Round 14: Treading Carefully Around A Difficult Subject

Round 14 of the NRL was another pre-Origin weekend. This meant a shortened round but also the absence of many of the game’s best players. Not surprisingly, the quality of play largely suffered.

Despite frequent disappointments with pre-Origin rounds, the NRL remains stubbornly committed to the idea of forcing many teams to compete for points without many of their best players. There have been variations over the years, but all look remarkably similar. It’s as if the NRL is borrowing from Henry Ford’s famous catchphrase: “they can have any colour they want so long as it’s…..” umm…the one colour he made it in. I forget which one that was.

The round kicked off on Friday night on the Gold Coast, where the locals were looking to avoid a fourth straight loss. Normally Manly have success against the Titans, but with a number of key players missing and coming off a tough defeat against Brisbane, the Titans were well favoured to end their losing streak.

However, Manly started well and should have taken an early lead; only some desperate defence pushed Farrar across the line before he could put the ball down. It was the Titans who scored first, but incredibly it came in a very similar manner to how they took the lead when they played Manly earlier this season. On both occasions, a Manly dropped ball was picked up by flying winger Kevin Gordon, who ran over 70 metres each time to score. I’m sure the Titans would be more than happy to make long-distance Gordon tries the new…..umm….fashionable colour for their game starts from now on.

A rather acrobatic try from Mark Minichiello soon followed and the Titans had a 12-point lead they probably didn’t deserve. From here, the under-strength Sea Eagles were always going to struggle and despite Minichiello giving up an 8-point try in the second half (a terrible decision; referee Cummins was a real…..umm…..sheep who was a different colour to the rest of the flock after this call), it was a relatively comfortable win for the Gold Coast.

The Titans’ opponents from last week, Canberra, were next up in Round 14 as they were presented the tricky task of a trip to Townsville. While the Cowbores were without Feral Thurston, they were coming off a thrashing by Souths and they were due for some success at home. Meanwhile, Canberra is usually very shaky away from home and has struggled with favouritism this season.

Not surprisingly, this game had few highlights; the Cowbores struggled but put forth a great effort to bounce back from their hiding to Souths. However, this was enough against a Canberra team uncomfortable with the burden of favouritism, not having learnt from their impressive efforts of recent weeks and missing Josh Dugan and Joel Monaghan to injury and Origin respectively. Yep, this was certainly another…..ummm….negative-coloured mark against Canberra and their chances in 2010.

On Sunday, the first game saw Newcastle host the Warriors. Neither of these inconsistent teams could pull away from the other in this relatively high-scoring game until late on when the Warriors took advantage of a penalty goal to establish an 8-point lead. Newcastle threatened a comeback when they cut the Warriors’ lead to 2 and had the ball in attacking field position but threw away this precious opportunity. Matt Hilder threw the game away with an awful long pass returned for a try by James Moloney.

For the Warriors, this was a fairly impressive effort; to bounce back from a potentially crushing defeat to the Dragons last week with an away win was commendable. However, the Knights’ baffling season continues. They have now won just 1 of their last 6 games at home; quite pathetic, really, for one of the more talented rosters in the NRL. Coach Rick Stone must be wondering if a…..ummm…..hole that sucks everything away has taken up residence at Energy Australia Stadium since Brian Smith left the team.

The late Sunday game saw Brisbane without their Origin stars take on South Sydney, who was missing a host of forwards due to Origin, representing England, injury and suspension. However, their starring backline of recent weeks was intact.

What looked like being a tightly fought game became a mismatch very early on. While the Cowbores bounced back from last Monday night, Souths suffered the opposite fate from this game (made worse, of course, by missing so many key forwards). Meanwhile, Brisbane flourished despite the absence of Lockyer and Thaiday. Parker, Gillett and Te’o were all brilliant as Brisbane tore Souths to shreds in the forwards and on the edges, while Hoffman and Yow Yeh continued their recent form.

Souths could have been forgiven for struggling without much of their imposing forward pack but what started poorly became worse, especially for their up-and-down halves combination. In particular, Chris Sandow had a terrible game, especially his attacking kicks, which almost always missed the mark completely, often fuelling Brisbane counter-attacks. He would have been forgiven for calling the……ummm…..depression hotline which is named after a dog following such a poor display.

On Monday night, what appeared to be a very even and high quality game between Melbourne and the Roosters shifted sharply towards the Sydney side from about the 20 minute mark. Melbourne was missing all of its superstars but they folded rather meekly once they fell behind on the way to a thrashing by the impressive Roosters.

However, the Storm’s capitulation – which will likely become much more commonplace as the season goes on and their massive punishment for accessing Rugby League’s …..ummm…. market where illegal player payments can be made hits home even further – was not the major talking point after the game. Instead, several baffling video referee decisions against the Roosters received post-match focus.

One could (maybe) see why the seemingly legitimate try to Shaun Kenny-Dowall was disallowed in the first half – the referees love a rule which is completely……ummm…..white and the colour completely opposite to white – but for them to allow Melbourne’s sole try when Sika Manu looked certain to have interfered with the marker was…..completely lacking in any logic.

Finally, last night’s State of Origin confirmed what has been coming for several years as Queensland belatedly put the cleaners through an abysmal, totally lacking in cohesion New South Wales line-up. The highlight of the match was probably Greg Inglis giving us one of the three or four matches where he actually tries each season. The much-discussed racism controversy may have played a role here, but probably a greater contributing factor was the insinuation that the New South Wales debutante Beau Scott had a chance of slowing Inglis down (or even shutting him out of the game).

Inglis scored very early on and took every opportunity possible to beat up on poor Scott, both in the run of play and literally as the game went on and the widening discrepancy between the teams allowed Inglis even more latitude to dominate and even embarrass Scott (and those who may have thought Scott could do the job). No doubt this annihilation will enjoy a spot in Inglis’… umm… little book where he keeps notes of opponents he has owned.

On that note, the Tuesday Roast will…ummm… fade to a close. See you next week.

See you next week.