Thank fuck State of Origin is
over for another year, and everyone can get back to doing what they’re best
at: drugs, sexual assault, public
nudity, drink-driving and domestic violence.
Luckily for the NRL, the Parramatta club have been digging deep and
giving 110% to make up for the lack of off-field offences since Blake Ferguson
and Josh Dugan have been off the street and in Origin camp. This week, the Eels made the decision to drop
Corey Norman indefinitely, following the release of his sex tape… a day before
he was due to attend court on drugs charges… in the same week that it was
announced that he accepted payments in “brown paper bags.” It’s probably safe to say that the announcement
to drop him probably wasn’t completely unexpected.
Congratulations to the Queensland
Origin team for racking up another 2-1 series victory in what will most likely
go down in history as one of the dullest, most dire and downright fucking
boring series ever played. When the main
talking points about the game revolve around the referee, you know something’s
gone wrong. Some people say that
Queensland were penalised six more times as they left the stadium, twice as
they got onto the bus and three times again this morning as they went to
training. NSW still haven't been able to score, despite the glut of possession and no opposition.
This year's Origin felt like both teams had been told “you should have pride in playing at this level” rather than actually
instilling that pride into the players. During the NSW
preparations, Blues legends Brad Clyde and Glenn Lazarus popped in to give a
pep speech about their experiences in Origin.
By the end of the session, Andrew Fifita admitted that “half the boys
had their phones out to find YouTube clips of them, because no one really knew
who they were.” WHAT THE FUCK.
This series was not the showpiece
of the sport that it bills itself as.
For the players, it was just another game, another $30,000 appearance
fee, another week of having to listen to James Maloney talk about the time he
got caught masturbating, or put up with Corey Parker’s stories about World War
II. It’s not even an honour to be picked
for Origin anymore; when Dylan Walker gets selected, it makes me think that my
call-up probably isn’t too far away.
This year was always going to be
a billed as a “rebuilding” phase for NSW as they dropped some old blokes, brought
in different old blokes, switched their young blokes around, and in the end
somehow stumbled upon a team that won by four points in a game that didn’t actually
mean anything in context, leading into wild celebrations about “the new
generation of footballers”, “core spine groups” and “just wait til Jarryd Hayne
comes back!” When you’re pegging your
hopes on someone who ran away from the game to not play NFL before
not playing rugby for Fiji and not having a rugby league team to come back to,
maybe those lofty heights of success aren’t quite as big as you think, and you
can probably reach it if you just stand on a phone book.
In all, there was probably about
15 minutes of actual good, exciting, skilful football played over the three matches, and that
was always in the last minutes of each game.
And for what is meant to be the epitome of awesomeness in league, that’s
just not good enough. There’s too much
emphasis on slowing down the play, not enough emphasis on shifting the defence
around, too much kicking and hoping, not enough offloads, and far too much Robbie
Farah.
And for fuck’s sake, JAMES
FUCKING TEDESCO, I know you’re the great white hope of the Tigers. You’re Neo to Jason Taylor’s Morpheus. You are the Balky to Luke Brooks’ Cousin
Larry. The Simon to the Tigers’
Garfunkel. The Han Solo to the NRL’s Chewbacca. You are Calibri while everyone else is Times
New Roman. You are Gandalf to Origin’s Balrog.
St George vs Titans
It’s refreshing not to have a
Friday night football game between top four sides. Not only does it allow league fans to
appreciate other teams’ style of play and execution and put some new players in
the spotlight, it also opens up the opportunity to go out on a Friday night and
ignore shitfights like this game completely.
Manly vs Warriors
This game is part of a promotion
of the NRL into Western Australia – apologies to our Perth friends over there
who wander into the stadium by accident.
Apologies too to the NZ Warriors; the NRL really couldn’t have found a
team located any further away to take to the other side of the country, could
they?
I don’t care much about this
game, but there is this:
MANLY star Dylan Walker is out of
rugby league for four weeks after injuring his hand as a result of punching the
front door of his northern beaches residence over the weekend.
The
Daily Telegraph can reveal that Walker got into an argument with his girlfriend
which led to the drama. Earlier in the
evening, Walker had been out drinking in Manly.
Fucking brilliant.
In terms of the winner of this
game, I’m tipping Warriors, but really not confident. Manly looked pretty good in their last
hit-out, probably because they don’t have to perform “Weekend at Bernie’s”
(kids, ask your parents) to drag Brett Stewart’s corpse around the field for 80
minutes. But as the old saying goes: ‘fuck
Manly.’
Souths vs Broncos
Man, I wish this game was being
played in 2014. Unfortunately, it’s 2016
(holy shit), and both teams are horribly out of form at the moment. I think the Broncos are more likely to wake
up from their mid-year snooze to take the biscuits in this one. To be perfectly Francis, it wouldn’t surprise
me if Souths lose the rest of their games and get kicked out of the competition
for being shit again.
Knights vs Storm
The Knights are threatening to
upset a few teams who underestimate them in the back-half of the season, and
are starting to put together a bit of decent footy. The Storm will have a few players hungover or
injured from mid-week Origin, which could disrupt their trademark “fuck you” defensive
patterns, but I think the overall shittiness of Newcastle will get Melbourne
through this one.
Panthers vs Parramatta
It seems that the plethora of
off-field distractions that have threatened to fuck Parramatta in the ear this
year really haven’t phased them at all, and despite a 12-point deduction for
being dirty cheating fucks, are still in finals contention (and above Newcastle
and the Roosters lol). The latest sting
of losing their playmaker and biggest attacking weapon within two weeks of each
other is surelysurelysurely too fucking much for them to bear against a
Panthers squad still just looking to make finals rather than make the finals
and avoid jail-time.
Roosters vs Sharks
Remember when Blake Ferguson quit
the Sharks a few years back, saying “I want to play in a team that wins the
premiership” and then moved to Canberra (no premierships there, sorry tiger)
and now he’s at the Roosters, who are only one win above Newcastle at the
bottom of the ladder? Hopefully the
Sharks remind him of that statement a few times during the game as he drops
another ball with no pressure on him. Despite
the Sharks having a gamut of players backing up from Wednesday night, I’m
tipping them to win this one pretty comfortably.
No comments:
Post a Comment