One NRL club is all class in farewelling a star. The Broncos? Not so much

A tale of two cities … and two clubs for that matter.

As the NRL regular season draws to a close, the Broncos and Rabbitohs have two famous players coming to the end of the road – Adam Reynolds and Jai Arrow.

For Reynolds, it’s a case of age catching up with the 36-year-old: if it’s not his calves being cows, it’s his knees on the blink or his hamstrings on the brink. With Arrow, we all know of his shocking diagnosis of motor neurone disease.

The interest lies in how the two clubs honour their heroes as the curtain falls on their careers.

For the last two games, Arrow is going to kit up and walk out with the team for kick-off before being replaced in the opening seconds to sit on the reserves bench with his teammates.

Souths negotiated this with the NRL, to have him as an extra team member to allow him to go from 98 matches for South Sydney to bringing up his century. Great knock, that. Classy. Heartwarming. And appropriate for a great and well-loved servant of the club.

And what about Reynolds, one of the heroes of Brisbane’s grand final win last year – the key cog in the driveshaft that allowed the whole team to hum, after years of underperforming?

The kicking and passing maestro has been around since the Dead Sea was only sick. He’s played some of his best football north of the Tweed.

Either way, the point remains: the Broncos’ season is gone; they’re third last.

Was it really going to cost the Broncos anything to have Reynolds come on during the last home game of the season, against the Storm on Thursday night? Did leaving him out help? Nuh.

The Storm, who have had an historically bad season themselves, put nearly 50 points on them!

For me, it was emblematic of the obvious. Michael Maguire, a very good coach at first blush with a new team, wears his players out, and in this episode has demonstrably lost the plot, just as he’s lost the dressing room.

The Broncos can let him go at the end of the season, or wait until he blows the first part of next season, and let him go in May.

I know what I’d do.

We’re waiting, Mr Norman

So where are you now, Greg Norman?

After all your brio on LIV Golf, all your bravado, all your carry-on about how it was the revolution that the game needed, how it was no less than the “future of golf”, how it would end up inevitably swallowing the PGA Tour, all your defence of the Saudi backers, even when it comes to chainsaw murders – “everyone makes mistakes” – what did we actually get four years on?

Such a meek surrender there wasn’t even a white flag, for the fact they probably couldn’t afford to buy one. All the money has gone to you and to players who, all up, delivered three-fifths of bugger all in terms of a sustainable audience.

Things were so bad that – stand by for the whimper – the originally planned season-ending Team Championship in Michigan was cancelled, and this week LIV let the bulk of its 300 employees go.

This all because the Saudi Public Investment Fund had withdrawn its backing, and no other investor has put their hand up. In the realms of the pathetic, I put it to you, we have a new post-war record, particularly in the world of sport.

The whole thing has been a debacle, and was always going to end like this, just as I always said it would – 50 times or so. You can’t launch a sport on blood money, built on blokes playing in nonsensical “teams”, rip away all the class of the traditional comps and expect it to work.

But still not a word from you, Greg. You did this, we were told endlessly by you, to help “the game of golf”. (The squillion you were paid to so debase yourself was surely incidental.)

So surely a comment from you about the end of the whole catastrophe would be appropriate?

We’re waiting, oh Great White Fish Finger.

Cricket’s hairy problem

Yes, I know this item is a fortnight off the pace, but I don’t care. I couldn’t fit it in before this because of these tumultuous sporting times. (So many issues, so little space.)

My question: what’s doing with famous cricketers and their hair? Why the vanity of transplants, toupees and tinting? And why is it pretty much only the cricketers letting the side down?

The latest cab off the rank is Matthew Hayden, who went from bald to hirsute overnight, and unveiled the new look while doing commentary for the first Test against Bangladesh.

His fellow brilliant commentator Ricky Ponting made his move in the field as long ago as 2007, which followed the lead of Shane Warne and Greg Matthews – the latter was doing stuff with his hair in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, following Michael Clarke’s hairstyles and tints over the years had been so exhausting I had to put another man on. See? Always the cricketers.

Beyond Mat Rogers, leaguies have no such pattern that I can think of, at least not so obviously – though there has been speculation about Darren Lockyer and Billy Slater, while I find Laurie Daley’s jet black hair … odd.

Rugby union? Zero. Hole-in-the-donut. Or just about. James O’Connor seemed to change hair colours as often as he changed his socks.

Personally, I just don’t get it with the cricketers. If going bald troubles them, why can’t they wear red bandanas, like normal people?

What they said

Brisbane star Adam Reynolds had hoped to overcome a calf injury and get a farewell NRL game but, on Monday, he broke the news: “I trained today, obviously thought I’d be a chance to play one last home game and then hand it over to the rest of the boys to finish off the season. But it’s not to be … I’m officially a has-been.”

Peter V’landys on more NRL teams: “Absolutely. Why stop if it is successful?” Fair enough, but what ultimately comes with an enlarged global footprint – ipso facto – is culling more teams from Sydney. Which ones will go, Peter?

Bangladesh Test skipper Najmul Shanto after being rolled inside two days by Australia: “We’re here after 23 years. It’s not easy to compete in these conditions against this quality of team. So if we are able to come consistently, then the players have their idea, players have their experience and they can be able to adjust these kinds of conditions and play good cricket. So my request is we want to play here, we want to play similar kinds of conditions consistently, not after 23 years.”

Teenage Socceroo Lucas Herrington on being part of the Hull City team that defeated Manchester United: “Just buzzing. I’ve been watching the Premier League since I was five years old, waking up at all hours of the morning. So to be out there with some of these lads against Manchester United nonetheless was a great moment for me and something I’ll never forget.”

Swans skipper Callum Mills after they defeated North Melbourne: “I’m so grateful for the fans sticking with us.”

England and Wales Cricket Board doing the usual copy and paste as they respond to yet another alcohol incident in their ranks: “We are aware of an incident, which is reported to have taken place in Derby last night, and are currently investigating.” Seriously, how hard is this? Put it in their contracts, clause 4, paragraph A: “If you prove to be an embarrassing piss head, this contract null and void.”

Joe Root, in his second stint as England captain, on it: “If I’m being brutally honest, I’m really hacked off … It’s not the isolated incident itself. It’s the fact that we continually keep making stupid mistakes away from the game, and it’s detracting from what we’re doing on the field.”

Dr Daniel Daneshvar, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, and lead author of a study that reveals at least one in four NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE): “We and others have shown that in NFL players, specifically, there is about a four times higher rate of death from neurodegenerative disease than the general population.” As shocking as that is, he went on to note that the 25 per cent is on “the low end”, and while the maximum possible prevalence of CTE was about 97 per cent, the true rate “is somewhere in the middle.”

LIV golfer Jon Rahm: “There’s been a lot that’s surrounded all of us pretty much since we joined, and at the end of the day, when you step on the golf course, it’s just golf. So all the problems and theories go away, and you compete. It hasn’t been any harder or any easier in any way. It’s just, kind of I think, the life of a pro athlete.” Yup. The life of a pro athlete, taking blood money, Jon.

Golfer Wyndham Clark embracing the role of villain in the BMW Championship as the fans were rooting for Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy: “Darth Vader had more fun.”

UEFA head Aleksander Ceferin firing more shots across the bow of Gianni Infantino, if not straight amidships: “I’m absolutely sure that the [FFE] plan is dead. For me, the most important thing is that we stopped another try to sell the sport. It’s hard to imagine what kind of people would sell the sport that belongs to everyone.”

Team of the week

Sydney Roosters. Had their first loss in nine games against the Tigers, for whom it was their first win in nine games! Honestly, I thought there would have been more chance of Bangladesh beating the Australia Test cricket side in Darwin than the Tigers winning that one, but … these things happen!

Sydney marathon. Good luck to all competitors on Sunday.

Essendon. Finished with the wooden spoon after just two wins for the year. These days the Bombers do a victory lap if they win so much as the toss.

Wallabies. Taking on Argentina at 5am (AEST) Sunday.

Mitchell Starc. First bowler in history to take a wicket with the first ball of a Test match on four occasions. Moved into the top 10 for all time wicket takers. Has done well for a bowler Shane Warne once derided as “a bit soft.”

Celtic. Up 4-0, they lost their Champions League tie to Austrian team LASK 5-4 on aggregate.

Lucas Herrington. Socceroo starred for Hull City in the Carabao Cup win over Stoke City to follow his good performance in the win over Manchester United.