If you think no one cares.......try missing a few repayments

The news in Rugby League circles this week comes out of Melbourne where the Storm has been busted 'securing' a payment for $45,000 for Cameron Smith. The money in question was a third party sponsorship that Melbourne guaranteed to pay Cameron Smith in the event that the 3rd party sponsor went broke. You might say who cares he was entitled to the money, but remember why Mark Gasnier left the game - he walked out on the game for a higher offer as his third party contract wasn't honoured by a sponsor.

Lets face it something dodgy must be going on down at Melbourne that they can afford to keep some so many Australian rep players on the books year after year. Most clubs sign up a batch of juniors to long term low value contracts in the hope that they develop into quality first graders. If they become a regular first grade player then the club is forced to shell out big bucks when their initial contract expires, meaning they have to make a choice in which of their players will go on to become rep players.

Canberra can be relied on to make the wrong choice, on the other hand the Sharks can be relied upon to fall for the old salesman's trick from players manager "you better make your mind up quickly as I have lots of other buyers lined up". This is why they have a line up of lemons that the other clubs don't want.

Hopefully the local population in the shire are as a gullible as the sharks board. They will need to be to keep the football club afloat. They are about to launch a significant redevelopment of the reclaimed tip\swap prime residential and industrial land next to the sharks ground and they are going to need some buyers who haven't heard about rising sea levels and love mosquitoes.

Speaking of players that other clubs don't want I was listening to last Monday's sharks game. After 20 minutes I was thinking what ever happened to Trent Barrett . It turned out that he is still playing and had been on the field the whole time.

Anyway back to those cheats the storm, why is it that they are now asking for $6 million a year to keep the club afloat when the News Limited exits the game. Why do we have to pay for them and why $6 million - that the annual budget of the tigers, sea eagles and dragons combined. How come the Sea Eagles Football club is a old demountable classroom while the storm is a large loss making modern office building.

Lets just get rid of the storm and bring back the bears. Who would care - certainly not the people of Melbourne. Even if they did win their 3rd grand final in 5 years it would still only rate a mention on page 35 of the Melbourne papers. Sporting capital of Australia my arse - Sport to them is AFL, they can only feign interest in other sports. Let them have AFL to themselves, we can put the storm on the central coast and they can have the swans back.

Speaking of less popular poorly supported sports in Melbourne - they have just completed the latest loss making instalment of the Australian Grand Prix. (its made a loss ever since they allowed people other than AFL stars in the celebrity race). IN this years race the funniest moment of all had to be when Lewis Hamilton was charged and his Mercedes impounded when he did a burn out coming out of the Albert park track.

This won't happen when the race is staged in Sydney, as our track runs past Parramatta road where Lewis could compete with the locals to his hearts delight, free from having to worry about how he was going to explain the impounded car come Monday down at the Thrifty rental desk.

In fact this could be part of the pre race entertainment - instead of having to shell out for expensive loss making preliminary races staged solely to occupy time until the twilight race start, this could form part of the entertainment. Watch as Lewis Hamilton and Mark Webber take on Youseff and Akmal starting from the lights at the Auburn Mega mall. The winner gets to start the race next day for the red bull team while the loser has to front the cops and explain in 20 seconds or less why they think that banning street racing is typical of the Nanny state.

League adds value for spec-savers sponsorship

Two weeks into the year and it seems that the big unexpected performer for this year is Newcastle. The Knights are performing well despite having half their pre season team on remand or living in fear that have been capture placing an order on the phone taps. Now I don't want to be the bearer of bad news to many Novocastrians (after all the location is punishment enough) but the NRL has signed onto the World Anti Doping Authority charter in order to get Federal Government funding.

The WADA rules say that if more than 3 members of one team are found guilty of a drugs charge then that team is banned from the competition and their medals are stripped, the result is wiped. The Knights have clocked up 2 team members and it's only a matter of time before a third gets charged. Could the NRL soon be scheduling in a mysterious bye each week - highly unlike. The same thing happened in 1998 when half the team tested positive to Roids and did you know to this day those drugs cheats still haven't given that trophy back.

The victim of this gross injustice was of course the Sea Eagles. It seems that every league fan hates them and is more than happy to see them lose by means fair or foul. And its still happening today. League fans for all the other teams should be rejoicing as the Big Manly props decimate opposition teams leaving them to be a crumbling mess the following week. But what do the Eagles get as a reward, some of the worst referring decisions made this decade.

How is it that three refs and two touch judges couldn't see a 'line ball pass that floated a meter forward from Daniel Mortimer. But that wasn't the ultimate injustice. Having been encouraged by scoring one try of a forward pass Daniel decided to go all out and throw a gridiron style pass that cut out the Manly winger and centre not by going over their heads but by chucking the thing about 5 meters behind them. Still I have seen that sort of thing before and no doubt has just about everyone else, particularly those who watched the 1995 grand final.

Anyway, speaking of confessed drugs cheats two of the biggest offenders from that era now both have a firm place on different TV channels.

The footy show has started the year well mostly thanks to Darryl Broman. Despite only being on the show for 5 minutes a week he at least spends most of his week trying to think of something funny to say. Unlike say Andrew Johns, who spends all week resting so he can come up with "they need to complete their sets of six" yes thanks scoop.

Ahh Andrew, football skills none surpassed but an intellect rivalled by garden tools. I can see Andrew now in the commentary box counting up to 6 on his fingers, god knows how he subtracts, does he gets his fingers amputated?

On the other channels Matty Johns show may also struggle if the adds are anything to go by. Hopefully the rest of the show is better than that. Still it might get good ratings as apparently all Matt's mates like to watch.


Daniel Mortimer "Man of the Match" with two touch down passes