Sadly, I think it might be you that's cooked. You've certainly never spent time around NRL players because I hate to break it to you, but aside from the Mormon guys, an enormous percentage of NRL players relax and unwind in exactly that fashion. I think you'd find it was far harder to find an NRL player who doesn't love pubs and poker machines than one who does.
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Honestly, I'd just about guarantee the Storm players and Raiders players and Roosters players and Parramatta players have all done it at different stages this year. Origin teams are probably doing it, the Kangaroos probably do as well.
If you genuinely believe NRL players from Brisbane or any other team are all tucked up in bed by 8:00pm the night before a major game then you really do need to get out a bit more.
You can argue whether they should or shouldn't be, that's fine. But the reality is just about every NRL squad behaves exactly the same way, and they didn't all get flogged the next day. Some of them likely dished out the flogging.
Personally, I think you're giving far too much credit for the result to the pokies the night before and not nearly enough credit to just how bog average to downright terrible we have been all season.