Monday Buzz: Weekend highlights, lowlights
MASSIVE ratings for JT’s farewell, Trbojevic boost for Manly and more check out the highlights, lowlights and talking points from another memorable weekend in sport.
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CHECK out the highlights, lowlights and talking points from another memorable weekend in sport.
HIGHLIGHT
The upcoming finals series in which it is impossible to rule out any of the eight contenders who have all played well enough at various stages of the season to be a genuine threat, even St George Illawarra.
HIGHLIGHT II
Johnathan Thurston’s phenomenal tackle on Gold Coast Titans forward Ryan James to jolt the ball loose near halftime on Saturday night. The Cowboys scored in the next set and turned the game from that one moment.
LOWLIGHT
The sin-binning of the Panthers’ Josh Mansour in Melbourne on Friday night against the Storm. A ridiculous decision from a referee who refuses to use common sense.
LOWLIGHT II
The Roosters don’t make too many recruitment blunders but the decision to release Blake Ferguson to the Parramatta Eels was one they got wrong. He made 278 metres on Saturday night against Parramatta.
JT REELS THEM IN
Johnathan Turston’s farewell game provided massive ratings for Fox Sports. It attracted the highest ever audience on Fox League, peaking at 795,000, which is a remarkable figure for pay TV.
TRBO TRIFECTA
Another Trbojevic is on his way to the NRL. Ben Trbojevic won man of the match in the Mona Vale Raiders’ under-17 grand final-winning team at Brookvale on Sunday. Ben, a centre or edge forward, scored the matchwinner near the end.
FOR PETE’S SAKE
A quick clarification for independent commission chairman Peter Beattie. I wrote last week he had gone to the Bledisloe Cup in New Zealand with Todd Greenberg. That was incorrect. The NRL’s COO Nick Weeks was at the rah-rahs with Greenberg, not Beattie.
MOREE MIRACLE
For the first time in country Group 19 history, the mighty Moree Boomerangs won their grand finals in all three grades in Moree on Sunday, a remarkable performance from a self-funded footy club that has been hit hard by the drought like all country teams.
360 VIEW
Catch you tonight on NRL 360 on Fox Sports with Ben Ikin and Paul Kent. Special guest will be South Sydney Rabbitohs coach Anthony Seibold. The show will run four nights a week during the finals.
NITPICKING REF HAD ME REACHING FOR REMOTE
THE NRL risks ruining the finals series by appointing referee Gerard Sutton to the major games.
For three weeks your columnist has restrained himself from criticising the whistleblowers, but we can no longer ignore the issue.
On Friday night, Sutton blew 15 penalties in the first half of the Storm-Panthers game in Melbourne.
I grabbed the remote and switched over to watch Usain Bolt in his soccer trial at Gosford. For the first time this year I couldn’t watch any more rugby league. This was the worst display of referee nitpicking I have seen all season.
The sin-binning of Josh Mansour was a disgrace. Sutton used no common sense.
And while all this was happening, refs bosses Tony Archer and Bernard Sutton were in the United States at a Hawkeye conference and to watch the US Open and a Major League Soccer game.
I didn’t watch the second half in Melbourne but noticed there were only three second-half penalties.
A ridiculous 15 penalties in the first half, only three in the second. Seriously, how could the discipline improve so dramatically in a 10-minute halftime break.
We suspect Sutton got a message at halftime. Like he did before the Origin game in Melbourne.
After the game, a number of interesting statistics emerged on social media.
The hashtag #NRLStormPanthers was used only 2000 times. The hashtag #Sutton was used 5000 times.
The word refereeing was trending nationally. This was a blatant case of a referee ambushing our game.
The referees were told by Todd Greenberg to drop the nitpicking.
They listened and did for a few weeks. He needs to step in again.