Round 12: Headlines

In light of the ongoing negotiations and bidding between the NRL and all commercial networks regarding the broadcast rights for the game over the next few years, this week’s Roast is in headline form.

South Sydney vs. Canberra – “Funny Bunnies struggle but thrash Raider Faders”

Over many years, South Sydney would sometimes produce a big effort when they were not expected to trouble the opposition, but on those rare occasions when they were heavily favoured to win a game, they would be far too complacent and lose.

Unfortunately, this is not the same old 50uff$, although for about 25 minutes on Friday night, they did their best to scare the long-time toothless. To be fair though, motivation was going to be difficult to summon. Canberra is rubbish and they were without serial geese Dugan and Ferguson. Meanwhile, Souths welcomed back Inglis and Taylor into their winning line-up.

Matters were not helped after several hilariously easy tries and Canberra responded with two easy tries of their own (the other try being amongst the top 5 in worst video refereeing decisions ever – how can a try be given without any evidence the ball was touched down?!?!). However, Souths started the second half strongly and thrashed the Raiders.

Melbourne v. Brisbane – “Storm surge thanks to Goose Griffin”

Melbourne almost never loses at home and even though they took a while to get going on Friday night, Brisbane’s brave effort fell way short in the end.

However one has to question the wisdom of Brisbane coach Anthony Griffin and his decision to rest some of his State of Origin players. In a code where any good idea is relentlessly copied, no other team has decided to rest players coming off an Origin game. While Civoniceva possibly had trouble with his Zimmer Frame on Thursday and Friday, there seemed no good reason to rest his other stars.

Speaking of backing up from Origin, it was only a few short years ago when the consensus seemed to be that backing up from Origin was easier on the Friday than the Saturday or the Sunday. What has changed since then? Surely it can’t be from Origin being faster or harder; Wednesday night’s game was slow as a wet week. Obviously the idea of the Origin weekend is now popular amongst players; hence, their story had to change regarding preferred day for backing-up.

Backing the campaign of the players is NRL windbag, guy-who-writes-for-the-Telegraph (not a journalist's backside) and king sh!t-stirrer Phil “Buzz” Rothfield. His campaign to talk down post-Origin weekends - whilst also talking down the game in general (so as to lessen the amount Fox must pay to re-acquire broadcast rights) reached idiotic heights in yesterday’s paper, where he declared the full-time siren in the Dragons-Eels game to be his highlight of the round, while his lowlight was the generally low skill level.

Coming off his failed, Bennett-led campaign to eradicate the wrestle out of the game, he’s back on a familiar old hobby horse; except for a few things: 1. the ‘bad’ games in round 12 contained few if any Origin players, 2. there were several well-played games featuring backing-up Origin players and 3. there were a host of bad games in the weeks leading up to Origin. Apart from these, his theory was brilliant!!!

(PS - Buzz is on about 'No Sunday footy in Sydney!!!!' today. Times are tough for this fraud - he's used three of his favourite targets in less than a few weeks. Look for 'Brian Smith on the outer' or 'Suburban Footy costing crowds' very soon.....)

Newcastle v. Gold Coast – “Titans the Toast of the Coast; Knights Most Gracious Hosts”

Newcastle started fairly well against the Titans on Saturday night, scoring first to take an early lead. However, after the Gold Coast fought back mid-way through the first half, the Knights’ response was pitiful. Willie Mason had another solid outing, but you know you’re struggling when 32-year old Willie Mason is your best forward (by some distance).

The Gold Coast dominated in the forwards while Scott Prince overcame yet another ‘injury’ to play and play well. The Titans are improving and may be a top-8 threat if their forwards continue to play well and their spine, much maligned at times, continues to surprise. Little known fact: since the end of Round 5, only three underdogs playing away from home have won – they’ve all been the Gold Coast.

St. George Illawarra v. Parramatta – “Dragons overcome Vid-tarded mistakes to beat Eels”

After two brave but ultimately unsuccessful efforts in the last two rounds, the injury-hit Dragons had a tricky game in Round 12 – the Eels were surely due to put in a much better effort. Parramatta started strongly, taking an early lead and looked the better team for much of the game.

The Dragons were resilient and may have made a better contest of this earlier on were it for not a host of pathetic plays from winger Daniel Vidot. Poor offloads and clumsy catches littered his Vid-tarded effort. It was significant to note that Kyle Stanley ignored the unmarked Vidot on his game-winning try.

(It was also quite funny on this play that Chris Sandow-now attempted a shoulder charge as Stanley ran towards the line and that Jarryd Hayne chucked a big tanty and kicked the ball into Carlton Public School after Stanley put the ball down).

But the chief Vidiot of the night was Fox Sports commentator Laurie Daley – he of the ‘uge effort’ and ‘getting his football team back into the football game’. After Hayne sent a general kick well across the dead ball line as the Eels held on to a lead with 15 minutes left, Daley reached deep within and came up with this gem, “Gee I hope Parramatta’s not playing to hold on to the lead here because I can tell you the Dragons won’t be playing to hold on, they’re playing to win”.

GEEZ THANKS SCOOP!

Penrith v. Manly – “General Grant leads Panthers to victory over Manly's Foran Legion”

(I know – Kieran Foran didn’t play again this week. I just wanted to use the Foran Legion headline before it was used in actual media).

Penrith coach Ivan Cleary (assisted, in all likelihood, by puppet master Phil Gould) has made some unpopular decisions in recent weeks. Taking the captaincy off Luke Lewis was perhaps the most bizarre yet. But his/their unorthodox motivational methods are working; Penrith was excellent in their ultimately comprehensive win over Manly.

The game was locked at nil-all until well in the first half before Penrith took the lead. Manly responded before half-time, but rarely got the ball in good attacking position after that. Penrith’s effort on both sides of the ball and across the park was simply too much for a beaten-up Manly, who were without Jason King, a fully-functioning Watmough and should have been without Steve Matai for the game’s final 15 or so minutes after his swinging-arm high-tackle which knocked out Danny Galea (how did the referees miss this tackle on first viewing???).

This game featured another hideous video refereeing blunder – Geoff Daniela’s late effort looked like someone trying to catch a greased-up eel rather than putting a ball down, but Penrith were deserving winners.

Wests Tigers v. North Queensland – “Tigers reaffirm quality, excitement, non-Feral edge over Cowbores”

Buzz Rothfield obviously wrote his piece for yesterday’s paper without watching this game; it was one of the better games of the season so far, despite having five players returning from Origin.

The Tigers led for most of the game but they seemed to score from opportune plays and some luck while the Cowbores’ scoring plays came after strong lead-up play.

Ultimately, the Tigers succeeded with two late tries but it was a highly entertaining game. Benji Marshall and James Tamou enjoyed a first half fisticuffs and a second half sprint (with each contest won by the guy most would have thought to be least likely to win), Tamou had another sprint downfield (with a left-foot side-step thrown in) before a Cowbores try, a correctly disallowed Cowbores try saw the normally reserved Brent Tate fire up at the referees, Matt Utai shocked everyone with a smart attacking kick late in the game and debutant Curtis Sironen looked like he’d been playing first grade for three years.

Perhaps the funniest series of plays on Sunday afternoon were the kick-off blunders by the Tigers. Tim LOLtzen first kicked off across the dead-ball line then Blake Ayshford misjudged the next four or five kick-offs received. It brought back memories of the corresponding fixture between these teams in 2005, when a towering Pat Richards kick-off hit the post and rebounded back to the Tigers, who scored soon after.

(To be fair, there wasn’t much similarity between the plays; it’s just good to recount examples of Tigers dominance over the hated Cowbores).

Sydney Roosters v. Canterbury – “Benny Barba and his 40 saves: Dogs take their chances; Roosters squander theirs”

It was a somewhat bizarre game to finish Round 11, with the Roosters again looking very strong for much of the game (as they have for long periods of games since ANZAC Day) but ending up being well beaten by the Bulldogs.

In short, the Bulldogs took a high percentage of their opportunities while the Roosters failed to take enough of theirs. After leading 12-4, the Roosters had significant attacking field position through to the end of the first half and over the first 15 minutes of the second half but, through some poor late-tackle options, some bad luck and some Ben Barba brilliance, could not convert any of these into points.

The Bulldogs’ resilience and good fortune paid off after they scored; the Roosters were broken. An easy try to Stagg and salt in the wound from a length-of-the-field try to Wright finished the scoring.

The Tuesday Roast has long disliked the excessive adoration given to Ben Barba (who could forget the media cheer-leading for his basketball bounce try late last season?) but his two try saves tonight added to an ongoing body of work in this area: for once, he received praise that was not over-the-top.

Instead, the excess was heaped on to the Bulldogs in general and specifically to Bulldogs debutant Krisnan Inu. Last night was Inu’s 100th game in the NRL; he would have played maybe 30 of these better than he played last night (where he was quite good but nothing special). Yet the Fox commentators acted as if it was Inglis, Jordan, Ali and Bradman all at once. Warren Smith took the cake when he proclaimed Inu’s leaping catch and fluky pass as “one of the highlights of the season so far”. PUH-LEASE!

Then Inu was awarded man of the match despite missing a host of easy kicks at goal and doing very little for much of the game. It was not quite Lachlan Coote man-of-the-match material from 2008 but it was not far off. Big Sam Kasiano could feel hard done by after his excellent effort.

The Inu exuberance came in a barrage of Bulldogs praise. Smith again overstepped the mark when he claimed that the Bulldogs – Souths game in Round 13 would be “with the exception of the Storm, a match-up of the two form teams in the NRL”. Were the Bulldogs not well beaten by the Titans barely two weeks ago? Did they not feature in the Lame of the Year against Manly not long before? Smith is no doubt talking up an upcoming Fox game and talking to the biggest fan base in Sydney but such hot air must not be ignored.

See you next week.