So the bunker has had a nightmare this weekend.

And wests tigers are the first team to go scoreless in a game this season

Ricky Leuteli sounds like the name of a gangster hit man
Say it in this guy's voice->

Yep.

Not sure how they arrived at some of those decisions.

Interpretations of the rules are retarded.

-PB

I found the Gillett one really concerning the onfield ref called it a try, they showed us two different replays on 9 that showed it was 100% a try, yet the bunker came up with no try. The commentators on 9 were saying that the bunker were using different angles to us (which in itself is not good enough for the viewers) - yet Archer has come out saying the bunker got it wrong - so surely someone has to be stood down for that.

With today's technology the Latrell Mitchell one was also unacceptable.

Despite probably getting the most attention this weekend the JT one could've gone either way based on the footage.

Ricky Leuteli sounds like the name of a gangster hit man
Say it in this guy's voice->

If Penrith can keep their best 17 on the park they'll give the premiership a real crack this season. Moylan is an absolute must in the NSW 17 imo.

Not sure where you'd fit him in the 17 tbh. Certainly wouldn't be at fullback.

Honestly for Origin I'd be tempted to chuck Josh Reynolds at hooker just so he can fuck with Thurston again :lol:

He is a better hooker than a half anyway. He came on the scene playing hooker and absolutely tore it up. I never understood why he didn't directly replace Ennis when he left

The state of Super League after 20 years
An interview with Super League chief executive Nigel Wood; an update on Gloucestershire All Golds; and a word on rugby league development in London
By Gavin Willacy for No Helmets Required, part of the Guardian Sport Network


Paris Saint-Germain versus Manchester City is a fixture the Godfathers of Super League promised us. They produced PSG-RL from a beret and wanted to create a Manchester powerhouse. We were told Super League Europe would comprise teams representing the continent’s major cities, playing live on satellite TV in modern stadiums on summer evenings.

As our elite competition turned 20 years old last week, it could tick most of those boxes, but Castleford v Huddersfield at fading Wheldon Road and Wakefield v Salford at a dilapidated Belle Vue was not what Rupert Murdoch, Maurice Lindsay and co had in mind in 1996, let alone in 2016. So were we sold a dud? Not according to Super League’s current chief executive, Nigel Wood.

“The competition has matured remarkably in contrast with the year one,” says Wood. “We had hopes and aspirations but there was a lot of naivety then, what you might call innovation without expertise. Our clubs have matured and grown. It’s amazing how the teams have changed, the venues have developed and the spectator experience has got so much better. There are now far higher expectations.”

While Super League launched with PSG beating Sheffield Eagles on a Friday night in Paris, no more major cities came on board and within two years the fabricated Paris club had collapsed, never to return. Oh, to have kept PSG alive: imagine what the Qatari millions would have done for them. And if the proposed Salford-Swinton merger had gone ahead, perhaps the Abu Dhabi oil-igarchs would have taken Super League’s Manchester franchise under its sporting wing.


With London Broncos also propelled into the top flight, the inaugural Super League Europe had a foothold in Cumbria and the capitals of England and France. All three of those have gone, as have the Welsh, Celtic Crusaders being the last club handed a place at the top table without earning it on the pitch. That licensing system was though a godsend to Catalans and Widnes, enabling them to establish themselves among the elite without the threat of relegation. So has Super League failed its initial target?

“You’ve got to look at the whole professional pyramid and test one against the other,” says Wood. “Yes, we no longer have a Cumbrian team or London and Paris in Super League but 20 years ago we didn’t have another club in London [Skolars] or one in Gloucestershire, Oxford, Hemel or the West Midlands [Coventry]. There’s far greater breadth and depth to our clubs now, and more access to Super League for clubs outside it. The expansion agenda is alive and well, it’s just not only whether you are in the elite league or not. The new 8s structure allows for the emergence of another club.”



In other words, the RFL still have dreams of Super League featuring internationally renowned cities, but they are just as likely – or unlikely – to be Toulouse or Toronto as London, Newcastle, Oxford or York. Toulouse Olympique should be in the Championship next season, when the fantastical Toronto adventure is set to begin in League One. I can’t see that lasting more than a couple of years but I would love to be wrong.

Super League 2026 could comprise of our major clubs Leeds, Wigan, Warrington, Catalans, Hull FC and St Helens plus resurgent Bradford, a reborn London, and maybe Toronto, Toulouse and Newcastle. Or is might look more like it does now. Whatever happens, clubs will have to win a lot of matches to be in it.

“We don’t want clubs in the competition artificially,” says Wood. “We found that genetically engineering who is in the top division is too offensive to the sporting public. A club’s destiny needs to be settled on the field.”

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This sporting snakes and ladders should breathe new life into some clubs and gives others the kiss of death. Once groundbreaking pace-setters and market-leaders, London Irish – the Bradford Bulls of rugby union – are facing relegation from the Premiership after 20 years in the top flight, while three of England’s most successful football clubs are in the Premier League’s relegation places with five weeks of the season to go. Such dangers haven’t done those competitions any harm. Ineptitude needs to be punished.

“Whatever happens it means we’ve got the best 12 teams re-emerging in Super League the year after,” says Wood. “It’s hard to argue against that. If after three years of the Super 8s there is no prospect of a Championship club getting promoted and the Middle 8s are not competitive, then we’ve got a problem. But if the Middle 8s is competitive, as it was last year, and Championship clubs challenge Super League teams and win some games, then whether someone actually gets promoted is less significant. We shouldn’t place a decision on one black and white outcome.”

Clubcall: Gloucestershire All Golds
On the surface, Cheltenham’s All Golds look the weakest of all the expansion clubs slugging it out in the depths of League One. However, they have plenty of development work going on in the community and pathways for players beneath a first team that has struggled badly to make an impact on Gloucestershire’s sporting public.

Coach Lee Greenwood, the former London Broncos winger, has dragged his team off the canvas after a hammering in Toulouse. They will be eyeing a place in the top eight play-offs and on Sunday pulled off a thrilling 36-28 win over Newcastle Thunder to reach the semi-finals of the iPro Sport Cup. They will do well to see off York to reach the final but a side that included Scotland international prop Joe McClean, former Harlequins RL forward Lamont Bryan and Widnes loanee Alma Tagayuna should be congratulated for beating Newcastle despite the Thunder having three full internationals Lee Paterson (ex Scotland), Peter Fox (ex England) and current Italy second row Gioele Celerino on debut. Shame only 102 people were there to see it.

Foreign quota


Imagine Leeds, Huddersfield, Wakefield and Castleford all agreeing to play some home games at Elland Road in exchange for the council building fabulous new stadiums in Leeds and the Rhubarb Triangle? That’s pretty much what’s happening in New South Wales, where Penrith Panthers are the latest club to agree to move a handful of home games to Sydney to help the NRL meet a quota of 65 games being played in the state-owned Olympic, Sydney Football and Parramatta stadiums.

That will trigger the NSW government spending $1.6bn on building or upgrading four stadiums over the next decade. The Tigers and Dragons already play four games each at the Olympic (ANZ Stadium) while the NRL promised six to eight “premium” games – i.e. finals and State of Origin. Sadly, the investment is all in shiny all-seat stadiums and not up-grading Sydney’s gritty suburban grounds that have much in common with the likes of Castleford, Wakefield, Batley, Keighley and Barrow.

The Panthers, who opened a sensational $22m training centre last week, hope the gesture will help persuade NSW to build them a new 30,000-capacity stadium in Penrith. They are already taking lucrative games to Bathurst and across the Tasman to Christchurch, where they will host the Warriors. Cronulla and Manly both refused to move games into central Sydney, knowing their local fans would be against it. Anyone who saw the tremendous Bulldogs-Raiders game on Monday from a tumultuous Belmore Oval will understand that.

Goal-line drop-out
We recently mentioned Darrell Griffin, who is still making metres for Featherstone in his mid-30s. I’ve just found a list from 2003 that showed there were six products of London and The South RL playing professionally elsewhere in the country then, with just Griffin – who started at Oxford Cavaliers and played for the Broncos’ academy – a regular of the four who were at Super League clubs, having signed for Wakefield. The others were Wood Green’s Joe Mbu on loan with Leeds, Bloomsbury-born Desi Williams at Wigan, and Twickenham’s Iain Morrison at Huddersfield.


Will Featherstone Rovers finally become a Super League club 30 years later?
Read more
By my reckoning, there are 11 southerners in Super League this season, including the NRL-bound Dan Sarginson, plus another four full-time in the Championship (Oscar Thomas and Omari Caro at Bradford, Jamie Acton at Leigh, Rob Worrincy at Sheffield) while Michael Channing is with Griffin Senior at Featherstone. And some myopic folk – hi, Garry Schofield! – still think the London development programme is a waste of time and money.

Fifth and last
Next month, Fijian winger Semi Radrardra should be playing for Fiji against PNG. Instead, he might be playing for Australia against the Kiwis, which has left plenty of fans hot under the collar. Radrardra is not being blamed for turning his back on his country – who play about one game a year – in order to pursue a fortune, believed to be worth about half a million dollars if he plays regularly for the Kangaroos. Instead, it is Australia taking advantage of the RLIF rules to recruit from a fellow World Cup semi-finalist that rankles.

Australia do not need to exploit loopholes to recruit players who are not Australian, neither do New Zealand. If would be like England trying to prise Danny Brough from Scotland’s grasp. Oh, hang on a minute, they did. Fiji coach Mick Potter will, like all the other islands’ coaches, have to see what he is left with after Australia and New Zealand have cherry-picked at their talent pool like magpies.

[quote]The state of Super League after 20 years
An interview with Super League chief executive Nigel Wood; an update on Gloucestershire All Golds; and a word on rugby league development in London
By Gavin Willacy for No Helmets Required, part of the Guardian Sport Network


Paris Saint-Germain versus Manchester City is a fixture the Godfathers of Super League promised us. They produced PSG-RL from a beret and wanted to create a Manchester powerhouse. We were told Super League Europe would comprise teams representing the continent’s major cities, playing live on satellite TV in modern stadiums on summer evenings.

As our elite competition turned 20 years old last week, it could tick most of those boxes, but Castleford v Huddersfield at fading Wheldon Road and Wakefield v Salford at a dilapidated Belle Vue was not what Rupert Murdoch, Maurice Lindsay and co had in mind in 1996, let alone in 2016. So were we sold a dud? Not according to Super League’s current chief executive, Nigel Wood.

“The competition has matured remarkably in contrast with the year one,” says Wood. “We had hopes and aspirations but there was a lot of naivety then, what you might call innovation without expertise. Our clubs have matured and grown. It’s amazing how the teams have changed, the venues have developed and the spectator experience has got so much better. There are now far higher expectations.”

While Super League launched with PSG beating Sheffield Eagles on a Friday night in Paris, no more major cities came on board and within two years the fabricated Paris club had collapsed, never to return. Oh, to have kept PSG alive: imagine what the Qatari millions would have done for them. And if the proposed Salford-Swinton merger had gone ahead, perhaps the Abu Dhabi oil-igarchs would have taken Super League’s Manchester franchise under its sporting wing.


With London Broncos also propelled into the top flight, the inaugural Super League Europe had a foothold in Cumbria and the capitals of England and France. All three of those have gone, as have the Welsh, Celtic Crusaders being the last club handed a place at the top table without earning it on the pitch. That licensing system was though a godsend to Catalans and Widnes, enabling them to establish themselves among the elite without the threat of relegation. So has Super League failed its initial target?

“You’ve got to look at the whole professional pyramid and test one against the other,” says Wood. “Yes, we no longer have a Cumbrian team or London and Paris in Super League but 20 years ago we didn’t have another club in London [Skolars] or one in Gloucestershire, Oxford, Hemel or the West Midlands [Coventry]. There’s far greater breadth and depth to our clubs now, and more access to Super League for clubs outside it. The expansion agenda is alive and well, it’s just not only whether you are in the elite league or not. The new 8s structure allows for the emergence of another club.”



In other words, the RFL still have dreams of Super League featuring internationally renowned cities, but they are just as likely – or unlikely – to be Toulouse or Toronto as London, Newcastle, Oxford or York. Toulouse Olympique should be in the Championship next season, when the fantastical Toronto adventure is set to begin in League One. I can’t see that lasting more than a couple of years but I would love to be wrong.

Super League 2026 could comprise of our major clubs Leeds, Wigan, Warrington, Catalans, Hull FC and St Helens plus resurgent Bradford, a reborn London, and maybe Toronto, Toulouse and Newcastle. Or is might look more like it does now. Whatever happens, clubs will have to win a lot of matches to be in it.

“We don’t want clubs in the competition artificially,” says Wood. “We found that genetically engineering who is in the top division is too offensive to the sporting public. A club’s destiny needs to be settled on the field.”