Five things we imagined last night

It’s been a long, barren off-season during which I thought at times that the Daily Telegraph had the monopoly on crappy rugby league writing. But the NRL is back, back, back and to mark the beginning of the 2012 season the Sydney Morning Herald has launched a new column which has kicked off with a rich seam of bullshit.

In a straight rip-off of similar columns seen all over the world’s sports media, the Herald is running “five things we learnt from last night’s game” after NRL fixtures. Unfortunately, the content of the two columns I’ve seen so far mostly leaves me asking: ‘Did we learn that? Because it sure seems like a cliché that could have been thought up long before the game and is now being recycled with some bland puffery even if it is directly contrary to what actually happened on the field.’

I knew I’d stumbled upon a potential goldmine from the very first thing we “learnt” from the Knights v Dragons five: “It has taken just three months for Wayne Bennett to turn the Knights into premiership contenders.” Apparently, the Knights “showed more confidence and composure than last season when the team limped into the top eight”.

Well, maybe. I mean, that’s certainly what a lot of people were saying would happen before the game. It's just that the evidence of what happened during doesn’t necessarily back that up. What I witnessed was a solid but uninspired Dragons team huffing and puffing to a narrow victory over a Knights outfit that showed creativity in flashes but made far too many mistakes.

Of course an average performance in round one means virtually nothing: there is no reason why the Knights can’t be turned into premiership contenders by Wayne Bennett (well, apart from the whole ‘Kurt Gidley is five-eighth’ thing) but on the other hand there was very little to support the view that this transformation has already taken place.

Incidentally, in round one 2011 the unconfident, lacking in composure Knights side that limped into the top eight at the end of the season played away at a Penrith outfit that finished second in 2010. The Knights won, 42-8.

Anyway, that little nugget was no more than a hors d’ouevre to the five things we apparently learned from the Parramatta v Brisbane game.

If I was asked to come up with five things I learned from the game that would be both vaguely relevant (in other words, ‘watching two people in blue and yellow ponchos clapping their hands and shouting “Parra! Parra!” is not the same as the majestic sight of a 100,000-plus crowd at the Maracana’ does not count) and could justifiably claim to have been learned from the game rather than made up several days or weeks in advance, I might go for something like:
1) If Parramatta thought Chris Sandow was going to suddenly turn them into a team with consistently creative attacking options they might be disappointed.
2) The new NRL season is unlikely to really fire until it stops raining.
3) If Brisbane don’t develop some more attacking options we are going to be hearing even more about Darren bloody Lockyer this season than we did last.
4) Parramatta are going to have to figure something out regarding Sandow’s defence because he was too easy to target.
5) Watching two people in blue and yellow ponchos clapping their hands and shouting “Parra! Parra!” is not the same as the majestic sight of a 100,000-plus crowd at the Maracana.

Ok, so I cheated a bit at the end. But at least my five weren’t:
1) Life after Locky is a work in progress.
2) There’s hope without Hayne.
3) Sandow is the real deal.
4) Brisbane’s attack is an organised mess.
5) Parramatta still don’t know how to close out games.

Let’s deal with these in order. The first and fourth points are, to all intents, the same thing. Brisbane looked clueless with ball in hand against the Eels, wasting a large quantity of attacking sets without threatening the line, dropping the ball frequently, slinging it wildly left to right without looking like finding a gap in the line and generally playing like a team that has recently lost its star playmaker. These things are all true, but really only need to be said once.

As for the Hayne point, well, hmm. Parramatta scored 6 points against a very, very mediocre Broncos side. Their only try came from a nothing kick that a defender did a hilarious bar of soap act with under minimal pressure. In 80 minutes of football Parramatta made a grand total of two offloads and zero line breaks. I am going to say right now that the suggestion that Parra “finally had players at their disposal who could fill the playmaking void and create something in attack” is unmitigated nonsense.

Speaking of which: Chris Sandow. As it happens, I think Sandow went ok. He scored a (massively fortuitous) try, kicked pretty well, only got spectacularly run over in defence once or twice and, well, it probably wasn’t the right night for his ball or running skills. We certainly didn’t see much of them.

The Herald column, however, chooses to emphasise the positives. Namely: “For one who thrives on confidence, he couldn't have asked for a better start than a try in the opening minutes”, and “his kicking game was not only accurate, but smart, finding touch at the right times to give his team a well earned break”.

Wowser. Is it fair to say that one might want a little more out of one’s half-million dollar new half back than the ability to fall on a ball in the in goal and kick for touch? Fair enough, it was a rotten, damp night and there was precious little opportunity to impress with ball in hand. But surely the conclusion there could only be something like ‘we need to see better conditions to judge whether the Sandow signing is a good one’? Simply anointing Sandow on the basis of some reasonable kicking and managing to fall over successfully seems just a touch soft.

Finally, “Parramatta still don’t know how to close out games”, which to me sounds like taking a potentially interesting point – Brisbane looked eminently beatable, but Parra couldn’t do it – and turning it into cliché.

First of all, it’s not based on even the most cursory examination of what actually happened in the game. The Herald article says Parra “dominated for most of the match”, which is simply untrue. The possession figures were 50/50, while Brisbane made more total run metres and Parra made more tackles. Parramatta completed two more sets (32 to 30) but Brisbane had more sets to start with (44 to 40). That’s not to mention the fact that Parra’s best period was at the start of the game, before Brisbane enjoyed a period of supremacy in the second half.

The point is that “closing out the game” wasn’t Parramatta’s problem at all, at least in the sense that “not scoring any points” was so much of a bigger problem that anything else pails into insignificance. “Closing out the game” puts me in mind of a team holding on to a narrow lead or getting a vital go-ahead try in a close game. But Parra weren’t ahead after 54 minutes and were behind on 59. If anything, the only team that even had a chance to “close out the game” was the Broncos, which they did by scoring a game-icing try on 72.

I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on “five things we learnt” and will update as and when I learn anything.