BY DAN

Hello and welcome to the most pointless article we’ve ever written.

Please stop reading now. For both of our sakes.

We’ve sure written some dumb things before. These pages have written entire articles based on the idea that NRL island reminded us of the Little Mermaid. We pitched a Love Island/NRL crossover. Sometimes we punch above our weight here at the Sportress. Sometimes you get what you paid for. This is one of the latter.

This time of year things can get a bit loose. People are keen for footy to start and journos have to fill pages. There’s no more player movement (that tends to either happen at the beginning or the end of the off-season), and there’s little in the way of contract finalisations. This is a time of the year when you see stories about people training the house down, or articles that list the best [insert club] team of the [insert X time period]. They predict a round 1 lineup six weeks, two trials, a Vegas trip and probably 4-5 misdemeanours away from people actually taking the field. People put dumb things to paper. We are no better.

Once in a group chat of the finest rugby league minds I know someone put up one of these lists. As is meant to happen when people write these, what resulted was a fair bit of criticism of the team, a few questions about eyes and whether they were painted on, and general mirth. That was until someone smarter than me questioned the entire premise and suggested the time period chosen was like choosing the best Raiders without an E in their name.

Me being the person you know least capable of independent thought, didn’t have the capacity to understand the criticism here, and instead spent the next few hours thinking about the best Raiders without an E in their name. Not my proudest moment let’s be real. I probably missed my kids doing something for the first time because I was googling how to spell player’s names (those who follow know spelling might not be my most developed skill) and thinking things like “is Adam Mogg’s marvelous 2006 more deserving of a spot at centre than Nic Cotric’s non-existent career at that position”. You know, the big issues.

So I came up with a 17. The main takeaway was that is was way easier than I expected. It was built without reference to middle names, but you needed to be ‘E’ free in both first and second name. For players like Chris O’Sullivan who probably had an ‘e’ in their name but no one ever referred to them as ‘Christopher’ I ran with what was public. Heck, my name is just ‘Dan’ on my birth certificate. Maybe Chris’s parents were equally succinct.

The team itself is hot. For your pleasure:

1. Josh Dugan
2. Noa Nadruku
3. Adam Mogg
4. Jack Wighton
5. Jordan Rapana
6. Chris O’Sullivan
7. Ricky Stuart
8. David Shillington
9. Josh Hodgson
10. Josh Papalii
11. Bronson Harrison
12. Hudson Young
13. Sia Soliola
14. Zac Woolford
15. Sam Backo
16. John Lomax
17. David Grant

For starters it’s wild to consider who’ve I’ve let out. No Jamal Fogarty. No Jason Smith. Scott Logan, Junior Paulo, Nic Cotric, Shannon Boyd, Tom Starling, Anthony Milford, Simon Woolford (more on that later), Jay Hoffman, Troy Thompson, Paul Martin, Dunamis Lui among others. The absolute plethora of non-e-based talent is incredible. There were plenty of tough decisions, especially among the middle forwards. There wasn’t space for Royston Lightning, despite the fact his last name was spelled counter-intuitively enough that he could have made the squad on principle alone.

So, look, normally this idiocy would have ended when I posted this dickheadery back in the chat. But then in another chat (look, i’m in a few), a friend who has known me since I was 12 made what can only been a terrible piece of judgement when he responded “I wonder how they’d go against a team with no ‘A’s?” The man has known me more than a quarter of a century and thought and I’d just laugh and go and do something productive. Oh boy.

Ok so…

1. Brett Mullins
2. John Ferguson
3. Ruben Wiki
4. Brenko Lee
5. Clinton Schifcofske
6. Mitchell Cornish
7. Lincoln Withers
8. Brent Todd
9. Simon Woolford
10. Corey Horsburgh
11. Brett Hetherington
12. Joel Thompson
13. Shaun Fensom
14. Joe Picker
15. Troy Thompson
16. Josh Miller
17. Edrick Lee

Much weirder team. Plenty of hot blood and courage. Those halves are ‘honest’ in that way that commentators like to subtly neg footballers. Choc Schifcofske would probably be better suited coming in off the wing to ball play a bit (and Edrick could cover him). Simon Woolford got a run here (No E and No A. Nice.) which made me feel better about life. For some reason the idea of him and his son trying to pester each other on the field makes me wonder how intense and funny Christmas cricket must be at the Woolfords. Somehow Nic Cotric didn’t make this team but Brenko Lee did. Man I need to get my head checked.

To me these two teams are pretty evenly matched up until you get to the halves. If only Jack Wighton was John Wighton or Jason Smith was John Smith then maybe we could have squeezed him in the A’s an evened it up a bit.

Verdict: No E’s by 12.

I dunno, we probably don’t deserve to ask you to do us a solid and like our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or share this on social media. Don’t hesitate to send us feedback (dan@sportress.org) or comment below. If your question is why then the answer is we’re sad and lonely.