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Mixed bag in front of cameras
THE first one was the good. The second one was both bad and the ugly.
Last weekend's televised Super League matches did a pretty good job of highlighting the positives and negatives of the competition in this country.
Friday night's contest between Warrington and Wigan was a belter, the Wolves eventually running out 16-8 winners.
Tony Smith - a coach with a track record of turning around under achieving sides that is second to none - is working his magic at the Halliwell Jones Stadium.
Smith's success at Huddersfield and Leeds was initially making his teams very difficult to beat.
Only after that did he start adding the bells and whistles. Now he's doing the same again.
Warrington were defensively outstanding in a contest that had an intensity we see all too rarely in this country.
Sky pundit Phil Clarke rightly made a big deal of the Wolves' first half tackling stint.
After spending the first eight minutes of the game without the ball, Smith's players made over 150 tackles in 40 minutes, missing just a single one.
Warrington may be stuck down in 10th on the ladder at the moment, but are currently one of the form sides of the competition.
And if they do make the new eight-team play off format, they look like a team that will cause plenty of problems.
After that, it was back to earth with a bump as Catalans Dragons and Celtic Crusaders fought out a dog of a contest in Bridgend on Saturday night.
The Dragons, now under the tutelage of new boss Kevin Walters, are a pale shadow of the team that finished third last year.
And Celtic, despite breaking their duck at Bradford the week before, are hardly adding value to the competition.
The Welshman had just five Brits in their matchday 17, a statistic that even Harlequins would probably baulk at these days.
I SAW a photograph this week of the neon sign outside Cronulla's ground in Sydney.
"Let us entertain you," it trumpets, a slogan that is presumably meant to refer to the Sharks' on-field exploits.
If things carry on as they are doing in that particular corner of Australia, that sign won't be there much longer.
Last year, we had star playmaker Greg Bird glassing his girlfriend.
This year, we've had a sex scandal involving Mr Media and former Sharks star Matthew Johns, allegations that prostitutes visited the Cronulla dressing room after one NRL match and a report that a female employee was paid $20,000 in compensation after being punched in the face by the club's CEO.
Unsurprisingly, the club's main sponsor, the electronics firm LG, has pulled it's backing, leaving real question marks over Cronulla's future.
With all that kicking off, and Stuart's team struggling badly on the field, you would have thought everyone would be keeping their noses extra clean.
Then captain Paul Gallen goes and racially abuses a St George player during his side's latest loss.
Will they never learn?
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Weather for Halifax
Saturday 11 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -2 C to 0 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: North west
