Monday, March 18th

Dylan Leach
NRL ROUND ONE IN DOT POINTS

Here’s our wrap up of Round One of the NRL in dot points. 

  • Brave Neds Gold Coast Titans go down to Canberra 21-0
  • Parramatta is unbeaten and cemented in the eight. Penrith to review the tape, but not of the match. 
  • North Queensland’s Jason Taumalolo broke his own personal record racing up 301 meters against St.George-Illawarra, breaking his PB of 283 set two years ago.
  • Robbie Farrah and Benji Marshal ensured that the Neds sponsorship/Michael Maguire era started in style with a 20-6 win over Manly at the eighth wonder of the world. It was a vintage display from Farrah and Des Hasler’s return was ruined. 
  • Blake Green and Adam Keighran ensured that the NZ Warriors started the season with a 40-6 win over the Bulldogs. In what has been an awful few days for everyone in New Zealand, the Warriors were able to bring some joy,
  • Wayne Bennett now has a 100% winning rate as coach of Souths as they saw off Reigning Premiers,  with a 26-16 win at the SCG on Friday night. Adam Reynolds also ensured that Cooper Cronk’s 350th game was one without victory as one of the Bunnies best.
  • For the first time since Round 18, 2013 – a game was nil-all at half time.  IN what was a shocking first half between the Knights and Sharks, the game ended up being decided by  an 85-metre intercept try to Edrick Lee, with Newcastle overseeing a dubious penalty try beating the Sharkies 14-8/
  • Storm opened the season beating the Broncos – but you already knew that. 

Bet now: NRL
THREE DAYS UNTIL AFL.

That’s right, there are only three days until the AFL season gets underway.

Richmond will host Carlton on Thursday night at the MCG and order will be restored in the world.

The week leading up to the opening round of the season tends to be rather predictable.  Which player is going to play Round One, Will a crap team improve, What happens if one bad team beats another bad team, the AFL’s new rules are set to be a disaster, The new hosts of The Footy Show are no good, the price of food at the venues is a rip-off (ensuring another Herald-Sun “sad face” picture in the paper), someone will bring up trades in March and so on.

But we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Meanwhile, in keeping with the AFL’s proud tradition of zero foresight, the AFL women’s comp has proven that its conference system is beyond a joke.

As the AFLW Preliminary Finals get underway, the four best teams don’t feature because, well,  the AFL didn’t think ahead when splitting a 10 team, Seven round comp into conferences might backfire.

Adelaide and Fremantle will play finals and that’s fair -they finished 6-1 and will represent conference A.

Geelong and Carlton will also play finals in conference B, they are nowhere near the standard of the Crows and Freo and should get belted.

Geelong finished the season 3-4, with the lowest percentage in the comp of 65.5% and still qualify to play finals.

North Melbourne finished 5-2, had a percentage of 123.1% – they won’t play finals.

In fact, 13 out of 15 “Cross-conference” games has seen a team from group A beat the team from group B. 

Say what you like about the standard of AFLW (which has improved dramatically) but the girls and fans deserve so much better.

Bet now: AFL
IT'S ONLY A GAME

It’s been a horrible few days after the horrific events in Christchurch.

Wellington Phoenix coach Mark Rudan puts things into perspective.