PETE’S PUNCHLINE
- Vitiaz must be the real deal. They took out Hekari via a penalty shootout.
- Thank you referee Amos Anio for a superb job on the Vitiaz-Hekari semifinal on Saturday. Your no-nonsense approach towards diving and the usual whiners on the pitch resulted in a decent game of football.
- So what happened when Anio started ignoring the milkers and divers on the pitch? They dropped that habit and they actually started playing some real football — the way it should be played.
- Two refereeing calls on the weekend’s NRL finals had me scratching my head. The first was on Friday night where an apparent charge down was not called that way. Panthers’ prop James Fisher-Harris affected what was for all intents and purposes a charge down of a Luke Keary 5th tackle kick but referee Gerard Sutton saw it differently. He ruled that JFH was only trying to tackle Keary and not charge down the kick. Problem is that JFH didn’t tackle Keary and he charged down the kick. The second call would have to rank as one of the most pedantic calls by a referee in recent memory. Storm forward Kenny Bromwich was ruled offside on a play that was happening on the other side of the field and where he had not retreated to the spot where the last Storm play the ball had occurred. He was running back into position from the Eels’ side.
- Gurias got dusted pretty easily in the end by the Tigers. I’d say the Tigers are back after the wobbles of the last month.
- I was wrong about the Tigers getting up on Lions in Brisbane but struth, that was a tough crowd. They gave it to the Richmond boys all night. The fans were rabid. They were merciless. They were vicious on any Tigers error, missed kicked, anything. They heckled, taunted, flashed obscene gestures, etc … I think I know why they were spiteful. There are no Qld sides in the NRL finals and they’ll probably put out an inferior Origin side and on top of that the Reds lost the Oz Super rugby final to the Brumbies. So I guess, the collective feeling was, they’ll be damned if the Lions miss out on winning a home game in the AFL finals.
- I’m going for the hat-trick of wins by my teams this weekend. Magpies, Rabbioths and Villa. I’m two out of three so far. I hope Villa shocked Liverpool this morning. If not, then like Meatloaf said: “Two outta three ain’t bad.”
- LeBron and AD look unstoppable. The Lakers in four? I hope not. Miami need to find something to make this series competitive.
- Congratulations to the Wigmen for their win over the Vipers. After the Vipers edged the Muruks last week, this makes me feel a little better. – PGTP ([email protected])