Henjak looking for blood in the wrong place?

Afternoon sports fans. Today’s big story is that Darren Lockyer has decided not to pull the plug on his representative career just yet. He will be first picked for the Maroons, and Australia for that matter for the ANZAC test, which means he will be unavailable for at least 4 of our games this season. Given the way our season is going so far, its 4 games that we desperately needed him for.

His decision has surprised me to be honest. Now don’t get me wrong here, I still rate him the best player in our game at the moment, his passing game and the way he leads a side around the park is second to none. But he’s getting old. It’s evident in every aspect of the way he plays the game now. He relies on the 2nd rower to make first contact on 90% of his tackling. He rarely takes on the line, and when he does get tackled he looks prone to injury. I squirm in my seat every time I see him take a hit.

I think he’s barely coping with staying fit for club games at the moment so I was fully expecting him to make a smarter decision, retiring from the intensity of representative football, and prolonging his career as much as possible. But he’s decided otherwise, and good for him. He deserves a chance to leave the maroons in style and win, lose or draw this year he will be given the send off from State of Origin that he deserves. I’m sure Henjak is swearing under his breath, as am I, but at the end of the day its Lockyer’s choice and no one has the right to stand in the way of him. Here’s hoping the Maroons can send him out on a winning note.

Also making news was Henjak’s decision to stand down Winterstein and Te’o for this weekend’s game against the Dragons for turning up late to training. I’m a big fan of making examples about of poor behaviour, but this couldn’t have come at a worse time for us. We'll need all the help we can get, the Dragons are in red-hot form this season, and coming off a loss they are going to be on their toes for their clash against us. Rumour has it they were only minutes late, but Henjak was looking for blood and found it.

It’s a big call dropping these two players. They’ve been two of our best so far this season and given the calibre of the players we’re already missing, this is going to hurt us. Obviously we don’t know the truth on the specifics, but I’m going to go ahead and say that I don’t agree with this decision. It’s not what we need right now. Morale is already low, and this isn’t going to help that situation. I’d sooner see people dropped to the Queensland Cup for poor performances, rather than being a few minutes late to the first training session of the week. We’ve got players who have already racked up double figures in handling errors this season, and our missed tackle figures so far literally resemble that of a cricket score - 184 in 4 games. When do we stop accommodating terrible performances?

If one good thing is to come from dropping these two players to the Queensland Cup, it’s that Josh Hoffman should get a run for us finally. I have a lot of time for this kid, when he learns to start putting his body on the line he could be a real superstar. The more time he spends on the paddock in the NRL, the better.

We’ll know for sure tomorrow, as team-lists start tricking through tonight. So until then all.