Set of six: Cuddles club

Billy Slater is a hot tip to move to Salford. Photo / Getty Images

Last week it was Eric Watson and Sir Owen Glenn in a stoush ... this week Jayson Bukuya and Chad Townsend. The Warriors duo, who were also teammates at the Sharks, nearly came to blows at a full contact training session yesterday and needed to be separated. Afterwards, coach Andrew McFadden didn't mind the aggression shown but brought the squads together. "Some-times when you train at that level in a contact sport, not everyone is happy about getting hit," he said. "It happens every now and then. What we need to do as a club is come together at the end and we are happy families again. We had a big cuddle session." Awww.
Linked in

Salford's efforts to lure top-name players to the Lancashire club don't look like ceasing any time soon. Salford have been linked with, among others, Sonny Bill Williams, Shaun Johnson, Issac Luke, Ben Matulino and Simon Mannering, and outspoken chairman Marwan Koukash is now chasing Melbourne's Billy Slater. "I hope he will be one of our future players," Koukash said. "He shares a passion with me for racing. He loves his racing. I've met him on a couple of occasions and I'm quite hopeful and optimistic we will see Billy in a Red Devils shirt in the future." In horse racing parlance, it hardly sounds like a sure thing.

Whistle blowers

Most kids grow up dreaming of being Sonny Bill Williams or Shaun Johnson. The NRL is hoping a few others aspire to be Henry Perenara or Jared Maxwell. The NRL is running a competition for four Kiwi kids to win "the ultimate, first-of-its-kind NRL referee experience". The lucky four will get tickets to a game at Mt Smart, a tour of the stadium, including the video referees' box, use of a headset to listen to officials during the match and, the biggie, a meet and greet with NRL referees.

Hair today, gone on Monday

Expect some fireworks, or should we say, hair-pulling, when the Titans and Panthers grapple on Monday. It will be the first time Jamal Idris comes up against his old club and it's likely Greg Bird will give him a welcome tug of his dreadlocked hair. "I remember in 2011 actually, we was mucking around, this was just a week out before the game," Idris recalled this week. "He goes, 'Jam, I'm going to pull every dread out of your head.' I started laughing and, sure enough, in the middle of the game, he actually did. I looked up and said, 'Ref, he's pulling my hair.' And he goes, 'Stop being a sook.' "

Seconds in

The Kiwis will take on Australia in next month's Anzac test without their first-choice second-row combination from last year's World Cup. Sonny Bill Williams will be overlooked as the selectors look to the future - it will, presumably, be couched as something else like Williams making himself unavailable - and Frank Pritchard is out for at least three months with a torn pectoral muscle sustained in the Bulldogs' 21-20 win over the Warriors last weekend. If they're selected on form, it would be hard to go past Jason Taumalolo and reformed bad boy Manu Ma'u.

Hooters

You have to feel for the Dragons and hope they don't miss out on the playoffs because of their defeat to the Storm in controversial circumstances on Monday night in Melbourne, but to argue they should get the two competition points is ridiculous. The NRL said freeze-frame technology was used to determine the final hooter sounded a fraction of a second before Melbourne played the ball before their winning try. Play to the whistle, boys.