The world according to a mad insane RL fan

[cpwigan]

The world according to a mad insane RL fan

Accept that British RL is mediocre compared to Australia / NZ. It is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a starting point. The supply of talented young players to British RL has always been less than demand. It probably always will be. It can be less / more though. Historically, RL has reduced the supply issue by signing Union players to supplement League talent. The history and success of Wigan RL is littered with great Union talent such as Sullivan, Boston et al. At the present time supplementing League talent with Union talent is a No! No! We actually now lose League talent to exacerbate the player supply issue.

Summer RL no longer creates the opportunity for a player to play in both hemispheres in a year. We no longer have tours. On the whole, journeymen come to the UK and earn a living because they are not good enough to play in the NRL. Some of those journeymen without a close season, without a great coach are able to qualify for play offs etc which only serves to illustrate the mediocrity of our competition. Player supply is chronic and contrary to some opinions is probably getting worse.

Accept British RL is mediocre. To argue otherwise you become part of the reason why it is so.

The quality of any competition / individual players relies upon A) Quality of coaching B) Their day to day environment but vitally C) An intense high quality competition.

The importance of coaching is self explanatory. The day to day environment is the facilities utilised, the workload across the year and so forth. Sadly, most quality coaches will originate from recent employment in the NRL. An Australasian accent does not simply = an outstanding coach. Up to date education in the most elite RL competition in the world is the key. A British coach can get that education via being an assistant or a sabbatical work experience of suitable length. Any Australasian spending time in the UK sees their own development / education slow down from the day they arrive in this country. 3 years is the maximum duration any coach can spend away from the educational melting pot that is the NRL.

The biggest issue in British RL is the creation of an intense high quality competition. The fewer players you have, the smaller your domestic elite competition should be. It is ludicrous to be so presumptuous and arrogant to think that British RL can support a similar sized domestic RL as that in Australia. Indeed, the biggest advantage and ultimately important factor Britain could have in terms of gaining supremacy over the NRL is a true elite competition. The NRL may expand too much and quality decrease.

Whatever the country, whatever the sport, whatever the age; the more frequently a competitor is exposed to intense high quality competition the better he becomes. He will become a better player than somebody more naturally talented simply by being asked to / learning to cope with the demands of intense high quality competition. No matter how good the training / the coaching you can never recreate the demands placed upon a player / team by intense, high quality competition. Indeed, the opposite is true, playing inferior lack lustre opposition leads to the development of bad habits no matter how good the training / coaching is.

The only way to create intense high quality competition in Britain at the present time is to reduce the number of teams playing at an elite level. Wigan, St Helens, Warrington, Leeds and Huddersfield would be the obvious current 5 based on playing strength. Playing strength or population base? Population wise you would talk of Bradford as the 2nd City of West Yorkshire or Harlequins as the capital city club. However, is playing strength not more important? Do we need to get away from SL or nothing is the only rule? Do you then add one or both of the Humberside clubs? Giving you a 3 Lancastrian 3 Yorkshire 2 East Riding SL or 3 Lancastrian 2 Yorkshire 2 Humberside 1 London? Perhaps 9 clubs with a 2 bye rounds for each club in the season. Might help with the WCC?

British RL is faced with two options in order to raise standards 1) Reduce the competition size or 2) Allow as many players as possible to play in the NRL with caveats.
Personally, I favour 1 supplemented by 2. Option 1 allows British RL to move beyond the NRL. Option 2 only means we will always be following the NRL / Australia/NZ.

At the present time commercially / financially. Unless you are part of SL you are by and large stuffed. It is refreshing to see clubs like Featherstone and Batley saying no, we are not ready / no we do not want to apply for SL. An enlightened view!

Far too many British RL Clubs are trying to punch above their financial weight even with more stringent RL byelaws to either get into or to stay in SL. 8 or 9 clubs would probably be the limit and that is pushing it to the extreme of clubs that could cope financially with an elite League.

Add a 14 team Championship to a 9 team SL and you have 23 British / European clubs in leagues that offer some financial / commercial / development prospects. 2 quality domestic leagues would remove the SL or nothing mentality that forces Geographical Expansion Clubs to seek the Holy Grail or poisoned chalice of SL far too soon.

Imagine Leigh playing Salford and Widnes and Wakefield, Castleford in a season. Revenue would be boosted by improved attendances. Featherstone and Batley playing Wakefield and Castleford. The revenue of their so called lesser clubs would be increased considerably and better still they could do so in a league that does not lead to them committing financial suicide. Would the attendances of possibly more successful Catalans, Crusaders drop by much? would they increase even? Would the attendances of Wakefield and Castleford suffer dramatically? Particularly if supplemented by an extra cup competition?

The 3rd domestic tier could / would operate at a very low professional level in terms of finance.

IMO the choice that faces British RL is a smaller more intense domestic elite division or to allow players to go overseas. I know which I prefer.

Pts 2, 3 to infinity of the mad RL scientist will follow

N.B I forgot to add. A smaller SL would mean either a bigger slice of TV revenue per club and/or the ability/opportunity to market each SL game properly. A dirty word/phrase - higher prices for a better competition?

[GeoffN]

The world according to a mad insane RL fan

One or two valid points in there, actually, but yeah, I'd agree most of it is insanity.

[Kiwiseddon]

God bless you CP. That really was a supernova where a candle would have done

I agree though. 3 tiers does sound like a good idea. I've always thought that the likes of Catalans and certainly the Crusaders should've earned their wings in National League One. Get rid of them and possibly a couple of others and we would have a better SL.

[weststand-rich]

Competition intensity is an interestting issue to eplore.

As it stands now we effectively have a 3 tier competion anyway:

Top Clubs - Wigan, Leeds, Saints, Wire.

Middling clubs - Huddersfield, Hull, Hull KR, Bradford.

Limited resource clubs - Castleford, Wakefield, Salford, Harlequins, Crusaders, Catalans.

What happens if we drop the number of clubs to say 10. With a proportional change in salary cap distribution that would result in a better squad quality on average in the competing clubs. And the quality of the games played would possibly go up? But would that result in more young and English players being blooded? The competition intensity goes up but the opportunity goes down - Coaches are still going to play there best squads, so unless injury forces your hand the development chances are reduced. In the short term the standard of the international team would probably improve. In the long term I'm not so sure.