Clint Newton - get f**ked!
Quote:
Newton's law prevails in greyest game of all
Steve Kilgallon in Auckland | June 11, 2007
IF WE tell you that this was the lowest-scoring game in the history of the NRL, then perhaps we don't need to tell you any more about the entertainment value it offered.
But on this downbeat Auckland afternoon, the enthusiasm of Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy in declaring this probably the best victory of his five-year tenure as Storm coach was outshone only by the excitement of his debutant second rower, Clint Newton, the man who has led the recent mid-season exodus from the Newcastle Knights.
Newton went from one of the competition's highest-scoring matches, the Knights' 71-6 thrashing by the Broncos, to the lowest top-grade scoreline since the Bulldogs beat the Illawarra Steelers in Wollongong by the same margin in 1993, and the contrast wasn't lost on him. But he wanted to talk about the other contrasts he'd noticed since heading south.
"This is what playing footy is all about - this is what I have missed the last couple of months," Newton said. "It's obviously been a pretty emotional time for me, but what a game to come back in, with supposedly an incredibly weakened team, but we thought all along that the players standing in for those on rep duty could do the job."
With six Melbourne players on Origin duty, and three more Queensland Origin selections out injured, Newton ended up playing the full 80 minutes as the Storm trailed until lock Jeremy Smith scored the game's only try nine minutes from full-time.
"He was struggling just before half-time there. We tried to get him off but we had done the replacements we planned to, so we asked him if he could just stay out there until half-time," Bellamy said. "He ended up playing the full game, so he will sleep well tonight, but I thought he was tremendous for us - he gave us some good punch and defended well, and I think he's going to be a really good fit into our team."
Newton certainly thinks so. "The first day I came to Melbourne, I knew I had made the right decision, and even if we got beat today I would be happy," he said, before throwing in a veiled shot at Knights coach Brian Smith. "The last week and a half has been amazing - the difference I have felt turning up to training and going home with a smile on my face, knowing that I am actually enjoying my footy again and playing with and under a coach that I have obviously got a lot of respect for."
Newton, who said he had won support for his decision to quit from Andrew Johns and Danny Buderus, said the flood of players leaving the Knights since he quit was no surprise. "No, not one bit, not surprised at all," he said emphatically. "Obviously, the direction the club is wanting to head, they don't want local juniors there, but I think that is something the club has been built on … I just hope the decisions being made are for the right reasons and beneficial to the club in the long term."
Melbourne's unfamiliar side included their 1999 grand final winner Matt Rua, playing his first NRL game for five years after retirement, having spent the interim in the Cook Islands, a season coaching in the Auckland third division with the Waitemata Seagulls, then a comeback last year in the Bartercard Cup with the Waitakere Raiders. Their line-up became even more intriguing, with five-eighth Matt Geyer spending most of the afternoon on the left wing, and Cooper Cronk effectively playing as a solo halfback. While Cronk was busy, this wasn't really a day for halves anyway: one of those cold, grey, windy, drizzling Auckland afternoons.
And Warriors coach Ivan Cleary was convinced the Storm made a major contribution to the greyness of this whole affair. "They focused on their biggest strength, which is probably pushing the limit in terms of the play-the-ball wrestle, and they certainly did that tonight," he said. "They wrestled the life out of us a bit and we just weren't good enough to get through them."
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I realise he's been gone for a week and a half now, and we should probably get over it, but when he says something like 'they don't want local juniors there', well then that just gives me the sh*ts. If we don't want local juniors here, then why the f**k have we signed Mullen, Walsh, Paterson, Uate and the like to long term contracts?
Clint Newton - f**k off and die 
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11-06-2007, 01:12 AM
