Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2017 i Inside Sport

Set completions are nice (especially when running an eye over the stats sheet after the game), but you know what? Getting the ball over the tryline is much better. With rugby league at the elite level trending toward more teams playing an expansive style of football, the National Rugby League’s best finishers should be looking at greater opportunities this season. Which top try-scorer will get across the line, metaphorically and literally, in season 2017? Read on ... Jordan Rapana (Raiders) $11 Canberra scored in bunches last year, leading the NRL in tries, and Rapana was often on the end of it. The 27-year-old Kiwi crossed 20 times to finish second to Suliasi Vunivalu in the try-scoring stakes, meanwhile leading the league’s stat categories for line breaks and tackle busts. Rapana’s…

“Last year they obviously had a bit of bad luck against Canberra in the semi-final, but it just goes to show how young and resilient this side can be. It’ll be good for the club for everyone to stick around. It adds to the dynasty they can build.” – 2017 recruit James Tamou Moving revelations Did you hear the one about the team that swapped around its numbers six, seven and nine mid-season but finished just two games shy of the grand final? Penrith’s opposition in 2016 certainly didn’t find it funny, either. Central to the Panthers’ charge to the play-offs was 18-year-old Nathan Cleary (pictured above), plucked out of the club’s development system and tested at halfback. His offsider in the six jersey, fellow rising star Bryce Cartwright, also…

“Like Jake Friend, Boyd Cordner is someone who has the respect of both his peers and the coaching staff. In their own way, Jake and Boyd are vital leaders with a huge amount of experience and I have no doubt they’ll work well together.” – coach Trent Robinson Good-Lookin’ Roosters Another redemption story playing out in 2017 besides the obvious Mitchell Pearce offering is Dylan Napa’s (above), rated by no less than Paul Gallen in the pages of this magazine last year as one of the hardest hitters in the game. Napa, indeed one of the best young forwards in rugby league, let himself down at the beginning of last season by breaking Maroons Origin camp curfew, but the Roosters’ recent move to shore up the PM’s XIII rep’s services…

“I am very happy with where our football program is at the present time ... We feel that we have improved the depth of our squad and that a number of our players have room for exciting development.” – Eels chief executive Bernie Gurr French lessons Even after the most savage of bushfires, there is eventually regrowth … The most fitting player for that analogy around Parramatta is young fullback/wing Bevan French (above). As the club’s fans sat in devastated awe following setbacks such as injuries and personal crises to star signings, player misbehaviour and the club being stripped points for major salary cap breaches, 20-year-old Indigenous prospect French debuted on the wing for the Eels in round 12 and gave the joint all it could ask for: hope. “He…

“With Elgey coming back and Haynsey having a full pre-season, it’s been really good.” – Hooker Nathan Peats on having Kane Elgey and Jarryd Hayne running hard in the pre-season. Contend genuinely The Titans scraped into last year’s finals and, despite a top-eight finish being the goal of every side, the boys from the Glitter Strip overachieved in the eyes of many. Neil Henry’s men will enter the season somewhat confident after a solid 2016, but last year’s semi-final appearance could be viewed as artificial. If the Eels had not been stripped 12 points due to salary cap infringements, the Titans would not have featured in September. Half Ash Taylor was a revelation and will need to fire again if his side is to find success. Much of his potential…

“I did a little work with Biggest Loser trainer Shannan Ponton out at Manly. He’s a legend of a bloke. He did a lot of mental work; where my head needs to be to get back in it.” – 2017 recruit Jamal Idris, who dropped 11kg over the summer. Post-Farah world It wouldn’t be the real Wests Tigers if they tidied themselves up attack-wise completely, but coach Jason Taylor wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more control in 2017. “In the second half of last year, we played more controlled footy; still our kind of footy, but more controlled,” he told Big League at the end of the campaign. “We want 24 games of that in 2017, which will get us into the position we want to be.” Following on from…

“WE DO SESSIONS AT THE BEACH AND GET OPEN-WATER PRACTICE, WORKING ON BEING SURROUNDED BY A GROUP OF PEOPLE BECAUSE THAT’S SIMILAR TO HOW WE RACE.” Rio Olympian Ashleigh Gentle is a star of the Australian triathlon scene. The Gold Coast native, who turns 26 this month, was a standout junior who won the world championship at that level in 2010. She had a strong season in 2016, earning selection to the Australian Olympic team in Rio and rising to third in the world rankings. With the second round of the World Triathlon Series to be held on the Gold Coast in April, we speak to Gentle about training for triathlons, how she stays mentally strong and the importance of nutrition. TRAIN FOR EVERYTHING “As triathlon is an Olympic sport,…

I'm not a Warriors fan but I admit they're awesome to watch – on a good day. Wonderful and willing. Wobbly and wayward ... The Warriors. The NRL’s most predictably unpredictable team. This column is for those of you out there, who like me, have fallen one too many times for the Warriors and their wow-ability. They can’t be held entirely accountable for my woeful tipping record, but they are partly to blame. So why is it, as I jot down my top-eight predictions for another season, there they sit among the contenders for the premiership again? I’m not a Warriors fan but I admit they’re awesome to watch – on a good day. It’s just those good days rarely come in succession. Over the last five years the storyline…

WAYNE’S WORLD With Wayne Bennett preparing for his 42nd season of coaching in the top grade, we thought it would be fun to demonstrate graphically just how experienced – and dominant – the Master Coach really is. Bennett began as a rookie mentor back in 1976 at Ipswich in the Queensland comp, which means he’s been coaching at the elite level longer than many of our dear readers have been alive. Feeling young, yet? 7 GRAND FINAL WINS 62% WIN RATE BENNETT THEN DAYLIGHT To prove he’s not just about dominating inexperienced coaches, his career wins even outnumber the second and third winningest mentors of the current NRL crop.…

Mick Crawley’s been a footy coach since he was 18 years old, when John Monie ran Woy Woy Roosters and made his players coach kids. Crawley was given the under-11s. That was in 1979. He’s coached a team every year since. There were years he coached three teams – juniors, seniors, reps. He ran North Sydney Bears' under-16s. Wayne Bennett got him a start with Queensland Rugby League. Graham Murray took him to North Queensland, Neil Henry to Canberra, Bennett to Newcastle, and Ricky Stuart back to Canberra where he oversees the most potent attacking squadron in the game. Crawley is the Green Machine’s Steeden whisperer. He’s the man to whom Stuart defers and delegates when he wants his players thinking attack. It’s this man Raiders fans – and anyone…

“Billy has been back in full training for quite a while now. Hopefully he translates that into a good NRL season. There’s certainly a huge bonus having Bill back and also having Munster as a bit more of a runner.” – Storm assistant coach Jason Ryles Once bitten, not shy From the outside, the Melbourne Storm sometimes appears to take the form of a ruthless professional juggernaut which counts its player losses each off-season before mysteriously reforming and destroying all in front of it. But it would be wrong to sell short the emotional damage and hurt last year’s grand final loss to Cronulla caused the Victorian-based playing group. “Obviously it was devastating,” three-time Storm player of the year Jesse Bromwich shares with Inside Sport. “I saw a little bit…

“If I get through this year well, I’d like to put all my focus into the Cowboys.” – Johnathan Thurston on his impending retirement from representative football. One more ride? When you have Johnathan Thurston in your team, a premiership is always a possibility. But after losing some cattle in the off season, North Queensland could be in for a tough year. The side’s maiden 2015 grand final win was as good as it gets after Thurston potted a field goal in extra-time. But the club failed to recapture such form last season before being bundled out in the preliminary final by Cronulla. The side looked tired, with the expectation a premiership brings seeming to weigh heavily on the club’s shoulders. The team is still a threat but with an…

“I’m very pumped. Just have a good start, that’s what’s on my mind, round one. Try to play consistent because I was really disappointed at the way I started last year.” – Roger Tuivasa-Sheck Initial here ... On the cusp of making the finals for the first time since 2011, the New Zealand Warriors confounded everyone again with a late-season collapse. Same old Warriors: how does a team as talented as this one miss out? At least one major talent was missing, though – Roger Tuivasa-Sheck. RTS had just arrived in a highly anticipated homecoming from the Roosters. But seven games in he tore the ACL in his left knee in an innocuous-looking play. “I was really shocked when I got the news,” he says. “I was in a tackle,…

“I think everyone knows that’s our standard here. We were well below par during those weeks where we were doing it tough.” – Adam Reynolds Bouncing to where? Speaking before the start of last season, Greg Inglis grasped at the volatile fortunes of footy teams. “The same beliefs were still there,” Inglis told Inside Sport. “It’s just: you can have the best preparation you can and lose a game, then have the worst preparation and win a game.” Making sense of how Souths will go has become quite the parlour game over the last couple of years. After the drought-ending premiership in 2014, the Bunnies looked like a juggernaut for years to come, with an unusually youthful roster for a title-winner that boasted actual juggernauts in the shape of the…

“We were looking for a really competent, world-class halfback. It was about signing someone who has been a regular halfback and who has played at the highest level and is competent at getting a team around.” – Head of recruitment Ian Millward on Ben Hunt. Half the battle At time of writing, the St George-Illawarra Dragons were preparing for life without their star signing for 2018, Ben Hunt, with the prospect of the 2015 grand final halfback playing for the joint venture a year early reportedly still a possibility. And boy, could they use him this year. Throughout 2016, the Dragons were rudderless in attack. As Rugby League Week shared in its post-season analysis of the Red V, the Steel-Dragons scored just 341 points, their lowest season total in attack…

as good as it gets a keeper worth considering ho-hum in the bin THE SECOND PHASE BY SIONE FAUMUINA, TROJAN PRESS, $26.95 In the modern era, if a young rugby league player makes an error of judgment – or a series of them – and finds himself splashed across the front and back pages, there’s plenty of support staff on offer to gently cotton-wool the young hero through whatever public hanging he’s about to endure. It wasn’t like that when things went pear-shaped for Kiwi superstar Sione Faumuina. You remember him: At 190cm tall and 101kg, he was a wrecking ball, but one that boasted the ball skills and game smarts of the ideal NRL player. He was 19 years old when he signed on with the Canberra Raiders at…

A SENSE OF WHERE YOU ARE BILL BRADLEY AT PRINCETON BY JOHN MCPHEE (1965) McPhee is a giant in the non-fiction field, a writer who can make any subject interesting, even if it was rocks (literally – he won a Pulitzer for a four-book series on American geology). A Sense Of Where You Are was McPhee’s first book, growing out of a magazine profile for The New Yorker, and it has all the intriguing hints of a master’s early work. But beyond that, it’s the ideal union of writer with his subject – Bradley was an archetypal golden boy, a basketball star who excelled in the classroom, and later delayed his NBA career to spend a couple of years at Oxford. Even back in those days, observers were predicting…

Van Gisbergen proved to be the big beneficiary of Triple Eight's capability. But how does he go about defending? There are more than a dozen different storylines I’m looking forward to ahead of the new Supercars season, which begins once again in the first week of March in Adelaide at the Clipsal 500. But I’ll start with the man everyone is chasing, defending champion Shane van Gisbergen. Frankly, I didn’t expect in preseason last year that SVG would go so well, even having made the switch to the Triple Eight team. Remember that there was a big talking point about Triple Eight’s third car – and Roland Dane saying he didn’t want three cars. As it would happen, they finished first, second and fourth in the championship. With the team…

Most of the football clubs have media training sessions, but I don’t think they're that great. I get annoyed. It’s a voice even master impersonator Billy Birmingham can’t crack. Ken Sutcliffe’s smooth, faultless delivery, along with his coiffed, tight black mop, and “sexy eyes” of a “male model from Mudgee” – as "Max Walker’s wife" would tell you – have been a staple of our sporting TV screens since the early 1980s. After quitting school aged 15, Sutcliffe became a radio try-hard, calling football games and DJ-ing in the bush with his old mate Ray Warren. He headed to TV land and Townsville, and came under the notice of Wide World Of Sports guru David Hill. Soon enough he was in a navy blue embroidered jacket with Tangles, Chappelli and…

“All that stuff doesn’t mean anything, though, does it? We’ve got to turn up and play. We lost a few games last year by big numbers also, so we’ve got to try and get that out of our game.” – Raiders fullback Jack Wighton, on expectations. No longer the raided After so many years of having things taken from them, the Canberra Raiders enjoyed becoming the takers last season. They took chunks out of opponents, grabbed bags of tries and claimed the club’s first top-four finish in 13 years. They even stole the Viking clap from Iceland ... Ricky Stuart’s team comes into this year with genuine expectations – not only because of what the Raiders achieved in 2017, but because their roster returns near intact. For supporters that had…

“We’ve focussed on how we need to be better than where we were last year ... Last year has been and gone.” – James Maloney Lights off, what’s next? With regularity, the subject of first times comes up. Sharks forward Wade Graham was asked during preseason training about how the club felt about travelling to England, never terribly convenient so close to the start of the NRL season, to play Wigan in the World Club Challenge. “It’s a game we’re all looking forward to,” Graham said, straight-faced. “Obviously, it’s the first time the club’s been able to compete in it.” No one can begrudge Cronulla enjoying every bit of privilege that’s extended to a reigning premier. The club and its supporters surely waited long enough for it, and its resilient…

“Obviously it’s not about the money and he [Bennett] knows I am here for the right reasons. I feel like I am and I feel like I have got a lot to prove.” – Recruit Benji Marshall on signing with Brisbane. Bucking Up After almost clinching the 2015 premiership, the Broncos were nowhere near as dominant in 2016. The hangover from losing the grand final in the dying seconds before an extra-time win to the Cowboys seemed to weigh heavily on the boys last season, whether they would admit it or not. Season 2017 is a clean slate of sorts for Wayne Bennett’s boys, who have the squad to trouble any side. Their halves of Ben Hunt and Anthony Milford are one of the best pairings in the game and…

“It’s always disappointing to go out the way we did ... We want to start the year really well and hopefully get that early top-four spot. I think that’s pretty crucial.” – Josh Jackson Expect better With the offseason turmoil that roiled Canterbury, it was easy to forget the club made the finals last season. But expectations in Belmore run to a higher standard, and four straight losses to end the year – and the subsequent putsch that almost ousted Des Hasler – left a more lasting impression than anything else. The last of those losses, the first-week finals elimination at the hands of Penrith, made the biggest mark. The way the younger, more dynamic Panthers (who had the same win-loss record as Canterbury) ran away in the second half…

“I thought I was ready to sort of be the guy. We’ll see how that works out. It’s not about individuals.” – Recruit Blake Green on taking the main playmaking duties from Daly Cherry-Evans. Proving their worth Manly was touted as a genuine top-four prospect at the start of last season on the back of a string of key signings including Dylan Walker, Nate Myles, Martin Taupau and Daly Cherry-Evans but fell well short to miss the finals for the second successive year. Their 2017 season looks just as grim with veterans Brett Stewart and Steve Matai expected to hang up the boots due to injury. Front-row recruit Myles underperformed and will need to fire this season to justify his salary, as will $10 million man Cherry-Evans. The halfback had…

“He’s devastated,›so it’s important we consider Jarrod’s wellbeing through this process. This is going to be incredibly difficult for him.” – Knights chief Matt Gidley on Jarrod Mullen’s positive test to a prohibited substance. Dark Knight returns The Knights have been the NRL’s perennial strugglers for several years and after collecting successive wooden spoons, the future remains bleak. Not since favourite son Andrew Johns was on the books have the boys from the Hunter been a legitimate title contender. And with several key losses and controversies in the off-season, 2017 looks no different. Their 2016 campaign was an extremely tough one for the club as the team failed to fire on any level. Injuries and a lack of experience were telling, as new coach Nathan Brown did his best to…