Hello for the first time since April. I’ve missed you all (well not really but a little white lie never hurt feelings), the last thing I wrote about was the endless pit of Westerosian despair the Dragons found themselves in. Five months later and that…is still the case? At least they beat the Sharks and the Couchman brothers re-signed.
A lot has happened since we last spoke. The Warriors and Dolphins emerged as new age juggernauts to challenge the Panthers and Roosters at the top of the ladder, Billy Slater got outwitted in a Suncorp Origin decider by 2026 Laurie Daley, the PNG Chiefs signed a cavalcade of soon to be 30+ year old mercenaries, and Braith Anasta threw his agent certification out of the cot so he could keep babbling on NRL360 to an audience of tens of forty-year-old shift workers.
Oh and there’s a fun, quirky new kick off rule that’s being trialled in the last two weeks of the regular season.
Wait, sorry, typo, when I said “fun” I meant irredeemably, unequivocally and [insert third flowery adjective that means “very”] stupid.
If you’ve somehow missed this news because the underside of the monolith you occupy hasn’t yet snagged an NBN connection, the crux of it is after a try is scored, the team that conceded the try now has the option to receive the ensuing kick-off if they so please, rather than the scoring team automatically receiving the restart. It’s a rule change that can only be described as “existing”.
The rule was trialled last week in a dead rubber game between Brisbane and Melbourne, the discontent palpable amongst the players as each try was met with ardent refusal to alter the fabric of the game, a compelling display of sportsmanship as two equally leaky defences insisted the other team take possession. I imagine the suits at NRL HQ were sitting back in their inner-city headquarters grumbling priggishly as both sides refused to receive after conceding, either in a show of defiance at what is a stupid proposal, or sheer ignorance at the proposal even existing in the first place.
The conceding team eventually did elect to receive, after the 200th try of the game or something, and it made such little difference because of course this sort of thing won’t matter in an unencumbered slopfest between two mightily disappointing powerhouses.
Never fear though, because it will be trialled again this week in equally meaningless fixtures, repeated blunt force trauma inflicted by the commission on its key stakeholders in preparation for handwaving this rule through in sincerity for next season.
And therein lies the issue.
This current set of administrators have shown no foresight when discussing rule changes, often ushering them in with little to no runway. The fact that this trial period of two weeks is somewhat comforting shows how far the bar has dropped that the bare minimum is suddenly good process.
Some of the rule changes have ended up being positive (two-point field goal, six man bench), but I’m not letting my judgement be clouded by them stumbling ass backwards into one or two good tweaks. The contestable ten metre rule off restarts is bonkers, but the one thing I’ll add to that is the trend for dropouts anyway was more teams going short. The penalty has been removed, the risk is lower, the value of forcing a dropout is shot, but the game was kind of trending that way anyway so…sure. We don’t need to relitigate the set restart stuff.
I feel like scenario planning is a managerial concept in short supply in Moore Park. If you’ll allow me to fabricate a feasible end of game situation, let’s pretend there’s a team that is trailing 20-12 in the 78th minute, all hope of a victory is lost. Suddenly, a second rower hits a hole off a beautiful short ball from the five eighth and scores under the posts to make it 20-18 with a minute left. Then, on the final set, the team chasing the game gets the ball back, rolls up field playing some c’est la vie football, slings a few offloads, busts the line, and crashes over as time expires for a famous victory.
Sounds crazy right? Probably made up, utterly fanciful.
Now, if you’re a Raiders fan, you’ll be very angry because you no doubt would have recognised that I just described the Panthers vs. Raiders game from 2017 in Bathurst, where Corey Harawira-Naera and Tyrone Peachey scored in the final two minutes to snatch an improbable Panthers victory.
But that’s ok, because in whatever hellish Candyland PVL and his goons live in, all the Raiders had to do after future-Raider Harawira-Naera scored was elect to receive the kick-off and kill the Panthers comeback before it is fully formed. Congratulations, let’s retrospectively amend the records and give Canberra that two-point win, they now finish the season in…ninth instead of tenth.1
The trial period for this kickoff rule feels like a sham. It does not matter that the players have outwardly stated they disagree with the change, once the blinkers are set on a concept under this administration, you can pencil it in. It’s the whole reason there’s currently several armed men patrolling a compound in Port Moresby that will house professional rugby league players in 13-14 months’ time.
I suspect the results of said trial are largely immaterial. It might even come to pass that much like Broncos-Storm focus group; we get so few instances of the new rule being activated that it may as well not exist. It doesn’t matter how many clinical studies and medical professionals say vaccines don’t cause autism, when one shady, banned doctor in exile in the forests of Bolivia says they do, all critical thinking is out the window. Am I comparing Peter V’Landys to an anti-vaxxer? I’m not…not saying that?
This leadership has shown a propensity to misconstrue, fudge or straight up fabricate numbers and bend data to the meaning they want, so I fear all it will take is one team scoring off receiving the kickoff and we’ll be off to cash the cheques in March 2027. Viva la raza.
Let’s actually play this out because I didn’t realise how fun it was. Penrith finished 2017 in 7th with 30 points and a +45 differential, eventual grand finalists North Queensland in 8th (30 points, +24), St. George Illawarra in 9th (28 points, +83) and Canberra in 10th (26 points, +61). If you change the result from 4 point Penrith win to 2 point Canberra win, Penrith slide down to 10th (28 points, +39), the Cowboys and Dragons both move up a spot into 7th and 8th respectively, and the Raiders finish 9th on 28 points with a +67. The Cowboys might not make their run to the Grand Final if they play Manly in Round 1, so the whole season hinged on that crazy night in Bathurst, how fun!