KEY POINTS:
As always, some of the biggest hits and the most-newsworthy grapples of the NRL have taken place away from the field. From the departure of Sonny Bill Williams to a drive-by shooting in Kings Cross, the 2008 competition has provided plenty of mad moments. The best of them are laughable and the worst are a disgrace.
1: Will-he-or-won't-he-get- the-damn-try
There's this line, right. It's a white line. And, once you run over the line with the ball in your mitts, you push the ball into the turf. It's pretty much the whole point of the game. It's called scoring a try. You can kick the ball over the line then fall on the ball; you can skid over the line with the ball tucked into your armpit and tacklers hanging off your legs. You can even moonwalk over the damn line if you want. But once you are over the line - particularly in the dying moments of a must-win playoff final against the reigning champions with a try needed to keep your season alive - for crying out loud, score the damn try.
Rest assured that whatever excesses of piss-taking and japery were engaged in when the Warriors enjoyed their much-deserved Mad Monday end-of-season booze up, reminding Michael Witt about the importance of forcing the ball for the try would have been top of the list.
2: Spitting at the touch-judge
There's a word for humans who lack the capacity to control the inward and outward flow of fluids from their bodies. They're called babies. Not that you'd really want to call Wade McKinnon a great big baby to his face, but there was something a tad naive about the fullback's claim that he couldn't help gobbing at touch-judge Brett Suttor during the Warrior's round-25 match against the Panthers.
The Warriors had struggled through the majority of the season without their ace attacking weapon and his indelicate hoick - clearly not aimed directly at the match official yet daft as a brush all the same - robbed them of his talents just after his return from injury. And just when they needed him most.
3: Selecting McKinnon to face Manly
I suppose we're all geniuses with hindsight, but McKinnon was dreary against Manly. The much-acclaimed star looked ring-rusty following his second unplanned withdrawal from the season's action. The man who delivered the most for the Warriors throughout the knockout matches, Lance Hohaia, cooled his heels on the substitution bench.
4: The Brisbane Broncos say 'see ya later, Wayne Bennett'
He's had more grand final wins than any coach in NRL history and he had the longest stay at a single club of any coach. With one disapproving grimace, Wayne Bennett could make a 120kg secondrower tuck in his shirt, pull up his shorts and do another 100 push ups.
Whatever magic deal the Broncos worked to keep Bennett happily ensconced in the Brisbane fold for 21 years of title chasing was worth it for the credibility and mana the guy brought to the club.
The moment the avowed non-smoker, non-drinker and non-gambler decided he was leaving Brisbane to take up the coaching reins down in Sydney with the Dragons, the Bronco's team ethic went into freefall. A side that should have been focused on the playoff race suddenly found time in their busy schedule to get on the turps. A lot.
Cue sexual assault charges against three players - with drug allegations and amateur photography of the deed thrown in for good measure (providing the photographic evidence when you're the defendant in a sexual assault case, eh? Very thoughtful). Then the team's skipper Darren Lockyer puts his biggest hit of the season on a bar manager who was impolitic enough to ask Lockyer and his pals to stop acting like drunken oafs.
How does the club handle this? Broncos chief executive Bruno Cullen blames the press, observing that a part-time netballer got off lightly after she was busted for drink driving.
What price the Broncos finishing below Bennett's new charges, the Dragons, next year?
5: The Bird, the glass and his girlfriend's face
Oddly - and sadly - domestic violence has been one of the biggest sports stories of the year on this side of the Tasman. Cronulla's Greg Bird put it up the newslist in Australia as well, appearing in court in late August charged with maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm on his 24-year-old American girlfriend Kathryn Milligan at his flat in Cronulla. Nice guy that he is, he also allegedly asked his flatmate to take the rap.
But this sorry affair doesn't end with Bird's alleged violent dumbness and cowardliness. "She just wants to go back to the way things were prior to the incident coming to the notice of police," Milligan's lawyer has told reporters. Bird is due in court next Thursday.
6: The Sonny Bill Williams saga
When the 2008 NRL season started, Sonny Bill Williams was hated only by people who didn't support the Bulldogs. But hating Sonny Bill has become the biggest growth industry in Australian sport and he now infamously pips Amrozi, Bali bomber, for the title of Australia's most-hated person. It's a strange world when Sonny Bill is regarded as having done more damage to league's public image than Greg Bird. All because the poor bloke wanted to play rugby (for the one club in the world with the biggest reputation for chucking vast amounts of cash around willy-nilly).
Perhaps even more bonkers than the nature of Dollar Bills' arrival in the south of France are the efforts of Labour MP Shane Jones to get him to sign for Northland. "I look forward to meeting the various iwi leaders to test whether they will be willing to contribute to meet the costs of signing of Sonny Bill Williams and bringing him home," said Jones. And this guy gets a say in running the country?
7: Mirror mirror, on the wall
North Queensland Cowboys forward Sione Faumuina was arrested for throwing something at a mirror in the Uber nightclub in Brisbane. Released by the Warriors for "cases of serious misconduct" related to alcohol back in 2006, the former partner of netballer Temepara George must have seen something he didn't like in the mirror.
8: Shooting stars of the NRL
It's bad enough that State of Origin players are wandering about Sydney in the wee small hours getting into fights. But Parramatta's Jarryd Hayne and St George's Mark Gasnier took things one step further, managing to get themselves into a fight that ended with the pair being shot at in Kings Cross. Drive-by shootings in Sydney, sexual assaults all over the place. All the NRL needs now is a good underground dogfighting circuit and it'll be able to look the NFL in the eye.
9: Smith's grapple and Bellamy's tantrum
What was madder: Cameron Smith trying to rip off Bronco Sam Thaiday's head in the playoff, his coach Craig Bellamy raving about conspiracy amongst the NRL judiciary, or the members of that judiciary suing Bellamy for his comments?
Correct answer: all as mad as each other.
Smith's little meltdown cost his side its captain and most-influential player for Sunday's final. Bellamy's rant cost the club a A$50,000 ($59,000) fine and revealed much about Melbourne's thin veneer of confidence in grand final week.
10: 'Hardcore' fans' outrage at Warriors ticket prices
Let's be clear: SuperSport is no fan of ticket scalpers. There's little worse than paying jacked-up prices because some hood has cornered the market on tickets for that must-see Wiggles gig. But those who claimed they were "diehard" Warriors fans and were being robbed by nefarious scalpers for access to the playoff match against the Roosters at Mt Smart might consider getting season tickets next year. Unless that's a little too "diehard" for them.
