Crunch time, or something like that...
And so to pivotal, crunch, really quite important Round 23 of this National Rugby League and it’s go-hard-or-go-home time for several clubs. Souths are on 30 points and two wins from the top and have already played, and you’d be justified in wondering why match-of-the-round between Souths (4th) and the Cowboys (2nd) wouldn’t feature in a preview piece in the sports pages of this crackerjack e-journal. But another yarn about the NRL’s TV rights had to go up plus an Ashes autopsy was going gangbusters, and so here you are reading the Round 23 preview after Souths dominated the Cowboys 31-18, it’s a thing. Regardless, there’s some quality fare on offer for the rugby league hound this weekend.
Cantering Broncos face up to desperate Saints
Brisbane (1st) will be looking to arrest their late-season stutter when they host desperate Dragons (7th) at Suncorp Stadium. And it should be good. It would be better if Benji Marshall were playing. But it still should be good. The home side will attract their usual 30,000-plus fans to the best rectangular rugby league ground in the land. Brisbane is 8-2 at home. They always play Friday nights. Their coach is wiser than Yoda. They have several advantages running into this fixture.
While Wayne Bennett has fine spine backs in Darius Boyd, Ben Hunt and the hot-footed wunderkid Anthony Milford, the rest of his back division has a sort of Sharks, mm’yeah, look about it. You like Jack Reed, he’s a rolling boulder of a man. But Dale Copley, Lachlan Maranta, Jordan Kahu, you’d suggest they’re still a couple years from being finished products. Yet here they are, top of the pops, more points than everyone bar the Cows, and you’d tip them to score several more against Saints.
And what of the Saints? They’ve named Marshall at halfback, but hamstrings aren’t to be trusted under pressure. I’m more chance of playing and I’m a 45-year-old blob. But they do have Josh Dugan at fullback and Dugan can run like the proverbial hairy goat afire. His kick return is all hard knees and crazy lines, and he has no apparent fear. And Brisbane will bomb and belt him all night.
But this match will be won in the forwards. It’ll be semi-final intensity which means one thing: brutality! Hit and be hit. Wrestle like Mongolian strongmen. Lock your opponent in the hurt locker and stab him with daggers. And though Sam Thaiday is a wide-running back-rower playing prop, and their bench of Jarrod Wallace, Mitchell Dodds, Willie O’s nephew Jo Ofahengaue and Kodi Nikorima is not itching the pants of Origin selectors just yet, the Broncos forwards, led by the Queensland version of Paul Gallen, irrepressible Corey Parker, will … will win. That’s all. They’ll win.
Warriors ready for Panther cauldron
The Dragons went to Auckland last week and fairly emasculated the Warriors who are now 200-1 with bookmakers to win the comp because Shaun Johnson won’t play again in 2015. Next year when they have Johnson and Isaac Luke and Roger Tuivasa-Sheck bopping about together, hoo-ha, look out for they will be greased lightnin’. But they don’t have those guys this year and hence will travel to Penrith battling to remain relevant. They’re tenth, negative 57 in terms of differential, and playing away. This does not augur well.
Still, if they’re going to win a game away - and they have done that four times in 2015 - you’d think Penrith would be the one. The Panthers (14th) won’t make the semi-finals of this 2015 Telstra Premiership and are one game off the bottom. But with their minds free to enjoy their footy and impress their all-powerful gaffer Phil ‘Augustus’ Gould with a view to next year and beyond, let’s tip the locals to hand the Kiwis their bot-bots.
Seasons hanging by a thread
The Raiders (11th and 2-8 at home) will be playing for survival while the Sea Eagles (9th) will be playing for probable survival and their very livelihoods when they meet at GIO Stadium on Sunday at 2pm. It’ll be dry, it’ll be fast and it should be an absolute ball-tearer, particularly if the Raiders can let it all hang out in their pursuit to stay alive in 2015. They certainly have the people, none more ball-tearing than Blake Austin, who has a sidestep that could bestride the Grand Canyon, what Native Americans called “Ongtupqa”, which means “Grand Canyon”.
But Manly have shown with successive, albeit Fortress Brookvale floggings of comp heavyweights Brisbane (44-14) and Souths (28-8) that they’re playing super-hot footy at the right time of the year. Their coach is cactus and they’re playing for contracts on the 2016 roster and beyond, at Manly or wherever. And it appears to have steeled the Manly men’s minds.
But for all that you’ll turn it on the box to see the two of the best No.6’s tearing about today. Austin and his counterpart Kieran Foran are running guns with ball skills and balls, and nous and a few other things, the pair play full-on footy. Love watching them play.
Hope the Raiders win because the NRL with the Raiders is a happy place. But you’d have to favour the Eagles here. Too much experience, talent, Brett Stewart, Jamie Lyon, Daly Cherry-Evans, and they’re playing to impress Bob Fulton and for their very careers. Should be a ripper.
Monday Night Football... is dead
People no longer like Monday Night Football, it’s a Thing, a ratings fizzer. We used to like it, people used to say, Great idea, Monday Night Football, why didn’t we think of this sooner? But no more. And you would need more than Sharks and Storm to drag this plump white duck from a coffee and chocolate Monte biscuit on the couch on these our dear Lord Mr Lillee’s northern beaches to the deep south and Remondis Stadium adjacent the southern beaches of the Shire, take it to the bank via Centrebet.
The Sharks, somehow, continue to win. They’re in outright fifth on 28 points and have won eight of their last nine games. The Sharks! Eight of nine! They beat the Cows last week without either Fifita (the twins who could be put in a room with Nick Kyrgios and forced to undergo what I like to call cattle-prod therapy) with a backline you wouldn’t back to bust through a line of hippy street protesters.
There’s a livewire in Jack Bird (born 1995, the year I was tooling about in HG Kingswood, three-on-the-tree, I was cooler than Fonzie) and others in Ben Barba and wing man Valentine Holmes who can leap like an otter and has the best porno name in rugby league. And their forwards are more meat-axe than man.
Storm? Who knows? Twenty-year-old Cameron Munster’s running unfettered at fullback and Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk know more about disassembling defensive lines than Rommel. But Storm, you don’t know who’ll turn up. They lost to the Tigers the other week. Then they flogged the Titans. And this week face the Sharks for The Battle for Fifth. It’ll be brutal. And I’ll dip my chocolate Monte in a cup of tea several times to salute their bravery.
Other games you could watch while ironing your Monday work shirts are Tigers-Knights, Roosters-Eels and Bulldogs-Titans.
