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About Roy Masters
About Roy Masters
Roy Masters has written for the Herald for over 20 years. He coached first grade rugby league for 10 years, including the longest stint of any coach at St George, and was named Western Suburbs Coach of the Century. An inaugural member of the Australian Sports Commission (1984), Roy still serves on the board, having initiated the program of modified sports for primary school children. Roy is married to Elaine Canty and divides his time between Sydney and Melbourne. An award winning journalist, Roy's latest book Bad Boys exposes the grubby side of the game.
Forty winks: coaches knew Storm were asleep from set one
"WE'RE the Storm and we're No.2," Melbourne's suspended skipper, Cam Smith, sang on the team bus as it travelled from Homebush Bay, the scene of the club's greatest humiliation, to their hotel in Parramatta.
Storm trumped by Manly tornado
WITH a combination of guts, guile and glitzy play, a relentless Manly surged over the Melbourne side that looked like a savage storm that had already blown its last breath, the Sea Eagles reversing last year's grand final result in an emphatic display.
I loathe them because filthy lucre is no cure for moral bankruptcy
Marcelo Rezende is the Sea Eagles' anti-wrestling coach: "Everyone says [Storm wrestle coach] John Donehue is the man who changed the NRL. I want to be the man who beat the man who changed the NRL."
Cronk was top dog before Cam ban
"IT'S Cooper's team now," Storm captain Cam Smith told coach Craig Bellamy in one of those introspective moments of honesty and humility that define the soul of the club.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the best of them all?
"YOU talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?"
Bellamy and his warhorses see Cats loss as a lesson, not a portent
A GEELONG fan who presumptuously had '08 tattooed on his arm prior
to the Cats' loss in last Saturday's AFL grand final is hoping the
Storm can be inked on to alleviate his embarrassment.
At the heart of Melbourne's grief
THE sight of four Storm players walking the streets of Coogee at
1am, eating chocolate coated ice creams, was at odds with the venom
and fury of a press conference three hours earlier where the club's
hierarchy vented their pent-up frustration at the NRL and the
media.
Developer sues, claims sale process of 'struggling' club flawed
DOCUMENTS filed yesterday in the NSW Supreme Court allege Manly Leagues Club was sold to Sea Eagles benefactor Max Delmege for $3 million less than its book value and for half an earlier offer.
Finals feud: Sticky v Bellyache
AS STORM players left training on Monday, they were given a
print-out of a newspaper column written by Cronulla coach Ricky
Stuart 10 minutes after Saturday night's epic final between
Melbourne and the Broncos.
Captain's loss would leave Melbourne with a flippin' nightmare
WHAT it comes down to, effectively, is a toss of the coin. Because
without Cam Smith, Melbourne have lost exactly as many games as
they have won.
Midnight coverage feeds Storm fans' siege mentality
ONE-THOUSAND Storm supporters sat on the cold, concrete steps of a
waterfront piazza in Melbourne on Saturday night, watching the
action from Suncorp Stadium on a big screen provided by Channel
Nine.
Peter's backing out of the rabbit hole
Peter Holmes a Court's ambition to scythe through what he perceived to be rugby league's inherent inertia, privatise the Rabbitohs and establish a Manchester United-type commercial dynasty at Redfern collided head on with the game's entrenched loyalty when he sought to buy a unit in an apartment building adjacent to South Sydney Leagues Club.
For players the eighth, and deadliest, sin is mendacity
IN FOOTBALL, it seems it is a greater sin today for a player to lie
to club officials than it is for him to sexually assault a woman,
smash a glass in her face, or collide with parked vehicles while
drunk.
No animal mascots permitted: why finals are pulling up lame
IF ANYTHING demonstrates what a politically driven,
compromise-riven, nothing's-a-given sport league really is, it was
the NRL final between the No.1-ranked Storm and No.8-ranked
Warriors at Olympic Park on Sunday.
A tale of two contrasting coaches
There are great expectations when in charge of a powerful club, as
Wayne Bennett and Brad Fittler can attest, writes Roy Masters.
Mental strength holds key to finals success
"Half this game is 90 per cent mental," American baseball manager
Danny Ozark once said, tangling his thoughts in a post-season media
conference.
No room for Storm at Dome
SHOULD the Storm finish second on the NRL ladder and proceed to the grand final qualifying weekend, the consolation of enjoying an extra day's rest has been lost because of a prior booking at Melbourne's Telstra Dome.
Coaches turn to players to avoid bad boy blues
NATHAN BROWN faces a challenge as daunting as keeping the Dragons in the play-offs should serial bad boy Todd Carney join him at Huddersfield, as expected, next season.
A dream finish for NRL ends a dramatic week
"SOAP opera," an AFL chief once informed me, "is about the only thing rugby league does better than us" - a reference to the daily column inches and air time devoted to dramas in the codes.
Juniors the solution to ending the Beige Age
THE National Rugby League is engaged in a Beige Age of its own making. There are no cultural differences between Sydney's nine clubs, nor any distinct identity with the Broncos, Raiders and Warriors.
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