Rein it in a tad, fellas

It’s difficult to know where to start with the barrage of positive media commentary about the Auckland Nines, other than perhaps to highlight the inevitability of it. Well in advance of the tournament the main media outlets appear to have decided that the competition was a wonderful thing and was to be presented in only the most glowing terms.

Obviously News Corp covered the whole thing via Fox Sports so had a vested interest in making it successful, which presumably explains the months of pre- and post-tournament ballwashing offered by the Telegraph. I imagine the Herald was just desperate for something to attract sports readership between the Ashes and the start of proper football.

Don’t get me wrong, here: it was good to see a big crowd turning up for pre-season rugby league. But some of the stuff being said about the tournament is over the top bordering on insane, and there’s a pretty nasty undertone to a small amount of it.

Taking a step back from the hype, a lot of the football played at the nines was pretty thin fare enlivened by the kind of huge line breaks you’ll always get in short-handed games and assisted by rule interpretations designed to maximise excitement at the expense of structure. Describing the nines, as many have, as some sort of glimpse of the future of the game is not a million miles away from suggesting the Ashes be played as a best of three T20 tournament all on the same weekend.

In the spirit of all the “what we learned from the Auckland Nines” commentary that is appearing across the NRL media like a nasty case of jock itch, here’s my “what we learned from the what we learned from the Auckland nines articles” article.

Hyperbole is king
The Telegraph takes the gong for the most overblown statement, albeit in a competitive field, with the following intro penned by David Riccio: “The undeniable success of the Auckland Nines has changed the rugby league landscape forever.”

Difficult to argue with that, isn’t it? When the NRL comp kicks off in a couple of weeks’ time what you’ll notice is that all the grounds are full of people in fancy dress, no-one will care about the results of the games and… actually I don’t know how the game has changed forever.

Strangely enough, reading Riccio’s full article leaves me none the wiser, either. From what I can work out the game-changing features of the Auckland Nines are as follows:
-    “Multi-millionaire Eric Watson… invited all 16 NRL chief executives and NRL chief executive Dave Smith for a barbecue at his house, which has its own golf course.” GAME CHANGER.
-    Watson says: “The NRL has matured so much. When I was first involved in the game, the CEOs didn’t like each other, the coaches didn’t like each other…. The CEOs are all on the same team. They have a brand, they have a business and they have a sport that competes with others.” Hmm. This sort of sounds like a thing that happened which maybe possibly helped the Auckland Nines come together, rather than something the Auckland Nines did which changed anything of itself. Also, call me crazy, but I’m not totally convinced that even the old-style warring CEOs wouldn’t have been able to take part in a bit of pre-season hit and giggle with several million dollars waved in front of them. It’s not exactly the Treaty of Versailles.
-    “It was a celebration and an advertisement that will leave a footprint in New Zealand long after the yellow five-point try paint has been removed from Eden Park.” As it turns out the 90,000 Kiwis in the crowd had literally never heard of rugby before the Auckland Nines.

It would be great if everyone could try to calm down just a little about this nines business. It was great that lots of people showed up and apparently had a good time, and no doubt its sets a positive mood for the start of the proper season. But, seriously, can we wait to see if the whole thing is still going strong in a few years’ time before proclaiming it as the day everything changed?

The big winners
Congratulations to the Bulldogs and the Melbourne Storm for achieving everything they could have hoped for at the Auckland Nines: taking as few important players as possible and getting the hell out of there at the earliest opportunity without any serious injuries. This seems like the most sensible way of approaching the tournament and is one I’m sure more clubs will follow in future.

Actually it seems to me that the fact that the tournament demands clubs bring a minimum number of their top 10 and top 25 players offers a great opportunity to realise some value from bad contracts. Hey, Adam Blair/Chris Sandow/Peter Wallace – you’re wildly overpaid and useless, please piss off to Auckland to fulfil our top 10 player quota and ensure we don’t risk injuries to anyone important. The Bulldogs played this one perfectly, incidentally: their big guns were Tony Williams and Michael Ennis, stopping off in Auckland en route to reserve grade and the knacker’s yard, respectively.

Most likely to have their season well and truly derailed by the nines? Happily, I’d have to say Souths. They were an injection of flair away from a grand final last season, and losing Luke Keary for most of the season means they may not get that injection in 2014. Maybe they should call the Sharks: they have a guy, apparently.

Incidentally, it’s illustrative of the Stalinist Russia approach to the nines that the wave of injuries has been glossed over with a catch-all take of “oh but players get injured in trials every year”. Obviously this is true, but I’d be amazed if as many players got injured in one-off trials as they did playing three to six hard sprinting, short-sided games in two days.

Good work, Cronulla!
Speaking of looking after your players, it was heartening to see the Cronulla Sharks have learned from their devastating recent experience of being fined $1 million for “serious failings in regard to the welfare of players”. Oh hang, on, that Cronulla Sharks – the one that let an obviously dazed Andrew Fifita carry on playing after a blow to the head… in a pre-season kickabout.

You can have it quick, or you can have it correct
Various branches of the media were all over the lack of video referee at the nines, inevitably pumping this up as a massive win. Here’s the Telegraph, for instance: “With no video help, referees had to back themselves — and in most cases they made the right calls. Endless replays have become one of the big momentum killers in the 13-a-side game.”

And the Guardian’s version: “Another refreshing aspect for the viewer was the absence of video replays on try adjudication… It was interesting to see how few errors the officials made – certainly no more than they make in the average NRL match even after watching half a dozen replays.”

First of all I would seriously question whether the officials “certainly” made fewer mistakes than they would with video refs available. In fact I would say “utter bollocks” to that; the only thing that was different was that there weren’t sufficient replays to show where the refs were making mistakes. “Certainly” a lot of mistakes were made, and equally “certainly” many of those could have been overturned with the benefit of video technology.

Again, it’s context that’s important here. Yes, in some ways it was good to have non-stop action without video ref interruptions (though it has to be said the “video referrals slow the action and lessen the spectacle” argument is one I’ve heard about a thousand times more frequently in print and broadcast media than I’ve ever heard among fans at games). But I really wish someone would acknowledge that this was only possible because nobody really gave a toss about the results.

It’s all well and good seeing a winger go over in the corner with two defenders in close attendance, in a massive flurry of arms and legs, and have the ref and touchy say “Sure, close enough – try. Now bang over a drop goal attempt and get on with it.” But I suspect there would be a somewhat different reaction if the same try is scored in, say, a grand final, no referral is called, and a subsequent replay then clearly shows the winger going into touch before the put down. I’m not sure how “refreshing” that would be.

Stop fucking patronising us, Josh Massoud
An impressive effort from the Telegraph’s Josh Massoud after day one of the nines managed to combine both the most patronising commentary around the tournament and the stupidest.

On the former front, Massoud rolls out the Telegraph’s old favourite view that sport, particularly NRL, would be much better if it was watched by gurning, face-painted applause monkeys who are best off kept as far away from the booze as humanly possible. Take it away, Josh: “Patrons at Eden Park were limited to two drinks each, rather than the standard four. The precaution led to massive queues at every bar, but none of the drinkers seemed unhappy as they compared costumes or exchanged phone numbers.”

I dunno, Josh, I wasn’t there myself but I’ve been to a few events with excessively long bar queues and I’m yet to see one which isn’t characterised by a metric shit tonne of moaning about how impossible it is to get a beer. I guess the nines might have been a little different in the sense that at least no-one there really gave a monkey’s about the games being played. Score another win for the Telegraph’s vision of an ideal sporting crowd, which is mainly there for the jumping castle and the ample parking but might sit through a few minutes of sport provided there’s never any dull bits and nobody swears.

Oh yeah, and by the way, Josh: stop fucking patronising us. Go stand in a beer queue yourself, or at least show some indication of having spoken to some people who have, before you unilaterally pronounce that everyone was just happy to be here, oh yessir massa.

As an aside, Massoud also suggests the crowd at the nines “boasted an equal gender split”. Well I saw plenty of crowd shots on TV, Josh, and if that was an equal gender split all the women must have been in the bar queues. Maybe the TV directors decided to mainly use shots with mostly men in them, which I guess is possible though it seems an unlikely change of direction from the normal approach of  “if you see a blonde chick with her norks out get it on ASAP”.

Now onto the stupidity. Here goes: “Much of the talk in New Zealand centred how this event would measure-up against last weekend’s annual rugby union sevens tournament in Wellington. That event had been running successfully for 15 years, but, in a godsend for league lovers, the latest edition was it’s [sic] most shameful.”

[“Shameful” in this sense presumably refers to lots of people being thrown out of the stadium rather than the poor attendance.]

Given that the whole point of Massoud’s article is to laud the nines as “a blueprint of how to evolve rugby league” I can only posit that join the dots was never his childhood speciality. Here’s his attempt: Wellington rugby union sevens starts 15 years’ ago and is immediately popular, with lots of people in fancy dress and a party atmosphere. Over time Wellington sevens becomes less popular as novelty wears off. Auckland rugby league nines starts this year and is immediately popular, with lots of people in fancy dress and a party atmosphere. Auckland rugby league nines is the blueprint for the future, has totally beaten rugby union in New Zealand and is the greatest thing ever.

Here’s the bottom line: yes, the nines did really well and it seems everyone had a laugh (except all the players with season-ending injuries). But it’s still, fundamentally, a bit of pre-season fun. I wonder if we could contemplate holding back on spunking all over the place until it has (a) been around for a few years and is still successful, and (b) we see if teams are prepared to risk players having seen the brutal injury toll from the 2014 event.