I was robbed last Friday. Again. I was playing in a four-man ambrose for the annual Pickers' golf day. My team carded a net 57. That's 14 under par, a winning score on any day of the week.
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Not on Friday though.
On Friday the powers that be, seeming to take a leaf out of the currently controversial book of not scoring kids' sporting events, decided that the golfing strokes on the day weren't going to matter and that the judicious method for deciding the winners would be through the random drawing of the cards out of a bloody hat!
Our team, operating under the mistaken premise that the prizes awarded would be performance based, had lost balls, thrown clubs, trudged through considerably inclement conditions and gone through all the various angst typical of the golfing experience.
We would have been far better to have stayed in the clubhouse, out of the elements, nursing a soothing drink; to have filled in our official card with conjecture and then thrown it in the hat with the rest of the chancers.
I'm not here to talk about golf though. The point to this introduction, apart from to illustrate another sporting injustice, is that, towards the end of the day, looking out from the clubhouse at the torrential rain, I said to my team-mates: "The footy'll be off tomorrow."
My prediction turned out to be entirely wrong, and so on Saturday I found myself at the Sportsground watching the Pickers take on their arch-rivals, the Cessnock Goannas.
Maitland didn't do so well, but I have to say that the state of the ground was a credit to those responsible.
The ability of the facility to manage such difficult conditions was such that the Sunday semi-finals - originally slated to for Newcastle - were transferred to the Maitland Sportsground.
The success of this asset bodes very well for the projected quality of our, now under-construction, regional athletics complex.
So impressive was the facility that I perceive it to be not beyond the realm of possibility that we could at some stage see Newcastle Rugby League grand finals being played at Maitland.
I had a look this week at some of the numbers regarding draws. I dug out a bunch of old programs and found draws in the old days to occur about as often as the proverbial hens' dentures.
In the current era of the golden point we have virtually no draws at all.
But ... we have, what appears to me, to be an inordinate amount of tied scores - which then go into golden point. I counted that, thus far in the season, we have had 14 games decided by one point (predominantly golden) - which means we've had close to 14 games drawn at full-time! That's a lot of draws.
Further, there have been 18 games decided by only two points.
This preponderance of such tight finishes over-strains credibility and I'm not buying it. I believe the results are being contrived by referees operating under instructions to encourage exciting football.
I've said it before - subjective refereeing undermines the game. I don't like it.
While on the numbers, I noticed that both the Storm and the Roosters have scored in excess of 600 points this season.
The Storm have conceded less than 300, while the Roosters have given away only 347.
This means that the two best attacking teams in the comp are also the best defensive. The questions to be asked are how and why? What are the nuts and bolts of these clubs getting so much right?
The particular people who should be asking these questions are the Newcastle Knights administration.
In light of the recent failings of a team containing six Origin players, and the embarrassing bungling accompanying coach Nathan Brown's exit, you would hope they are wondering, what are we doing wrong?
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how impressive the whole Storm organisation was in their match against the Bunnies at Gosford, both on the field and with so many of the players (captain included) mingling with the fans afterwards.
Another example: at that same match the Storm debuted fullback, Nicho Hynes. Hynes grew up in Umina. For the Storm to put him on the park for his first-grade debut at Gosford in front of hundreds (possibly thousands) of his home-town supporters ... of course he's going to play great.
That's the sort of attention to detail - the sweating of the small stuff - that seems to elevate winning clubs.