration to Paramount Plus a few years ago. The loyal diehards stayed on, but I’m not running a Paramount sub just to watch the occasional Sydney FC game.

The NRL is strong enough that it can survive some streaming integration and marginal exclusivity, but it’s cutting off its own nose to spite its face.

I almost wrote about the Roosters famous win over Penrith on Friday night in this one, the second biggest upset in history since gambling odds have been recorded or something along those lines, a drought breaking win for the Tri-Colours over the Panthers, who hadn’t beaten Penrith since 2019 (hilarious when you consider how stacked some of those Roosters sides were and the side that finally broke the hoodoo was full of children).

In all honesty though, I didn’t really think there was much to say about the Roosters performance that hadn’t already been said. We’ve heard about the tale of Taylor Losalu, on the tools the next morning pouring concrete, we’ve heard the plaudits bestowed on his young side from Trent Robinson. It was a game that lends itself more to fanciful emotional fist banging than any sort of actual cultured analysis.

It was a great win for the Roosters. It was a wake up call for Penrith of sorts, even though they’ve made a habit of a head scratching early season losses (Tigers in Bathurst anyone?)

But instead, let’s talk about the Cowboys.

*audible groan*

The Cowboys own a funny place in the overall rugby league discourse. Good enough historically to be counted, yet out of the way enough to escape scrutiny. By now you’ve seen the litany of star first graders they’ve let slip through their grasp over the years (see Brandon Smith, Viliame Kikau, Kalyn Ponga and Jahrome Hughes among others).

But things are bad in Townsville right now, and the fix isn’t obvious or apparent.

I almost dedicated a bonus newsletter last week to the dropping of Jeremiah Nanai, a player skating by on reputation for the better part of the last two seasons. Nanai had a tremendous rookie season in first grade, capped with a Kangaroos call up for the delayed World Cup, and then proceeded to hit the pause button on any progress since.

Bursting on to the scene as an enterprising back rower with a flair for the spectacular aerial contest, Nanai quickly built a reputation as one of the premier attacking edge forwards in the competition, but teams figure out pretty quickly whether your quiver is full of bows or sticks, and Nanai’s was several twigs short of a fire.

Tortured and laboured metaphor aside, Nanai is the classic example of a young player whose reputation outgrows his output to the point of overcorrection. That overcorrection in the public eye is beginning to sharpen as people cotton on to his…lets call it stagnation, as a player recently. I won’t go so far as to say he’s got a limited skillset because I think that’s patently untrue, but I do think it’s fair to say the scope of Nanai’s career thus far is an accurate microcosm of Todd Payten’s men the last two seasons.

Take 2022 for instance. Nanai burst onto the scene after a handful of first grade games the year prior, taking home Rookie of the Year honours in a season where he scored a blistering 17 tries from 23 games. Impact of the new quicker ruleset aside, that’s still seriously impressive. The Cowboys marched all the way to a home prelim final after a banner win in Week 1 of the finals against Cronulla in Cronulla.

They lost the prelim to the Eels, which stings, especially given it was in Townsville, but the building blocks were there.

Turns out the building inspector fudged the report.

2023 was a down year for the club, a real kick in the teeth after a promising 2022. After a six game winning streak in the middle of the season that saw them climb to as high as 5th on the ladder, the collapse was just as brutal, losing four of their last five (three by 16+) to slump to a disappointing 11th.

You’re probably familiar if you’re reading this just how unique the Cowboys circumstances are pertaining to the level of scrutiny they face isolated atop their perilous perch in Townsville, away from the prying eyes and sharp tongues of big city media.

Most other coaches would have faced at least a modicum of job pressure after the two year form reversal the Cowboys had between ‘22 and ‘23, but such is the reality of the Cowboys existence, no one cares, and so Payten is allowed to go on untethered to the bounds of expectations.

A rebound of sorts happened last season, finishing fifth and defeating Newcastle in a home elimination final before losing to Cronulla in the semis, but no one seriously thought North Queensland were anything more than fodder last year, playing for the right to be pulped in Week 2 of the finals.

Back to Nanai, the vessel for this long-winded metaphor about the Cowboys as a whole, but for someone with all the talent in the world and a rare blend of physical gifts to accompany it, he goes wherever the wind takes him far too often.

To be fair to him, it can be hard to impact the game as an edge forward at times, but that’s the territory that comes with the accolades he’s racked up and the countless coaches he’s fooled along the way.

Last year I wrote about how David Fifita’s reputation was miscast in my mind, and a lot of that is due to Nanai’s inverse unearned goodwill. The two have been pitted against each other at representative level, Nanai beating out Fifita for Queensland berths due to Fifita’s “lack of work rate”, ignoring that Nanai got beaten cold for what proved to be the eventual game winner in the decider last year when Jarome Luai danced around him to set up Bradman Best in the corner.

The dropping of Nanai by Todd Payten was a refreshing dose of stark reality to a player resting on his laurels and relying on talent alone in a league that finds out pretty quickly what you’re made of. People that don’t watch the Cowboys regularly (and I don’t blame you) might have been surprised to see such a rein pulled so quickly, but it had been in the works for the better part of 18 months.

The problem was it may have been Payten’s only rein, designed to shock and scare an underperforming team into action, instead they wilted in their own backyard as Cronulla waltzed in and promptly downed them by 24 without really breaking out of a canter.

The scope of improvement for the Cowboys is somewhat limited. Outside of Jason Taumalolo slumming it in reserve grade as he works back to full fitness, there isn’t a whole lot that Payten can do from a team list perspective to shake things up. From the reports filtering through on Tuesday morning (apologies I’m late this week, I was busy Monday night), Jake Clifford is coming in for rookie half Thomas Duffy, while Nanai has learned all the lessons he needs after a week in jail.

Clifford is a high floor inclusion for this Cowboys side who just need a bit of stability and someone to help organise the side and play off the back of Scott Drinkwater, and while Duffy may have a first grade future, there wasn’t much benefit to him getting slogged behind a custard pack every week and destroying his confidence.

As for Nanai, I do think it would’ve been more beneficial for him to stay out for a few weeks. His defensive issues won’t be fixed after one game at the lower level, and they’re coming up against a smarting Broncos side desperate for a bounce back after being stormed in the nation’s capital.

The Cowboys find themselves living in the margins, operating in a state of flux. For all the memes Chad Townsend generates, he’s nothing if not an adult in a room of children (points again to the Roosters big win over Penrith), and the Cowboys are lacking some on field leadership right now.

Nanai has been coasting, guys like Tom Dearden and Reuben Cotter have allowed the team’s struggles to consume them, and the carousel of middling outside backs now that Val Holmes has left shows no real sign of finding a resolution, irrespective of your opinions on Jaxon Purdue.

Drinkwater aside, this team has been running on a treadmill facing in the wrong direction, and if they don’t turn it around soon there may be actual consequences in Townsville for the first time in what feels like forever.

Payten only has so many reins left to pull before the horse is fully bolted.

**

Programming Note

An update or two of sorts.

Firstly, this newsletter. I was a bit sporadic last year, but I am now re-committing to *at least* one edition per week, on Tuesday mornings at 8am (daylight time, daylight savings is good, don’t yell at me), and if something arises for a second edition later in the week, well then that’s cool too, but hold me to the one, and yell at me if there’s nothing in the inbox on Tuesdays.

On a more general note, as I like to think of myself as the next Bill Simmons or Jomboy, I consider this newsletter under the overall arch of my, um, *production company* Beyond the Fence (yes I can hear your eyes rolling). With that said, if you are into more general sports chat, please consider subscribing to the Beyond the Fence podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and as I am finally entering the digital age, please also follow it on socials so it grows.

Spotify (latest episode, it won’t let me link the show):

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beyondthefencemedia

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondthefence_

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@beyondthefencemedia

I was kind of struggling to pick a topic for this week’s piece based on the round of footy we’d just witnessed. Punching down on the Eels is unbecoming, while I’m not going to go too early on the Roosters looking like Kurt Mann’s eye (although it might be one week away).

Then news filtered through on Monday evening about Dylan Brown accepting a historic contract offer from the Newcastle Knights, news later confirmed by the man himself in an Instagram story (players breaking their own news surely drove Adrian Wojnarowski to retirement).

10 years, $13M. What cost of living crisis?

On the face of it, it’s a monumentally…confusing(?) contract offer from the Knights. Paying a man $1.3M a season is a huge financial and roster construction risk, not least because it greatly inhibits your ability to then fill out the rest of the roster around the margins.

That would be true of a 4-5 year deal, not one that is A LITERAL DECADE LONG. There will be Tigers fans in their mid-late 20s in 2035 who haven’t seen their team make the finals (sorry low blow). A ten year deal is a period of time you rarely see in sports, even in leagues where maximum contract lengths aren’t inhibited1 (unless you’re Todd Boehly signing every south American pre-schooler to a 15 year contract to play for Chelsea).

Patrick Mahomes is ascending rapidly up the charts in terms of “greatest of all time” conversations in NFL circles (disappointing Super Bowl loss this season aside). He signed a 10 year extension back in 2020 for $450M USD according to Spotrac. Now ignore the ludicrous sum of money for a second, that’s not what this is about.

Mahomes is at worst the…third best player of all time in his league? A league that brings in billions of dollars in advertising revenue and hundreds of millions of fans worldwide. He is a large driving force behind the revenue boom the NFL has enjoyed, and even his ten year extension was met with mild surprise at the sheer length of it.

Anyway, back to Brown, the timing of this announcement couldn’t have been more fitting, coming off a majorly disappointing performance for the undermanned Eels in a 38 point hiding in Melbourne. Now, Melbourne never lose in round one, and the Eels were without Mitch Moses, but this was the grand stage for Brown to show the world *something*, especially with his very public contract situation.

He proceeded to show Parramatta that there’s absolutely no reason they should come close to matching a small fortune for his services.

Dylan Brown has been somewhat living off potential for the better part of two seasons now. After a breakout of sorts in 2022, where he helped lead Parramatta to the Grand Final, Brown has stalled as a footballer, willing to float in and out of games and hide behind a more dominant playmaker.

The decision to court Brown from Newcastle is founded in what I would deem sound logic. Newcastle have struggled with their halves for a few seasons now, failing to find a combination worth investing in for the long term, including several failed experiments to move Kalyn Ponga to the five-eighth role.

Guys like Jackson Hastings, Tyson Gamble, Jack Cogger and Will Pryce churned through the machine last year, while this year’s version of the wheel of fortune has spat out former winger Fletcher Sharpe to just run really fast at second receiver instead of really fast on the wing, so clearly they’re out of ideas.

Kalyn Ponga is a dominating force for Newcastle anyway, a player that receives the ball perhaps more than any non-half in the competition. While he may be named at fullback, his role is akin to that of a floating playmaker. Where he goes the team goes, he has the licence to roam both sides and kick when he wants (which should be never because he’s bad at it).

Newcastle’s reliance on Ponga therefore makes the outlay for Brown confusing. Like I mentioned above, I get chasing a premier half on the open market, although Brown hasn’t met that definition for two seasons now, operating on name value alone.

Surely the money set aside for Brown could’ve been used to hunt for a forward, given the Knights will see Leo Thompson exit the Hunter at season’s end for Canterbury. The problem though for Newcastle is that they’ve been left holding the bag with nothing to really spend it on. The list of free agents available for next year is uninspiring from the standpoint of their needs, and who knows what will still be available come November 1st for 2027.

The Knights have now committed, if you believe the figures reported, $2.5M a year (give or take) to Ponga and Brown combined for the next two seasons at least (Ponga is off contract after 2027). That feels like a real go-for-it move for a team that huffed and puffed to beat a plucky but undermanned Tigers outfit in round one.

Is Dylan Brown really the man to give the famous ten year deal to? The Cowboys were laughed at for giving Jason Taumalolo the decade all those years ago, and Taumalolo was the best player in the league at that time, a rare front rower capable of carrying a middling team to a victory off his own back.

Those are the guys you give $1.3M a season to. Those are the guys you give ten year deals to.

Brown doesn’t really fit either category, especially when you place him in the rest of the Knights spine. Ponga is world class, and will still be tasked to be the guy, but then you have Phoenix Crossland at hooker, who is playing above his station as a hard working battering ram, and Fletcher Sharpe should that experiment continue.

It’s possible Ponga re-signs with Newcastle and goes on to do great things with Brown. It’s also possible his dad marches into club HQ with a flamethrower and demands a trade to the Brisbane Lions or some shit.

The Knights have bet the house on Dylan Brown. The LA Dodgers are famous for paying through the nose for talent and figuring it all now later. Except the Dodgers did it with Shohei Ohtani, the rarest individual baseball player of all time, and the Knights did it with a meek secondary playmaker who’s never shown he can be an alpha.

The Knights have paid $13M for a guy who, without Mitchell Moses alongside him, deferred to Ronald Volkman, who spent 2024 being medically retired after failing a medical at the Dragons. Volkman kicked the ball 16 times compared to Brown’s three.

The only theory I will offer in the positive for the Knights is the case study of Jarome Luai last season. A three-time premiership winner entering his negotiations, his reputation was still that of a freeloader on the back of the best team of the modern era, a guy who fit in and who could never fit out.

The Tigers bet the house on Luai being that guy, and Luai bet on himself. With that massive chip on his shoulder, Luai ended up having his best season in first grade, large swathes of it with Nathan Cleary sidelined through hamstring and shoulder injuries.

Luai was able to step up and be the lead playmaker next to Brad Schneider or Jack Cole, while not sacrificing the ad-lib random generator football that makes him dangerous. The result was a fourth premiership, a brilliant State of Origin series for the Blues, captaining Samoa on a historic tour of England, and riding off into the sunset as a Panthers legend and a Tigers saviour.

That’s the blueprint the Knights have copied for Dylan Brown. Just…minus all the previous success.

It’s a lot to pay for a set of plans for a prototype that got rendered obsolete two models ago.

Ten years is a long time. Let’s hope the Knights don’t have to visit the patent office again.

**

Programming Note

An update or two of sorts.

Firstly, this newsletter. I was a bit sporadic last year, but I am now re-committing to *at least* one edition per week, on Tuesday mornings at 8am (daylight time, daylight savings is good, don’t yell at me), and if something arises for a second edition later in the week, well then that’s cool too, but hold me to the one, and yell at me if there’s nothing in the inbox on Tuesdays.

On a more general note, as I like to think of myself as the next Bill Simmons or Jomboy, I consider this newsletter under the overall arch of my, um, *production company* Beyond the Fence (yes I can hear your eyes rolling). With that said, if you are into more general sports chat, please consider subscribing to the Beyond the Fence podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and as I am finally entering the digital age, please also follow it on socials so it grows.

Spotify (latest episode, it won’t let me link the show):

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beyondthefencemedia

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondthefence_

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@beyondthefencemedia