The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

What if the NRL was really all about the fans?

27th August, 2014
Advertisement
Is the colour, glitz and glamour of T20 cricket consigning Test cricket to a long, slow death? (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)
Roar Pro
27th August, 2014
93
1460 Reads

The widespread hatred of Thursday night Football in the NRL started me thinking.

If we were in charge, what format would the NRL take? If you suddenly became a multi-billionaire tomorrow and decided to start your own hypothetical NRL competition, where the only goal was to bring maximum entertainment of fans, how would you do it?

As a fan the only thing I love more than watching, and whinging about, the NRL is speculating about hypothetical scenarios. So, with no regard to money at all, this is how I would do it.

The Teams
The first problem that needs to be solved is the overabundance of teams in the Sydney area. There are two possible ways to deal with this problem, the first is to shut down, merge or relocate all teams.

The second is completely abolishing all current the franchises in the NRL and form a group of new clubs in Sydney. I think it would be a shame to ruin the history of some of these clubs, so for me, it would be about deciding which clubs to keep.

Eliminating teams was not the simplest of tasks, obviously in doing so you will alienate a group of supporters and make them resent the competition. It is for this reason that I wouldn’t fully be against the idea of starting over from scratch in Sydney altogether.

I would restructure sides as follows:

Tigers are gone. Western Sydney simply has better teams with better tradition and more storied histories, sorry guys. You can be still be in the NSW Cup. Penrith also are gone. Sorry Panthers fans but you guys missed the cut out west.

Advertisement

Parramatta and the Bulldogs make the cut, but there is going to be one small change.

The Bulldogs shall no longer be referred to as the Bulldogs and will henceforth be known as the ‘Berries’.

Sharks and Manly are also gone. I don’t know who I will hate now that Manly are gone, but out of these two teams and the Roosters I decided only one team could make the cut.

The Roosters are the only team to play in every single season of professional Rugby League in the country and with their wealthy backers that isn’t going to change anytime soon. Plus, I am a Roosters supporter. They will, however, be rebranded the Eastern Suburb’s Roosters.

Souths also make the cut. Not only are they a team with one of the strongest traditions in the competition, but they also are the strongest supported. As such, they are simply the first team through when such a list is decided.

St. George-Illawarra kind of makes the cut. Well, Almost. Henceforth they will be known as the Illawarra Steelers and will play back in Illawarra.

Sorry Dragons fans. But you know, they will keep poaching your juniors, not that you have as many as them. Oh and they will play in an alternate strip once a year with the ‘red V’ and pretend you are still getting your fair share. It will be great, you will love it.

Advertisement

The Newcastle Knights and Canberra Raiders both keep their spots, but Ricky Stuart is immediately given a life ban from coaching and is no longer allowed to report on NRL.

Buzz Rothfield is given a similar treatment.

The Central Coast Region also gets a team. The Central Coast Bears are officially in the competition, and Manly are gone… I guess you can call that karma?

North Queensland, Brisbane, Gold Coast (who are no longer the Titans but are instead the Gold Coast Dolphins), New Zealand and Melbourne are all obviously still in the competition.

That sees us arrive at a total of 13 teams. So now we look at the areas that could potentially host a figurative NRL team.

Perth is in. They are the Reds. It is happening. No doubts at all.

West Brisbane/Ipswich are in. They are the Jets. This also is a no brainer.

Advertisement

Central Queensland gets a team. They can be either the Central Queensland Chargers. Named after the Stanwell power plant nearby their city, or the Central Capras named after the fact they are situated on the tropic of Capricorn.

Now we are at 16, the same as our current amount of teams. I have decided to increase the amount of teams to 20 – and this is where it gets tough.

Potential suitors are; a third Brisbane team, a second New Zealand team, an Adelaide team, a Papua New Guinea team or if you want to go even further left field, you could be the first football code to put a professional team into Darwin or Hobart.

I eventually decided on Adelaide, Darwin, Hobart and Papua New Guinea. It seemed unnecessary to give Brisbane a third team from a fans perspective, even though it would obviously make a lot more sense than any of my selections from a financial perspective.

Adelaide can be the Rams, this however means the Central Queensland team cannot be the Capras, otherwise they would have too similar logos. So, the Adelaide Rams and the Central Queensland Chargers are now official NRL teams.

Papua New Guinea will be known as the Hunters.

Northern Territory will be the Northern Wedge-Tails. It is imperative to the clubs success, however, that they will never ever be associated with the Manly club whatsoever.

Advertisement

Accordingly, they will most definitely not wear maroon and white. Instead they will wear the Northern Territory traditional colours of black, ochre and white.

Hobart possibly makes the least sense out of all the teams available. But the opportunity to be the first professional football team was one to great for this crazy commissioner to pass up.

They will be the Hobart Tigers. But a Tasmanian tiger, none of this Bengal tiger rubbish.

The Format
The second problem would be dealing with the schedule and deciding a way that makes it fairest for each team in the NRL.

Many people like to point out that the only way too have a truly fair schedule is too bring in a format where each team plays home and away twice and that is the only way to do this.

Unfortunately, this would lead to a 32+ game schedule. Not only is this a completely unreasonable and unrealistic schedule for a full contact sport team it also presents the problem that every game you add to a schedule makes each individual game less and less important.

One way to get a fair schedule without going to a full home and away schedule is too bring in a conference and division format like what is common in American sport.

Advertisement

In doing this, the goal always has to be to ensure that as many rivalries as possible are preserved and that each game carries maximum weight in the context of the competition.

Another option is too go to an odd number of teams, say 17 for arguments sake. Every year you would play 16 games, so you would play half the competition at home and half away.

You could then flip this every year so that over a two-year period you would play every team at once each at home and away. The only problem is that this, though possibly the fairest model, offers less opportunities for rivalry games or marquee games which are what the fans really want to see.

You also would have a bye during each season. There also would be a team stuck with the mostly pointless Round 1 bye. Although the Round 1 bye could be given too the team who had to play the World Club Challenge, any early bye would be largely pointless.

Considering the pros and cons of each of the models proposed I decided that for my vision of the perfect NRL the ‘conference and division’ method would be the best way to go resolving such a dilemma.

Now the problem is, which teams do we keep and how do we divide the sides.

Fortunately NRL has a schism that we can traditionally base ours off. One conference shall be the Super League, the other shall be the Australian Rugby League.

Advertisement

Each conference will consist of ten teams broken up into two conferences, and further bifurcated into two divisions.

Super League
Superleague East
Brisbane Broncos
Gold Coast Dolphins
Melbourne Storm
Ipswich Jets
New Zealand Warriors

Superleague West
Canterbury ‘Berries’
Parramatta Eels
Canberra Raiders
Perth Reds
Newcastle Knights

ARL Conference
ARL North
PNG Hunters
North Queensland Cowboys
Central Queensland Chargers
Darwin Wedge-Tails
Central Coast Bears

ARL South
South Sydney Rabbitohs
Eastern Suburbs Roosters
Adelaide Rams
Hobart Tigers
Illawarra Steelers

Every team would play each team in their division twice, they then would play the team from the other divisions in their conference once each – all home the first year and all away the next.

On the years where a given side had all home games against their conferences other division they would play all away games against one division from the other conference.

Advertisement

Then the next year it would swap and you would play all away games against your own conference and all home against the same division from the other conference. Then, on the third and fourth year, you repeat the same pattern except now with the other division from the opposite conference.

Over a 4 year period this means you would play:
• 8 games against your own division (4 home, 4 away).
• 4 games against the other division in your conference (2 home, 2 away).
• 2 games against the other conference (1 home, 1 away).

Each season a team would play a schedule of 18 games. There would be 180 games in a season. Just 12 less than the 192 total currently played.

Finals Structure
At the end of each season the top team from each division automatically qualifies for the finals. Then the next two best teams in each conference (for ease of explanation lets just call them wild-cards), regardless of division would also go through for a total of eight teams.

In the first week the four division winners would face the other division winner from their conference. The four wildcards would also verse the other wild-card from their own conference. The team placed higher on the table would host the game at their own home stadium.

The teams that lose the wild-card games would be eliminated. The winner of the wild-card games would then play the loser of the other finals games at the home field of the team that won their division.

The loser of this game would also be eliminated.

Advertisement

Following this you have two options for your semi-finals and your Grand Final. You can either cross the teams across the draw here, meaning that the two winners from the first week would verse the winner from the second week for the opposite conference. Or you could keep it within each conference.

Each of these models has their own strengths and weaknesses.

If you keep it within the conference you are not always guaranteed to have the two best teams playing against each other in the Grand final. However, you are given the advantage that this would make the conference championship similar to another grand final on its own – like the conference championships in American Sport.

Either way would work for me, but personally, I would go for the more American method and make this conference championship a whole event on its own.

The final would be played following a fortnight break to allow the teams to prepare and the hype to slowly build among the fan base.

It would alternate being played between Brisbane and Sydney, and would be like Australia’s very own Superbowl. It would be played on a Sunday afternoon and the city it was in would host many events in the build-up to hype up the event.

Once the pre-game entertainment was over however, it would be all about business. This means absolutely no 30-minute halftime break, rather the game would play out identically to a game in the regular season.

Advertisement

State of Origin
State of Origin would take place after a two-week break following the end of the season. The teams would be selected (full squads of 25) immediately after the Grand-Final and those wishing to participate would get into camp by the end of the first week.

The teams would stay in camp for the duration of the series, though they would be able to leave for brief breaks at the discretion of the coaching staff.

Each state would have its own commentary team for the coverage of State of Origin.

It would contain only one person from the opposing state who would be constantly talked over the top of and mocked mercilessly and they would be encouraged to be as biased and as one eyed as they felt necessary.

This way everyone is happy with the quality of the commentary, not just the NSW fans.

The games would be played on Wednesday nights still, sorry guys. This would continue to allow the people who are not first choice sport NRL to still watch and enjoy the series. Following the State of Origin series we would still actually be inside the amount of time usually taken to complete and NRL season.

This whole season would have taken place in 29 weeks as opposed to the 30 it currently takes. This means that we could pick the Australian team at the same time as always and we wouldn’t upset the current international season.

Advertisement

Oh by the way, the Anzac test got cut. But don’t lie, you didn’t even notice it was missing.

Weekly Programs
The important thing when looking at the fans dream NRL schedule is to hit the right mix between having games for the fans to watch on television and the games in the Ideal situation for attending matches.

The way I would do this is to every single week have one Thursday night game, one Friday night game, one Saturday night game and one Monday night game. These would be placed so that the NRL games were always on the TV for fans who don’t live near a game or don’t want to go for whatever reason.

It is also great for all fans who can sit back four nights a week and watch live rugby league.

Ray Warren and especially Ray Hadley are given the Ricky Stuart life ban for being incredibly negative and constantly saying the wrong names and we would build a new commentary team.

Gould would also get cut but not because of incompetence. His points are concise and relevant.

While, he is undeniably a knowledgeable individual I just don’t think he works in a commentary setting. He can start up a new version of the Sunday Roast where he was much more entertaining and useful.

Advertisement

Fret not though Broncos fans and haters. The ‘Broncs’ would not be on a Friday night every week were I in charge. Instead the Friday night games would be shared amongst the teams as close to evenly as possible.

Once these games are sorted we then would have six games left. Tow of these six would be played on a Saturday afternoon.

They would be played starting at 3:00pm local time, except for Adelaide, which would start at 4:00pm. This means that a Perth or Adelaide home game could double-up as the live Saturday night game for example.

The remaining four games would all be Sunday afternoon games, three would kick off at 2:00pm and the remaining one would kick off at 4:00pm.

I would make sure that games played in the Northern areas where it is hotter kicked off at the later time for the safety of the players and comfort of the fans in attendance.

It also would allow fans at home to watch two games in a row live. Fox sports could bring back the viewers choice and the fans could decide which specific game they wanted to watch.

A sample week could look something like this:

Advertisement

FTA– Free to Air TV
PAY– Pay TV
PVC– Pay TV Viewers Choice

Thursday: South Sydney V Eastern Suburbs @ Redfern Stadium 7:00 local (7:00 EST), FTA live

Friday: Brisbane V Gold Coast @ Lang Park 7:00 local (7:00 EST), FTA Live

Saturday: CQ V Darwin @ CQ Stadium 3:00 local (3:00 EST), PVC Live
Hobart V Adelaide @ Hobart Stadium 3:00 local (3:00 EST), PVC Live
PNG V NQ @ PNG Stadium 6:00 local (6:00 EST), FTA Live

Sunday: Illawarra V Central Coast @ Illawarra Stadium 2:00 local (2:00 EST), PVC live
Melbourne V New Zealand @ Melbourne Stadium 2:00 local (2:00 EST) PVC live
Canberra V Perth @ Canberra Stadium 2:00 local (2:00 EST) FTA live
Parramatta V Canterbury @ Parramatta Stadium 4:00 local (4:00 EST) FTA live

Monday: Ipswich V Newcastle @ Ipswich Stadium 7:00 local (7:00 EST) PAY live

In a single week, if you felt like it, you could watch seven games of NRL live and it could be any of the ten games you choose.

If you don’t feel like getting pay-tv, that is ok because there is five games live and free to air! On top of this seven of the ten games are on at times when the fans want them and will be more able to attend.

The salary cap, the draft and trades
Simply, the salary cap stays. It has the NRL the closest and most competitive it has ever been. The salary cap has been highly successful in achieving what it is meant too.

The draft isn’t going to happen in my NRL. The teams will continue to develop and nurture their own talent.
The only change I would make to the way teams can be put together is by adding trades, up until Round 6 of the season teams can trade players – with added bundles of cash to sweeten the deal.

For example, this year when Ricky Stuart couldn’t get a single player to go to the Raiders and if Robbie Farah had his annual hissy fit at the Tigers board, the Raiders could have approached the Tigers to trade them some assets to obtain Robbie Farah.

Advertisement

They could have traded say, three or four young guys and a big bundle of cash to add Farah to their squad.

This also would have helped them, for example, when they lost Dugan for nothing.

They could have instead traded him too a team and brought back some talent instead of losing him for nothing. When the Roosters let Carney go only for him to be snapped up immediately by Cronulla they could have instead traded him for another player of a similar calibre.

Stadiums
Sydney would build a rectangular stadium of the quality of Suncorp to host the State of Origin and the Grand final.

If you were paying attention you would have noticed that the Souths and Roosters game above would be played at ‘Redfern Stadium’. This is absolutely how things would work in my NRL.

Every team who does not already have a stadium of acceptable standards would instead build a stadium very similar to what the Titans play out of, with a capacity of around 25’000. Only re-skinned to suit the colour scheme of their individual tenants.

Picture Skilled Park in red and green filled with Souths fans nine weeks a year. Or the ‘Berries’ fans packed into a similar stadium built at Belmore yet only blue and white is everywhere the eye can see!

Advertisement

Imagine the Jets fans decked in green and white packing a stadium every home game all the way up to the rafters.

This whole scenario has me salivating already. This is my dream scenario for the NRL. I know it is never going to happen… But a man can dream right?

What would you change if you were in full control of the NRL? Let me know in the comments.

close