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In the 1970s and ’80s, the preseason and midweek rugby league knockout cups were a terrific showcase of sudden death football, and a perfect companion to the overall NSWRL competition. Clubs from reserve grade, country New South Wales, Queensland, interstate and overseas went up against the best professional sides for glory.
While tournaments such as the UK’s Challenge Cup proudly maintain this kind of tradition, the concept in Australia was unfortunately lost amidst the dramatic changes of the 90s. That said, a knockout championship may in fact be the solution to the impact that State of Origin has upon the NRL club competition.
In order to accommodate this tournament, simple changes would need to be made to the overall season structure.
Firstly, the NRL competition would be restructured so that each NRL team would have 11 home games, 11 away games and 1 neutral venue game (with revenue shared between the two competing teams for that game). That would mean 23 games for each team, one less than currently.
For a 16-team competition, this would equate to 184 games a season. For 18 teams it would mean 207 games a season,
while 20 teams would require 230 games.
The season would therefore run over 27 weeks – from the first week of March through to the first week in September. This means there would be 4 bye weeks where the late stages of the Knockout Cup would be run – coinciding with the mid-season representative schedule.
Round 1- Pre-Season Tournament
The current NRL trials would be modified slightly to become a preliminary qualifying tournament for the NRL Knockout Championship.
Teams involved would be the NRL clubs (16-20) plus the winners of various regional competitions from the previous year such as the Affiliated States Championship, National Zonal Competition, PNG NRL, CRL, QRL etc. These other teams would take up approximately 8-12 positions in the qualifying tournament, creating a preliminary group of anywhere from 24-32 teams.
In the Qualifying Tournament each team would play three matches. The team at the top of the table after these rounds would be the Pre-Season Cup winner, awarded $100,000.
The top 16 teams from this preseason tournament would then qualify for the mid-season knock-out competition. Any NRL club that fails to qualify is awarded a rest week (with no competition points) for those rounds.
Mid-Season Tournament
All gate takings from the mid-season tournament would be fairly redistributed to every NRL club. That said, there would also be additional prize money according to each round of the Knockout Cup reached. Teams would be seeded based on the pre-season ladder position, with matches played at the higher team’s preferred venue, providing it met the minimum capacity for that round.
Round 2 – Group of 16
Friday, Saturday – 1v16, 2v15, 3v14, 4v13, 5v12, 6v11, 7v10, 9v8
Sunday – State of Origin I
Winners re-ranked 1-8. NRL winners get 1 premiership point. Losers eliminated.
Round 3 – Quarter Finals
Friday, Saturday – 1v8, 2v7, 3v6, 4v5
Sunday – State of Origin II
Winners re-ranked 1-4. NRL winners get 1 more premiership point. Losers eliminated.
Round 4 – Semi Finals
Friday – 1v4, 2v3 (minimum 30,000 seat stadiums)
Saturday – New Zealand vs Pacific All Stars
Sunday – State of Origin III
Winners through to final. NRL winners get 1 more premiership point. Losers eliminated.
Round 5 – Cup Final
Friday – Knockout Cup Final (minimum 50,000 seat stadium)
Saturday – Pacific Cup internationals
Sunday – Australia vs New Zealand
Knockout Cup winner awarded $1,000,000. If an NRL team is the winner, it gets 1 more premiership point.
As each game is a knockout game, teams will provide as many of their best players as possible in order to gain both premiership points and a financial windfall. Therefore the NRL competition doesn’t take a backseat to the representative matches, and fans remain actively engaged.
Further, any team that is knocked out of the cup, while they don’t receive points for a bye, would get an additional rest period in order to recuperate during the representative season.
In this manner, by the time the tournament is finished, every team in the competition regardless of ladder position will be in a fully competitive state for the subsequent 8-10 week run to the finals.
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