Friday Night Whack-Fests
Friday night and there should be two floggings as all-conquering Broncos beat up on Titans and powerful Roosters romp across Wests Tigers. But rugby league, as we know, is a funny game, and … no. There will be no upsets.
Brisbane, the competition front-runners with a bullet, will be at home in a derby in front of a good thick crowd of cheery, beery, post-work locals. And the Broncs are in sparkling form. Half Ben Hunt has been running the ball and throwing assists, and Anthony Milford is a hot-footed speed fiend they reckon has set Red Hill records over 40 metres. And the Titans miss Greg Bird and many other good players.
At ANZ Stadium at the same time the Roosters will surely thump the Tigers because if you lined up the team’s respective XVIIs head-to-head, then the Tigers might sneak four into the composite squadron. That said … Martin Taupau would be one and so would Aaron Woods, and those guys running full pelt at Jared Waerea-Hargreaves, Dylan Napa and Sam Moa, these collisions are going to hurt.
And on the back of momentum created by the big man-action you’d suggest James Maloney and Mitchell Pearce have more to work with out wide than Mitch Moses and Luke Brooks. An entertaining whack-fest awaits.
Face Slapping Rabbit Men
The Rabbitohs haven’t been super flash in this season of our Lord Rocket Reddy 2015, they’ve missed the carnage up the guts of Sam Burgess and the skill and muscle of Ben Te’o wide of the ruck. And they’ve come back to the all-panting pack.
But they haven’t come so far back they’ll lose to Newcastle Knights. Souths are still running outright fourth, and won’t want to be dropping a game to the mob running 14th. Michael Maguire will have his Rabbit men metaphorically face-slapping on another all week. Glenn Stewart is a hard and super-fine footy player and he’s surrounded by other good ones, and the Knights? The Knights are just a functional bit of kit that needs more dynamic and effective players in 1, 6 and 9 to capitalise on the go-forward of the Sims brothers and company.
Thurston vs Parramatta
Monday night in Townsville and the Cowboys host the Eels without Chris Sandow, Anthony Watmough and Corey Norman, and therefore hope of any kind.
Well, they have hope – for where there is life, all that.. But the Cowboys are smokin’ and it’s all on the back of the preternatural form of their captain and champion, Johnathan Thurston.
How good’s he going? Bookies are paying out on him for the big gongs, is how good he’s going. The man is just so precise, excellent, smart, professional, prepared and mistake-free he’s just about the perfect halfback at the present time. Cows could win this going away. Only thing stopping that happening is Thurston being a nice bloke who doesn’t want to see another team emasculated, and his coach taking him off to rest.
The Eels’ halfback will be Luke Kelly who’s a good player I witnessed rip off some wondrous things in a game of schoolboy rugby union at St.Gregory’s College a few years back. But Sandow is the only man who can bring X-Factor to the Eels, and he’s been shipped back to the Motherland.
Dog Country
The Sharks are capable of an upset over the Bulldogs if they can keep the ball in their impressive forward pack and not give the ball to the backs, like at all. Just imagine they’re playing rugby union when the forwards maul the ball down field and their five-eighth kicks it, and they have a lineout, maul, and repeat.
But that can’t happen because the games have different rules so if the Sharks can play some of the footy their forwards are capable of, toss it about a bit between the likes of Luke Lewis, Andrew Fifita and captain blood Paul Gallen, they could actually frighten the Dogs at Belmore.
But they probably won’t. Because Belmore thick with Dog People is Dog Country. It’s fearsome. The noise of the suburban ground changing “Bull-DOGS” – that’s colosseum stuff. And the Bulldogs have two Morris boys and great thumping forwards, and Josh Reynolds whom the locals love him like they did Baa Lamb, and a coach who’s more nutty professor than man, and will know his men are a chance of giving this game up if they take the Sharks lightly.
Could be a fine game of footy given the combatants’ skill, pace and power. But you’d favour the Dogs in their backyard.
Whacking, Dusk and Beer Nuts
Elsewhere Warriors at home on a dry track Saturday afternoon, Manly without Daly Cherry-Evans, Shaun Johnson hot-footing it about like a high-skilled pole cat, whatever a pole cat is; a bunch of Sea Eagles told their club doesn’t want them to be Sea Eagles any more and it’s all pointing to a Warriors whacking at Mt. Smart Stadium.
On Saturday night at McLean Park in Napier, New Zealand (and not at AAMI Park in Melbourne as assumed and asserted earlier by the writer of this missive), the Storm and Dragons will do their best in a battle of attrition with occasional star-bursts from their fancy ones. And in Penrith the Panthers host the Raiders and you can’t pick a winner, the teams could play 20 times and win ten each by forty points, and people would go, hmm, yes, where’s those beer nuts.
