I’d say more like Jo BarrettRuan Sims must have been judging every match.
We saw that already in origin, the thing is they can get away with it because media coverage of NRLW is still quite limitedThere is genuinely a massive cliquiness/favouritism thing going on in the women’s game at the moment. Keep an eye out for some extremely odd Jillaroos selections this year. Every time you see a name which has you thinking “hang on, this is a bit weird, isn’t (player x) way better?” - yes, they are. The player who got picked instead is in there because she has the right mates, and/or the player who missed out didn’t get picked because those girls don’t like her.
The NSW Roosters, you mean?!I just hope NSW sack Hilder. She is a biased disgrace.
Fox with hilder and Barrett on comms. Painful
Never thought of it that way but makes complete sense. Kezie Apps is a great player but she wasn’t a captain last year, she’s since been elevated to co captain status off the back of losing an origin series and a season ending injury early in the NRLW season.The Caitlin Clark thing is exactly that. The people in positions of power and even the pre-existing fanbase liked that it was “their” little thing. The attention Clark brings threatens that. People who run WNBA teams and coaches are at risk of having to be accountable to large, demanding fanbases for the first time. It’s now a fight to get tickets for games and the old fans face to ordeal of having to interact with ordinary people . Scary stuff!
And the extra money the players are going to make now doesn’t make the petty jealousy go away that Clark is the one drawing in the crowds, not them, so they lie to themselves and insist it’s because she is part of the white supremacy movement or something like that. But the reality is that you don’t even need to particularly like basketball to understand why Clark is genuinely special & unique in the women’s game.
But yeah in the NRLW you definitely get the feeling that there’s an old guard threatened by the new school + a weird cliquiness in these rep teams. Mahalia Murphy for example is a Jillaroo from before the NRLW existed and picking her over Kernick can only be a politics thing.
Brandy and Vossy rightfully tore into coach Brad Donald on SEN radio, Donald claimed one of his reasons for leaving Kernick out was she was behind the other girls on the pecking order as she apparently came off the bench for NSW which actually wasn’t the case, she was named on the bench for game 1 and 2 but elevated to start both times and was named to start and started game 3. Absolutely embarrassing that the national coach seemingly didn’t watch the origin and probably just looked at the line ups earlier in the week.Zero doubt in my mind that if they played Kernick at centre she’d go better than Murphy.