Almanac Rugby League

The Almanac Rugby league Crew

If you’d like to publish a rugby league story on The Footy Almanac website, please contact Ian Hauser.

 

If you’d like to join the Footy Almanac’s rugby league email list to receive our regular
Thursday updates during the season and occasional updates in the off-season, contact John Harms in the first instance.

 

The Footy Almanac’s coverage of rugby league features a team of four regular columnists:

Ian Hauser provides a round by round preview/review and comments on specific players/incidents.
Matt O’Hanlon (Prop by the Sea) offers a quirky take of the week’s happenings on and off the field.
Mark Shannon (The Prospector) comments on various issues in the code, both historical and current.
Russel Hansen (Rabbit in the Vineyard) gives a specific take on South Sydney’s progress.

as well as numerous other occasional contributors.

Our collection of articles appears below. The first article was published in 2010.

 

Almanac Rugby League – A deserved win

September 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

As a Broncos fan who has always had a strong dislike of Manly, I’ll get the difficult part over with straight away: I have to admit Manly deserved to win. In all honesty I wasn’t expecting the Broncos to win. With Darren Lockyer missing, I sensed the Broncos wouldn’t quite have what it took to [Read more]

Almanac Rugby League – A relentless wave

September 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Despite the absence of my team, and ignoring the Melbourne – Newcastle game, this has been an extremely high quality finals series – the St. George/ Brisbane, St George /Wests Tigers and Wests Tigers/NZ Warriors games were all incredibly exciting but this game – from start to finish – topped the lot. It was fast, [Read more]

Almanac Rugby League – On the road

September 24, 2011 by 1 Comment

We are under immense pressure to perfect what shapes as a great game. We are in the trusted Commodore heading north. The only friend of the driver is the ABC radio and the pressure is from my obsessive goal to hit Miriam Vale at half-time to have the finest road food in Queensland –possibly Australia [Read more]

Almanac Rugby League – The Lang Park Report: 17 September 2011.

September 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment

By Greg Strohal My maiden visit to Lang Park was a memorable one. The crowd some 48,000 was primed for an epic contest. We caught the bus from Adelaide Street and arrived at Lang Park and were greeted by a real buzz surrounding Lockyer’s last. We walk around to Caxton Street and took the obligatory [Read more]

Almanac Rugby League – The Old Boys Can Bar corner and the 50 cent doubles

September 19, 2011 by 3 Comments

The Preliminary Finals of the Queensland Cup were both played at Redcliffe’s Dolphin Oval this weekend with two clear-cut results setting up an intriguing Grand Final next Sunday at Lang Park. Full credit to ABC-TV for telecasting both games live throughout the State. Memo to ABC-TV bean counters: In your drive to cut costs in [Read more]

Almanac Rugby League – The fairytale continues

September 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment

For someone who appears not to particularly enjoy the attention of the public spotlight , Darren Lockyer gets plenty of it. Don’t get me wrong, Lockyer is entirely accommodating with the media, public and corporate demands. He is pure sporting hero. But I can’t help think sometimes the demands of attention must be tiring and [Read more]

Almanac Rugby League – Justice

September 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I was watching a program on SBS last week (insert obligatory “not that sort of show” comment here) on the problems involved with online gambling and it got me thinking how the changes in gambling had affected our day to day lives. Now, in my mind, if you can find your way through all the Senator [Read more]

Almanac Rugby League – The fairytale continues

September 18, 2011 by 1 Comment

For a lot of people the main focus of this game involves Wayne Bennett and Darren Lockyer. The pair established a strong relationship when Bennett coached at the Broncos, slotting him in at fullback early in his career before moving him to five-eighth – and moulding him into an international in both positions. But more [Read more]

Almanac Rugby League – Don’t panic

September 18, 2011 by 1 Comment

I’m not a betting man, but if I was I’d say my game would be omen betting. As tactics go, it’s probably questionable at best, but given my lack of allegiances as I settled in to watch the Tigers take on the Warriors on Friday night I had absolutely nothing else to go on. I [Read more]

Almanac Rugby League – A numbers game

September 13, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Coming into this weekend I found myself once again scratching my head, just like most rugby league fans as to how this McIntyre Finals system operates. Apparently it’s all about rankings, and provided you keep winning, elimination isn’t a problem. On the surface, it sounds simple enough. But delving a little deeper, I realised that [Read more]