Good News For NZ Rugby League

Today the Warriors signed Parramatta Eels players, Feleti Mateo and Krisnan Inu to three year deals. This is great news for the club, but the Warriors will need to sign a decent sized prop to take the ball up, if they want to improve their chances of playing football in September! In other signing news, the Warriors have also managed to sign Michael Luck to the end of the 2012 season. Luck consistently works hard and provides good leadership on the field, regardless of whether there is a C next to his name.

Last Friday night the Kiwis played the Kangaroos in the annual ANZAC test, although the boys went down 12-8 there was plenty to be happy about. Kearny put a young and relatively inexperienced team  on the field. Many people expected a 30 point plus blow out but the rain proved once again to be the great leveller and the boys in black put in a pretty gutsy defensive effort. I will look forward to seeing the Kiwis on home turf at the end of the year as part of the Four Nations tournament.

Because of the Kiwis game, the Warriors had a bye and banked two valuable competition points. Lets hope the rest has done them good and they are able to produce a solid effort at home against the Cowboys this weekend. This game should see the return of injured players, Mannering, Vatuvei and Seymor.

If it seems too good to be true...

It usually is! I wasn't to surprised to learn about the Melbourne Storm's breech of the NRL's salary cap, but I was a bit stunned in regards to the punishment that was handed down to them - not that it wasn't justly deserved. In fact the whole debacle has inspired me to get back on the blog for 2010.

I think everyone has had their suspicions about how they managed to keep such a talented pool of players there under the salary cap. My Dad (who can be incredibly vocal about this type of thing) has voiced his opinion on this a few times over the last couple of years. Our whole family was in Sydney for the 2007 Melbourne v Manly Grand Final and witnessed that amazing win from the Storm and were blown away with the way they played.

Shane and I after the Final

As a fan of the game you feel cheated to have looked at these guys in awe and I really do feel for the Storm fans. I hope that the Storm fans do stick by their team through the 2010 season as it would be a shame to see the franchise in Melbourne go under.

It will be interesting to see what team turns up on Sunday to face the Warriors (who aren't tracking to bad this year - and thanks to the Storm's fall from grace - are now back in the top 8). There are rumours to flying around that the Warriors may be facing an under 20's side, personally I believe that the Storms first grade team will turn up but I don't know if their heads will be in the game. Cameron Smith is an absolute sulk and is their captain and will set the mood for the team, so I think a lot of how the Storm will play will come down to how he decides to handle this.

As always I have my fingers crossed for the Warriors, I'm hoping that they have gotten over that disastrous effort they produced last weekend.