Call me the Kiss of Death, will you??
Well, this is what I wrote after watching Penrith’s first match of the season, in this space, in March:
“I’m calling it now. Penrith will go back-to-back, and win their second successive NRL premiership this year. Oh sure, sneer unpleasantly … I don’t care, do you hear me? I just don’t care. Did you see that match on Thursday evening? It wasn’t just that, missing five stars, including Nathan Cleary, Penrith beat rough contenders Manly, 28-6. It was the 20 extra points they could have got! The Panthers were so damn dominant it was dull, and I do hope the season won’t be the same. I hope the likes of Souths or the Raiders can throw out a challenge, but right now I can’t see it. Remember, you heard it here first. Panthers will go two for two in 2022.”
And now you heard it hear second. Parra, valiant. Penrith, unstoppable.
Hard for Swans to heal grand wound
“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”?
No doubt, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and nice to have you in the sports pages.
But was it better for the Swans to have made the AFL grand final and get walloped, than not to have made the grand final at all?
All up, the Swans have had an extraordinary season and generally played above themselves, bar that one match. In the whole year their worst loss was by 24 points. In the grand final, they lost by 81 and simply never looked in it from the start.
So, what do you think? Would it have been better for them to have lost by a point to Collingwood in the preliminary final, rather than win by a point as they did? A loss to Collingwood like that would have seen them bearing a deep scar, and no doubt about it.
The risk is the 81-point loss in grand final will be an open wound. Back in the 2007 grand final, Port Adelaide lost to Geelong by a staggering 119 points, and this week I saw a comment from one of Port’s standout players, Kane Cornes, saying it took them “five or six years to recover.”
Callum Mills, John Longmire and Nick Blakey look on as Geelong players collect their premiership medals.Credit:Scott Barbour
How to come back from such devastation and not lose “the five or six years” that Port did in similar circumstances?
When I asked Cornes himself, he was up-front: “Address it. Look at everything you did in the lead-up and during the game that was wrong, and go over it again and again. We tried to ignore it, and it hurt us [for years].”
The game that saved rugby league
The NRL grand final will be tough, and no doubt about it. But surely not this tough …
Read on.
As you may recall, TFF’s cherished rugby league journalist mate Steve Mascord – who of course worked at the Herald for many a’moon – released a book a while back about the Super League war. Called Two Tribes. This week, on the 25th anniversary of Newcastle’s win over Manly in the 1997 ARL grand final, it became available on Kindle and it documents, among other things, how the Knights were so concerned about Andrew Johns’ shocking rib injury the week before, they actually had a surgeon on the bench, ready to do emergency surgery if his lung was punctured!
But …
“That afternoon at the Sydney Football Stadium, Joey didn’t die.”
Not even close. And we can only hope the match on Sunday gets close to this kind of theatre. For, in the dying seconds, with the scores locked …
“Andrew and his brother Matthew,” Mascord writes, “had studied tape of Manly – and other teams – leaving a gap behind the play-the-ball while defending with play near the sideline.
“‘I heard Matty calling for the ball, obviously for one last shot at field goal,’ Andrew said. ‘I looked over from dummy half and there was John Hopoate staring at Matty and his body language showed he was going to charge out and jump Matty and try to charge the kick down. So I said to Darren Albert, who played the ball, “stay alive” and then feigned left and snuck down the short side to the right, dummied again to my old mate Mark Hughes on the right … then took the tackle of Craig Innes and put Alby in for the try’.”
And the rest, as they say in the classics, is history!
Mascord makes the case it was “the game that saved rugby league”, as it was such a stunner it meant Super League, who was running the rival comp, smoked the peace pipe shortly afterwards and the two comps came together to form the NRL as we know it.
What They Said
Former Eels captain Nathan Hindmarsh, on having been to two grand finals, for two losses. “It stings … obviously everyone knows that, the kids down the road know that, I walk past them and they go ‘show us your grand final ring’. Bugger off you little bastards. And that is [just] my own kids, when we are walking to school …”
@VictoriaPolice: “We’re preparing to assist @nswpolice in the search for 22 missing swans, last seen wearing red and white at around 2:30pm in the Melbourne area #AFLCatsSwans.” Very unkind!
Roger Federer, on briefly holding hands with doubles partner Rafael Nadal as they both wept after they bowed out at the Laver Cup in London last week, following the realisation Federer had definitively played his last match: ”Well, I mean, it was a short moment. I think at one point, I was sobbing so hard, and I don’t know, everything was going through my mind about how happy I am to actually experience this moment right there with everybody … I guess at one point … I guess I just touched him, and I guess it’s maybe a secret thank you.”
Nicho Hynes on winning the Dally M: “Coming to Sydney … I hired a mindset coach to help me through it, and he [Jarred Brown] is the reason why I’m wearing this medal right now.” You’re right. And I don’t know what a “mindset coach” is, either.
Team Europe’s Roger Federer is lifted by fellow players after playing the final game of his illustrious career.Credit:AP Photo/Kin Cheung
Geelong great Joel Selwood hanging up the boots, four AFL grand final wins to the good: “I decided that I could go again next year at 85 per cent, and everyone would look after me but I had to be all in and I just couldn’t do that.”
Milwaukee Bucks guard Jrue Holiday happy to have Aussie veteran Joe Ingles on his team: “Joe is one of the ones you hate to play against. He’s an asshole playing against him, not gonna lie … He’s kinda dirty and talks trash, boy. But now that’s he on my team, I’m happy.”
The Concussion Big 5 is an initiative of Macquarie University and the Australian Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Biobank, in partnership with Sydney FC put out a press release this week to raise awareness of the signs of concussion: “With the highly anticipated NRL Grand Final just days away, everyone attending community sporting matches is being encouraged to make themselves aware of the five key signs of concussion: Slump, Sway, Slow, Stun and Slur.”
Sydney coach John Longmire: “We … just buggered it up today.”
Latrell Mitchell after South Sydney’s loss to Penrith last Saturday evening: “Thanks to all the Souths fans sticking with us today and through the year … we dug deep for yers and will continue to do so. South Sydney, we never give up and it’s just, the cookie crumbles at the moment and we go back to the drawing board, and do our thing, but, yeah.”
John Monie celebrates as the final whistle sounds in the 1986 grand final.Credit:Fairfax Media
John Monie on still being the last person to coach Parramatta to glory – back in 1986 – on what a win this Sunday would mean: “It’s been a long time between drinks, hasn’t it? It would be fantastic to know I won’t get guys like you ringing me up all the time.”
An unnamed Indigenous player, alleges after mistreatment from Hawthorn a decade or so ago, he still suffers: “I am now deemed disabled, and I am on disability support pension, and I am also awaiting NDIS funding for a full-time support worker to work with me seven days a week. I have had multiple suicide attempts, multiple stays in the mental health unit at the hospital … the trauma that I deal with every day is because of the way the club treated myself and my family.” The senior coaching staff of Hawthorn at the time, vigorously deny the allegations of mistreatment.
Lauren Jackson celebrates with teammates after their quarter-final win over Belgium.Credit:Getty Images
Team of the Week
Lauren Jackson. After retiring six years ago, has made a comeback to the Opals at the age of 41, and helped them to a successful World Cup campaign.
Geelong. From start to finish, of the season, and the grand final, put on a masterclass in 2022, and smoked the Swannies in the decider by 81 points.
GWS Giants. AFLW team lost to the Crows by a score of 97-1. This is reminiscent of that line from, I think, Dermott Brereton, in commentary many years ago, after a similar scoreline: “They came with a point to make, and they made it.”
Penrith/Parramatta: Hopefully this grand final won’t be as one-sided as the AFL one.
Newcastle/Parramatta. Contesting the NRLW grand final.
All Blacks. Won the Rugby Championship, walloping the Wallabies along the way, last Saturday at Eden Park.
Garang Koul. Youngest Socceroo debutant since Harry Kewell in 1996. Next time Socceroos play is their World Cup opener against France on November 22.
Eliud Kipchoge. Broke his own men’s marathon world record in Berlin. The 37-year-old Kenyan crossed the line in a time of two hours, one minute and nine seconds, to beat by 30 seconds his previous best, set four years ago in the German capital city.
Twitter: @Peter_Fitz
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