Re: Lenighan blames West Yorkshire mafia : Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:36 pm  

Juan Cornetto wrote:

I have been following League for 60 years and in my experience the game has always relied on imported talent to bring the crowds in, be it top international Union players especially from Wales, or top League players from down under.

However both these sources have dried up over recent years to such an extent that SL is very much the poor relation nowadays.

We have never produced enough home grown talent to replace these star signings and our own young players now lack the experience of playing alongside great players and learning from them. All this has produced a steady decline in the quality of the product to such an extent that all that is left is the physicality which on its own is just boring.

The time has come for some radical thinking to arrest this decline and maybe we should be seriously developing Nines RL in the UK which could bring back the crowds and sponsors and appeal to the TV audience.

Agreed - RU's style is becoming like RL but with significantly more money to back it up

Re: Lenighan blames West Yorkshire mafia : Fri Sep 21, 2018 10:11 am  

Juan Cornetto wrote:

The time has come for some radical thinking to arrest this decline and maybe we should be seriously developing Nines RL in the UK which could bring back the crowds and sponsors and appeal to the TV audience.

Nines has the potential to be to RL what T20 is to cricket - an exciting concept that lets the flair players show off their skills and appeals to a brand new audience that isn't necessarily interested in the hard graft and the nuances of forward play that the purists enjoy. If I were Elstone, some kind of Nines event would be one of the first things I'd be looking at introducing. Create the event, hype it and sell it to whatever city is willing to bid for it.

But knowing RL, we'd host it on a Tuesday night in Leigh, pack the teams with academy players and then dismiss the idea as a failure.

Re: Lenighan blames West Yorkshire mafia : Fri Sep 21, 2018 4:29 pm  

bramleyrhino wrote:

Nines has the potential to be to RL what T20 is to cricket - an exciting concept that lets the flair players show off their skills and appeals to a brand new audience that isn't necessarily interested in the hard graft and the nuances of forward play that the purists enjoy. If I were Elstone, some kind of Nines event would be one of the first things I'd be looking at introducing. Create the event, hype it and sell it to whatever city is willing to bid for it.

But knowing RL, we'd host it on a Tuesday night in Leigh, pack the teams with academy players and then dismiss the idea as a failure.

I had in mind ditching the loop games and the Magic weekend and having a series of weekend knock out competitions at different venues in a separate NINES championship so that SL players could be available.

As you say this could like T20 in cricket and I believe it would catch on with the public, TV and sponsors for the overall good of the game.

It would be a great opportunity for youngster and could bring back the smaller faster backs with skills who would also play alongside the better SL players who would relish playing on TV in front of large crowds. In turn it could improve the standard of SL

Re: Lenighan blames West Yorkshire mafia : Fri Sep 21, 2018 4:39 pm  

Juan Cornetto wrote:

I had in mind ditching the loop games and the Magic weekend and having a series of weekend knock out competitions at different venues in a separate NINES championship so that SL players could be available.

As you say this could like T20 in cricket and I believe it would catch on with the public, TV and sponsors for the overall good of the game.

It would be a great opportunity for youngster and could bring back the smaller faster backs with skills who would also play alongside the better SL players who would relish playing on TV in front of large crowds. In turn it could improve the standard of SL

Using 9s as a replacement for Loop fixtures is a good shout (although I'd keep MW). Host almost a second league, with rounds inserted at various points in the season, played at a football venue (say, six rounds, each team plays two games on Sat and two on Sun?). It would need a serious prize money incentive for the clubs to buy into it though.

Re: Lenighan blames West Yorkshire mafia : Mon Sep 24, 2018 2:21 pm  

bramleyrhino wrote:

Using 9s as a replacement for Loop fixtures is a good shout (although I'd keep MW). Host almost a second league, with rounds inserted at various points in the season, played at a football venue (say, six rounds, each team plays two games on Sat and two on Sun?). It would need a serious prize money incentive for the clubs to buy into it though.

Yes this is the sort of thing I had in mind and it would soon draw in the crowds and money from TV and sponsorship.

With SL dying before our eyes the game needs some out of the box thinking and I believe that in Nines we have a better product than the very successful 7s in Union. So some serious investment and promotion is required and like T20 in cricket it could go International as countries like PNG and Figi and dare I say England who could compete on equal terms with the Ossies.