The RLIF had a meeting in Singapore earlier in the week, revealing some details about what the international calendar might look like moving forward. Of course, the main outcome, that the powers that be have acknowledged the need for a calendar in the first instance, should be considered something of achievement.

We don’t know what that calendar looks like but I can guarantee it’s not what I would have done, not what you would have done and it will satisfy no nerd’s ambitions (“What about Niue?” I read, then looking up that country’s population. It’s 1,600 people by the way and probably won’t exist in a couple of decades thanks to climate change). That’s just the world we live in.

The meeting is coming on the back of

• the reignited debate of how the NRL should deal with it’s obligations to fill a 192 game regular season while three interstate all-star games kill at least twelve, and as many as thirty-six (up to 18% of the product), of the entertainment value of those games,
• the overly complicated qualification system for the 2021 World Cup slowly grinding to a close and how this might be made more efficient, simple and keep costs within reach of cash-strapped newer affiliates

• and trying to figure out what, if anything, is going to happen for the 2025 World Cup. With Moore Sports falling out of the picture, a US/Canada host, if one can be found, is unlikely to be viable but no one has stepped into the breach just yet. With England hosting 2021, odds are that Australia will take 2025 unless there’s a miracle bid from somewhere else. The reality is that while the RLWC should be a cost effective international event for nations to hold, it is not and does not offer a great opportunity for return on investment unless you have something to sell the northern English and east coast Australians. We either need to accept that the World Cup will alternate between Australia and England for the foreseeable future or some innovation will be required in how the World Cup is formatted to make it more attractive to prospective hosts.

is fortuitous in it’s timing but offers no answers to any of the above, which are really quite large and important questions.

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Here are the tips for this weekend’s action:

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Intrust Super Cup

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have now read every Origin perspective Twitter has to offer and have synthesised my own searingly hot take of Game 1, 2019.

Queensland played well but not exceptionally so. Plenty of opportunities presented themselves to blow the game open (Napa should be dropped for not grounding the ball properly) and the Maroons only won by four with the margin created by a fortunate interception. Will Chambers contained Latrell Mitchell, despite concerns that he would be unable to hold back the “world’s greatest player”, but should never be passed the ball ever again. His function is to be a decoy while Cherry-Evans cutout passes to Gagai, who pulled his usual superman transformation from Club Gagai into Origin Gagai. Ponga was bad in the first half, much better in the second half and turning himself into a flying speed bump in the dying seconds of the game (pictured below) probably saved the win for the Maroons.

The forward pack did their job, winning the metre battle and we saw some great work out of Arrow, Kaufusi and, to a lesser extent, Gillett. I say Gillett because I actually noticed he was on the field, which is a step up from his typical form at the Broncos. Cherry-Evans, Munster and Oates (foot going into touch aside) did what was expected of them. Cherry-Evans’ kicking needs a slight polish but this is unsurprising, given this is his first game in weeks.

Anyone telling you Ben Hunt played well at hooker did not watch the game. A hooker has two jobs: pass the ball and make tackles. I saw a small man getting carried by NSW’s starting forwards while “making” his tackles during the opening phase of the game (also a time in which dummy half responsibilities were being shared among six players) and I saw plenty of passes through the rest of the game go to ground before reaching a Maroon jersey. His two redeeming features were a single 40/20ish play and the fact that NSW cooked their rotations so he didn’t get smashed in the closing stages. “But he made the most tackles!” Spare me. If tackle counts mattered, you’d be rating Hunt higher than Cook and that makes no sense. I expect a starting hooker, probably McCullough, will take Hunt’s place in the 9 for game 2 and Hunt will move to 14. But here’s a crazy thought: you don’t actually have to play Hunt at all.

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The Origin period is a tough time for tipsters. The systems that we’ve been using for the last eleven weeks start to break down over the next six weeks, as selections play havoc with overall team quality and on field cohesion.

Word to the wise is that the Elo rating systems (Archimedes and Eratosthenes) and Poseidon don’t account for these changes. The Elo ratings see an amorphous mass known as “South Sydney” or “Brisbane” whose only inputs are the final score or, in Poseidon’s case, the number of tries scored and goals kicked. By their design, the team ratings will adjust after the fact, not before.

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If you have a keen eye, you might have noticed a change of advertising on the blog in the last week or two. I had an idea last year that there’s lots of rugby league logos around that go by the wayside and that some might look good on a cap or a t-shirt. I found a print on demand service and taught myself to trace in Illustrator and produced a couple dozen designs from old photos and crappy scans.

I launched pythagord.com (Pythago RD or “pi-thag-ord”) earlier this year and it was extremely well received on Twitter and generated a few sales off the bat. I then sent emails to a dozen clubs to see if anyone was interested in being partners, with me doing all the work and paying a cut to clubs to avoid any potential intellectual property disputes, as well as trying to generate some revenue for them. With any luck, I could ride their coattails and their fans would help turn a profit at some point. I got a nibble from Wests and a very polite no from Glebe (which was fine, as they were pretty much doing the same thing) but otherwise it was met with silence.

It took me a while to realise I wasn’t getting anything back. It took me longer to work out what to do about it and then longer still to actually do anything. I held off on promoting the site in the meantime. I ended up reformatting most of the products to remove references to the original club – except the BRL and QComp club stuff, which should exist anyway and it’s a crime that it didn’t so now it does – but you can find what you’re looking for using the team nickname.

The aim now is to make some return on my investment. In the absence of reliable cooperation from the better known clubs and trying to avoid a minefield of trademark and copyright law, I’d like to expand the offering in these ways. If you:

• Know of any rugby league club, whether they be juniors in search of some revenue or seniors with a suitably interesting logo or name, who would like a cost effective, low risk merchandising solution with no minimum orders or stock keeping;
• Are a budding or accomplished graphic designer and have some rugby league designs that might look good on a piece of clothing and want to see some royalties;
• Produce a podcast or blog and want to sell some t-shirts to sympathetic friends or families to raise some beer money (Sports BFs is already on board)

Hit me up.

If you bought something under the impression that a cut would be going to the club, my apologies but they don’t appear to be interested in your money. I gave it to Men of League instead (and matched it with my own money), so if nothing else, some good came out of this:

Also some cool rugby league stuff happened in Barcelona and Blackpool on the weekend but you should already be across that. The vista of rugby league’s future continue to expand despite itself.

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Here are the tips for this weekend’s action:

National Rugby League

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Intrust Super Cup

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magic Round was fun. Do rugby league teams remember fun? I’m not sure all of them do. The ones that attended Magic Round definitely couldn’t avoid it. But don’t take my word for it, let’s hear what the fans had to say:

On the experience

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It’s Magic Round, baby! I am very excited to be attending seven out of the eight games (please just make it eight games in three days next year, preferably aligning with the Labour Day weekend) and we found out this week on NRL.com that Magic Round is staying in Queensland for at least the next two years. Despite protestations for the kind of people who have to be quoted in AlTeRnAtiNg CaPs, this is a good thing.

The idea is for the NRL to sell the event to the highest bidder moving forward, as a diverse revenue stream, but they need to establish the concept in Australia first. Holding it in Brisbane does this because it is an established rugby league market and placates the Queensland government somewhat for not getting the hosting rights to the NRL grand final at any point before the end of time. Attendances are not that important to the overall success of the event because the state government is paying the NRL and the NRL in turn pays the teams for giving up their home games. Nonetheless, 125,000 people are expected, which is roughly 20% more than the eight “host” clubs would normally draw in aggregate.

It’s not being held in Sydney for a couple of obvious reasons:

1. Why would the Queensland government pay to host an event in Sydney?
2. Sydney already gets around 100+ NRL games and these are poorly attended compared to non-Sydney matches.
3. Seriously, shut the fuck up. Sometimes things happen outside of Sydney.

On to the tipping, given that this weekend’s games are being played at one venue, I’ve taken the unprecedented step of manually removing home ground advantage from the tipping systems (even for the Broncos, who technically have an away fixture). The net result is that the team on the left would normally be handed an advantage of 40 to 60 Elo rating points, which translates to about 4% winning percentage for Archimedes and about 6% for Eratosthenes. I made some smaller modifications for Poseidon but did not completely remove the home ground advantage because it would have been too difficult to do for a one-off. xPPG remains unaffected.

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