Kent on Saturday: The Four Nations has proven the NRL needs to get back to simple footy Samoa's competitiveness shows what can happen when players are allowed to play. A FUNNY thing happened on the way to the Four Nations final. The football saved the competition. The doomsayers were out beforehand, lamenting the absence of a platoon of current Australian Kangaroos and a couple of other stars, the Englishman by the name of Samuel Burgess and the Kiwi, Sonny Will Billiams. Many thought it would be second rate with the absence of such star power. And then they kicked off ... I am still talking to people raving about last weekend's Test between England and New Zealand. The Australia-England Test was another ripper. The Samoans have been tremendous. And the moment anybody starts to drill down on the why's and wherefore's, they inevitably settle on one thing: the less structure, the absence of the wrestle, have made the footy great. What is it about this the NRL fails to see? The most boring game in the NRL these days is when one team is churning through its completions and then wrestling like Royce Gracie in defence. It doesn't matter how flamboyant or talented the opposition is. Unless they start tucking the ball under their arm and going completion for completion, as well, they get licked on the scoreboard. Which means, after the game, we hear from the losing coach how it was the referee's fault before he tells us they didn't complete. And we all fall asleep until we get to watch it all again next week. The NRL's rules committee meets next month and the first thing they should do is watch Four Nations games and figure out how it got so right. NRL football is moving away from the game it used to be ... and getting caught in a spiral of lost identity. One of the NRL's great strengths over rugby union was its simplicity. To understand rugby and all its various rules you need to be an insider. That's why no casual fan can just turn on the television and take in a game. What was that penalty for? The NRL is becoming more like rugby, as we introduce rules to legislate against coaching tactics and, worse, variations or interpretations of rules. This is the surest sign we have lost our way. Australia v England provided another thrilling game of Four Nations football. The rules committee must fix this. Their charter should be to protect the game's integrity, preserve its identity, and not bow to the whims of coaches seeking competitive advantage. It does not need more rules to do this, but less. It needs to untangle rules - and their dreaded interpretation - and make the game simple again. So. never short of an opinion, here's mine: More fatigue leads to more mistakes, which means more uncertainty. The wrestle will be less effective. And don't take the soft option of going from 10 to eight. Make it six. Coaches will moan they have not got time to adjust for next season. Two things: they're all starting from the same point and they have all summer to get fit. Deal with it. Fall back in line with the rest of the world. The Four Nations, on the back of the World Cup, is a revelation. The second referee was supposed to control the ruck and clean it up. International football has shown, for some reason, the opposite is true. Is the NRL's experiment with two referees over? You can't strip in a tackle, scrums are uncontested, you can't strike in the play-the-ball, so how do you get the ball back if a team is completing its sets? They changed the unlimited tackle rule because teams would not surrender the ball and it became boring. Guess what, we have now created a briefer version. Above all, sport is theatre. Particularly television sport - and every NRL game is televised. One of the great joys of the game is now gone because a team scores and rather than a burst of elation at the try we have to sit and wait five minutes for the video ref to decide. The argument against this is we have the technology so why not use it? But at the moment video refs are paralysed with fear and so take an eternity. No other sport around the world, using replay technology, suspends its game as long as NRL does. We are making decisions based on what? How did we ever take a black and white rule and make it grey and think it would make things clearer? Interpretation only leads to damaging debate over who's more right or wrong. These suggestions are all from the top drawer marked "common sense." It's where the fans work from. Cricket legend Richie Benaud will be back on our screens very soon. REST easy, folks, Richie Benaud is not lost to our small screens this summer. In between dealing with his injuries suffered in last summer's car accident and his current bout with skin cancer, the living Aussie treasure has swapped the cream, the bone, the white, the off-white, the ivory and the beige for ... blue and white butcher stripes. Benaud has signed on as the voice of lamb, the ads coming soon to a television near you. Benaud was missing from Friday night's summer opener when Australia took on South Africa in the Perth one-dayer, but the countdown has begun for when he emerges in the commentary box in Sydney on January 3, a moment that threatens to dwarf the Test itself. By then, Richie's hoping, we'll all have had our fill of ... chhhops. ANTHONY Mundine proved what everybody who knows boxing have been saying for years. Mundine's handspeed was why he so easily outclassed big punching Belarussian Sergey Rabchenko on Wednesday, and why he would have been a threat against anybody if he had headed overseas years ago instead of fighting the Bum of the Month Club. Now, at 39, it's a race, a balancing act. God given gifts against what times takes away. NEVER again. Those should be the words of every Australian government when it comes to funding Australian soccer's fanciful dreams. If the inquiry into corruption is corrupt, what hope have we? Amid accusations of foul play over World Cup bids, the Garcia Report was commissioned. The FFA co-operated fully and was smashed for "problematic conduct." Who didn't co-operate fully? That would be Russia (2018) and Qatar (2022), both cleared of wrongdoing. So never again. For, while the more worldly among us never expected any different from FIFA officials, what remains is the little matter of the FFA spending $45 million in taxpayer money to fund the bid. SLOWLY we get to the gritty end. After a solid win over the Barbarians and then Wales, the new-look Wallabies step it up on Sunday morning (Fox Sports 2 7am) when they take on France. Once again the scrum is being questioned, the last time the Wallabies met France in Paris they got donkey-licked, but if they are to get into World Cup shape then Tests like this should be no problem for a team with serious World Cup ambitions. It will be a great gauge to see where the Wobblies are. Mark Hunt connects with Antonio 'Big Foot' Silva of Brazil. Mark Hunt The fighter, from Sydney, meets Fabricio Werdum for the UFC heavyweight title in Mexico on Saturday. Jeff Fenech said this week you could knock out anyone in the world. How would a fight between you and boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko end? I believe I'm the best fighter on the planet, no matter which sport it is. Like any other fight, I'd go in for the KO punch and hope it lands. How do you get inside his reach? I actually like fighting taller guys. I've done it my whole career. Maybe you should check out how I beat Stefan Struve to get your answer. You have a unique habit when you drop someone of turning and walking away the moment you land, do you know when they're going down? You can feel it connect and I then know I don't need to do anything more. What goes through your mind the moment you clip someone and you see them start to fall? That the gameplan worked. And the gameplan is simple - go in there and knock him out. It's a good feeling to win like that but I do get a bit sad when it's all over. You were just getting over knocking out Roy Nelson when you got a late call-up to fight for the title, is the movie next? [Laughs] I hope so. Got to get my manager onto that idea. How does it end for Fabricio Werdum? It ends with him on the canvas and me with my hands in the air. I have tremendous respect for Fabricio and he's a top fighter, but I'm going to go in there and like everyone else I've fought, try to knock his face off. Issac Luke will come in for some criticism for supporting banned teammate Kirisome Auva'a in the Four Nations final. But in times of trouble, friends stand by friends. South Africa is still awaiting an apology from Michael Clarke for hurting Dale Steyn's feelings a year ago, when a few unkind words were said on the pitch. All together now ... boo hoo. Originally published as How the Four Nations can improve the NRL