Having been the head coach at the Huddersfield Giants in the UK Super League since 2009, and previously the coach of St George Illawarra in the NRL, I’ve had a first hand view of the differences – and similarities – between the two competitions.
The first thing I should note is that the training and preparation of teams in England have really developed over the years, primarily because there have been a lot of Australian coaches over here who have brought their NRL experience to the Super League and have groomed some of the local coaches to combine NRL ideas with English Super League ideas.
Many current English Super League coaches have worked under Brian and Tony Smith, for instance.
Brian Noble is a good example. Early on in his career, he worked with Brian Smith and Matty Elliot, and would have learned a lot from the experience.
My assistant coach, Paul Anderson at the Giants, has just spent three weeks in Australia with the Dragons, Tigers, Roosters and Bulldogs, as he will be taking over the Giants next year and this experience will be very valuable for him in his future as a head coach.
The biggest difference between the two countries is the way the pre-season works.
In the NRL, the pre-season is a long one. Players have a break after the season ends, do some pre-Christmas training, then break again for Christmas, before resuming with more intensity in the lead up to the first trial matches.
You can plan for two distinct phases of pre-season training: one could be conditioning and defense, for instance, and then the next could be speed and attack.
This approach allows coaches to work directly with players on improving specific areas of their game, while also enabling them to get over any niggling injuries they may be carrying before the next season kicks off.
This contrasts with how it works in the UK.
Here, the pre-season is only 6 weeks long (compared to around 12 weeks in Australia) before the teams get stuck into the friendlies.
As a result, international players, like Jamie Peacock, mightn’t have had a proper pre-season for years. Between England camp, and his club duties, he basically starts playing again as soon as the annual three-way tournament against Australia and New Zealand concludes.
So the biggest downside to the game in the UK is that top-line players can go for years without a real pre-season, whereas players in the NRL can generally get something new to work on in between seasons to add to their game.
The style of play itself is also vastly different.
A lot of teams will chance their hands in England. This goes against the grain of the NRL, where it is more about reducing errors. So the rugby league in the UK tends to be more attacking, and often very attractive to watch.
It’s not unheard of for a team to amass 1,000 points in a season.
The reason for the shortened pre-season is, of course, the Challenge Cup, which is a knockout competition and has been a wonderful success for league in this country.
It’s a real shame that in Australia we haven’t taken to a knockout competition. It would be sensational if there were two Cups to be won.
This would mean that teams like Parramatta in this years’s NRL competition, who are struggling, would still have the possibility of winning a Challenge Cup.
In fact, it’s often the case that teams not loaded with the best players win the Challenge Cup.
What’s more, it gives smaller regions a chance to compete on a larger stage. The Super League teams don’t enter the competition until the fourth round, by which time the smaller sides have had the opportunity to earn the right to take them on.
It would be fair to say that the intensity in the Super League can vary a fair bit, mainly due the the fact that the number of peoplee playing the game in England is much smalle than that in Australia, which leads to less depth.
In the NRL, most games are of high intensity and most weekends, any team can beat the other, where in England, if some of the lower team suffer 3 or 4 injuries due to a lack of depth the intensity can be lost.
But, when you come over here and watch the game on a regular basis, you’ll see that there are a lot of very good players running around.
When I first came over, there were perhaps one or two teams with a genuine chances to win the title each year. Now there are five or six sides all competing for the top four.
Sides at the top of the competition are playing more consistent football, which is leading to the number of good young players impoving quicker and more consistently due to the increase in consistent intensity/more frequent, harder games.
The success of guys like Sam Burgess and Gareth Ellis in Australia has opened the door to more English players starring in the NRL.
There is a huge number of Super League players who would be a hit in the NRL, if watched more closely and given the opportunity.
Throw in the passionate supporter base in the UK, with the fans singing throughout the matches, and it’s easy to see why my time at the Huddersfield Giants has been so enjoyable
The Giants fans and players have been a great bunch of people to work alongside.
Former Dragons coach and player Nathan Brown writes an exclusive weekly column for The Roar. Brown, who played 172 games for the Dragons and coached them for a further 142 games, is currently the head coach at the Huddersfield Giants in the UK Super League.
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