KEY POINTS:
I struggle for good things to say about the Warriors at the moment.
They play brilliantly when at home and very poorly when away. This has been the pattern all season and there is no sign of it changing.
I cannot see them beating the Panthers in Penrith this weekend, for no other reason than that the team will again be taking the bucketful of drop-the-ball pills it does prior to every game in Australia.
Why they play so poorly away and what you do about it I just don't know. And obviously the coaching staff don't know either, otherwise they would have done it by now. This week I see Ivan Cleary was down talking to Robbie Deans about how the Crusaders manage to get such a high percentage of away wins.
Hopefully this exchange of ideas will lend some insights to Cleary and lead to an improvement in consistency of performance so the Warriors play well regardless where they are playing.
I'd like to say that if their away record doesn't improve I'm going to bar the Warriors from my column and my radio show on BSport until it changes. But they are the only NRL team in town so I can't do that. But to say that I find them frustrating to watch and to cover as a media commentator is an understatement.
The light at the end of the tunnel for me this week is the intriguing contest that is State of Origin. Since this series began in 1980 with the likes of the great Wally Lewis on the field, there have been 81 games and Queensland have won 40, New South Wales 39, with two draws. Each state has won the series 12 times, with two series drawn. The points scoring records reveal how tight these contests are - New South Wales has scored 1284 points with 219 tries and Queensland has scored 1275 with 223 tries. Just nine points difference in 81 games over 28 years.
As usual, little separates the teams this season and without doubt the State of Origin again shapes as the highlight of the rugby league season for me.
On Wednesday night, I will have my Maroons jersey on and will be cheering like hell for Mal Meninga's heroes as they knock the arrogance out of the high-strutting Blues. One thing is guaranteed in these games, there won't be any score blow-outs and we will see rugby league played at its best, by the finest players, all of whom - unfortunately - happen to be Australian.
* The result in the Centenary Test in Sydney last weekend did nothing to restore credibility either to the Kiwis or to international league. We were dominated from the first minute and the game was over by the 20th. The fact we scored more than Australia in the second half is irrelevant.
It completely sickens me that rugby league sycophants ring up talkback radio to defend poor performances by our national side and at times the Warriors.
It's time for us as supporters to grow up and realise that when teams and players go bad it must be called that way. It's about time that as supporters of the game we refused to accept sub-standard performances. And, yes, 28-12 is sub-standard.
* Dean Lonergan is a former Kiwi international
