If this week of NRL headlines was a movie, it would be Rambo IV. Non-stop action. Lots of bloodshed. And unfortunately, too many questions left unanswered.
1. Is Trent Barrett’s selection justifiable?
Yes.
I went back and forth on this one the same way I went back and forth on the prospect of the Tracy Grimshaw Zoo magazine photo shoot. Both are past their prime, both still have a few things to offer, both probably deserve some TLC after the last couple of weeks, and ultimately, both will come through (Grimshaw would have looked good. I’m 85% sure of this. And who knows, she may still. If you are willing to sell your soul and host A Current Affair, Zoo can’t be that far off, right?).
As much as I loved the onus of going young and focusing on character in order to mark a fresh start for the NRL (I wrote a whole column about it), Barrett makes too much sense for this Blues side. In my April column “Threesomes are awkward, even at the Origin level” I mentioned that Braith Anasta was a good fit for the Blues this year. That selection makes sense for the same reason Barrett’s selection makes sense. SIZE.
If there is one thing Barrett does well, its take on the line in attack. Game one proved that the Maroons are beatable through the middle, on the fringes of the rucks, and anywhere where Darren Lockyer is standing in defense. Barrett will attack the Lockyer channel, get them going forward, and create quick play-the-balls for Farah and Wing to dart from. That is how you beat this QLD juggernaut. NSW biggest advantage is the athleticism of their forwards, so speeding up the tempo of the game will work in their favor. I would start Farah and bring on Wing for the final 20 of each half.
My only issue with the Barrett selection is his kicking. He has kicked well in the last few weeks but there is no guarantee it will be there on Wednesday night (At this point of his career I wouldn’t trust him in the Props Pentathlon). I would have Farah (a proven sniper with the boot) handle the field position kicking duties and give Wallace the job when in the red zone.
Whichever way you look at it, Barrett deserved selection over Campese. That is a fact. Campese was a no show in Game one and was destroyed (and that’s being kind) by Barrett in the Raider v Sharks game on the weekend. Kimmorley probably deserves it over Barrett but he gets too tight on the Origin stage, and Matt Orford definitely deserves it over him but … well, no one has explained this one.
(So let me get this straight: You consistently play well your entire career, you turn a franchise around and win a premiership within 3 seasons of arriving, you win the Dally M medal, you have the respect of the entire league, you are in heads of the core personalities of the QLD side (Inglis, Slater and Smith, 2008 grand final) and you can’t get selected? I would have him in the squad just to sit on the bench and yell reminders of 2008 grand final at the Storm players.)
Its simple: Barrett makes sense. He will cause a Zappia amount of issues for Lockyer and give them the best chance of winning (Zappia can work, right? Like a bakers dozen but more seedy). I don’t think they will win, but he will give them their best chance.
2. Did the NSW selectors need to tinker with this team?
No.
Disregarding the Barrett selection, the NSW changes are like the Ghost in TWO HANDS—totally unnecessary. They had a great product and they messed with it.
(Can someone explain why Pando would pay someone $500 bucks to deliver the 10k in the first place? Especially when he already had 3 guys who could have done it.)
The thing that I would be most worried about is loss of momentum. The original side made a huge leap mentally around the 60 minute mark in game one. They stopped believing in the hype of the QLD side and remembered that they were all quality professional athletes. Once they made that mental leap and began to believe in themselves, things turned around and they had a nice comeback.
Origin is all about momentum and they had it going into game two. Messing with the side just diminishes that advantage. After you make a momentum run at the end of a loss you want to pump the team up all week with lines like “you showed when you work as a unit you can compete” and “you believed in yourselves and it showed at the end of the game”. How can you do that when you don’t have the same guys who were in there to being with?
NSW selectors and talking heads are playing the “this side is tougher than the original one” card, but that was never an issue. The QLD forwards are pretty tough I guess, but I wouldn’t call the backline tough. Talented, but not tough. Tough is overrated anyway. It looks good in the highlights when you are getting your head stapled but it doesn’t win games like it used to.
On NRL on Fox this week they preached about the selection of Williams, arguing his Manly combination with Lyons could cause the QLD backline problems. If I were NSW I would want to keep the ball AWAY from the QLD backline as much as possible. In attack and defense. If anything, Williams is valuable for his defense and his larrikin locker room presence. Traditionally, NSW gets tight when the pressure builds and the QLD sides have for years capitalized on that (even when they were overmatched). I’m still not sure he brings enough to the table that it warrants jeopardizing the momentum earned in game one.
(Some thoughts on NRL on FOX: They couldn’t have spent more then 8 seconds trying to think of a name for this show? Even Homebrand has more originality. To be fair, I like this show but its getting stale. The 4 of them remind me of the Sex and the City girls: They constantly bitch about the same things with no resolution in sight. They secretly all hate each other. They’re myopic beyond belief (Really? You want to tell jokes about how much you drink when the league is trying to overcome, what is socially considered, a league-wide drinking problem?). They spiral into incoherent tangents constantly. And they talk about the Maroons and Rugby Union the same way the Sex and the City chicks talk about Men—like they are some huge threat who spends all day trying to think of how to ruin them.)
(Note to NRL: Rugby Union is NOT your enemy. They have a global presence and lots of money. They are making inroads into Soccer and the United States. If anything I would bide my time, because if rugby ever develops a presence in the states, Rugby League will be in a good position. League is better designed for that market and would be far more successful. Ultimately, sports come down to TV money and Rugby League is a better TV product. Its fast, its physical, and there are far less stoppages. Rugby Union is your friend NRL. The AFL wont do anything for you and the A-League is out to destroy everyone.)
Can someone explain the thought process in selecting Anthony “I thought the best way to explain the incident to my son was to deny it ever happened” Watmough?
I knew the NRL was myopic, but Watmough! Really?
The guy PUNCHED his clubs main sponsor!!! And now he is going to play origin? This isn’t 1992 anymore. There has to be accountability. There has to be some form of corporate governance from the NRL. Sponsors are the hand that feed them. He didn’t just bite it; he punched it in the face. And a week after Clinton gets hit with $50, 000 dollar fine? What kind of message are they sending here? Its more ambiguous then the gender of the main street kid in TWO HANDS.
Seriously, what exactly do you have to do, to not get selected?
Watmough punched a sponsor; Paul Gallen racially abused another player and showed no remorse (it’s ignorant to think this stuff doesn’t exist in the game, but in saying that, Mickey Paea blew up uncharacteristically, so it must have been bad); and Lyons literally asked not to be selected. I hate the fact that I love the NRL sometimes. The reason the NRL got hammered so heavily after the 4 Corners report was because they hadn’t done anything in the past decade to show they were trying to curb their problems. Society judges on how you react, and the NRL continues to not only react with poor judgment, but to not react at all.
I’d make a rule that if you are suspended for possibly costing your club hundreds of thousands of dollars and bringing the league into disrepute, you have to sit Origin out for a year. Just a thought.
These changes were lateral moves at best. Messing with team chemistry and the leagues fragile image just to try and win a game which you are probably going to lose either way. It’s a step backward when the league seemed to be heading in a good direction.
3. How does this affect the QLD side?
It doesn’t. Apart from being distracted by William’s beard, I don’t see how this QLD side loses. Their biggest issue is themselves. They shutdown mentally in the 2nd half of game one and I’m guessing that wont happen again.
I applaud the Willie Tonga selection. People forget how good this guy was. Prior to his Zappia load of injuries (see, it works everywhere), Tonga was the most explosive center in the game. His rookie year in 2004 ranks as one of the best ever: He started on a title team, played Origin, won a Tri-Nations series, developed a signature “step in mid air”, and somehow escaped the bad boy Bulldogs label. It’s ironic that he is filling in for Justin Hodges too, since he single-handedly put the final nail in Hodges Roosters career (In round 13 in ’04 he abused Hodges all night offensively, eventually finishing with a hat-trick in a 30 point blowout). That night lead Hodges to Brisbane and his ultimate rejuvenation—a rejuvenation which kept Tonga out of the Origin side. God forbid anyone in the media bring up stories like this one.
4. Will Reni Maitua be a successful lifesaver?
Considering he couldn’t save his career, I’m not sure I want him dragging me in from a tide. I feel like he would make the situation worse. NRLStats.com report that over his career, on average he missed 15% of his tackles. Would that stat transfer to lifesaving? Would he miss 15% of the people he tried to save because he had his head in the wrong position or didn’t give enough effort? And does he swim faster than he runs? I would hope so. I feel like this will be an interesting social experiment. I’m going to miss Reni. The Bra Boy jokes have served me well.
5. Was the Fuifui Moimoi v Daine Laurie battle fair or foul?
It wasn’t just fair. It was fucking fine. Natalie Bassingthwaighte fine (Is that the worst stage name ever? In print it looks like I fell asleep with my head on the keyboard). There was nothing malicious about their encounters and everyone was fine with it (When Cummins called the captains over for a talk, Cayless looked like he had just been asked if he wanted his beer cold). There was no reason to call the final penalty and on the previous penalty Laurie even told Ben Cummins that Moimoi’s “high” tackle wasn’t high (which it wasn’t). I try to stay away from bashing refs but at the end of that game they killed what is one of league true assets as a sport—the head to head battle. One of my favorite memories of Girdlers career was a battle he had with Justin Hodges when he [Hodges] was at the Roosters. Tempers flared in the 2nd half of a otherwise boring game and they went at each other. The teams stood back, let them do their thing, the crowd loved it, I loved it, and they shook hands as soon as the final whistle blew. They are the organic moments a league thrives on, and the refs did everything in their power to kill one of those moments on the weekend. I would have been double pissed if I was Daniel Anderson. Someone worked out a way to wake up Moimoi and refs put him pack to sleep.
6. Are the Broncos really this bad?
If you are referring to the globetrotters that play at Suncorp Stadium on weekends now, then yes. They have some serious flaws. In my breakdown of the side a few weeks ago I highlighted the quiet flaws that I was sure would derail the team in the playoffs. Obviously I spoke too soon. Besides the obvious defensive issues (Folau is secretly horrible at making decisions, the left side is too small and inexperienced, Hodges may as well be defending from a wheelchair at this point, Lockyer is doing his best impression of a bullfighter, Wallace looks lost, and the forwards are too young), I think this team has an identity problem. They are too old in some areas and too young in others. How does this team even gel off the field?
The old guys are fading and the young guys don’t seem to know their place. One half of the team is pushing for a premiership; the other half is merely trying to adapt to life as a NRL player. They all look lost. They don’t know when or how to assert themselves. In the past the Broncs were always revered for their professional approach. They showed up every week, they were crisp, and they always gave that extra bit of effort that other teams could never harness (During the Bennett administration their scramble defense must of swung 2, maybe 3 games a year). This team doesn’t have that extra gear. And the stalwarts of that administration are either too old to push them to that level or they have moved on. This team is a lot younger then people realize. I think the next ten years rides on the signing of Hunt. They need to resign him and move him from 1 to 6, the same as they did with Lockyer. It’s a artificial rite of passage, like when the pope dies. Cue the Maroon smoke.
7. If Tony Zappia were a movie villain who would he be?
I would say the Penguin from Batman Returns mixed in with a little of the evil general from the latest James Bond film and a pinch of the capitalist greed from the Danial Day-Lewis’s There Will Be Blood character. How does someone get this evil? Is it one of those things where he stole a cupcake when he was young, got away with it, and thought “hey that wasn’t too hard, I’ll try a bike next time”? Seriously, if you were writing a sketch about a evil capitalist, his story would seem too far fetched.
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Well I feel like I raised more questions then I answered but we uncovered some good stuff altogether. I feel like this should be a weekly thing. A question for every day of the week. That way you can tell people you read every day. Feel free to send any questions or thoughts along.
Brisbane Sports Fan
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