Missing my footy

I love my footy. What can I say? I’m a Queenslander and I started following the Broncos when I was about 12 years old and have loved them ever since. In fact, I love watching most sports; I’ve even been known to watch a round of golf or a game of lawn bowls on the telly. (But I must say that I draw the line at motor sports.) Back to the footy.

Living in an AFL-obsessed state, it’s not often that I get to watch rugby league, so when I found out that Game 1 of the 2009 State of Origin was being played in Melbourne, I jumped at the opportunity to go. The fact that the Queensland team is made up of mostly Broncos players, only confirmed the decision. My good friend Adele who’s also a mad-keen Broncos supporter is coming down to watch the game AND we found out that the Broncos are playing Melbourne 2 days later IN MELBOURNE!! So I’ve been starved of my addiction for months, and this week I’ll be going to 2 games within 3 days!!!!! PLEASURE OVERLOAD!!!!!!!!

GO QUEENSLAND!!!!! AND BRONCOS!!!!!!

11 Comments

  1. Hi Frit-nonymous,

    Good try (and excellent graph work!) but no. If someone has completed 9 years of engineering and (currently) almost 1 of medicine, aren’t they a medical student? Or an engineering student (by “semesters played”)?

    Like the cartoon 🙂

    david

  2. I suppose it boils down to what you consider a ‘Bronco’ to be. Is first signing? Played for the feeder club? Most recent signing? Most games played?

    I think part of this discussion revolves around having an ill-defined standard for defining players from clubs. We consider Petero Civoniceva to still be a Bronco, but no one cares about Ashley Harrison.
    Perhaps a better measure is by the majority of games played . If we apply this rule, there are seven Broncos, as this chart shows (total games in blue, Broncos games in red).

    The seven players are:

    Darius Boyd
    Justin Hodges
    Darren Lockyer
    Petero Civoniceva
    Sam Thaiday
    Karmichael Hunt
    Ben Hannant

    Granted 7/18 isn’t quite a majority, but when people say ‘mostly’ they don’t normally mean a strict majority – if a dice had 1 2 3 4 6 6 on its sides, a gambler would say that it rolls ‘mostly sixes’.

    Perhaps a more telling chart is this one.

    Although when all is said and done, this whole thing is a monumental waste of time and resources. This discussion is best summed up here .

    This is not something that should really concern a true human at all…

  3. Hi Nate,

    Yeah, i thought of including that… but didn’t because

    (i) if i chose to count players by their original club, i would then have to discount Folau and Hannant.

    (ii) if each club counted both current and former players, over 30 claims could be made on the 17 players. The roosters could claim 5 players instead of 1, and (theoretically) 3 clubs could simultaneously claim the majority of players. Dodgy!

    (iii) but mostly because i was responding to Renae who never used the word ‘former’ in her claim. So i have stuck to “bronco players”, not former players, not players in contract talks with the broncos, not players who once had a meal at broncos leagues club, or got their hair cut at the same place as Darren Lockyer. 🙂

    Meanwhile, i am impressed by your memory of remembering Ashley Harrison playing for the Broncos, but must correct you on Petero Civoniceva. Last year he was playing for the Penrith Panthers.

  4. To side with Wifey a bit here, but while there are just 5 broncos, there are another 3 who were playing for broncos just last year

    Darius Boyd
    Petero Civoniceva
    Ben Hannant

    and although we maybe don’t care, Ashley Harrison was with Broncos a long long time ago too.

    so 9/17 broncos (not neccessarily current) players is just over 50% so could be considered mostly. Even if you don’t consider Harrison (which if fair enough), with only 13 players on the field at a time there’s a good chance you’ll see a team on field that is half broncos players.

    Not counting Harrison, the opening line up was 6/13 players so only 1 shy of half.

  5. You know my penchant for setting the record straight. Today i set my sights on the once-true (but not now) assertion of Queensland being mostly Broncos.

    This Queensland squad contains a total of 5 Broncos (Hodges, Folau, Lockyer, Thaiday and Hunt). Granted, this is the highest representation in the squad by any one club (1 ahead of Storm’s 4) but at 29% can hardly be considered “mostly”.

    Nevertheless – enjoy this week’s “Festival of the Boot”!

    david (prentending he is the antony green of rugby league 😉

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