It is a joke they want to increase top-eight to 10 in NRL

COLTS all rounder was one of the X Factors who kept his reputation in club cricket.

John Cleary, pictured in carnival cricket for Max's XI, was the best of the X Factors. Picture: Gerard Walsh

SportsView - Opinion with Gerard Walsh

LAST Saturday, we had a full page in the Daily News on Condamine Cup cricket and I nominated, after consultation with a team member, the likely MVP (most valuable player), XFactor and a likely classic catcher.

We scored two and a half out of six for our predictions with our X Factors.

John Cleary was best with 57 and 3-21 for Warwick Hotel Colts in a win, Tom Bourke hit 63 not out and took 1-27 for Maryvale Condamine in a win, while Lachlan Boal got 2-39 and hit nine runs in the Wheatvale loss.

The other three X Factors had a bad day - Adam May (Victoria Hill) was out for four in a loss, Mitch McLennan made 13 for Allora in a win and James Kurtz hit 14 for Redbacks in a loss to Allora

This Sunday, the preliminary finals will be played and it will be a heavyweight battle between the two X Factors, Cleary and May, in A-grade.

I could have asked 11 team members about the X Factors in their two clubs and the players would have come up with Cleary and May.

NRL finals

THE NRL is getting into a tendency to make policy on the run.

It has done it with some of the rules, or should I say interpretation of the rules, and it is doing it again suggesting we have a top 10 in a 16-team competition.

If you really want to keep interest going and bring in some more income, have a plate competition between ninth to 12th.

But seriously, that is a silly idea.

In the old days of external exams, you didn't pass with 40per cent and it should be the same in the footy. Winning half the games is surely a prerequisite to a premiership win.

Good to see the NRL tough on problem players but, as with everything, the league does make an example of the players who are in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

Well done to our man at the Broncos, list and recruitment manager Peter Nolan, who has a pack of forwards capable of steering the Broncos to an NRL premiership this season.