Back to Brisbane after 24 years, and the grand final that still causes arguments to rage theroar.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theroar.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Rugby League: Not sick - but not well A Set the default text size A Set large text size
Replay A Set the default text size A Set large text size
The idea that ‘rugby league is dying’ has been rightly ridiculed in recent days as a baseless trope – and yet watching Melbourne excoriate Sydney Roosters last night still left many of us who’ve enjoyed a long relationship with the game feeling distinctly uneasy.
Yes, as commentators on podcasts and in editorials have pointed out, rugby league has been ‘dying’ since the weeks following its invention – as a breakaway competition, not a distinct sport – in 1895. It survived 13 years in complete isolation up to 1907, it survived two actual world wars and a third of its own making and it survived its parent code going openly professional, theoretically removing its very reason to exist.
Brett Dallas had a promising career and was a former State of Origin hero. Robert Craddock examines his downfall and the personal battles that have brought him undone.
Richie Mo unga (C) and his Crusaders teammates celebrate winning he 2021 Super Rugby title. The word hate is as overworked in the sporting lexicon as a box kick or scrum re-set on the rugby pitch. Remember the eight-year-old kid who held up the I Hate You, Auckland sign at Lancaster Park in 1997 when the Blues were at the peak of their powers? That boy - Dean Anderson - had a pretty good take on the word hate when he grew up to be a man.
Stuff in 2013 - when he was 24 - Anderson said: Now I can see how people would get quite wound up about it, but at the time - being an 8-year-old kid - I hated brussel sprouts, and I hated peas.