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Five reasons you would be mad to miss the finals

Like an old song or a tattered photograph, finals rugby league can act as a memory trigger.

It’s always windy in Sydney at finals time; I can remember the Winfield Cup being unveiled on live television by Rex Mossop, the trophy threatening to tumble from its plinth in a gale at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Where were you when Mark Broadhurst and Steve Bowden went at it in 1981? Or when Paul Carige wrote his name into finals folklore in 1998? Or when Steve Mavin went home after being hooked in 1987?

These days it’s tempting think of sport as “product” for voracious television broadcasters, always there to fill the gaps between commercials but drained of its uncertainty – and its very soul – by fulltime professionalism and media saturation. In rugby league, add wrestling and match plans that are carbon copies of each other.

As the days get longer in Australia, the footy finals are played and then cricket starts – just as it ever was and always shall be. If you don’t watch, these things will still happen.
So why bother watching?

The New Daily has sought to find something different about the NRL finals in 2014, something that potentially separates them from last September and the September 100 years before that, five reasons you’ll be kicking yourself if you stay home with the TV turned off.

Alex Johnston at training this week. Photo: Getty

Twinkle-toed Alex Johnston at training this week. Photo: Getty

1. SOUTH SYDNEY COULD WIN THEIR FIRST PREMIERSHIP IN 43 YEARS.

You wouldn’t want to miss that, would you (unless you’re a Roosters fan)? Wayne Bennett said in round 21 that everyone knows what the Rabbitohs are going to do. But with Alex Johnston and Dylan Walker on board, they now have the pace to go sideways and surrender some ground in the knowledge that they can actually go around opponents. That also means that if they win the Grand Final, they’ll be more entertaining in doing so than if they had won it last year or the year before. The big uncertainties are Greg Inglis’ hip injury and fitting Adam Reynolds, John Sutton and Luke Keary into the halves.

2. THIS MANLY TEAM WILL NEVER BEEN SEEN AGAIN

When Geoff Toovey took over from Des Hasler at the Sea Eagles in 2012, the tip was that the club’s playing strength was on its last legs, with back ended contracts and little talent coming through. Almost three whole seasons later, they’re still challenging – despite simmering internal trouble. But Jason King is retiring, Glenn Stewart is off to Souths, Anthony Watmough is reportedly defecting to Parramatta and Brett Stewart is thought to be standing at the exit door tapping his feet too. Manly can’t keep reinventing themselves. See this amazing football machine while all its parts are still in working order.

End of an era? Slater, Cronk and Smith. Photo: Getty

End of an era? Slater, Cronk and Smith. Photo: Getty

3. THE STORM ARE WINDING DOWN

Just how good are Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk? All are entering their fourth decade on Planet Earth (we can’t say for sure if they are actually from here), they are leading around a side that has been transformed since the heady days of premierships subsequently stripped from them. Ryan Hoffman, once forced to the Wigan Warriors, is now going to the New Zealand variety. Whatever happens over the next month for Melbourne will be compelling: either one almighty exhortation of greatness, or the end of a wonderful – if blighted – era of premiership history. Either way, worth witnessing.

4. THE PANTHERS ARE WINDING UP

Penrith’s last great period of rugby league pre-eminence, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was a sprawling working man’s epic. “I’ll have a beer with every one of yous,” Roycey Simmons proudly proclaimed from the dais on Grand Final day. It seems overwhelmingly likely the Panthers are back, if they can make the top four without two of their best players in Peter Wallace and Tyrone Peachey plus a hospital ward’s worth of others. Rugby league turns people with humble backgrounds into heroes and nowhere does that romance resonate more than in Sydney’s west. There are more pages in the front of the Storm’s book than in the back – with Penrith it’s the other way around.

Johnathan Thurston needs a flag to cap his career. Photo: Getty

Johnathan Thurston needs a flag to cap his career. Photo: Getty

5. THURSTON’S UNFINISHED BUSINESS

For the first half of the season, North Queensland sort of limped along. It’s hard for a new coach to make an impression quickly and Cowboys players say Paul Green changed everything this year but their jockstraps. Then, suddenly, the cows started emitting rocket fuel instead of methane. Johnathan Thurston is the most talented of the players in creative positions in the game today. He does not want the phrase “never won a premiership” tacked on when his legacy is discussed upon retirement in a few short years’ time. This is his opportunity. If there is such a thing as destiny, then he should be starting to smell it about now.

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