Look we know it’s late, but since they went to so much trouble presenting it, we’d be rude if we didn’t share this week’s Queensland Cup preview.
There’s still three games left for you to enjoy too, including a game at Stradbroke Island on Channel 9 at 1:30pm. So have a read and a look around Nothing But League while you’re there.
Real League fans talking about real Rugby League.
This week’s Queensland Cup preview.
Big news in Rugby League has been the confirmation of Daly Cherry-Evans using the NRL loophole and turning his back on a deal with the Gold Coast Titans.
A lot of people have been quick to condemn the move (or lack there of) but they don’t know the thinking behind it. Each big decision in life should be accompanied by a pro and con checklist, and we are proud to announce we have obtained the very pros and cons that was used in the decision to stay in Sydney.
BEACHES
GOLD COAST – Surfers Paradise, Main Beach, Cooloongatta etc.
SYDNEY – Bondi, Manly, Cronulla, etc.
VERDICT – Tie (Gold Coast 1 – Sydney 1)
TV SHOWS
GOLD COAST – The GC, The Strip, Gold Coast Cops
SYDNEY – Everything and anything else.
VERDICT – Sydney (Sydney 2 – Gold Coast 1)
RIPLEY’S BELEIVE IT NOT
GOLD COAST – Yes
SYDNEY – No
VERDICT – Gold Coast (Gold Coast 2 – Sydney 2)
THEME PARKS
GOLD COAST – Sea World, Dream World, Wet N Wild, Movie World
SYDNEY – Luna Park
VERDICT – Gold Coast (Gold Coast 3 – Sydney 2)
WEATHER
GOLD COAST – Better
SYDNEY – Good
VERDICT – Gold Coast (Gold Coast 4 – Sydney 2)
FAMILY REASONS
GOLD COAST – Yes
SYDNEY – Yes
VERDICT – Tie (Gold Coast 5 – Sydney 3)
TALLEST BUILDING
GOLD COAST – Q1 1st
SYDNEY – Citigroup Centre – =9th
VERDICT – Gold Coast (Gold Coast 6 – Sydney 3)
BETTER CHANCE OF BEING ASKED TO DO A LOWES AD
GOLD COAST – No
SYDNEY – Yes
VERDICT – Sydney (Gold Coast 6 – Sydney 4)
HAS A BASKETBALL TEAM
GOLD COAST – No
SYDNEY – Yes
VERDICT – Sydney (Gold Coast 6 – Sydney 5)
COLOUR OF JERSEY FOR A QUEENSLANDER
GOLD COAST – Blue
MANLY/SYDNEY – Maroon
VERDICT – Manly/Sydney (Gold Coast 6 – Sydney 6)
BEST PUBLIC TRANSPORT
GOLD COAST – G Train
SYDNEY – Manly Ferry
Verdict – Tie (Gold Coast 7 – Sydney 7)
BIGGEST AFL NAME
GOLD COAST – Warwick Capper
SYDNEY – Buddy Franklin
VERDICT – Gold Coast (Gold Coast 8 – Sydney 7)
COMMONWEALTH GAMES
GOLD COAST – Yes
SYDNEY – No
VERDICT – Gold Coast (Gold Coast 9 – Sydney 7)
HAS AN A LEAGUE TEAM
GOLD COAST – No
SYDNEY – Yes, 2
VERDICT – Sydney (Gold Coast 9 – Sydney 8)
OBSCURE SPORTING TEAMS
GOLD COAST – Daikyo Dolphins, Gold Coast Rollers, Gold Coast Giants/Seagulls/Chargers
SYDNEY – Not really
VERDICT – Gold Coast (Gold Coast 10 – Sydney 8)
LIKELIHOOD OF TEAM BEING AROUND IN 5 YEARS
GOLD COAST – No
MANLY/SYDNEY – Yes
VERDICT – Sydney (Gold Coast 10 – Sydney 9)
BRIDGE WORK
GOLD COAST – Bridge to Southport or Jupiter’s Casino
SYDNEY – Sydney Harbour Bridge
VERDICT – Sydney (Gold Coast 10 – Sydney 10)
So… it’s all tied, we’d better have a tie-breaker.
MONEY
GOLD COAST – Good
SYDNEY – Better
VERDICT – Sydney
FINAL SCORE
GOLD COAST 10
SYDNEY 11
As you can see it wasn’t an easy decision, so maybe we should all lay off DCE. He’s done the math and the homework.
We were going to abandon this week’s column due to lack of our own interest, but we decided to go back on our thoughts and do it.
Just like Daly Cherry-Evans who decided today that he likes Manly after all and will stay for probably more money.
It’s not his fault, if the game allows it and players are looking after their best interests, then who can blame them.
But it sucks for the fans and the clubs who lose out on the deal, and the sooner the NRL adopt a system that means players can’t sign for another team until after the current season the better. Arguments about players not being able to move in the tiny three and more months between end of season and start of serious training are hard to agree with when you consider other sports which have to move continents in their off season of around a month and less.
What will happen no doubt is the NRL will eventually admit the AFL does it better when it comes to running their own game, again, and copy that system. Not the draft, just the trade week. But like Channel 9 the NRL aren’t in the business of listening to fans.
Anyways onto to this week’s multi tips.
BRISBANE to beat Manly
After being disorientated by playing on a night other than Friday the Broncos return to the usual timeslot and should see off Manly whose performances of late warrant a position higher on the ladder.
GOLD COAST +6.5 start v Wests Tigers
Gold Coast were as good as Souths last weekend, and were unlucky to lose. Wests Tigers are coming off the bye which is always hard to predict.
CANBERRA +6.5 start v Newcastle
Canberra have been much better on the road this year and who could blame them with the cool winter games in Canberra. They go to Newcastle who were good against NZ last weekend without winning. One wonders what excuse Ricky Stuart could come up with if they lose.
Despite failing to see what Ricky was actually upset about, you can’t blame him for not saying anything to the press. In this world of sanitised sports personalities it would be good if they were allowed to speak their mind. How about a licence/points system which would give 12 points a year to say what you want, and the points lost depends on the offence. So you could chip away at the establishment or have one big spray a year without fine.
SOUTHS -7.5 start v NZ
Souths haven’t played well lately, and they are due. Hopefully they get a fit Inglis. NZ meanwhile very rarely put two good games together and the double travel from Auckland to Perth wasn’t very nice.
STORM -5.5 start v Penrith
Penrith played well for a 20 minutes burst last weekend against the Eels, Melbourne were well beaten by the Roosters. Hard to see the Storm putting two bad ones in a row together.
SHARKS +12.5 start v Roosters.
The Sharks surprisingly beat the Roosters easy last time around and we say it can happen again. Wishful thinking given the Tricolours excellent form last round.
DRAGONS +4.5 v Bulldogs
Hard to imagine that the Dragons are the betting outsiders for a team on top of the table. St George Illawarra seem to have found the attacking goodness to go with the solid defence. Not bad for a team that looked a popular pick for bottom three.
EELS +8.5 start v Cowboys
Eels were good against Souths and Penrith and will need to be against the in form Cowboys. North Queensland were lucky to beat Manly last week, and may struggle to do the same in Sydney this week.
MULTI TOTAL = $65 for $1.
Don’t fret, it’s here. Well the link anyway. Your weekly catch up of all things Intrust Super Cup and Queensland Cup, which are both the same thing is available at our favourite Rugby League website.
Click on the R12 review right now.
Welcome to another week of the weekly Sporting round up. It’s on a Tuesday this week for no good reason, and given the usual amount of readers shouldn’t cause too much trouble.
FA CUP: FOUR GOALS GOOD, NO GOALS BAD.
Pity about the kick off time for Australian fans but it was some performance from Arsenal as they dismantled Aston Villa 4-0. We predicted 4-2 on the back of Christian Benteke’s recent goal scoring form, but he was missing as was the rest of the team.
Arsenal put one of those performances together that they threaten to do so many times throughout the year, and a repeat against the big boys might see us with more than a one horse race for the EPL next year. A couple of more buys like Alexis Sanchez and they will be some prospect.
Aston Villa turned their promising end of the year into a turd as they were flogged by Southampton, lost to relegated Burnley at home and well beaten in the FA Cup. If that form continues into the new season and Benteke’s chips are cashed in, they might follow through on the relegation they’ve been threatening for some time.
FIFA SUCKS
I’d better be careful, if we say too much it will end up our fault the alleged millions were siphoned off for decades. Sepp Blatter was returned for a term that will hopefully provide him enough time to clean up the evidence from his time in charge. Looking for plenty of smoke around Zurich.
Here’s what we thought on Friday about how to fix it.
ANOTHER GREAT AUSTRALIAN BATTLER WINS ON US GOLF TOUR
Hot on the heels of Gurgler favourite Rod Pampling’s win on the Web.com tour, another Aussie down on his luck won the tournament that Pampling used to put his name in lights a few years back.
Steven Bowditch won the Byron Nelson with ease. An 8 under first round set him up nicely, but the 6 under finishing round proved his quality and the four stroke gap was a deserved reward for a man who recently battled depression.
Battling depression can’t be easy when as a golfer you spend 5 hours at a time by yourself, and for lowly amateurs that time is spent using and discovering new four letter words. So we tip our Hat to another Aussie golfer who now will have the comfort of a tour card and lots of zeroes to move onwards and upwards.
YOUR OFFICAL ROD PAMPLING UPDATE
Ranking 182 down from 185
Last Weekend:
AT & T BYRON NELSON – Tied 22nd
Playing on exemption for a previous win, our man ended up a very respectable equal 22nd. Some of his best.
MIGUEL ANGEL JIMINEZ HOLE IN ONE UPDATE
No Aces this week. But you should still check out his dancing from last week’s Weekly here.
RANGERS STAY DOWN FIGHTING
Glasgow Rangers long fightback to the Scottish Premier League ended at the playoff stage with Motherwell who gave Rangers a touch up at home and away.
A fight duly broke out as Rangers showed glimpses of why they aren’t exactly missed in Scotland’s top flight. Another year of second tier football may give them a chance to do it better next year.
ASK DR SPORTZ
Q. What have been your favourite on field sporting fights?
Ric Nattrass-Creeque, Richlands, QLD
Great question, whilst this Doctor is not for fighting in general, sometimes sporting fights can be funny, and that’s what I enjoy.
There’s nothing better than a scuffle between team mates, or funnier than at a boxing weigh-in.
But the best sports fighting of all time belongs to the F1 classic between Nelson Piquet and Eliseo Salazar. Watch for the worst attempt of kickboxing ever, and around the 54 second mark where Salazar looks for the biggest hole he can dig himself into.
Here’s our weekly video collection of finest fights.
THIS WEEK’S SUPER MULTI
AUSTRALIA to beat West indies
FREMANTLE to beat Richmond
MELBOURNE +30.5 start v Collingwood
VETTEL to win Canadian GP
BARCELONA to win Champions League Final
TIGER WOODS to win Memorial Tournament
$1 pays $786
SPORTING HIGHLIGHTS
THU to MON
CRICKET – FIRST TEST – Aust v WI (Fox Sports)
FRI
NRL – BRONCOS v MANLY (Ch9)
FRI to MON
CANADIAN F1 GP (Fox Sports)
P1/P2 from 11:45pm Fri
P3 from 11:45pm Sat
Qual from 3:00am Sun
Race from 4:00am Mon
FRI to MON
GOLF – MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT (Fox Sports)
From 3:00am
SUNDAY
BARCELONA v JUVENTUS CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL (SBS)
From 4:00am
It’s State of Origin time and The Gurgler Shop has some new specials for the discerning sports collector.
Forget who has won how many series and who has scored whatever whenever, The Gurglers Shop brings the forgotten rreasures that defined the State of Origin series of the past.
All priced to sell, get your fingers clicking on the below specials.
[huge_it_gallery id=”14″]
Normally on a Friday night The Gurgler unloads its thoughts on the upcoming weekend of football, but it’s hard to talk about any other subject than the arrests of FIFA executive during the week. That and there’s not much left on the field to talk about. Like Arsenal winning the FA Cup 4-2.
Was it really a surprise that the FIFA executive were arrested this week, or was the surprise that finally something happened. There have been countless articles, reports, TV Shows highlighting the corruption within FIFA, yet up until this week nothing has been or looked like being done about it.
We’re not talking about any sporting body here. Football is played in just about every country in the world, and the World Cup is one of the two biggest sporting events in the world, and the only one that is interesting. It brings in a reported $US4 Billion plus, and where does that money go? Well into movies laughably showing FIFA’s connection with the world and allegedly into the pockets of the people running the game.
At the top of the tree is Sepp Blatter, an almost laughable figure akin to a Mr Sheen, in which he has more comparisons than looks. Because as he refuses to step down from the election, because he has no idea of what’s been going on. Please – no boss of any organisation can be around for 15+ years and not know everything that goes on. He’s either lying or so incompetent that he shouldn’t run either way. Or win.
But he is, and he will win, because all of the developing football nations stand a better chance of improving under Sepp, and their numbers will outrank the big powers from Europe and USA. So with another X years of him at the helm, it’s time to admit that you can sit back and keep whining about the same clowns or do something about it.
The World Cups in Russia and Qatar look like dud tournaments, with Russia’s love for anyone out of a narrow line of acceptance and crime issues, and Qatar’s heat forcing everyone else to change on top of the 1000’s of killed migrant workers by the time 2022 rolls around given the current rate of mortality.
That leaves only one choice for those who are opposed to FIFA and willing to do something about it. A mere boycott of the World Cup is not enough, the World Cup will continue on regardless, what needs to happen is an alternative World Cup played at the same time.
Long term gain always has a measure of short term pain, just ask the professional cricketers around the world after World Series Cricket made their sport a gold mine. Sure they had to play in secondary stadiums and at night with what looked like pyjamas, but you can’t deny the end results of today with million dollar cricketers. At that time the real tests continued with second and third string players, and whilst they keep the official stats, the real interest was in the Supertests, because they had the best players.
The Super League battle of the 90’s in Rugby League also transformed the sport, and they also had to suffer some short term pain. It wasn’t as affected as the game was a little stronger than cricket, but the Super League / NRL split of talent was more equal.
But both have a powerful message to the countries who want change, do it yourself, but be prepared for some pain.
Think about it, if the unhappiest of the footballing nations – Europe, USA, Australia, and some support of the best players in the world from the other nations like Messi, Suarez, James, they could build a footballing nations tournament that would at least match a world cup without them.
Putting the neutral glasses on, would you really get excited about a World Cup with no European teams. Without the best players. Of course not. At a minimum if only Europe and a handful of sympathisers were to break away, they could just make the Euro Championships every two years, with invitations to other nations like Australia.
A competition to rival the depleted World Cup would also attract sponsors, and taking them away from FIFA is a step in the right direction.
It may never happen, but neither will change in FIFA and World Football until someone steps up, other than Sepp Blatter that is.
Rivalry round in the Intrust Super Cup this weekend and you need to know about it.
Thankfully the good people at Nothing But League have a comprehensive preview of the upcoming set of fixtures.
Read it now here.
Our sporting weekly returns in all it’s glory. Here we get whatever sporting beefs and best off our chest for another week. Plus we try to give the most extravagant multi that Centrebet will allow.
MIGUEL ANGEL JIMINEZ AKA THE MECHANIC’S FINELY TUNED IRONS – HOLE IN ONE GOLD
A week after our favourite golfer Rod Pampling returned to the limelight our favourite international golfer Miguel Angel Jiminez holed in one for the second time in two weeks to light up the European Tour in his usual style.
Following on from his ace the previous week in his homeland tournament in Spain, he got another at the Wentworth course in England this week for his third of the year. He also now has 10 in the European Tour which is an all time record.
His ability with his irons is in equal measure to his greatness as the most interesting sportsman on earth. The Cigar smoking, Car loving, Spaniard is a breath of fresh air, well maybe not whilst the cigar is in motion, to the sanitised scrubbed down cliché ridden sportsman of today.
He’s no mug either, with age no barrier to achievement as he is consistently in the sharp end of most tournament, but will always be number 1 on the Gurgler charts.
He’s hard not to love, so here’s an assortment of his finest work. Including all three of this year’s holes in one. The dancing is also some of his best.
Other non-Jiminez Sport in Brief…
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA RETAINS HIS MIDDLE NAME AND WINS INDY 500
Tired of running around in circles for forty times a year Montoya returned to where he developed his name in motor racing as a previous Indycar champion.
His win of the big race will justify his return to the series after a fascinating battle for the 500 miles. Not that we can talk from experience as we only got up with 20 laps to go and were rewarded with the tight finish.
WESTS TIGERS v NQ COWBOYS – ZERO POINTS FOR ALL
In an advertisement for why the NRL should take a break around origin, the only game in the NRL on Saturday didn’t deserve a winner. They got one with a 79th minutes try to the Cowboys after an error. Thank god for Foxtel IQ for the ability to watch it in fast forward.
ENGLAND RUGBY PLAY IT SAFE
English Rugby announced a 50 man squad for the upcoming 15 player World Cup. Who knows it might be some new rule change allowing 20odd reserves. Actually, why do I care it’s England and Rugby Union.
ASK DR SPORTZ
Do you think Mercedes spoiled Lewis Hamilton’s race on purpose?
H. Rothengatter, Amsterdam.
I do, but we’ve already discussed this and I can’t be bothered redoing it. Read it here.
THE GURGLER’S SUPER MULTI
$1 Multi pays a HUGE $1,188
EUROPA LEAGUE
Dnipro to beat Sevilla
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
Barcelona to beat Juventus
FA CUP
Arsenal to beat Aston Villa
AUSTRALIAN FRIENDLIES
Syndey / Draw No Bet v Tottenham
AUSTRALIAN FRIENDLIES
Chelsea to beat Sydney
SCOTTISH PL PLAYOFF
Rangers to beat Motherwell
AFL
Hawthorn with -99.5 Start v Gold Coast
AFL
Melbourne +40.5 start v Port Adelaide
Not long now until the origin kicks off. The coverage that is. But at least you get the chance to be well liquored by the time Kenny Sutcliffe has done his thing, followed by all the cast, and hopefully Andrew John’s excellent use of technology for origin insights.
So settle back for one of the games of the year, and without doubt the most anticipated first tackle in rugby league each. Each first tackle providing a window into your teams chances for the series.
If it is 8:15pm and the game still hasn’t kicked off, grab yourself another beverage, put your last try scorer bets on (recommended betting option from The Gurgler) and you can even amuse yourself with our obscure forgotten origin XIII from one of our previous stories. Click on it here now.
So here’s our best bets and tips for Origin 1. As ever bets responsibly by covering as many different options so you can’t lose.
Before I go, can I please mention – Dale Shearer, and can we bow our heads and remember the long departed but not forgotten Kicking Duel.
GURGLER’S BEST BETS/TIPS
SCORE – NSW 16/18 v QLD 10/12
FIRST TRYSCORER:
Darius Boyd or
Will Hopoate
LAST TRYSCORER:
Mitchell Pierce $21,
Boyd Cordner $21,
Cooper Cronk $26,
No one $81
MAN OF THE MATCH:
David Klemmer $41
Andrew Fifita $26
Mitchell Pierce $10
– and if he does it’s your fault Courier Mail. Arguably the worst paper in the world.
NOVELTY BETS
What time the bloody game actually kick off?
8:23pm
How many of the players on each side will actually sing the national anthem?
QLD 12 NSW 14
Ray Warren mentions of Greg Inglis being a Queenslander.
12.
Brett Finch contributing anything worthwhile.
0.
TV Promos mentioned by commentators during game.
3.
Mentions of betting markets through coverage.
21.
Chances of State of Origin being stand alone so the NRL doesn’t suck in the meantime.
minus 9.
