Team of the decade - Fullback.

Ah, the fullback. The first man on the team sheet every single week. But who would you give the number one shirt to, and why? What are the qualities of a rugby league fullback?

The modern fullback's minimum requirement is to begin the counter attack upon receiving the ball from the opposition's kick down field. They obviously need a good set of ball handling skills in order to not drop the high ball. He is also the last line of defence, meaning once the opposition get past this fellow, you've had it so a good tackler is essential. But what makes a great fullback is the way they perform their minimum requirements as perfect as possible, as well as their attacking qualities adding more options to the attacking structure for the half backs to use. The full back can slot into any side of the attacking line next to the second rowers and the centres, so they act as extra option runners or carriers. In effect, the defence can be playing against five three-quarters (If that makes any sense.)

Below are A Tap on the Twenty's four nominees for fullback of the decade, who all possess the key skills to becoming an excellent fullback.


Anthony Minichello
Minichello was one of the reasons I used to like watching Sydney when I was younger. He is always in support of his line breaking team mates and has scored 89 tries in 181 NRL appearances because of his ability to back up the runner. His hard work failed to go unnoticed having represented his country 18 times in test matches, with a further nine tries to his name. His début against Canterbury in 2000 saw him play on the wing for the first few seasons, but the retirement of Luke Phillips in 2003 sparked a career that also saw him represent New South Wales nine time scoring six tries in the position of fullback. Thankfully for Sydney, he has saved that team more tries than they care to think. But despite a reoccuring back injury in recent seasons, he has always been a real asset to the club and a local hero being part of a team that saw him win the NRL in 2002 and become grand finalists in 2000, 2003 and 2004.

Billy Slater
Easily the best fullback in the game currently. Unfortunately for this exercise it does not automatically qualify him for that imaginary fullback spot when you consider half the nominees either are retired or play elsewhere on a more regular basis. Slater is one of the more acrobatic players in the game. Cameron Smith's try is a perfect example of that, when it was Slater who knocked the ball away from the dead ball line for Smith to score. Slater is also one of the few players who catches the ball on the full every single time it is kicked towards him. It was a real pain to see Eastmond's or Thomkins' kicks go straight to Slater every time. Since 2003 when made his début against Cronulla at centre, he was quickly moved to fullback after seven games and has since set the world alight with his brilliance. 

Darren Lockyer
Darren Lockyer spent the early part of his career playing at five-eighth (stand off for us English folk.) This was at the early stage of his playing days at Brisbane in which he spent a lot of time coming off the bench from 1995 until 1997. From that point on he was a fullback, and a fine one too. He later went back to five-eighth at a later stage, but for now we will discuss his performances wearing the number one shirt. He was such a brilliant fullback that when Wayne Bennett moved him to five-eighth, I immediately cast doubt over his selection on the hypothesis that it seemed silly moving a player who has done so well at fullback playing for both his state and country in the number one shirt, to the number six shirt. But as the last line of defence, he was excellent. But he wasn't as flashy as Billy Slater. but equally effective. He would always find the extra yards to begin the counter attack that no other player at the time could. He didn't waste time letting the ball bounce either. He would collect it either on the full, or on the half volley. He always had his body in the right position to collect the kick without wasting chasing it down. A brilliant fullback in his day.
 

Kris Radlinski
Arguably the best British fullback since Jim Sullivan in the 1920s. Radlinski is of Polish decent, but was born and grew up in Wigan for whom he played 332 games for. His international debut came in 1995 for England, and made the Great Britain side a year later. Despite retiring and making a comback, his finest hour was during the 2002 Challenge Cup final, in which he won the Lance Todd Trophy award for his man of the match performance. I'll always remember his tackle on Tim Jonkers ten minutes into the final, when despite being in hospital all week he was passed fit, he managed to prevent what would otherwise have been a certain try for Saints. In his career he played for Lancashire as well, but always gave 100% for whatever side he represented. He demonstrated a brilliant attacking flaire, earning himself 183 tries for Wigan, but only two in an eight year stint playing for GB.

The 2000s fullback of the decade is Anthony Minichello.

Team of the decade - 2000s.

A post on the ever popular Rlfans.com forum on the Warrington board recently posted asked fans to name their team of the decade. Listed were some brilliant forgotten names such as Allan Langer, Danny Farrah, Allan Hunte, Darren Burns and Tawera Nikau. As a Warrington fan myself (I make no secret about it) I couldn't resist a stab at my own Warrington XIII over the past ten years. Below is my selection.

Allan Hunte
Henry fa'afili
Martin Gleeson
Toa Koe Love
Brent Grose
Lee Briers
Allan Langer
Adrian Morley
Danny Farrah
Paul Rauhihi
Logan Swann
Ben Westwood
Tawera Nikau

But then it got me thinking on a wider scale. What would be the team of the decade with regards to the rest of Super League? Even better, what would it be with regards to the rest of the world. On the face of it, it seems an easy task to name 13 players who have amazed, shocked and played outstanding rugby within the last ten year. But it isn't. The scrum half position alone has some wonderful nominees who could be placed there. Andrew Johns, Jonathan Thurston and Stacey Jones to name just three players. There are many more who could be worthy to wear that fictional number seven shirt.

So lets begin at having a stab at it shall we? Over the Christmas and New Year period I shall try to name thirteen of the best payers over the past ten years, starting with the fullback. Below are a list of rules that are being abided to with regards to selection.

A player can be nominated as many times as possible for different positions, but in the opinion of the editor (me) they must have played a significant part of their playing career in that position and not just the odd couple of games.
Players can only feature in the final team once and not in multiple positions, despite being able to be nominated in many.
There is no minimum or maximum number of nominees to each position. If a player is worthy of consideration in any given position, he will be nominated.

Independent commission taking its bloody time.

Ever since Rupert Murdoch put his nose into the Australian game, things seem to have gone badly for the sport overall. News Ltd's interest in the sport sparked the Super League War, crippling the game in Australia and internationally setting it back years behind other sports such as the AFL and rugby union. While Super League and BSkyB's money on the other side of the world proved to be the ressurection what the game and the RFL needed, Super League has been a dirty word down under for the past twelve years. Many Australian fans feel News Ltd took their game away from them. A game based on community values, friendship and raw emotion.

Now after twelve years, News Ltd are willing to do some good for the game and sell their 50% share of the NRL providing the ARL sell their share. As a result a new independent commission is being set up (ironically with David Gallop and Colin Love at the head of it) to repesent the views of all 16 NRL clubs. The ARL is to be wound up and the money News earn from the deal will be pumped back into the game via the media conglomerate's own club, Melbourne Storm.

So finally it seems the game will be handed back to the clubs. The fans can happily wave goodbye to Murdoch and Co, while the clubs get to elect independent representitives to oversea the running of the game on a fair basis. Except, thats not whats happening.

The clubs want a bigger say in the way the profits are split, while ARL are being fussy over nominating two candidates for the new eight man commission. The way I see it, (and read carefully because this gets tricky) they want nominees from the New South Wales Rugby League and Queensland Rugby League and are rejecting News' offer. As a result, the 16 clubs are threatening to walk away from the NRL and set up Rugby League Australia unless the new commission is set up.

This is a blatent example of the way administrators shoot themselves in the foot. A good offer comes along that will eventually see the game being run effectivly for the first time in 115 years and our origina governing body throws out their dummy. No wonder the game is behind AFL and football. What is concerning is the proposed split that could happen on the 18th January next year. It would be the ikin to the Super League War, but with all 16 clubs walking away instead of oly half of them.

All the ARL have to do is nominate two candidates to sit on this new commission. Any two businessmen, or any two human beings. Hell, I'll do if they like. The last thing rugby league needs is another split twelve years after the last one (which may not happen until at least 2013 making it 16 years) and become further behind the AFL whilst it has to rebuild itself again. Its not fair on the players and its even more unfair on the fans who have had to put up with a lot over the last two decades.

Celtic move north.

Celtic Crusaders have dropped the 'Celtic' from their name and renamed themselves Crusaders RL. It was part of a rebranding exersise that has ended up with the club moving away from Bridgend, moving away from Newport and finally they are settled in Wrexham. Wrexham just so happens to be on the other side of  Wales nearer to Rhyl and Colwyn Bay for those who don't know. Its much further away from Cardiff and Swansea in between which the club was originally formed and based.

So why has the club been relocated? Money!

Leighton Samuel has screwed over the town of Bridgend twice now, having owned the original rugby union club until it went bust and Samuel switched codes. But while crys of outrage are heard from Widnes to Halifax and the RFL is slammed for not stepping in and saving the club from embraressment, (which if they had done, the flat-cappers against expansion would be waving their whippets and setting the dogs loose on Red Hall) the deal brokered between Wrexham FC and Mr Samuel has seen the club based in another area of untapped talent and is still classed as an expansion club despite only being 30 miles away from Widnes.

But the club wasn't bought by its new owners to spread the gospel of RL. It was bought to save the struggling Wrexham FC. The statement from the Wrexham chairman went something along the lines of, they couldn't afford to run the football club with only a few thousand turning up each week. He was talking of figures similar to when Celtic were based in Bridgend, averaging 3,000. In fact if you want to be more specific, in Bridgend last season Celtic averaged 3,500. Wrexham have so far in the 2009/10 season averaged 3,200. Considering it would take less time for the majority of teams and fans to travel toWrexham than Bridgend, the new owners must be banking on a lot of away support to raise revenue. I dread to think if the likes of Saints, Wigan and Warrington were to outnumber the home fans whilst invading Wrexham.

But South Wales has not been forgotten in all this. While Super League may be moving up north in the valleys, South Wales RLFC will step into Celtic's old shoes and be based in Neath. The newly formed club will be overseen by a Welsh businessmen, but will consist of board members from Wales Rugby League governing body. They have been admitted into the Championship 1 for the 2010 season, but will not compete in either the Challenge Cup or Northern Rail Cup for this season at least.

It appears they will act as a feeder club to the Crusaders Super League team for the time being, and in my opinion they should not be rushed into applying for a Super league lisence. While it would be nice to see a south Wales side in SL again, they need to develop a bigger fan base than what Celtic did for them not to be forced from their home or go financially broke. An increase in amateur players in the RLC and schools competing in the Champion Schools proves there is an appetite for rugby league in south Wales, and if Crusaders can spread the game like they did in Bridgend and the rest of south Wales then I'm sure Wales can eventually become familiar with rugby league in the end.