Overworked?

[adrenalinxx]

There is an artile on sportlife (http://www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague ... acock.html) in which Peacock agrees with Noble that the players play too many games in a season and this is one of the reason for Great Britains poor perfromances in the tri-nations.

Should the Super League reduce the number of match and keep it to a simple 1 Home, 1 Away format or have a differant format.

Would reducing the number of matchs in the Super League have an effect on the supporters, would people be happy with a shorter season. Also clubs will not be able to make as much money from less games unless they increase ticket prices, that would not be too popular withs some supports but clubs like Wakefield might lose valuable income if the Super League is made shorter.

Could the answer be to place a limit on the number of matches that a player can play during a season, there for making sure that every player has a rest at some stage and also giving oppotunities to other players in the squad to get first team rugby.

[highland convert]

Just like the fishing boats, limit their time at sea or on the pitch. It could work but the down time would have to be logged prier to seasons start or an injured player would book off as rested. In that case it would be a false rest. ie the player played the full season with the only break ann injury. You could raise the salery cap and state the number of registered players a team must carry. The salery cap limits the number reducing the opertunity to rest top players, Jones out on another thread is a prime example. Salery cap limits the number of players of his calibre a team can have available. With say 40 registered players by rotation they can be allowed to recover from knocks. The body need not take as much punishment and so many knee ops could be prevented. HC

[Matthew]

Surely it would make more sense to:

Firstly extend the number of clubs in the league and then play one home and one away.

Secondly at the end of the season have a two tier competition. The top 6 play for the super league title and then 7 - 12 (bearing in mind that there would be more teams in the league) could play for a secondary cup - most likely called something like the "Super League Shield".

This would increase the total number of games teams play - without resorting to having 4 matches between the champions and a team that didn't make the play-offs.

By extending the league we could do away with relegation for the time being too.

Thirdly we could increase and then change the cap so that you could only pay the overseas players a percentage of the available cap money and then the rest would have to be spent on home grown players. And has been stated on here many times; any players that came through the clubs academy are exempt from the cap for as long as they stay at the club.

[Fraggle]

adrenalinxx posted:
Also clubs will not be able to make as much money from less games unless they increase ticket prices, that would not be too popular withs some supports but clubs like Wakefield might lose valuable income if the Super League is made shorter.

That is the key part of all this, the clubs are not prepared to sacrifice some of their income by reducing the number of games. The success or otherwise of GB is of minor importance to the clubs compared to their own income, and the clubs most affected by this potential shortfall tend to have shorter seasons than the successful clubs in any case, since play-off income can't be guaranteed for the likes of Wakefield (or Wigan!).

[GeoffN]

I'm not convinced that the number of games played is that much of a factor anyway. Our players don't play that many more games than the Aussies.

[DaveO]

Fraggle posted:
That is the key part of all this, the clubs are not prepared to sacrifice some of their income by reducing the number of games.

What this means of course is that basically there is not enough money in the game. If clubs could get the same income from fewer games then why not reduce the number of fixtures?

I suppose if they could get the same money as now from fewer fixtures then club chairmen would automatically think they could get more money than now if they kept the same number of fixtures!

I personally think a 14 team competition with home and away fixtures would be the right balance.

What is needed to make it so GB can compete or rather remove the excuse of playing too many games, is that we play the same number as the Aussies preferably at the same time then we don't have the ludicrous tri-nations fixtures we had last season.

The Aussies are going to 16 teams this season so I don't know what that means fixture-wise but it could mean some teams only play each other once in order to keep the length of the season down and number of games down.

Whatever we really need to get the SL and NRL seasons in sync in terms of fixtures and the timetable. That simple step would make internationals far easier to organise.

Of course that may still mean players complain of too many games but if they do I think it would be time to tell them to get on with it and not be so soft!

Dave

[Fraggle]

DaveO posted:
The Aussies are going to 16 teams this season so I don't know what that means fixture-wise but it could mean some teams only play each other once in order to keep the length of the season down and number of games down.

Didn't they used to operate a "bye" system whereby not every team played every week?

Of course that may still mean players complain of too many games but if they do I think it would be time to tell them to get on with it and not be so soft!

Dave

Loathe though I am to give the roundball game any credit, it seems strange to have our players complain about being tired after 28 games of rugby league when their soccer counterparts often play twice as many, and often twice in the same week. I know the physical demands of the two sports are very very different, but few RL players play every round of the season, and even considering cup runs and internationals, they still don't have to play anything like as many competitive games as in other sports.

[the_cow]

Surely when the franchise system comes into force in 2009 (if im not mistaken) then we will have a 14 team superleague with each team playing each other home and away once. that would be 26 games a season which would be two less then last season and one less than this?

the challenge cup could be one way to reduce the fixtures- possibly have another round before the superleague teams enter? that way only the 'best of the rest' would play the superleague teams, thus avoiding one sided affairs. although i know that would not go down well with the fans of lower league clubs.

[DaveO]

the_cow posted:
Surely when the franchise system comes into force in 2009 (if im not mistaken) then we will have a 14 team superleague with each team playing each other home and away once. that would be 26 games a season which would be two less then last season and one less than this?

the challenge cup could be one way to reduce the fixtures- possibly have another round before the superleague teams enter? that way only the 'best of the rest' would play the superleague teams, thus avoiding one sided affairs. although i know that would not go down well with the fans of lower league clubs.

You need a minimum of four rounds left in the challenge cup to incorporate a 14 team SL with the clubs joining in at the same time. Working backwards from the final

2 teams contest the final.
4 teams contest the semis
8 teams contest the quarters.
16 teams contest this round.

So the 16 team round could swallow up the 14 SL teams alongside two minnows but that sort of turns the previous CC rounds into a pre-qualifier for an eventual two clubs to go in alongside the SL sides. So only two non-SL clubs get a potential big pay day of an SL sized crowd.

But lets assume that worked. This gives us 30 fixtures for the two CC finalists.

Add in the playoffs and if we assume the top two in SL also contest the CC final then the playoffs add two games for the team that takes the shortest route to Old Trafford and three for the one that gets there next.

So that gives us a 33 game season for one of the top sides in the GF.

The Aussies have 25 rounds set up for for the NRL in 2007 (not including playoffs). They do have a longer playoff series than us with a top 8 playoff system I think but I don't know how that works but I can't see it adding any more than 3 games to the 25 rounds for any side.

So my estimate based on the above scenario is we could end up with a 32 or 33 game season for our top two sides (including playoffs) who ought to supply the bulk of the internationals while the Aussies play a 28 game season at most BUT you must add in State of Origin so that makes 31.

The figures of 32 and 33 are of course assuming the best two teams win the lot and contest both finals in the UK which does not always pan out so on average I would say it would be less than 32 or 33 games for us.

The seasons would then be comparable and even if we could not start the seasons at the same time (we start in Feb, they start in mid-march) we could surely coordinate ending them at the same time.

Dave

[GeoffN]

DaveO posted:

So that gives us a 33 game season for one of the top sides in the GF.

The Aussies have 25 rounds set up for for the NRL in 2007 (not including playoffs). They do have a longer playoff series than us with a top 8 playoff system I think but I don't know how that works but I can't see it adding any more than 3 games to the 25 rounds for any side.

So my estimate based on the above scenario is we could end up with a 32 or 33 game season for our top two sides (including playoffs) who ought to supply the bulk of the internationals while the Aussies play a 28 game season at most BUT you must add in State of Origin so that makes 31.

The figures of 32 and 33 are of course assuming the best two teams win the lot and contest both finals in the UK which does not always pan out so on average I would say it would be less than 32 or 33 games for us.

That really sums up my point, earlier, in that our top clubs only play a game or two more than the top Aussie clubs, which is why I can't see that being much of a valid excuse for the gulf in class between the two international sides.
I see the overseas player situation as being much more relevant to our problems at international level; along with our lack of a meaningful intermediate competition similar to their State of Origin.