The chance of Isaah Yeo’s pectoral injury ending his season has raised the question of whether Penrith can win the NRL premiership without him. Yeo is line-ball with Nathan Cleary as the Panthers’ indispensable player. What single player’s absence would cancel out the other contenders’ title hopes?

Cronulla have won games without Nicho Hynes or Braydon Trindall, but I doubt they could reach the grand final without Blayke Brailey, their quicksilver version of Harry Grant. Newcastle can survive without Dylan Brown but not, obviously, without Kalyn Ponga. The destructive new star Francis Manuleleua is also critical to the Knights’ chances.

The Dolphins slumped while Isaiya Katoa was injured and are now roaring back with their recovered playmaker. The Warriors and Roosters, the most likely grand finalists if Penrith miss out, are the least reliant on one player.

Still, I can’t see the Roosters winning if they lost Naufahu Whyte. (See how Sam Walker or James Tedesco perform without Whyte’s go-forward.) Victor Radley, who straightens their attack at first receiver, is probably their other indispensable player.

The Wahs have no single linchpin. James Fisher-Harris is still the best prop in the game, but they have such a good pack they could make up for his absence. Maybe Wayde Egan, whose vision at dummy-half sets up those dominant forwards, is indispensable. While the semi-finalists have an even spread of talent, a few of the sides who will be in Bali in September belong to the one-man team league.

Bronze medal or fool’s gold?

In case you missed it, three weeks ago, England and France were dragged out of their post-semi-final misery to go through the motions of a “bronze medal playoff” in the FIFA World Cup. The Guardian’s Jonathan Liew, calling it “the match nobody wants to play”, was voicing the thoughts of several billion fans.

Reflecting the emptiness of the fixture, the coaches put out second-string teams, each making seven changes. France, playing like they didn’t care, let in four goals in the first half. England, playing like they didn’t care, scored six by full-time. Ten goals were scored, and by the end even fewer people cared than at the beginning.

Clearly someone at the NRL did miss it, because they have floated the idea. Imagine the anticipation: two teams of reserve-graders competing for nothing, not even a NSW Cup. Approximately 20 tries scored if they can hang onto the ball, which they won’t. All in the name of “content” but making no-one content, or even half-content. Today’s NRL is good at throwing meaningless chum in the water to stir up news. Let’s just hope this is another example. In the history of dumb ideas, this one gets a bronze medal.

Scott stance beggars belief

Over in the AFL, there was an extraordinary press conference on Saturday when Geelong coach Chris Scott was asked about the club’s unlawful secret contract with player Jake Kolodjashnij waiving any future claim for the effects of head injuries. It’s about as lawful and ethical as an actor signing on for a snuff movie. Geelong did it in secret, and are now being rightly condemned.

If that was reprehensible, the reaction of Scott, a two-time premiership coach, was bizarre. Not only did he say he hadn’t known about the contract, but he didn’t want to know, and held this up as a model of governance.

“It’s not 1980. The coach doesn’t run everything these days,” Scott said. “This is deliberate that I’m kept at arm’s length from these things … I don’t want to know too much ... I’m one of the least-informed people … It’s not part of my remit ... I could demand that I be involved in it, but I don’t want to be. It’s not the way our football club or any good football club operates.”

Eh? Was this Sergeant “I Know Nothing! No-thing!!” Schultz? The head coach thinks it’s modern governance for him to not know about unlawful agreements between his players and the club.

Even if you believe Scott, it is exactly the type of willed ignorance that has characterised drug scandals in football. These are the same coaches who are always telling us that they care for their players not just as footballers but as human beings. It beggars belief.

Over to you, rugby league. Has any club signed a contract with a player who waives future claims for brain injuries? Are head coaches kept in the dark so they can maintain plausible deniability? It is critical for the NRL to clarify this. I trust it has begun its investigation.

Cowboys-Titans shirt show

Indigenous Round brings many good feelings (notably how far the NRL has outpaced the AFL in Indigenous inclusion). A highlight was the smoking ceremony before the Dragons-Sharks match; what were those Dragons inhaling?

But the lowlight was the jerseys in the Cowboys-Titans game on Thursday. Nothing against the jerseys themselves, but why were the Titans in Cowboys dark-blue and the Cowboys in Titans teal? The panel designs were quite similar, so the only way to tell them apart was the colours – which were the wrong way around. Both teams play in next week’s second part of the Indigenous Round, so they could have worn the jerseys then.

The head-scratcher is that there had to be a meeting, somewhere, before Thursday’s game, in which someone decided that yes, it was OK to have each team play in the other’s colours. In the end, the only memorable thing about the game was 80 minutes of total bewilderment; the Titans appeared to win 30-8 and the Cowboys to suffer a second straight heavy defeat; but that was just an optical illusion.