The PNG Government is behind this bid in a big way:

PNG Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare has also pledged $10 million to help build a new stadium in Port Moresby and a further $250,000 to assist the PNG bid team, headed by Gold Coast chairman and veteran league official Paul Broughton.

It’s true to say that there are plenty of competing bids from within Australia – Central Coast, Central Queensland and a second Brisbane side, not to mention outposts such as Adelaide and Perth.  Also not to mention a second NZ team but more on that later.

The usual mantra WIIFM applies.

As far as the NRL is concerned, the answer could well be “plenty”:

PNG Minister for Sport Philemon Embel wrote to Gallop saying: “The passion of six million PNG people for rugby league is undisputed. Unlike the Australian-based possible expansion teams, a PNG team will increase revenue to the clubs.

“The New Zealand Warriors increase revenue to the NRL by at least $10 million a year. PNG would do the same.”

This last point is something that our retard … oops, retro friends across the ditch forget when they call for the Warriors to be kicked out of “their” National League.

It’s not just a case of ditching the Warriors (boom boom) but losing ANOTHER team – the Warriors pay their way along with another team.  Or should that be we pay, largely through Sky.

I can’t see the Kumuls flying soon but it certainly would add another dimension to the NRL plus yet another weak team that the Warriors can lose to.

Not that many sleeps to go until the real rugby season starts.

Often at the same time and in the same place.

So you might be surprised to find out that barely a month after the 2009 NRL Grand Final, the Warriors are among a number of teams back in “pre-season training” for 2010.

It was only 29 days ago when 3.6 million television viewers tuned in to watch Melbourne beat Parramatta in the Grand Final. The first cricket Test of the summer is 24 days away from starting, yet the Sydney Roosters, New Zealand Warriors and South Sydney will this morning start training for their 2010 campaigns.

Yep, Xmas is still almost two months away and the first round of 2010 NRL is around 4 months away and the poor bastards are busting their guts.

Don’t worry, but Ivan will give the boys a couple off days off over Xmas:

Former Cronulla five-eighth Brett Seymour will start training today with his new club in New Zealand, but Warriors coach Ivan Cleary has arranged for his players to have another short break over the Christmas-New Year period.

Let’s just hope the Warriors didn’t organise a piss up for the new boys!

Someone from the Warriors should be taking notes.

You do have to wonder about whether there was ever any chance of Steve Kearny becoming the Warriors coach.

As for the Eels, they went well beyond what could have reasonably been expected, coming from 8th to play in the Grand Final.  In doing so, they went one better than the Warriors history breaking effort in round one of the playodds last year, ironically beating the Storm.

Speaking of irony (no, not Tony) it shouldn’t be a complete surprise that the Eels’ style of play has been compared to the Warriors of 2002 who – it must be said – fell one at the final hurdle.

Daniel Anderson clearly is more than a capable coach and appears to have learnt a little to relax a little more from his stint at St Helens.

Let’s hope the Warriors backroom boffins take note – playing an open game doesn’t need to at the expense of making it into the playoffs.

In fact, the reverse is the problem with the Warriors – if you’re to miss out on the playoffs, then you really need to give the fans something to cheer.

Let’s hope the lessons from 2009 are well learnt at Warriors Central.

Mind you, a bad season for the Warriors is the equal of a good game of rugby these days.

The coach you got sacked because he got smacked.

Yep, think about Jason “Kung Fu” Taylor only got given the DCM because he got KO’ed by David “The Terminator” Fa’alogo.  Fa’alogo’s career at Souths also got terminated.

Let’s take another scenario.

Taylor goes out gets tanked, makes a gold medal dick of himself (think Dick Taylor ) and gets put in a taxi drunk as the proverbial sailor and goes home.

Hardly sackable offence given his appearance was approved at the Sad Sunday piss up.

Instead, Fa’alogo returns the serve and Taylor hits the deck.  Career over for the short term.

So yep, he’s getting the sack for getting whacked.  Not once either, according to the Sun-Herald in Oz:

[The footage ...] clearly shows Fa’alogo punching Taylor in the face after the pair were involved in kung-fu-style mucking around that got out of hand. Fa’alogo then follows up with a second strike to the back of the head, which causes Taylor to stumble down a set of stairs and out of camera shot.

Taylor’s camp has said a hotel staffer witnessed Fa’alogo punch Taylor in the head a third time off-camera. It’s understood this blow caused an egg-shaped lump on the forehead, as seen in the photo.

Three times.  No wonder his face looked like it did.

Mind you, next time you’re out on the piss, tell the Domestic CEO you’re “concussed”:

Taylor’s recollections stem primarily from viewing of the CCTV footage, as he claims to have no memory of the incident.

He was adamant that he was drinking responsibly and he submitted written evidence from three independent witnesses that he was not intoxicated as part of his submission to the club.

”He was so concussed he even smiled for the photo. He has no memory of it,” Lana Taylor said of the photograph taken shortly after the incident, which shows Taylor still in Japanese-themed attire.

Yep, all that drinking made him concussed.

Anyway, his concussion has gone along with his job at Souths.

Run, Rabbit, run.

The guilty player in this story is the “McIntyre Final Eight System” that is used to find the winner of the playoffs.

First, the system in a nutshell.

The key numbers:

• 8 teams play over four weeks to find one winner
• the 8 teams are ranked 1 to 8 (it has to be simple if the Aussies use it)
• the games are based on ranking and played in the following order: 4 v 5 , 3 v 6,2 v 7,and 1 v 8 – the timing is critical
• in week 1, teams one and two can’t be “flushed down the dunny”
• conversely, teams 7 and 8 must win to stay alive

Where it gets interesting is the next two weeks.

The top two ranked winners from week one go to straight to week three.

The two bottom ranked losers go on the piss and commit violent crimes and beat up their coaches – allegedly … oops, are eliminated.

Bugger it, let’s let Wikipedia explain:

Week 2

• 1st Semi Final: 4th highest ranked winner vs 2nd highest ranked loser
• 2nd Semi Final: 3rd highest ranked winner vs 1st highest ranked loser

The two losing teams are eliminated, the two winning teams progress to Week 3.

Week 3

• 1st Preliminary Final: 2nd highest ranked winner (from Week 1) vs winner of 2nd Semi Final
• 2nd Preliminary Final: 1st highest ranked winner (from Week 1) vs winner of 1st Semi Final

The two losing teams are eliminated, the two winning teams progress to Week Four.

There you have it.

Given that home advantage is so important and no one wants to be eliminated, there’s going to be some upset people out there.

The Warriors broke new ground last year winning from 8th.  Ironically, their reward was a home game against the Roosters who’d finished ahead of the Warriors.  Conversely, the Storm (the number one ranked team) had to play away in week two.

The same happened this year with the Dragons losing in week one and as a result having to play the Broncos in Brisbane in week two.  Conversely the Eels won on the road in week one and earned a home game against the Titans – a much easier task than the comparable road trip.

Wikipedia notes other anomalies with the McIntyre System.

There is a valid point that the top four  teams deserve better reward for their efforts over the season.  It would be eminently reasonable for example to give these teams home advantage in throughout the playoffs – the Eels who slipped into the playoffs at 8th surely don’t deserve the rights to a home quarter which is effectively what they got against the team that finished third.

Having said that, the problem doesn’t occur if the top teams win and logically they already have an easier draw in week one.  All they have to do is win!

Moreover, the top ranked team has made the final more often than not (including the Warriors) so the system ain’t THAT broke.

The irony of course is that the NRL stole the McIntyre System from the AFL in 1999 … the same year that the AFL dropped it.

In particular, one of the big issues has been the Warriors drop out of the top 8 and to the bottom of the ladder, although safely out of reach of the wooden spoon.

(As bad as the Warriors have been in the past, that’s one award that has thus far eluded the Club).

So let’s check out last year’s Top 8 and compare with this year’s position.

1. Storm – 4th in 2009  – down 3 places
2. Sea Eagles – 5th – down 4 places
3. Sharks – 15th – down 12 places
4. Roosters – 16th – down 12 places
5. Broncos – 6th – down 1 place
6. Raiders – 13th – down 7 places
7. Dragons – 1st – up 6 places
8. Warriors – 14th – down 6 places

The biggest winners were

• Bulldogs – up a massive 14 places from 16th to second
• Titans – up from 13th to 3rd, 10 places

So as bad as the Warriors year has been, they are by no means the worst and indeed the Roosters and Sharks fall has been most spectacular.  Arguably, the Raiders performed worse than the Warriors based on the places at the end of the normal season going down 7 places to the Warriors six.

Part of the explanation is not performance per se but expectation – the Warriors ended up one game away from the GF in 2008 after a history making run in the play-offs.  This lead to massively inflated expectations (which no-one, the Club included, denied were unreasonable).

What the stats show is one thing most journos won’t add to their dissection of the Warriors’ woes – the salary cap is designed to ensure that the same teams don’t dominate season after season and massive changes in results is to be expected.

Indeed, you could argue that the salary cap actually penalises the teams that are consistent and achieve regularly as they struggle to retain their players under the cap.  The Storm and the Broncos have managed to do so by smart recruitment and savage cutting of players when they have to.

Another feature of the Warriors this season has been the strong emergence of the Kiwi players (not Kiwis players, but NZ players playing for a NZ team).  A legitimate criticism of some of the successful Warriors teams in the past has been the number of cheating Aussies in the side – hopefully, in future seasons, the Warriors can succeed with a largely NZ-made team.

I’m not trying to argue that this season wasn’t intensely disappointing.  Rather, the Warriors’ woes need to be put into the context of a competition that ensures snakes and ladders each year through the use of the salary cap.

The season started so well.  A scratchy but deserved win over the Eels (who admittedly didn’t look all that flash at the time) then a great win over Manly.

Stacey was back, the Warriors were motoring, and we could feel the premiership in our grasp.

Then the wheels fell over, the exhaust got munted, and the engine blew into a kazillion of little pieces.

So what went wrong?

Losing more games than we won is a helpful starting place but Steve Deane at the Granny identified 10 things that went wrong for the Warriors:

1. The Jones Factor

2. The tragic loss of Sonny Fai

3. Wade’s Woes

4. Tate that (the loss of Brent Tate)

5. Denan Kemp

6. Ch-ch-changes

7. Mid-season exits

8. Steve Price

9. Not scoring enough points – doh!

10. Coach Cleary

All pretty obvious and reasonable to be fair.

Deane doesn’t excuse Jones from criticism:

As the team’s guiding force and playmaker, Jones has to carry the can for its deficient attack. He didn’t create much himself and he failed to draw much creativity from those around him.

However, he does acknowledge that Jones is not the root problem:

By punting the likes of Grant Rovelli and Nathan Fien mid-season, the Warriors put all of their eggs in the Jones basket. That was the real mistake.

In fairness, when the Warriors played urgent passionate and committed football – as they did in Round 2 v Manly – then Jones looked every bit like the legend he is.  The rest of the year reflected the team effort, not Jones.

For that matter, consider the fact that the two undeniably best halves in the game – Benji and Thurston – won’t even be playing in the semis.

I think the big question mark is now on Cleary.  The first couple of years all went to script ie get into the semis.  (They would have in year 1 except for losing points for the salary rort leftovers.)

However, it would seem reasonable to assume that Clearly made the decision to boot Witt, Rovelli, and then Fien.  He also has to take responsibility for the overall failure of the new recruits to “make a difference”.  Although, to be fair, Moon is starting to land on his feet.

Who knows, Cleary could have benefited from getting the boot instead of an extensions – it doesn’t seem to have done Daniel Anderson any harm.

But if the Warriors fail to make the finals next year, Anderson may be dishing our interview tips to his former fullback.

Ricky Stuart must be the type of cheating Aussie we most like to hate.

If I remember correctly, his last game was in NZ when he got carted off injured … which was kind of what it must have found like after the World Cup final last year.

Note to All Blacks – yes, it is possible to write “NZ”, “World Cup” and “win” in the same sentence without using a negative.

Anyway, Peter Fitz had a lovely story about our Aussie friend:

Here is Ricky Stuart when he left the Wallabies in early 1988 to join the Canberra Raiders: ”Rugby union has been tremendously good to me, but eventually I always thought I would drift to league.”

Here is Ricky Stuart when he joined Super League in 1995: ”Ricky Stuart will do what’s best for Ricky Stuart.”

And here is Ricky Stuart, writing in his column, on the news that Karmichael Hunt is leaving rugby league to play first union and then AFL: ”If we don’t draw a line in the sand now, more and more players will take the money and run like Karmichael Hunt has done. Our game develops these players. Makes them stars. And bang, they cash in and rugby league is left to hold the can before they turn and want to come back. I … [understand] something Karmichael will probably never understand. Loyalty to the game. Sadly, Karmichael’s decision reflects this new generation where players want what’s best for them and not the team.”

Says it all really.

Bulldogs 10 – Warriors 4.

At least two dodgy decisions so far.  In fact, the Warriors haven’t had the ball since they were on attack and a knockon was incorrectly ruled.

Heremaia off, Henderson on.

What if Heremaia played for the OTHER team?

Heremaia was a Bulldog

Was a good friend of mine …

Bulldogs have all the possession, momentum, penalties, referees etc

Bulldogs mistake.  Warriors mistake.

ANOTHER cheating call.  If Ah Van played at the ball, I’m a cheating Aussie.   BTW I am screaming at the TV but the cheating refs aren’t listening.

Doggies 16-4

Refs have scored three tries so it was only a matter of time before the Doggies scored one themselves.

Refs 16, Doggies 6-4.  Had added the two before the kick.

You are fucking kidding me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Game over.  Blog over.

[At this stage, Stacey bombs after the Warriors get a penalty on the 40 min mark.  Ah Van plays the ball back in the Doggies in goal, Roberts picks up, passes and the Doggies score at the other end!]

Refs 16, Doggies 12.  Warriors 4.

Anyway, around here, we always focus on the big issues.

Like pissheads, dickheads and cheating Aussies.

And bingo!!! the Herald has wrapped them all up into a nice little gallery.

• Gred Inglis – dickhead
• Anthony Watmough – pisshead, dickhead
• Reni Matua – cheating Aussie
• Brett Seymour – pisshead, dickhead, Warrior (one of these words is not like the other)
• Tony Zappia (no relation to Frank) – dickhead, cheating Aussie
• Brad Fittler – pisshead, dickhead
• Nate Myles – pisshead, dickhead, shit for brains
• Mathew Johns – dickhead
• Greg Bird – pisshead, dickhead
• Brett Stuart – pisshead, dickhead

And like the Warriors against the Titans last week, I got bored and gave up.

And there’s still a couple more months for more dickheads and pissheads to emerge.