State of origin selections stuff up - here we go go again

Top news of the week is the state of origin selections for NSW, and as in previous years we are trying yet another theory. If you can remember last year when we said we were going for youth and we were going to stick with them through the series. So we picked Peter Wallace at halfback, Terry Campese 5/8 and Robbie Farrah at hooker. By game 3 it was Brett Kimorley, Trent Barrett and Michael Ennis.

Well this years official theory is that we want size out wide to combat Hodges, Inglis and Folau. So we picked an untried rookie in Jimal Idris who is suppose to stop the queensland centres from the NSW bench. How is he suppose to stop them, through sustained sledging? (Actually that might work if someone we gave Jimal speech training so string together a sentence - and put Rodney Rude on the NSW staff to write put downs.)

Now stop me if I'm wrong but wasn't it Idris who failed to stop Matt Cooper on Friday night not once but twice as he ambled casually onto score for the Dragons - lucky Idris will start and hopefully finish on the bench.

This has the look of last years campaign to it where we threw a bunch of youngsters to the wolves and then promptly sacked them after only one average performance. (If only Australian cricket used the same policy, Michael Clarke would be out of the 20 / 20 team and we would could have unleased David Warner on the poms, instead of having Clarke run out the entire top order just to get off strike.)

So what is the answer to the revolving door of NSW selection - the Melbourne Rebels.

Here let me explain - most of Queenslands top players come from the Melbourne Storm. The Storm have made big dollar 3 year contracts to their players which they are obliged to meet or better - then they back ended the contracts. What that means is that they have yet to pay most of the money they promised the big name players.

So their options are to do what Canterbury did - which is to not sign any big name players for 3 - 4 years. They eventually only managed to get their head above water when their only big name signing (sonny Bill) left the club.

The Storms problem however is that their salary cap for next year is entirely committed to 6 marquee players once you take into account contract back ending. So to field a team next year they will have to get some other team to promise to take most of their stars at their current salary, and that's where the Melbourne rebels come in with the trusty old News Limited cheque book.

This is already starting to happen with Folau the first to go announcing that he is going to Rugby Union on Monday 12 July of thereabouts. By the end of the year we can add Billy Slater and Greg Inglis and possibly Cooper Cronk.

Its either that or they can go to AFL, who are offering a million dollars a year to NRL players who have never even played the game before. (This gives you a bit of an indication of exactly how easy the game must be if you can pick it up and make the first grade team after only 3 months of pre season training.)

Now if we can only get rid of Thurston and Prince we could be in with a chance next year.

ln other news
The media is fawning over Jessica Watson on mass after she managed to do what every 16 year old can only dream about - ie spending 200 days with nothing else to do but spend every waking moment on face book. Why this was news is anyones guess really, perhaps it was because she did it without running into anything - something that looked long odds back when she started.

The 200 days of boredom did come in handy though as the first thing she did when she got of the boat was have to listen to a speech by Kevin Rudd.




Damm boat people - still coming in at the rate of a boat a day. Still this one would have actually managed an around the world record if she didn't go so far out of her way to avoid Christmas island

Rugby League needs another contest for the ball - but are scrums the answer?

I have recently been trawling through some old Rugby League footage and watching it reminded me of something that we use to have but dont any more - Scrums. Back in those days you kick it out or knock on and it was a scrum - and the scrum was a contest for the ball. I was thinking - thats what we need some other options where the team without the ball has a chance of winning it back. It might also inspire teams to put some different kinds of football players back on the field rather than your stock standard 6 foot 4, 105kg athlete.

Back when league first separated from Union it decided to abolish the line out and instead stick to scrums as they were at the time an even contest but Imagine now if Rugby League bought back the line out, then we would see the re-emergence of tall lighter players, ie football players with necks.

Then it occurred to me what would happen if we did bring back the scrum. Back in the 70s teams didn't mind if you lost the ball as you always had a chance of getting it back with a scrum. So Scrums were a lose gathering of players where anything goes and scrum penalties were a lottery judged solely by the ref . Now a days the sport is professional with much more money, players and clubs would demand that the scrums are fair and the rules clearly defined. So in other words you couldn't just get the ref to feed the scrum, while it would make it an even contest it would still be very hard to judge who collapsed the scrum or made some other infringement.

This of course means your left with something like a rugby scrum, where there is a defined start and finish. But bear in mind that these take about a minute to sort out each time (this includes the obligatory 50 seconds for the team to talk tactics while a front rower lies on the ground feigning injury), and the result nine times out of ten favours the team feeding the scrum. So in other words for the 10 or so scrums we would get a game we would have the same result as we have now but the ball would be circulating around 1/8th time less than it is now.

We have been lulled into a false sense of security that the game is even and interesting by the salary cap (with one notable exception). Just because each team has a chance of winning doesn't mean we shouldn't make changes to make it more interesting. At present the teams that win do so by dominating possession. This leads to forms of play that are less risky - ie constant dummy half running or passing one of the ruck to a running forward.

If a team does score they get the ball back from the kick off. Or if they trap a team in goal they get the ball back - if a team dominates possession they win. Over the last few weeks that's exactly what has happened to the tigers. The refs of course try to even this up through equaliser penalties (just watch how many times those 50/50 calls go to a side that has just conceded a couple of trys).

The game has changed in the professional era so that coaches support low risk high percentage plays. As a result some of the more interesting parts of the game have all but disappeared - what for instance happen to the chip and chase. Coaches don't encourage it any more because if you don't regather the ball you have given it away in good field position to the opposition. We need another contest for the ball to add more variety to the game and give teams who are on the back foot the chance to win the ball back.

Scrums aren't the answer but what is? AFL has the ball up and Rugby Union has the line out. Why not combine the two - have the hooker throw the ball backwards over his head to a group of 5 forwards kneeling in a pyramid shape with the lock standing on top ready to dive for the ball wherever it goes.

Or how about run under a limbo bar to collect the ball, this would encourage short people to participate in the game meaning each team would have to carry at least one Ommpa Lumpa in the defensive line or two in Canterburys case as you would have to count Brett Kimorley.