What the hell happened to the Storm? One of the Storm’s strengths during its golden era has been its next-man-up conveyor belt of talent. Somehow, they always have someone ready to step up to capably fill gaps. Need a fullback to replace Billy Slater? You got a choice of Scott Drinkwater, Nicho Hynes or Ryan… Read More Storm feeders, Capras, Magpies and the race to the 2022 Queensland Cup
One of the tough things writing about homogenised rugby league was trying to ascribe the direction of the sport solely to the cravenness of the Sydney clubs. But at that time, we hadn’t actually seen the Queensland clubs rise to the defence of the state’s rugby league heritage. They’d been mute and I was going… Read More Benny, Vossy and Bluey: it’s been a week and then some
Note: this won’t include everything that happened in the world of rugby league in 2021. There’s been a focus on senior men’s and women’s thirteens football and, to avoid this post being infinitely long and dull, that means there’s no juniors, schoolkids and minimal nines content. I’ve farmed a lot of content from the APRL… Read More The Year In Rugby League Football, 2021
The move to do away with the ‘unlimited’ tackle rule that had been played in Australia for 59 seasons was the brainchild of the urbane secretary of the Rugby Football League in England, Bill Fallowfield. The move was designed to counter what Jack McNamara in the Manchester Evening News described as the ‘evils of the… Read More It’s not just the six again
We’re over half way into the Intrust Super Cup / Queensland Cup and it’s time to review how each team and player are performing. We’ll be looking at this using the following analytical tools: Form – Elo ratings that reflect short term performance. Production – The accumulation of valuable work on field, as measured by… Read More 2021 Queensland Cup WIP Report
Regular readers will know that I like to keep up with all the developments in world football, not just the top level. Because so many second and third class comps were cancelled last year, we aren’t able to do a serious season preview for each one in 2021 (if I even had the time). Many… Read More A Shallow Dive into the minor rugby leagues in 2021
Just before kick-off of the Bulldogs-Dragons spoon bowl on Monday, the Warriors dropped a big press release. Contained within is an important story with a lot of implications for rugby league, so let’s go through them. For the Broncos It wasn’t that long ago that the Broncos had six feeder clubs in the Queensland Cup.… Read More The Warrior Dolphins
I was always vaguely aware of the Queensland Cup growing up, but only really took an actual interest in it when I started this site a couple of years ago. I became a Souths Logan fan, because that’s where I lived most of my life, and started going to games. Since then, I’ve toyed with… Read More A deep dive in to the 2020 Queensland Cup
For the third season in a row, I’m changing the player rating system. We mourn the passing of Statscore (not really) and PPG (again, not really) as we slowly converge on to a system that I can take for granted and don’t have to refine any further. The core of the system hasn’t changed. The… Read More Primer – TPR
I wrote about Sydney as an obstacle to expansion yesterday. It started as an intro to this post but ended up being over 1000 words and I thought it should stand alone. It’s the result of thoughts that have been bubbling since I started paying proper attention to rugby league when I started doing this… Read More NRL Tips – Round 25, 2019
Pythago NRL 