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This is rugby league’s most mystifying question. Hardly a week goes by without NRL boss Dave Smith either making a blunder, or coming up with a bone-headed suggestion.
The latest is handing Auckland hosting rights for the launch of the 2015 NRL season, and giving serious consideration to increasing every NRL game to 100 minutes, in four quarters of 25 minutes each.
Insanity, both.
How on earth will the code benefit from the launch in Auckland? Just because the Auckland Nines will be played as the curtain-raiser?
New Zealand provide one 16th of the competition, hardly a fraction worthy of such a ceremony of importance.
Besides, Auckland and Eden Park are married as the home of All Blacks rugby, where the 15-man code is a religion in a nation whose total population is 4.471 million, smaller than Sydney’s 4.667 million.
If the NRL are so keen to move the season’s launch away from Sydney, Brisbane deserves first call, certainly not Auckland. In fact, Broken Hill, or Bourke, in far western NSW, would be better still if the NRL wants to attract new faces to kick-start the season.
Country areas in both NSW and Queensland have been shamefully ignored and neglected by the NRL. They used to be huge rugby league domains, but have been lost in the telling for decades.
So Auckland is a poor call, but the latest mistake takes some beating.
Increasing play-time to 100 minutes of 25-minute quarters will increase the television take to $2 billion, the next time the contract falls due.
Imagine the boredom of television viewers of the commercial bombardment in the five-minute break between the first and second quarters, plus the third and fourth quarters.
And to magnify the commercial break bombardment, it’s suggested the half-time break would be 10 minutes.
Maybe. Bank on 15 minutes minimum.
Nobody loves watching rugby league on television more than I do, be it Channel Nine, or Fox Sports. But up to 25 minutes of commercials before full-time would be a sure-fire way of diving for the remote.
And notice there’s not much being said about expansion at the moment, one of the code’s touchiest subjects. Perth and Adelaide keep being mentioned in hushed tones, both potential disaster areas where AFL reigns supreme, to be joined by rugby in Perth.
Another Brisbane team, and another New Zealand team, have also been mentioned under the breath, while nobody in the NRL wants to admit that not having a team on the north-side of Sydney from Manly to Newcastle is just plain stupid.
There are hundreds of thousands of rugby league fans in the 166 kilometres between Manly and Newcastle. As it sits, not having the Central Coast Bears domiciled in the NRL at Gosford is giving a massive free kick to the Central Coast Mariners with the thousands of kids in the area.
Launching hosts, more playing minutes and expansion? Forget it.
Clean up the rugby league scrums, the code’s biggest embarrassment, cut out the chicken wing tackles and the lifting beyond the horizontal, then fans will listen.
Rugby league is a great game, always has been, always will be. Pity it’s run by too many who don’t understand what makes it tick.