The Changing face of Rugby League : Mon Jun 26, 2017 5:24 am  

I guess I've been lucky over the years I've seen the likes of Wally Lewis and many more top class Aussies play in the British game.

The sort of downside of this has been that most of them always played for Wigan, Saints, Warrington, Bradford Hull and Leeds.

Yes we at Huddersfield occasionally mined a golden nugget Brad Drew, Brandon Costin and Danny Russell for example but the balance of the game has always been to the wealthier clubs who could afford the best.

However now due to the wealth of the Australian NRL the coach's have the find the best UK youngsters and those golden fringe players from the NRL that can be stars in superleague when not having to wait behind the Aussie superstars for the odd game here and there in the NRL's far bigger talent pool.

This evens up the playing field somewhat and has lead to Huddersfield and probably this year Castleford picking up the LLS and coming close to breaking the big fours stranglehold.

Leeds, Huddersfield and possibly this year Warrington have also tasted the middle 8's and even the mighty Wigan aren't home and hosed yet as their big players O'Loughlin, Tomkins, Leulalai looked decidedly ordinary against a Fartown side with at least six players in the stand who would normally be first choices.

Ironically for all our strifes and woe in the current past two seasons we aren't that far off challenging for the top again as we seem to have unearthed several gems around which to build a team.

Seb, Ryan, Ukuma, Tom, Shannon and of course Jake are probably with a pre season together as good as it gets these days for the overseas rota.

In Kruise and Gareth we have two long term young hookers the envy of many other teams along with Oliver Roberts Dale Ferguson Darnell Macintosh some good young squad players who will improve.

Add Leroy, Gerry, Jordan, Danny and Lee and we are only a couple or three very shrewd signings away from a very good team and as Castleford and Salford this year have shown with some shrewd signings the summit can soon come into view.

In conclusion times ahead can be exciting for the game as a whole, I have always thought 14 was the best make up for Superleague with a top 5/6/8 play off my only reservation is the Toronto thing and yes in the short term it can garner some publicity but the Catalans aside all the expansion teams have been and gone and it's not worth losing any more traditional Rugby League Towns for a few column inches !! If anything lets regenerate them as what good does a stadium devoid of opposition fans do for the game as anyone who has attended Catalans and London home games in recent years can testify to.

Re: The Changing face of Rugby League : Mon Jun 26, 2017 8:53 am  

Who's Gareth?

Re: The Changing face of Rugby League : Mon Jun 26, 2017 10:33 am  

HuddsRL5 wrote: Who's Gareth? O'Brien He means Adam though.

HuddsRL5 wrote: Who's Gareth? O'Brien He means Adam though.

Re: The Changing face of Rugby League : Mon Jun 26, 2017 11:30 am  

Wadski wrote: O'Brien He means Adam though. Yes silly me I will have to stop composing when I wake up early

Wadski wrote: O'Brien He means Adam though. Yes silly me I will have to stop composing when I wake up early

Re: The Changing face of Rugby League : Mon Jun 26, 2017 9:48 pm  

Interesting post and it has been mentioned that SL could be increased to 14 - or even 13 that in my opinion could never work especially for the Magic weekend. With HKR looking strong they are the obvious choice and given an opportunity then others could meet the standard too. Probably Toronto will make it at some point so 14 does not seem too much of a stretch. RFL funding may be the stumbling block as the sky money would be split in to smaller chunks that may not impact the better supported sides too much but will for others?
The play offs for GF should be a straight top 5 for me. Winners of LLS straight through then 2-5 play off to join them.
Super 8's is pointless as gap between 1-8 is too big meaning that top 4 at the split have a huge advantage.
What to do with Middle 8's is another challenge for the RFL. Not a good concept, poorly supported and too much jeopardy for those in the MPG.
Guess one day all this will be settled and we can enjoy some seasons without the constant changing of the format - well we can but hope!

Re: The Changing face of Rugby League : Mon Jun 26, 2017 10:40 pm  

All this constant changing of the game is part of the problem IMO.
Players, coaches, fans and sponsors have no idea whether what they are expected to buy into this season will be the same as next.
This constant harping on about "dead" or "meaningless" games is total nonsense.
How many premiership football games are "meaningless" - doesn't seem to bother them.
So what if wakey v Giants won't make a difference to the top four. It can still be a decent game and fans and clubs can still have their rivalries.

Re: The Changing face of Rugby League : Tue Jun 27, 2017 3:39 pm  

jools wrote:

All this constant changing of the game is part of the problem IMO.
Players, coaches, fans and sponsors have no idea whether what they are expected to buy into this season will be the same as next.
This constant harping on about "dead" or "meaningless" games is total nonsense.
How many premiership football games are "meaningless" - doesn't seem to bother them.
So what if wakey v Giants won't make a difference to the top four. It can still be a decent game and fans and clubs can still have their rivalries.

I think the constant changing of things jools is for a couple of reasons, One is the obvious one of trying to increase crowds, The other i recon is some sort of attempt to try and fool people into thinking the RFL are actually doing a decent job and are therefor justifying their salaries and Co Cars and so on.

Back in the days when League was reasonably supported, there was just 1 league, No P&R and the talent was far more evenly spread about the clubs, It was not unusual for players to be at clubs for 9/10 years, Some of what we regard as poor clubs today could hold their own with the best.

At the time Sky stepped in and brought in Summer rugby, the game was in it's death throws, only Wigan won anything for 10years, and that was because they bought all the best players some that rarely got a game but were not available to other teams. They were a cracking team for sure but the game was getting boring.

Sky virtually bought the game and will have the last say on what happens to the structure insomuch as they will have to like it . The real power leaving Sky out of it rests with the SL Clubs, They are the clubs that generate the wealth and it wrankles them to have to support the game below them and feel the Championship should stand on their own feet.
There are two sides to this "as there always is " 1 the championship can't stand on it's own feet because Sky don't want to know about it, Hence the continual changing of formats in the wild hope that sooner or later one of them might work.
2 the S League clubs maintain there isn't enough money for them to provide a good enough squad of players to lift the level of the game to anything like the Aussie game, and also fight off the dark side tempting our better players away from the game.

No easy solution because the basic problem for league is what it has been for many years now, It is just not popular enough, there are far too many other things for people to do with both their time and their money now compared with back in the day, On top of that it has to compete with Soccer " which is a hopeless task " ( not the case in Os ). So do we let the game below SL wither on the vine and concentrate on the likes of Toronto and the south of France, which Sky want, or do we try to carry on in an ever decreasing way spreading the money out.

Union is in a different position to league in so much as they are not particularly bothered about crowds locally. The top sides will pull roughly the same as S league, But at International level the game is at a whole different level to ours and it powers the whole game and makes it cash rich, In league people are not really bothered about the international game , they are bothered about their club, and being able to just tootle down the road to the local rivals on Sunday afternoon.

Union have sold their game big style since they turned openly Pro, Despite League being the better game " arguably " and pulling better viewing figures, Union are the ones who get twice the TV coverage and twice the money, so obviously the powers behind Union are of a different ilk to the ones behind league. Hence the power struggle that is currently going on between the RFL and S league, I think S league feel they can do a lot better than the RFL have done and It's hard to disagree with that.

Interesting times ahead.