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The NRL must continue to experiment

(AAP Image/Action Photographics, Robb Cox)
Roar Guru
25th May, 2015
43

One of the things that makes rugby league different from other mainstream sports is the willingness on the part of its administrators to adjust the rules to make the game a better spectacle.

In 1986, the league moved swiftly to counter Canterbury coach Warren Ryan’s (more on him shortly) strategy of gaining endless line dropouts by dumping bombs repeatedly into the in-goal.

It was an anti-pass tactic that was countered with the 20-metre tap.

Then, the shift from the five-metre defensive corridor to ten gave the skilled players more room to work. The 40/20 has been a fantastic innovation. Debate continues over the seven-tackle set following the ball kicked dead in-goal, but no one can claim the NRL wasn’t trying to solve what they considered to be a problem by implementing the rule.

Warren Ryan was the coach of the Canterbury 84-86 grand final teams. Scores for those GFs: 6-4 (versus Eels), 7-6 (versus Dragons), 2-4 (versus Eels).

I also think that the best games in today’s NRL are better than the best in any other era. Our players are more creative, athletic and skillful than they’ve ever been.

That said, one could say any sport is good to watch at the highest level. In our game, it’s the matches under that top tier of exhibition that lack the requisite creativity and spontaneity to make them consistently worth watching at the ground or on television.

Steve Mascord wrote an article recently addressing the stark fact that coaches, in the absence of Origin players (and often when those same players are on the field), have prioritised ‘structure’ and defence to a point where improvisational attacking football is being left behind.

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In 1906, following a long period of experimentation, the National Football League in the US decided to ratify the forward pass. The game had become stultified; administrators could feel the evolutionary impulse, pushing them to change in a way that would release more creativity and adventure on the field.

Before you stop reading, I am not calling for the forward pass in rugby league – although I won’t deny I have toyed with the idea in moments of boredom.

However, the time has come for our own administrators to get just as creative. Legislating the speed of play-the-balls through the referees, as critical as that is, isn’t enough. Stand-alone Origins, ensuring the availability of rep players for all NRL games, is a must.

Reducing the interchange would be a positive move, but that may not be enough.

As Mascord so rightly said, sport is entertainment. Nothing should be sacrosanct when it comes to making the game better – except keeping the magnificent contest for possession that is our scrums.

Getting creative means giving coaches incentive to attack, in addition to legislating against negative tactics. And the first place we should start is in the ‘get-out’ part of the field: when teams are digging their way off their own line. It’s this half of the field that presents the biggest problem for our game; more and more teams are doing absolutely nothing until they pass halfway.

Let’s give coaches an alternative to the negative, one-out forward runs employed to gain territory. The NRL should trial a ‘get-out restart’. Any team that reaches halfway before the third tackle has been completed, having received the ball inside its own 20, gets a restart in the tackle count.

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This might cause two things to happen. The team in possession might use more offloads and passing in an attempt to get the restart, and the defending team might be forced to rush up and defend with even more intensity to prevent it.

The key word here is ‘might’; we can’t know how coaches and players will react. But we should be experimenting.

The other change that could occur is a tad more controversial. It was recommended by Warren Ryan in the mid to late 80s in response to dull, defensive football that was being played – a trend initiated partly by Ryan himself. The administration’s response to the boring play on the field was to separate the teams by an additional five metres and that decision paid off handsomely.

Well, almost thirty years later, here we are again: Defence and one-out football are once again a problem, so it’s time to revisit Warren Ryan’s almost-universally ignored idea.

12 men per side.

I love a tight, intense, low-scoring game of football. But I also like ball movement. Nines football is clearly too open, having none of the tension and suspense of the 13-man game. As a spectator, I like waiting for the opening to happen, even if takes 30 minutes.

But why can’t we experiment with widening the corridor between the winger and the sideline? Might it not give coaches the incentive to gain territory through passing to their speed-men?

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There might be a surprising supplementary advantage to this change: lowering the number of players in the competition. As bad as that would be for the men who would miss the cut, it could raise the overall standard of player in the NRL and make it easier to add more teams in the future.

Maybe. We don’t know what would happen. But the people controlling the game can’t fall into the trap of being as inflexible and structured as many of our teams seem to be on the field.

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