Round 26: Tuesday Roast™ Awards Night

The NRL season, under the stewardship of former lawyer David Gallop, has settled into a yearly routine which sits nicely with a sport where games can often deteriorate into lengthy periods of set of six, kick, set of six, kick and so on. In this framework, the end of Round 26 is quickly followed by the annual Dally M Awards night. Tuesday night gave us a bevy of well-dressed players, very well-dressed WAGs but also of mind-numbing structure and the same awards night structure that seemingly has been in place for about 15 years.

It doesn’t need to be this way – you can make your point heard and make a difference to this monotony! Well....you can if you run your own NRL tipping competition, complete with weekly write-up.

Anyway, it’s time for the annual Tuesday Roast™ Awards Night. The players and WAGs are just as well-dressed but the casual, mellow atmosphere of Tuesday night is set to be shattered as the more straight-shooting Tuesday Roast™ awards are read out.

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

This is the most renowned of the Tuesday Roast™ awards, but season 2011 has not provided many potential nominees for this coveted award. We might have to make it an AFL award next season (when the misdemeanours covered up by subservient Victard media are considered).

The nominees for this award are:

* Todd Carney – got the most column inches but his crimes have been fairly tame. Poor guy just loves a drink...

* Nate Myles – now we’re getting warmer. A previous nominee for this award, Myles was a major influence on Todd Carney. Still, Myles lost his way after signing with the Titans for next season and beyond – it’s surprising this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often.

* Michael Jennings – lost trust of his team-mates despite being selected to the NSW State of Origin team, then turned up to an afternoon training session later in the season struggling to walk after a major drinking binge.

Not surprisingly, the winner is Michael Jennings. For a lean year in this area, our winner would rival many from years gone by.

Jennings’ Panthers completed their difficult, but not entirely surprising, 2011 with a loss in Wollongong to the Dragons. Penrith simply had too much to absorb to remain competitive in the top 8 race much longer after mid season. The Dragons, on the other hand, look to have emerged from their mid-season malaise and might well be in a position to time a run to the title.

Penrith’s fall from grace in 2011 was bad, but there was another 2010 semi-finalist whose 2011 was even worse. They had problems with their incumbents but their additions were....awful.

The Chris Walker Award for the worst off-season signing

One should never to be too quick to put an event into its place in the history books, but this award will almost certainly be renamed for season 2012. The nominees are:

* Brett White – the new starting prop and captain for the ex-Melbourne Storm who look rubbish elsewhere team.

* Blake Ferguson – left Cronulla looking for a team who could win. Left the team who hasn’t won ever for one who hasn’t played in a preliminary final since 1997 and such a dysfunctional nepotistic administrative structure that Cronulla will probably win one before them. Throw in the arrogance and the tantrums and it takes some pure AWFUL to prevent him from winning.

* Matt AWFUL – every team he has left has improved (usually markedly) after he left, he basically pulled a Sonny Bill on Bradford in late 2010, he hoodwinked his way into a three-year contract despite being broken and gave Canberra a grand sum of 6 games for 0 wins before he was ‘rested’.

Matt Orford is the worthiest winner of this award. Ever. Please return your 2008 Dally M, fraud.

Canberra’s worst season since the early 1980s mercifully concluded on Sunday when the Bulldogs launched a late comeback in a bizarre afternoon. Canterbury’s decision to sell out to Star Wars meant there was a weird vibe, with storm troopers, Princess Leias and theme music all around. Ben Barba scored another host of tries (no basketball bounces this week though) but Andrew Ryan’s late try almost resulted in a calamitous injury when he tried to recreate the concept of Luke Patten’s staged post-try celebration from last season.

Canberra is in a potential position to win the next two awards in season 2012. Well, definitely the first award:

The Darren Senter “Addition By Subtraction” award

For those not aware, Darren Senter played for Balmain and the Wests Tigers for a number of years, never getting close to a semi-final game. His hard-working but snarly and negative game was grudgingly admired by Tigers supporters but his retirement unleashed the Wests Tigers attacking juggernaut of 2005 and the club’s first premiership.

The nominees are:

* Michael Bani – the more-than-useless Cowboys winger kept stealing game appearances from far better players into the early rounds of 2011 before coach Neil Henry finally realised the error of his ways and the burgeoning talent of Fai Fai Loa.

* Todd Carney – the Roosters looked far better late in the season without his drug-addled spectre hanging around waiting for yet another chance to come back.

* Ivan Henjak – Brisbane’s coach in 2009, 2010 and much of the 2011 pre-season was, by all reports, disliked and hampering the growth of what is now a very talented, mostly young Broncos squad.

The winner is Ivan Henjak. Time will tell, but Henjak’s replacement Anthony Griffin has no obvious or distinctive coaching talents, yet Brisbane is thriving (again). Clearly, it’s not that hard to coach the dominant team in south-east Queensland.

Brisbane’s final game of the minor premiership was Darren Lockyer day and little else. Manly, as they do with everything ever, ruined this game as a spectacle due to their suspended and injured players after last week, but they played gallantly to stay in this game for some time.

The Paul Whatuira “Buy of the Year” award

Paul Whatuira, with his speed and difficult-to-tackle style plus premiership-winning experience, was the key off-season addition for the Tigers in 2005. This year’s nominees are not likely to follow in Whatuira’s footsteps but have made a profound impact on their respective teams. The nominees are:

* Jeremy Smith – people laugh at Cronulla fairly often, but the fact that they able to buy a player ANY team would have must count for something. Smith had an excellent year, although (again) suffered somewhat due to injury.

* Neville Costigan – Costigan is the hard man amongst hard men i.e. Newcastle. Strangely though, they are a somewhat fragile team collectively despite being full of hard heads like Costigan, Hilder, Edwards and De Gois. Wayne Bennett will be happy to coach Costigan again next year after missing him badly in 2011.

* Dallas Johnson – there were concerns Johnson might vie for a spot on the ex-Melbourne Storm team of players who suck elsewhere, but clearly his body and his concussion-addled brain still had at least another excellent season in them. Feral Thurston would have loved some more guts in the pack like Johnson after the Cowbores have sucked so bad since 2005.

The winner is Dallas Johnson. Even if the Cowboys go out in Week 1 of the finals, the additions of Johnson and Glenn Hall were brilliant additions to a team which always has talent but rarely delivers.

The draw somewhat unfairly sent the Cowbores to Auckland in the season’s last round, but the Cowbores gave a strong account of themselves after a scratchy last month. With that said, they lost to two Krisnan Inu tries – not a great thing to put on the CV.

The final two player awards are both named after halfbacks from the Hunter, who had vastly different career paths.

The Andrew Johns “One Man Team” award

It’s been a few years now, but Newcastle fell apart whenever Johns was injured. It still amazes that Danny Buderus is held in high regard despite his inability to do anything without Johns. The nominees for today’s Johns are:

* Feral Thurston – he was not the one-man-team he quite was in previous years, with Little Matty Bowen™ having some excellent games with Feral out injured.

* Michael Ennis – the Bulldogs’ season never really got back on track after Ennis missed some games with injury/representative duty. His injury eventually saw the other Bulldogs learn to play without him, but it took quite some time and cost the Bulldogs a top 8 spot.

* Paul Gallen – once (still) a grub but now a superhuman forward, Gallen played this role for Cronulla but also New South Wales. People laughed when he named prop for State of Origin 2, but to play a full game in that position, with little prop help on the team, was almost unprecedented, certainly in the modern day.

The winner clearly is Paul Gallen. Interesting to note that each of these players are considered amongst the more irritating players in the NRL. Can we conclude ‘grubbiness’ is just misplaced effort??

Another season with some bright wins but more tough losses ended on the latter for Cronulla on Saturday night. The Tigers looked vulnerable after 7 mostly easy wins but a few dubious refereeing decisions and some Robbie Farah desire saw the Tigers stumble across the line.

The Michael Witt Award for the worst drop-kick/field goal attempt

In 2004, Michael Witt sent supporters of the game into rapturous laughter with a line drop-out at Penrith which, while attempting to loft the kick just across the 10 metre line and win back possession, ended up returning back across the goal line and finished up in-touch in-goal. The nominees for this award are:

* Chris Sandow – Sandow is an excellent field-goal kicker, but his premature celebration after kicking several late-game (but not that late) field goals which were then superseded by opposition tries gave supporters many laughs.

(Speaking of Souths and humour, I hope everyone enjoyed Souths’ second-straight calamitous effort when presented with a win-and-you’re-in game in the final round of the season. Surely the funniest moment was after Newcastle jumped to a 76476476-nil lead after 20 minutes, the Channel 9 cameras cut to the “LOL@50uffs” signs in the crowd)

* Jamal Idris – his first and surely only drop kick came with a line drop-out against the Warriors. He held the ball like he’d never thought about attempting a drop-kick then slipped over in the kicking motion. It would take some effort to beat this.

* Jason Ryles – some forwards have kicked field goals before (Nathan Cayless and Ian Hindmarsh come to mind) but Ryles’ attempt to win the game from 40 metres out against Souths – followed by finger-pointing and shouting between various Roosters – was almost a season highlight. The kick itself wasn’t that bad, but the fact this long-time target of hilarity was in the wrong place at the wrong time....Champagne comedy!

The Roosters completed a very good end of season run in an entertaining win over a deliberately under-strength Melbourne team. Rumours have long swirled about the Roosters and betting in late-season, unimportant fixtures and the way the Roosters celebrated and the way the money flowed for the Roosters with the points start..............

The Tuesday Roast™ awards end with the two team awards.

The Luke Carroll & Anthony Prince ("Dumb and Dumber") award

Carroll & Prince were young Australian men living in Vail, Colorado in 2005, when they decided to rob their local bank. Balaclavas may have hidden their appearance, but their distinctive Australian accents meant their identity was well known to employees of the bank and they were easily apprehended.

The nominees for stupidity in the NRL in 2011 include:

* Gold Coast Titans – sadly the Titans aged before our eyes, going from premiership threat to basket-case in months. However, their stupid signings for 2012, loading up in positions where they remain strong and not buying anyone in the important spine positions, should ensure the Titans remain near the cellar next season.

* Canberra – two words: Matt Awful. But this is not the Dally Ms so we need another team to win this award.

* South Sydney – somehow this team, who has had to suffer through John Sutton’s inconsistency and one-in-eight game glimpses of talent for close to a decade, chose to re-sign Sutton and allow the more talented, harder to replace Chris Sandow to leave the club. Sandow responded by having a brilliant second half of the season. Sutton will, almost certainly, tease Souths with some excellent games but ultimately disappoint. A lot like Souths themselves really.

Well done to 50uffs – for many supporters, seeing the Rabbitohs get close but (again) fail to make the finals made their season. It never gets old either!

Finally, appropriately, the last award to the team that finished last.

The Western Suburbs Magpies 1999 “Worst Team in the NRL” award

The nominees are:

* Sydney Roosters – who had a disgraceful middle 12 rounds, where they couldn’t score in a brothel and were not even remotely entertaining.

* Canberra – they lifted against the Dragons but sucked against almost every other team in every other match. Would have been worthy winners of the spoon in almost any other year, except for

* Gold Coast – the Titans were somewhat unfortunate to suffer mightily with injury (although it was hard not to laugh at Clinton Toopi’s injury – vertigo. It sounds like an injury Michael Hagan would have – actually, it was. Couldn’t they have made something up that sounded remotely like a footy injury?) but they aged rapidly during 2011 and were deserving winners of the wooden spoon. Were it not for horrendously lucky wins against the Dragons and Raiders, they would have threatened the mighty Magpies’ points total from 1999.

Well done to the Titans, Parramatta certainly did not deserve the wooden spoon.

That brings an end to the tipping season of 2011 and the tipping competition under its current structure (for obvious reasons). Thanks for your patronage and hope you enjoyed the competition.