The Rocket

Yeah, just checked, I`m gutted, FFS , stunned. Hadn`t even thought about Scheck, worth watching for that alone. Yeah mate I don`t expect you to go to too much trouble but any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, we`ll watch it on our laptops if necessary.

I assume we`re still talking about the England/Samoan Test series, if so, it better be on, I`ve travelled 5 hours to Sydney to watch the Kangaroos and Kiwis Sunday afternoon then get up at 2 a.m. Monday to watch England take on Samoa on Kayo.

That`s madness as well, it`s when the teams are announced that people can really start to put faces to the whole thing and be more likely to start engaging.

There were very good posters over here tracking the ticket sales to the Oz v Tonga Test match and even they were predicting somewhere between 15k and 20k up to three days before the game, this is prob why the media were downplaying the event, there really didn`t appear to be a lot of interest. It was only those last three days when ticket sales exploded. After that England v. Samoa semi-final at the WC this game should absolutely sell itself. One of the best games of League you could ever see, a break-out try on the bell to save the match c,mon. Hopefully like the Oz, Tonga game were people delay their ticket purchase maybe to determine the weather, but 15 000, that`d be very disappointing given I`ll be sitting up at 2 a.m. with my youngest wishing he could experience one of those heaving grounds I saw when I watched Test matches from England in the 90`s.

As I said been getting coverage on Nine (which you probably haven`t seen) during the finals and heavily since and stories snowballing on NRL.com over that period. Some people might call that moving the goalposts but regardless I think you have me mixed up with some else here. Def not me. Anyway back on topic, given the success expect to see this get more profile and bigger venues over the next period.

No it was starting to be promoted throughout the finals series and there has been loads of stories on NRL.com from around that time as well. I don`t know how many advertisements (and on how many different things) you expect the NRL to be running, but probably concentrating on the NRL until it was wrapped up and then to start heavily promoting the International series after that makes sense and has let`s face it, has worked.

Not true mate, this has been heavily promoted on FTA by Channel Nine.

Peter Hiku in the centres, expect another Lolohea moment, and CNK at five-eight, you`d think they were the Cook Islands, Nikorima has had his best year in ages. Lot of questions around Stacey Jones` coaching, this isn`t helping. Hard to believe Bennett was keen for the job and the NZRL couldn`t even give him an assistant role while Jones has his training wheels on. Worked when Kearney had the job.

With Fox and Kayo that`ll easy go over the one million mark, reach alone would be pushing two million.

Can you go back as long as it isn`t the same calendar year.

My son tells me there was talk after the game of Kotoni Staggs coming into for Lolohea, I think he was in that position the last time they beat Oz.

I`ve got our tickets to the final on Nov.10 at Commbank, lashed out and bought some good seats. Tonga v. PNG and Aus v. NZ would make a great afternoon viewing.

Speaking of flying did you see one of the Red Bull stunt pilots put on an aerial show over Bondi beach last week to coincide with the announcement of the tie-up with that company. It was held just prior to the NRL Beach Touch Football finals that were being held there. I mean, talk about marketing gold. It`s no surprise that I stumbled upon an article in some magazine called the Diplomatic Weekly or something last week that had a big article on the NRL`s push into the Pacific, it`s great to see the brand getting such widespread reach and hopefully recognition.

Hot on the heels of signing Red Bull as the NRL`s official sports energy drink partner comes a tie up with another multi-billion dollar company. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DA5PsnDS4F7/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet How cool is that ad.

He makes it sound as though the NRL has only recently supplanted fumbleball as Oz`s most watch sport: "Rugby League has dethroned the afl as Australia`s most watch television sport." When in fact we`ve been on top now for about 6 years and preceding that there was only about 5 or 6 years where the afl had dominated.

My go to position for dealing with disappointment in something that has happened in the game is `well, it`s only a sport`, `only a game ` type thing, I find telling myself that helps. Having said that I`m back on here, the Oz forum and the papers everyday looking for and getting excited about good news. I`m sure there`s some interesting insight into addiction, compulsion, human nature in there somewhere.

So this halfback South Sydney have signed and is being touted as the solution to their halfback problems, Lewis Dodd, where does he fit into all of this.

Look the accepted wisdom for Accor is that it is really only for crowds less than 20k that the place suffers from lack of atmosphere, with 35k the other night it was fine.

We were there and had a good night, bar the result, right there in the corner where Cleary did the chip kick for To`o to score, pity a few more of the whingers about crowds weren`t.

@Sports Prophetwe may soon end up having the best of both world`s : From today`s SMH. V`landys joined NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo for a two-part interview on Nine’s rugby league program on Monday night to discuss all the big issues in the game. One of the code’s major talking points is the blueprint to get from 17 teams to a 20-team competition in the next eight years. V’landys believes a 20-team competition could result in a shortened season, with emphasis to be placed on growing the international game and a potential standalone Origin period. “That’s the ambition – to get 20 teams,” V’landys said. “If you don’t have ambition, you shouldn’t be there. Our ambition is to make the competition as fair as possible. The draw would be fantastic if everyone played [each other] once, so you need 20 teams for that. Talking about conferences and all those sorts of things is part of the process that we’re going to go through with the business case. “[The players] are going to be playing less football because at the moment there are [27] rounds. If you go to 19 rounds you’ve got all those weeks we can do other things and that’s where you can fix your problem with the State of Origin.” Usually if he says it, he means it.

so fumbleball, the hubris knows no end. Meanwhile the swans with their 70k members averaged 23k viewers per game on channel 7 this year.

There probably would have been a time when players would have played `busted` to have the opportunity to represent their country, unfortunately the international game, due to lack of credible opposition, means that probably not so much the case anymore. HST you can`t tell me that a first timer like Mitch Barnett for example, wouldn`t ignore a few niggles, to have a green and gold jumper in his wardrobe. Back to your statement, I think we`d find if clubs pressured players from certain backgrounds not to play it would very quickly become a race issue and no club is going to touch that, and as far as pressuring lesser known players who mightn`t have the leverage of the more high profile players, given the camaraderie amongst certainly the PI teams, dangerous territory for clubs as well. And critically in all of this, is that it is only three games at most, and I think most clubs would be comfortable with that on the risk/reward scale of having your players go away, mix, get coached and play against the best and return most likely as better players.

Full page Rugby League article on the back page of a Melbourne newspaper. That`s pretty momentous in Storm history.

It`s a pity the referees aren`t as lax when it comes to forward passes. That call against Daniel Tupou with 17 minutes to go was a bloody shocker. Very sharp eyed when it comes to imaginary forward passes.

It`s easy to forget that Rupert Murdoch , love him or hate him, saw something in Rugby League that he thought had the potential to be extremely popular, and he is a bloke with an eye for the main chance. Unfortunately the way the whole thing was undertaken was a disaster and we have spent the last 25 years getting back to where we were when the whole episode started. Fact still remains though, we have an extremely marketable product in the right hands.