We’re pretty much right down to
the very pointy end of the season now, and by rights, each of the four teams
left battling it out could win and it
wouldn’t be a travesty if they did.
Unless it was Melbourne.
LAST WEEK
The Roosters held off a physical-as-fuck
Bulldogs team last week, who went into the game with a weird beserker rage that
would have been absolutely impossible to maintain for any extended length of
time. Full credit to the Roosters for
withstanding the onslaught and copping a few big hits. After the initial carnage, all the Chooks had
to do was muscle up a bit and use their quick men a bit smarter. And they did.
And it worked. Then the ref
decided to award tries to anyone who asked.
And then they decided to score at will.
And then they won by a lot.
As for the North Queensland vs
Cronulla game, the last time I saw a Cowboy fuck anyone that hard, Jake Gyllenhaal
got an Oscar nomination. It was honestly
a pretty shit way for Cronulla to finish their season, although after coming
last in 2014 and having to stop using their Dank supplements and hormone
replacements and couldn’t inject their super-soldier-serum any more, they
didn’t do a bad job. I’m happy to have
read about some reported in-fighting following the game, with old players
pointing out the new guys, claiming that “youse didn’t dig deep enough” and the
new players pointing to the old guys saying “yeah nah youse didn’t dig deep
enough” and in the end everyone pointing at Paul Gallen and saying “youse only
dig deep enough for Origin” and Paul Gallen squinting at everyone and saying
“yeah nah it was a bad day at the office for us.” It sure was, Paul. It sure was.
In Mad Monday news (HOORAY), Dylan Walker and Aaron Grey were taken to hospital following an adverse reaction to painkillers. That they suffered together. At 3:45 in the morning. This is totally normal, and I really wish
people would stop saying that NRL players are stupid, or that they totally sit
around being stoned on each other’s medications and washing it down with
alcohol and peptides. There’s totes nothing
suss here, it was just an allergic reaction.
It has happened to me before – I usually get horribly allergic to
alcohol after about thirty beers and some opiates too.
 |
| Damn right, Joey |
THIS WEEK
This week the Storm and Brisbane
come back into the finals series after taking a week off. No one ever really knows if winning your semi
and not having a game the following week is a good thing – heheheheh winning
your semi – sure, you might recover from some niggling injuries, but momentum
is lost and the pace of the game might come back as a rude fucking shock.
Brisbane vs Roosters
This is almost too close to call;
I’ve switched allegiances a thousand times this week. Mitchell Pearce is threatening to come back
for the Roosters after a few weeks off for injury, and judging by his previous
experiences in big games, will have to share Michael Jennings’ invisibility
cloak to hide under. Pearce really needs
to pull his head out of his arse and perform this week, as his replacement,
14-year old Jackson Hastings is playing so well at the moment that I’m surprised
his name hasn’t been mentioned as a bolter for Origin next year, an Australian
rep side, or the pinnacle of today’s Australian rugby league echelon, the
NFL. It would also be great for Daniel
Topou to apologise to his teammates for whatever he did last week, as I’m sure
he’d like to be passed the ball at least once during this game. Poor Toups.
The Broncos have, in my beady
little eyes, looked good all year – not always glamorous or even “Broncos had a
good win last night, hey?” “Yeah nah, bit scrappy.” “Got the job done, but.” “Nah yeah.” kind of consistency. They have shown that they can turn it on when
it counts, but more importantly, they can grind out a win with solid defence
and a good kicking game. I reckon Hodges
and Reed in the centres are deceptive liabilities in attack, but make up for
this through solid defence and the occasional grubby close-range try. I have also heard through the grapevine that
Hodges is contemplating passing the ball in this, what could be his last game
of rugby league, so that’s something to watch out for. For me, Ben Hunt holds the key to this game -
when he is fit and on the field, the Brisbanes fire up. It gives Milford more freedom to play a
support role instead of trying to make the busts himself, and when he does that
he just ends up looking more like a 92 year old Asian woman who sits at the
pokies at Jupiter’s Casino all night than a potential game-breaking athlete.
This should be a corker of a
match, but I am going to tip the Roosters in a close one, based on gut instinct
and what I think is a better forward pack, even though I haven’t mentioned them
in about eighteen giant paragraphs.
Storm vs Cowboys
The Cows shrugged off their “slow
starter” tag last week by blowing the Sharkies away from the first
whistle. Although if they had waited for
the Sharks to get some points before playing properly, we’d still be waiting
for the end of the game. And as much fun
as it would be to watch Cronulla fumble balls and trip over themselves, after a
week it would probably start to be wearing a bit thin. The North Queenslanders have named an
unchanged team from last week, but they only really need to mention are “6. M
Morgan” and “7. J Thurston” because they’re the only ones that anyone really
knows or cares about. Except for Tamou,
and that’s just because he’d fucking eat you whole if he knew what you really thought
about him.
Melbourne may just have the edge
in this game due to the Cowboys being a genuine title contender, which puts aside
the Storm’s most obvious weakness: losing to shit teams. The two met just three weeks ago in a game
that sent everyone to sleep and then made everyone sit up and say, “Oh, the
Storm won? Well fuck me” before
switching over to the late movie on Channel 10 – it was probably ‘Click’ or one
of the ‘Mission: Impossible’ movies. This
game may be decided on just how much the Storm are allowed to cheat before JT
starts crying to the ref about it.
Thurston, more like WORSTon, amirite?
I’m tipping Melbourne in this
one, based purely on the fact that they are unlikely to direct the Cowboys to the
tryline like the Sharks did. I also
think that there are vulnerabilities with the Queenslander’s edges in both
attack and defence. There’s something about their support players that I don’t
trust either. Probably because they’re
from Queensland.
 |
| The league's fastest player has retired from NRL to do... something. Good luck to you, Kevin Gordon, you fucking nutter. |
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