All Stars whet appetite for NRL season ahead

Sweeping ball movement. Spectacular tries. Stinging defence. Simmering tensions. The NRL All Stars game has proved again what a specular start to the NRL season it is.

The third annual All Stars game on the Gold Coast was another fantastic advertisement for the game. In front of over 26,000 feverish supporters, the players from both teams turned it on with the NRL All Stars running out eventual winners.

The fixture is billed as an exhibition game but tell that to the 40 players who took the field. There was no sense of exhibition when the giant Kiwi international, Jared Wearea-Hargreaves, squared up with Sam Thaiday and then later with Ben Barba and Nathan Merritt. Things threatened to boil over more than once but peace was restored.

Passion was the theme of the night and not just from the Indigenous team. As in previous All Star encounters, the Indigenous team was always going to have a reason to perform. The sense of a brotherhood coming together to represent the original inhabitants of Australia is a strong unifying force.

More surprising was the camaraderie, commitment and, dare one say, ‘passion’ from the NRL All Stars. Apart from pride in their own performance and respect for their opposition, they had no such binding force on the night and comparatively little to play for.

NRL All Stars’ captain, Benji Marshall, summed up the intensity of the game when he said, ”That is past a pre-season trial – it is right up there with an NRL game.”

After trailling 12-0 early and by 10 points at half-time, the NRL All Stars fought back strongly in the second half to win 36-28 and to claim the Arthur Beetson Trophy. It was always going to be a high-scoring affair and the eleven tries scored, eight of them by backs, meant the crowd spent much of the night on their feet. England’s Jack Reed (pictured) also managed a try for the NRL All Starts team following a flowing move. Indigenous winger Merritt was voted by the fans as the Preston Campbell Medal winner for his two tries and his all-round classy display.

The new modified rules in place had mixed results. The four power plays, designed to benefit the attacking team, resulted in five tries, two of them to the defending team.

The use of the immediate tackle-count restart at ruck infringements rather than a penalty seemed to divide opinion. NRL All Stars coach, Wayne Bennett, believed the rule cleaned up the ruck and suggested the NRL look at adopting something similar down the track. From the players, Marshall gave it qualified approval while Johnathan Thurston, the Indigenous captain, thought the referees were penalising infringements that would have been let pass without the rule modification.

Greg Inglis’ ankle injury was the only sour note of the night. He hobbled off after scoring a try late in the game and is expected to get scans in coming days. Early indications are that it is not as serious as the ankle injury that kept him out of the game at the back end of 2011.

NRL ALL STARS 36 (F Pritchard L Bailey L Lewis J Reed J Dugan M Vatuvei tries B Marshall 6 goals)
INDIGENOUS ALL STARS 28 (N Merritt 2 M Bowen J Yow Yeh G Inglis tries J Thurston 3 C Sandow goals)
Skilled Park. Crowd 26,039. Referees: A Klein J Robinson.