The idiocy of punishing excellence – the NRL is starting to twig…
Roar Pro
By Millster, 16 Sep 2008 The Crowd is a Roar Pro
114 Have your say
A number of you will have read my views over the last year or so on those aspects of all professional codes that are implemented to artificially level out a competition – such as drafts and salary caps – and that therefore reward mediocrity and prevent clubs from enjoying and consolidating the fruits of their success.
Rather than launch another big comment of my own on this, I just want to tip my hat to a Fox Sports article which has confronted this issue in the context of this year’s NRL finals series. Even braver as this media outlet is constructively criticising a code that it owns.
The final paragraphs are gold – as follows:
“Underlying every grievance is a sense of injustice. Like the salary cap, the top eight doesn’t provide enough safeguards to defend what the best teams have earned. The intention, in both cases, is the opposite: tear them down to appease the lowest common denominator and create a veneer of parity.
So where is the incentive to excel?”
Please enjoy the full story at this link:
http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,8659,24352381-23214,00.html
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Phil Coorey said | September 16th 2008 @ 9:35pm | Report comment
Not a bad article – the finals system is a joke but how bad would it be if we didn’t have the AFL to compare it to? Would anyone notice or care??Lets forget about the AFL system (which is better) for a minute and relate this stupid system to another in a long line of dumb ass decisions that the game is presented with now and remember this…
League is run by some of the most backward thinking people we will ever come across in our lifetime. For example…
What type of game allows their players to be released for 3 exhibition games (that’s all origin is) that 9 times out of 10 ruins teams chances for the finals or disrupts the year like it has for Melbourne, Gold Coast, the Roosters and the Broncos to name a few this year. Yet the fans sit on their ass and take it cause they don’t know any better.
We are seeing mistakes made week in week out by guy in video booths. Tries being awarded on benefit of the doubt? Benefit of the doubt??It’s either a frigging try or isn’t.
Seriously how much more retarded does the game have to get for people to wake up to themselves and walk away??
oikee said | September 17th 2008 @ 9:19am | Report comment
Is it just me or do people go out of their way to find fault, you talk about people walking away because of systems they have in place or even the video ref making poor ones, tell me this, how many people would walk away if brisbane like millster has said had all the talent and won every year. That would do more damage and millster would be on here telling everyone who wants to listen how unfair this system is.
Here is another example ;- Gus Gould whinges about the video ref so other people listen, he says no no no to every call the video ref makes, now if we did not have the video man do you really think he would not complain, he would be saying no no no to all the mistakes that have been let go by the ref in the middle because he did not see them. For anyone wanting the cap gone then i say get used to football in england, 2 to four teams with any hope, the rest rest relying on a minor miracle, call that the mackintyre system if you like.
Pippinu said | September 17th 2008 @ 9:38am | Report comment
I have to confess, if I were a Melburnian, following the Storm as my entree into this game I know little about, I’d soon get mightily pi$$ed off at this whole SOO business that works to impede the progress of my own club in an event I have absolutely zero ownership of.
Why would any self-respecting Melburnian cough up their hard earned to buy a seasons ticket under those circumstances?
True Tah said | September 17th 2008 @ 9:47am | Report comment
Pippinu,
if the Melbourne Storm was comprised of actual Victorians and not a development club for Queensland, then SOO wouldn’t affect them, as their players wouldn’t be battered around. Im not having a go at Victorian RL, but the fact is that Storm have no Victorian raised players. RU doesn’t even have a pro team in Vic, yet guys like Tamati Horua and Christian Lealifano have still made it to a higher level.
Look at Greg Inglis, born and bred at Bowraville, a few hours south of Coffs, yet through the imaginative recruiting habits of the Storm, he magically gets reincarnated as Queenslander.
Personally, I think SOO is so overrated, it is really just an excuse for the NRL to say it dominates the ratings, and it has overlived its used by date…I also think SOO really hurts international RL – look at guys like Karmichael Hunt who say they would play for the ABs in rugby, but not in league, cos he wants to play SOO.
Phil Coorey said | September 17th 2008 @ 9:53am | Report comment
SOO is a waste of time – the sooner people realise it – the better.
If private ownership increases in league – don’t expect the owners playing players $500, 000 a year to be willing to see their investments run off and play in three exhibition games…
Pippinu said | September 17th 2008 @ 10:06am | Report comment
It’s refreshing to hear such perspectives on SOO. As a non-league person I enjoy watching it occasionally, but looking at it objectively, it seems to me that it’s strength (the intense rivalry between two states), is also it’s weakness – that the rest of Australia is likely to feel less ownership of it, and this can only be detrimental to setting up a national league. Now that may well suit strict adherents to the game – and that is fine – just don’t expect it to grow in the rest of Australia if that is the attitude.
True Tah – you would know that there is quite a long history of Union in Victoria, even if it has always been a niche sport. Growing up in Melbourne, I was aware there was a Rugby comp – but I never, ever saw any evidence of League anywhere in Melbourne. So, in short, I would think that the prospect of drafting Victorians into the team in the immediate future looks improbable.
I could add to the top post that Victorian AFL fans generally had little time for their own version of SOO – not because the quality wasn’t good, at times it was exceptional – but mainly because they care first and foremost about their own clubs (by a very big margin).
Going back to the Storm, you don’t have to be Einstein to see that if the Storm is continuously handicapped because of three games involving two other states, Melburnians will get well and truly sick of it.
Redb said | September 17th 2008 @ 10:10am | Report comment
Good point Phil. Effectively what killed SOO in AFL, was the clubs and players being reluctant to play jsut in case they got injured and jeopardised their premiership chances. It’s a bit more complicated for the NRL as the SOO is used as bit of selection pool for players to be elevated to the RL Kangaroos. But is that as important any more? I doubt it. SOO seems bigger than International RL.
The mid week SOO games are a joke, SOO should be played on the weekend, with a bye in the NRL so that teams aren’t penalised for having their players in SOO and in some cases having to send out a 2nd rate team.
Redb
Millster said | September 17th 2008 @ 10:15am | Report comment
Oikee – you make me laugh. Anyone who’se been on this site long enough will know how strongly and constantly I rant on against anything in any code that provides an arificial, contrived veneer of “fairness”. So contrary to what you’ve written, if Brisbane won every year, I would not care one bit if that was based on merit. What I DO care about and hate with a passion is where a club does develop itself well and win, only to have the salary cap squeeze put on it, only to be punished in terms of what players it can draft for the future, and on and on, just so the shit clubs at the bottom can be kept on life support. The rational side of me does realise though that small codes that are as isolated as League have no other choice than to ‘manufacture’ its own sense of competition and make sure the cups are shared around even by these stupid means.
LeftArmSpinner said | September 17th 2008 @ 10:18am | Report comment
The notion of a bench and interchange has served to blunt the effect of the best players rather than enhance the performance as was its initial intention.
Instead of the playmakers facing a tiring defence, they face a refreshed defence. Crazy..
True Tah said | September 17th 2008 @ 10:26am | Report comment
Redb,
I would go further and say that SOO should be killed off altogether, it is a marketing gimmick, the whole “State vs State, Mate vs Mate” rubbish really built it up in the early 90s.
You’re right in that SOO is bigger than RL Internationals, which is a shame…it wasn’t always like that, back in the 60s, when the Soap dodgers could play league, Anglo-Australian test matches were the pinnacle of the game…the fact that Australia has a lack of decent competition helped elevate SOO to the level it is now.
Pippinu,
the Bulldogs had a Melbourne-born and bred player a few years ago, Craig Polla-Mounter, however he was from a union background.