Monday Buzz: Weekend highlights, lowlights
State of Origin carnage sparks NRL debate, Wayne Bennett attacks schedule, good old-fashioned rugby league fireworks and more — check out the talking points from the weekend in sport.
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Monday Buzz: Blues bolter to put fear into Maroons
Casualty Ward: Broncos young gun joins injury list
Check out the highlights, lowlights and talking points from the weekend in sport.
HIGHLIGHT
Ash Barty’s victory at the French Open. A humble champion and a wonderful role model.
HIGHLIGHT II
Some good old-fashioned fireworks at ANZ Stadium on Friday night between the Burgess boys and the Knights. No one got hurt and TV viewers on Fox Sports loved it. No drama, as long as it doesn’t happen every week.
HIGHLIGHT III
Two great comeback stories. The unbelievably courageous Chris Lawrence at the Wests Tigers and Wade Graham’s stunning return for the Cronulla Sharks against the Eels on Saturday night.
LOWLIGHT
The sin-binning of Knights forward Lachlan Fitzgibbon after Friday night’s brawl. He did nothing except drag Sam Burgess from the melee. The referee and the bunker official should be dropped.
LOWLIGHT II
Wayne Bennett complaining that the Rabbitohs don’t get a bye until round 16 while other clubs got one in round 12. He says it is unfair yet ignores the fact his team will be fresher for the finals than the teams that had the earlier bye.
IN A BLUE FUNK
Every NRL official will be madly cheering for the NSW Blues in Perth because ticket sales in Sydney for the third game will be a disaster if the game is a dead rubber.
SHOOSH
Which television sports media personality recently lost a six-figure amount in a shocking day betting on the horses.
SPOTTED
St George Illawarra and Maroons star Ben Hunt doing a recovery session at the Caringbah health and wellbeing clinic owned by his Origin opponent Damien Cook.
360 VIEW
Catch you Monday night on NRL 360 with Ben Ikin and Paul Kent to discuss all the big NRL issues. Special guest in the studio is Newcastle Knights coach Nathan Brown.
ORIGIN INJURY TOLL SPARKS DEBATE
The NRL’s showpiece, a State of Origin series, makes an estimated $100 million in revenue.
Ticket sales, sponsorship, merchandise, corporate suites, TV rights, tourism etc, etc.
This is money generated by employees of most of the 16 NRL clubs — the 34 players in each game.
Understandably, there are now rumblings among the clubs about injury compensation.
The Knights have lost their front-row enforcer Dave Klemmer for up to six weeks, while Kalyn Ponga, Cody Walker, Corey Oates, Matt Gillett, Joe Ofahengaue, Latrell Mitchell, Angus Crichton and Josh Morris missed their club games over the weekend.
So let’s look at the Knights’ situation with Klemmer. We will estimate the Blues front-rower is on $850,000 a season.
For 25 games that works out the Knights are paying him $34,000 for each match.
So if he misses six weeks, that’s $204,000 the Knights pay him while he is sidelined.
Last Wednesday night he was working for the NRL, not the Knights.
The NRL introduced a rule last year that if a player is injured and ruled out for 12 or more weeks, the club can apply for salary cap relief.
It was used by Canberra in the case of Josh Hodgson, who required knee surgery after playing for England.
So it comes down to the fairness and integrity of the competition. Obviously you can’t win a premiership without Origin players.
But it’s not fair on clubs like the Knights, who lose their chief enforcer at such a crucial period in the season while a handful of rival clubs don’t lose any of their stars to Origin.
Originally published as Monday Buzz: Weekend highlights, lowlights
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