Wests Tigers hardman Martin Taupau has challenged Wendell Sailor to an arm wrestle. As most readers will know, dual international Sailor broke former Queensland prop Ben Ross' arm in just such a contest on The Footy Show last Thursday. Commentator Ryan Girdler joked with Taupau on air after Friday's 34-6 win over South Sydney that Sailor thought he could beat him in an arm wrestle. "I heard about this arm wrestle last night – if you want to challenge us, let's go," Taupau told Triple M. Sailor respectfully declined, describing Taupau's fend as second only to that of Greg Inglis. Sailor has been quoted as saying he will never arm wrestle again. 3. Blake blames himself You'd think Blake Ferguson would be happy scoring the winning try for the Roosters after flying to Philadelphia for cutting-edge knee surgery. Not so, says coach Trent Robinson. "To be honest, Blake's disappointed with his game," the tricolours coach said after the Warriors game. "He prides himself on performing and feels he didn't perform as well as what he wanted. He's been out for a long time. He's a physical guy and he did a lot of good stuff but for him that wasn't up to scratch. He's an honest guy and he knows where he can improve." But Robinson was not concerned. "We had our best game of the season, as a team, against Melbourne but this is definitely our best win," he said.

4. Credit where it's due - here Full credit to Trent Robinson – for giving us full credit. A few weeks ago in this column, we took the chooks boss to task for saying we should call out divers. If you'll remember, we said that getting such a call wrong in print was asking to be sued for defamation. Well Trent reckons the fourth estate did a good job in stamping out the practice anyway , by forcing the NRL to limit the involvement of video referees. "It's probably embarrassed some players, if they stay down and don't get a penalty from staying down," he said. "I obviously raised it. The credit goes to the media. I had to put pressure on them to come and make something of it and they did. That's the power of the media in our game and they really helped on that. They made our game more credible. They put some pressure on and that's a credit to them. They did something to the good there." The next wrap for the media from a coach is due in 2025 – stay tuned. 5. Back where we started Fantastic point made by former NRL coach Matthew Elliott about the change to the round-13 transfer rule. This column has already made the point that the 10-day cooling-off period will just become a shorter dutch auction – even though signings are not supposed to be announced until the end of that period.

But Elliott points out in an online opinion piece: "This will still see players signing for other clubs the season before, while still running out in their current team colours" – which is exactly why we got the round-13 rule in the first place. In other words, we are back to our starting point, having invested so much time, anger, frustration and brain power in our circular journey to get there. How very rugby league. How long before someone forgets the journey completely and says "I don't like players signing for rival clubs a year in advance, let's do something about it"? And round we go again ... 6. Call game off, says league dissident Rugby league's "Prisoner X", Sol Mokdad, wants the World Cup qualifier set down for Dubai on October 30 to be moved. Mokdad is the man arrested at the behest of the UAE Rugby Union and held in jail for 13 days (kind of poetic, it being 13, right?) last month. He is perplexed, to put it lightly, that the RLIF would seek to work with the people who had him locked up and are still seeking to hold the game between South Africa and Lebanon in Dubai. "The reason it was going to be in Dubai was to help UAE Rugby League – which really no longer exists," Mokdad told me in Exeter late last week. "Most of the clubs are refusing to play rugby league under rugby union administration. I know there are security concerns in Lebanon but play it there or somewhere else where the government recognises our sport."