There is no doubt about Newcastle coach Brian Smith. He could never be accused of not being his own man and it’s caused him a pretty bad couple of weeks.

After blueing with Clint Newton, the club let Newton go and he immediately joined the Storm. Then there’s the decision to cut nine players for 2008, telling them now and the Knights get an absolute towel up by the Broncos.

I suppose Smith’s thinking is that the players who he is letting go next year will still play well for the Knights as they will be looking for a contract from another club, but in saying that, morale in the steel city wouldn’t be too good.

I guess the cut players can look on the bright side. Gorden Tallis and Jamie Lyon blossomed after Smith parted company with them. There was an article this week in the Daily about how men are sooks when they get sick and most women agreed with that suggestion.

Fair enough, count me in, but there are some pretty tough guys playing football. Take glamour boy Billy Slater, who fractured his eye socket and cheekbone last weekend against Manly.

Apparently after the game, in the dressing room, he kept saying: “One week. I’ll only be out for one week”. Sadly for him it is six weeks. On the local front, a few weeks ago I noticed Beerwah’s Wade Rothery limping off the field and then trying to take the strapping off his foot.

If there wasn’t a broken bone in among all the strapping, I’m not here, and it looked to me like he had strapped it up to play the game. Maybe backs are a bit tougher than people reckon. It might only be the ’flu men are sooks about.

What about the Miss Universe Pageant? I must say, normally, it’s not my go but I have read with interest all the flack about Gladstone’s Kimberly Busteed and her choice of the Australian surf lifesaving outfit for the swimwear apparel.

There has been a fair bit of knocking and Kimberly’s response was that she believed the costume was a fitting tribute to mark the 100th year of the lifesaving movement in Australia and, instead of being negative, critics should be offering other suggestions for next year.

Well, good on her, is my comment and Surf Lifesaving Australia should make her a life member for the attention she has brought to the association. Now, speaking of attention, and the reason I mention this, I was in a queue to get on a plane to Gladstone and Kimberly was ushered to the position in front of me and, let me tell you, she brought the Brisbane Airport to a standstill.

The last couple of weeks I have mentioned old footballers and all the festivities that are around at Origin time. It struck a chord with one reader – yes, there is at least one – who told me he attended an Australia v New Zealand celebrity rugby league match at Ipswich a few weeks ago.

He said there were some good performances by ex-players from both countries and it was an enjoyable night, but he thought they were pushing the limits with jobs for the boys. Tom Raudonikis was the coach of the Australian side, which is quite believable, but one would wonder what he would have to do.

I would hope it was a more hands-on role than the team doctor that was listed in the program. Greg Conescu was listed as the MD and was actually paged over the PA at the Ipswich Reserve to go to the Australian dressing shed.

So that’s what Turtle did after he stopped playing, although, I think during his career, he might have fancied himself as the Doctor of Love. For the record, the Kiwis won the match and word has it that some of the Australian players went in expecting a picnic but quickly found out they were on the menu. The Kiwis were deadly serious.

The NRL Snipe was also on about jobs for the boys when he got back in touch during the week “I see that former star Bob Lindner was given the only vacant job available for the Maroons, media liaison manager, which is all good except that there are two things Bob doesn’t like – talking in front of people and the media,” the Snipe reported.

“But his predecessor Ben Ikin wasn’t available because of his growing commitments with Nine and is becoming known in Queensland as ‘Our Gus’, in reference to counteracting southern bias.”