Round 26: Tuesday Roast™ People’s Choice Awards

With the Dally M Awards — the NRL’s awards night — rapidly approaching, it seems appropriate for the Tuesday Roast to end the (tipping) season with an awards night of its own. While the Dally M night is…not too bad, any night where Matt Awful takes home any award (that doesn’t have ‘worst’ or ‘overly reliant’ in the title) needs something of a makeover.

So…here is some awards the average NRL viewer might prefer to see presented:

The Wendell Sailor Award for Promotional Services to Rugby League

And the nominees are: Wendell Sailor, Wendell Sailor, Wendell Sailor and Wendell Sailor. Not surprisingly, the award goes to….Wendell Sailor.

In a season where off-field incidents have increased in number and severity, Wendell’s charisma and near-omnipotence have been of great benefit to the game. How popular is he? Even when he engages in actions many would deem arrogant or in bad taste, they become highly enjoyable moments (e.g. his on-field slanging match and post-try celebrations against Newcastle and Adam MacDougall in April).

While some cynics might say Wendell’s current persona is aimed squarely at his post-NRL career, there is little doubt he is an engaging and insightful analyst and these qualities have helped the Dragons to their very successful season so far.

Wendell’s relatively calm demeanour was most likely a key factor in the Dragons’ amazing form turnaround on Friday night, which saw them thrash Parramatta 37-0. But a very important factor here was that Parramatta didn’t need to win this game to keep their season alive: they hadn’t had this feeling in months. With sudden-death awaiting them now and some key returns from injury, watch for a much improved Parramatta performance in the re-match at Kogarah on Sunday.

But the boost of Wendell to the game’s image was more than countered by a massive amount of negative publicity from off-field incidents. That makes the task of finding the “best” incident a very difficult one…

The Palm Motor Inn (where Julian O’Neill “sh*t in Schlossy’s shoe” in March 1999) Award for the “best” off-field incident

And the nominees are: Brett Seymour, Brett Stewart, Anthony Watmough, Todd Carney, Jake Friend, Brett Seymour, Brad Fittler, Setaimata Sa, Jake Friend, David Fa’alogo and Nate Myles.

Yep, Nate Myles is the winner. Of course, there could still be any number of Mad Monday related incidents, but the combination of excess alcohol, an upset stomach (and corresponding medication) and a wrong door chosen brought poo back to the NRL headlines just over a decade after Julian O’Neill’s infamous misdemeanour.

If there was an award for a pathetic effort in the final game for a club legend, the Roosters would have secured it after their poor performance against the Cowbores. But if the rumour mill is on (or even close to) target, the fetid stench of gambling (and its use to profit handsomely) was all over this game. After much of the money on this game was for a Cowbores win by more than 13 points, it was extremely suspicious the way the Roosters folded late to push the final margin to beyond 13 points (not to mention the Cowbores’ celebrations for a game that should have meant little to them). We might hear a lot more about this otherwise insignificant game.

But Season 2009 saw the effect of one prominent off-field incident which came from a seemingly harmless situation. This off-field incident had far greater consequences than any of the above stupidity and sent one of the predicted contenders into a season-long torpor….

The Ben Alexander Memorial Award

For those who weren’t following rugby league in 1992, Ben Alexander was the brother of NRL commentator Greg Alexander. Penrith had won the title in 1991 after several years of being in contention and all signs pointed to a team which could contend for many years to come. Sadly, Ben was killed in a car crash which came after a drunken night, which was partly the result of Ben not receiving much time on the field. This crushed Penrith and the local community and the premiership-winning team of 1991 was dismantled from this point on.

While the Warriors’ loss wasn’t as sinister, they are the “winner” of this award, after the tragic drowning of up-and-comer Sonny Fai in January. Not only did this send the Warriors’ premiership chances plummeting, but it robbed us of one of the more exciting teams in the NRL. Save for a few brief purple patches, the Warriors found points very hard to come by in 2009.

In perhaps the most uneventful game of Round 26, Melbourne easily disposed of the Warriors and in doing so, sealed 4th spot. It was Stacey Jones’ final game (again) but the Warriors were unable to even trouble the scorer.

A number of teams in Round 26 either were unable to trouble the scorer or came very close to laying a duck egg. The most prominent of these lost the minor premiership because of it and might struggle over the next few weeks because of a major absence….

The Allan Langer ‘From Starring to Obscurity and back again’ Award

The nominees are: Adam MacDougall, Wendell Sailor, Eric Grothe, Brad Meyers, Phil Graham and…..Brett Kimmorley. Brett Kimmorley wins this award in a canter, despite some impressive returns from obscurity amongst the nominees. This is because Kimmorley stunk it up so much for Cronulla for a period spanning several seasons (not weeks or months). He steered Cronulla from a perennial contender for the title to someone who made up the numbers and was destined to never play Origin again after gifting Matt Bowen an intercept in Game 1 of 2005.

Given this, Ricky Stuart was probably well and truly justified in his desire to get rid of Kimmorley once he took over Cronulla in 2007, but by the time he got around to offloading Kimmorley, Kimmorley was starting to experience his late-career renaissance. This continued for much of the remainder of 2008 and flourished further in a quite talented Bulldogs team this season.

However, in the first game for the Bulldogs since Kimmorley’s sickening facial fractures, they were blown off the park by the Wests Tigers. Admittedly, Kimmorley might not have been able to do much: the Bulldogs started very slowly, barely touching the ball before falling 10-nil, but the pressure is on a number of prominent Bulldogs now to win without Kimmorley (either this week or next week).

The pressure was lifted from Manly somewhat on Saturday after they thrashed the Gold Coast, but that doesn’t exempt them from perhaps the most unwanted award of 2009…

The Chris Walker Award for the Big-Money Dud Signing of the Year

The nominees are: Trent Barrett, Ben Rogers, Tony Williams and Israel Folau and….ohhh there’s only one vote in it! Tony Williams is the winner, but Ben Rogers can feel very hard done by!

Williams’ sloth-like lethargy (despite his massive size) and a turning circle that made Luke Covell look nimble meant he was the most maligned Williams at Manly this season (an amazing feat, given the extreme case of second-year syndrome suffered by David Williams). It’s a great night for Williams as he also won the Jason Ryles “Looks like Tarzan, but Plays Like Jane” Award.

After the Dragons win on Friday night, the Gold Coast didn’t have much left to play for and it showed as Manly rather easily thrashed them. It wasn’t a top-shelf Manly display, but it wasn’t far off and suggests the challenge of playing big-name teams in the weeks ahead could help to produce similar efforts.

Like the Gold Coast, Souths didn’t have a lot to play for in Round 26, but somehow snuck home in the dying seconds to defeat Cronulla. For the second week in a row, a very brave Cronulla side had victory cruelly snatched from them. But in an unfortunate way, it highlights one problem in relying on too many young and inexperienced players…

The Michael Jennings Award for Youthful Inability to Read in Defence

For allowing rather easy match-winning tries in their final two games, Cronulla’s Matthew Wright is a worthy winner of this award. This award was introduced in 2007, when Penrith’s very talented rookie Michael Jennings wowed supporters while creating a nice breeze with his turnstile arms on opposing centres as they went past him.

Wright is only 18, so he could end up being a very good player, but as the depth of NRL squads is more severely tested each season and younger, more inexperienced players are required, pathetic defence such as that seen by Wright will become more common, not less.

Speaking of Jennings, his Penrith side travelled to Newcastle on Sunday with a chance to win and qualify for the finals. Not surprisingly, as they did in almost every game of significance they’ve played since the absence of Petero Civoniceva, Penrith….emulated Nate Myles and Julian O’Neill in their shorts.

But the award resulting from this game was for size. No, not Islander size or bulk, rather the best example of a “big man” with plenty of skills plying his craft for the Knights…

The Tracey Grimshaw ‘Big is Beautiful’ Award

The nominees were: George Rose (for almost bursting out of his suit on NRL on Fox last week), Danny Wicks (for his surprising skills and speed for basically a fatty boombah), Jarrad Hickey (who used to be a fatty and still looks a $1000 KFC Man of the Match away from returning to his former state) and Matt Utai (who hilariously tried to be a forward this season).

Newcastle’s Danny Wicks took out this award for the second straight year. Which prop forward scores an 80 metre try? Which prop flies (relatively speaking) through the air to take a bomb with two hands above his head AFL-style? He is a constant source of amusement on the field. Wicks’ success in recent seasons might persuade NRL teams to go back to the fatty prop (a la the trend of plus-size models on the catwalk).

The final two awards go to Canberra’s Terry Campese. Firstly, he beat out a strong field (including Paul Gallen and Billy Slater) for The ‘But My Mum says I’m the best player’ Award.

His next award is The Steve Turner ‘It’s Not My Fault They Picked Me’ Award (beating out David Williams and Steve Price (who was unfortunately ‘picked out’ by Brett White).

There is little doubt of Campese’s ability, but his on-field attitude and approach to the game was revealed to be barely above the level of a moody adolescent this season. Canberra’s ornament to the game, Alan Tongue, was often embarrassed by Campese’s unprompted appearances and stupid comments towards officials, while Campese’s inability to lead his team and play well away from home are disturbing attributes for someone in State of Origin contention to possess.

That brings to end the first Tuesday Roast™ People’s Choice Awards Night and, of course, the tipping season as a whole. Well done to all who received prizes, good luck to the remaining teams (who are ecstatic the Tigers couldn’t make it to September) and see you again in 2010.