Round 9: That's Straight Outta The Text-Book!

Round 9 was the first of 7 short rounds (due to representative games) this season. Rugby League is game where the word ‘short’ has a number of uses: just short of the line, short kick, career cut short by injury, attack down the short side, short turnaround (from Monday night), short-priced favourites and, most appropriately this week, short of cash. And that’s without considering the high number of players who are shorter than average or just plain short.

But the newest addition to the ‘short’ lexicon has been short message service, known as SMS or text. Whether it’s Brian Smith’s frequent texting to his players, Greg Bird texting his flatmate on a Sunday morning, the ‘ding, dong, the witch is dead’ text sent around by a Cowbores player after Graham Murray’s contract was not renewed or the abusive text supposedly sent by Lance Thompson to Justin Poore on the morning of their preliminary final loss to the Tigers in 2005, the text message has become significant in the world of rugby league controversy.

Hence, here is the recap of each Round 9 NRL fixture within 160 characters.

“Yeh we lost bro but it didn’t really matter ay, we’re on the rise…and next time, we won’t have Isaac, J Smith n Frankie out either” – Benji Marshall

Another ‘ANZAC’ Test and another fairly comfortable win to Australia, but Benji is (partly) right here. Gone are the days when New Zealand needed reinforcements from England (who were never worth the cost of plane fare anyway); now their team is based entirely in the Southern Hemisphere and new leaders are emerging to take over from Stacey Jones and Cayless.

“Awesome mate. Absorbed their best then carved them up. Showed that knob Ennis who is best. Now just have to beat Parra…and shut that Chard guy up for once” – Robbie Farah

Most experts thought Country looked to have the edge over City in their annual match-up and this seemed the likely outcome in the first half. But City’s defence remained largely solid (despite a significant advantage in possession to Country) and when this advantage was reduced, City – led by Farah, Peter Wallace, Michael Jennings and others – finished extremely strongly.

“Heard the bad news, unlucky boys, even worse your stuck in T-ville. Loving France, these French chicks…they fire up! At 20 to 4, whenever! FIRE UP!” – Mark Gasnier

Alas, Gasnier’s infamous drunken communiqué was not a text but a voice message, but the Dragons would have felt pretty bad after their close loss to the Cowbores. Despite having most of their team either backing up from Friday night (and having to travel far just to get to the game) or carrying an injury, they had a great chance to defeat a fairly poor Cowbores team.

Well…they would have won were it not for Feral Thurston, who once again backed up from a representative game extremely well. He scored 3 tries, each one slicing through the Dragons’ weakened right-side defence and (just) offsetting the dominance the Dragons had every time they attacked the Cowbores’ right-side defence. Brett Morris had 4 tries but amazingly could have had more. The Dragons could have come back from 10 points behind in the final few minutes if Matt Prior could pass (although the huge gap Hornby ran into appeared to come from an obstruction) but it wasn’t to be: a second straight extremely lucky home win for the Cowbores.

“Boys. Just checking you made it home ok. It was a win but can’t be happy, we were lucky. See you at warm down 0700. Text you with dinner instructions soon. Bye” – Brian Smith

Newcastle was a touch lucky to escape with a win over the Gold Coast, but they are likely to get the message (hoho) drilled into them about taking teams lightly (if Smith’s notorious texting habits and school-teacher mentality are true). It appeared as though Newcastle’s defence was going to be the difference; both teams dominated possession early on, but Newcastle put 3 tries on during their turn, while the Titans could only come up with 1. But the Gold Coast responded, came up with important plays when needed and almost stole the game from a lazy/tiring Newcastle team.

The much-discussed refereeing obviously played a role in the result (assuming Prince converted Zillman’s late try) but it was going to be a controversial call whatever decision was made. While Gold Coast coach Cartwright was annoyed by the Prince-Sau outcome, his anger at the refereeing in general was misguided. Chris Walker’s attempt was not a try (the ball touched a Knight foot) while everything else was the result of ill-discipline, not refereeing mistakes.

“Nice one Jamie, just like my Origin effort in ’06. Also heard you said it was a fair try – brilliant. Keep fighting the good fight against video refs buddy. Hogdo” – Brett Hodgson

The second Sunday game saw Manly come back from a 16-0 deficit to defeat an uninspiring Brisbane, but the post-game talk was about Jamie Lyon and his controversial tries. The second of these was fine; he clearly tapped the ball forward to control it (if Jarryd Hayne didn’t breach this rule two weeks ago, this try wouldn’t have been in doubt), however his first try was much worse.

Lyon’s first try saw him chase a kick, play at the ball with his hip/torso then fall on the ball with his hip/torso across the line. There is a rule that the torso can ground the ball for a try, but surely if the torso can ground the ball, the torso can knock it on too yes? There is no “rule” which says a torso can knock the ball on, but the third State of Origin game in 2006 provided a precedent here.

NSW put up a bomb, which Brett Hodgson aimed to catch the ball but lost sight of it. The ball hit off his torso and went forward but was regathered by NSW, who passed it to Eric Grothe for a try. The video referee, citing the ‘can’t knock the ball on with your torso’ rule, awarded a try, which the Tuesday Roast approved of at the time. However, the swift and unanimous denouncing of this decision by the rugby league community meant that any future torso knock-ons would not result in tries…yes? Apparently video referee Paul Simpkins was keen to re-write history, but amazingly no one has mentioned the Hodgson incident in the aftermath of Lyon’s hip/torso knock-on.

“Freddy. Saying O’Meley was accidentally left off sheet and not playing Kouparitsas – brilliant. Nearly as bad as my last days there. All the best mate. Opes.” – Chris Anderson

In last night’s game, Melbourne hardly looked like a team with 8 players backing up from Friday night. This was evident after 15 minutes. The Roosters had almost all the ball and scored a try, but the Storm looked quite untroubled defending them. Initial suspicions about the Roosters were confirmed during the rest of the game. Melbourne scored several soft tries and won comfortably.

How bad are the Roosters going? Aside from their patchy play, inconsistent intensity and high error count, coach Brad Fittler is starting to feel the heat. He left Mark O’Meley out of his team, as many expected, but this makes the explanation from early last week (that O’Meley’s name was left off the team sheet by mistake) look ludicrous. Also, Nick Kouparitsas played his first game for the Roosters last night – but was on for about 3 minutes. This meant the Roosters used one big forward replacement for almost all of the game: every other team uses at least two big forwards.

For the Roosters, this situation is reminiscent of 2007, when the much-loathed Chris Anderson was coach. In his last few games before resigning, he didn’t (forgot to?) play forward Nigel Plum in a game against Newcastle (at Gosford – the same venue as for last night’s game) and the club used another pathetic lie (a press release to announce that Anderson’s frequent turning away in disgust during their 56-0 loss to Manly was actually so he could view a TV replay).

Brad Fittler is far more liked than Anderson and not nearly as decrepit, but he also is not as good a coach as Anderson was (in his Bulldog years) so could be in trouble if results don’t improve. Losing to the Storm is not so bad, but the ease with which Melbourne won had to disturb Fittler.

See you next week.

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