Sporting codes treading on each other's toes

They get a lot more on pay tv than 100k. You can't deny that there is a large group of people wishing for the cricket season to end and the NRL to begin. The overlap that exists this year is due to Indian demands and won't exist ext year. And yes cricket is a bigger national sport than Nrl but in Brisbane and Sydney it would get out rated? And the last rating figure I can see from oztam is 1.2 mln for India v aust

I believe the point was meandering aimlessly...

There were only 20 games played in the 1993 season that coupled with the fact that the top 8 wasn't brought in until the following year cost Geelong a finals berth and what i believe a Flag, we were peaking late that seaon. PEAKING I TELLS YA!

That's when the state leagues in the A-League off season could benifit. Or are they now played in summer too?

Did you see the ratings for cricket over the summer. It averages over 2.5 million a day Australia plays cricket. WOW! NRL can barely get 800k on free to air and maybe 100k on pay tv. Cricket is doing okay people.

The AFL and cricket remain wedded to their respective seasons. Some of the other codes are a little desperate for the limelight I think.

Will need a class to teach the kiddies how to ignite flares. ;)

If you decrease the number of games, players will leave. a quality player will need to be involved in over 20 games here to be in contention for the NT or he would easily leave overseas.

First up, with AFL, RL and RU being full contact sports, the stress on players bodies is much greater than for soccer players. That means soccer players are far more capable of playing more matches in a year at a high level than players in the other codes. Secondly, as a truly international sport, the A-league is not just about running a football competition in Austrlia, but also about improving the standard of our players, so that they can compete at an international level. The more games you can play at the highest level possible, the more you will improve. We already have isssues with players leaving Oz to play overseas. Reducing the number of games, and thereby lessening the learning potential of players in the A-League would only increase the number of players looking for overseas employment. More players leaving means a lesser standard here. It becomes a vicious circle. Likewise, foreign players are also needed to help improve the standard of the competition, and hence the standard of the Oz players in it. A shorter season would make it far more difficult to attract overseas players to the competition. Finally, it is also a matter of economics. A shorter season means less earning potential. There is absolutely no evidene to suggest that a shorter season would result in a corresponding increase in revenue per game. Players, coaches and administrators will still want to have the same earning potential per season, so there would be no saving there. As for JamesP, what is wrong with trying to make the A-League the best comp in Asia? Australia is already the highest ranked national team in Asia, so why not aim for the same thing with the league? Reducing the length, and hence the standard of the league will do nothing for the Australian national team. Personally I find it odd that any Australian would suggest that simply because we are not as big and do not have as much money that we still cant try to be the best. Striving to be the best you can be, and overcoming the odds is what sport is all about after all!

Also in 2000, but that was because of the need to be finished well before the Olympics.

More than enough for me. Although I like to comment on sport from a social commentary perspective - support it I do not and especially not the elite footy leagues in Oz or abroad. i look forward to the Olympic games in London and especially the Swimming however.

Why is there and increasing overlap of codes themselves? The reason is quite obvious. Professional sport in Australia is the most competitve market in the world. Four major football codes, cricket, olympic sports, and a host of other minor competitions are all vying for our attention. The football codes are obviously the worst. No where else in the world is there so much competition for hearts and minds. In the battle for "market share", quality is extermely subjective, so realistically it is the sport with the most exposure that wins. The NAB Cup may not be the most enthralling competition in the world, but it gets the topic of AFL out and about in the public mind as a handy warm up for the season proper. I may be wrong, but it would seem to me that the NRL season has started earlier and earlier in response to the growing media exposure of the NAB cup. Union likewise starts earlier to partly accomodate for a successfull International season, thereby increasing it's exposure. Has this casued any noticeable effect on any of the competitions? Well to be fair crowds across all football codes have never really been higher. Sceptics might point to decline in the A-League since seasons 2 and 3 but realisitcially crowds are many times bigger than the NSL 10 years ago. Are all of these competitions sustainable long term? Of the four football codes, the A-League is the weakest. The momentum provided by being part of the biggest sport on the planet though seems to guarantee its future, no matter how rocky that may be in the short term. The increasing globalisation of Union also suggests that it is somewhat insulated from the whims of the Australian market. The global exposure that both these sports have give them huge potential in attracting corporate sponsorship, a luxury neither the AFL or NRL have. AFL and NRL then, despite currently being the biggest locally, are in direct competition for a limited amount of corporate support, support which will go more and more to Union and Soccer. Neither has yet been truly able to dominate the local market. League is still number one by a long way in NSW and QLD which together account for almost half the countries population, while AFL is king in the rest. Should one of these sports stumble severly, and NRL came so very close during the Super League fiasco, I can see one of them falling to the role of a minor sport. Of course it may not happen in my lifetime, but I do beleive the Australian sporting landscape will be much different in 20 years time. For the time being though, get used to the idea that the sporting seasons are going to overlap more and more. I'm sure most sports fans are more than happy at the prospect. As Roy and HG used to say, "Too much sport is barely enough!"

"Big Bash League (which failed to reach its predicted crowd heights, by the way)" Oh really? I think the Big Bash exceeded most expectations despite a slow start. Crowds of 550,000 at an average of 18,000 in just over a month. An average of 350,000 viewers on pay TV. There are predictions that the next TV deal, which may include free-to-air, will exceed $100 million. I don't think many saw that coming.

The NSWRL actually started in February from 1982-87. On this day 30 years ago the Illawarra Steelers played their first game.

If it wasnt for the new team GWS, the NAB cup would of got very little interest this year. Still NAB does alright given its a pre-season comp. I agree the more games you play, the more it devalues the importance of the result. I think this is the case with ODI cricket, regular season american baseball and NBA. It works in football leagues in europe as you do not have a finals round and every result is important to where your team finishes. All comps with a final system gets tiresome during the regular season when you know your team has no chance of making the finals by round 12 and you go through the motions for the rest of the season. Even if your team is top of the ladder by 5 games, you know it means little as it depends on how your team is travelling in late September that really counts. Although I guess the finals more than make up for the lack of excitement in the regular season. Unfortunately the a-league is similar but as someone mentioned before you can not have a long off season and you need plenty of games if your players are going to be competitive internationally. Fifa boss Sepp blatters idea of having the world cup every 2 years was rightly condemned world wide, as it would devalue winning or qualifying for it.

I agree with Brett, how exactly has 'Cricket Australia ... further intruded into the footy codes’ seasons'? The first international fixture of the summer was the 1st test against NZ in Brisbane on Dec 1st. Cricket is being played within it's traditional season October-March, football codes should be played between April and September. The only encroachment I can see is from the football codes with the Indigenous 'All-Stars' game being played in the first week of February being a perfect example.

There were an odd number of teams last year, with Gold Coast joining a year before GWS. Although the home & away season went over 24 weeks, each team only played 22 games.

Thats a fair point (I'm from QLD so really dont know a huge amount about AFL), but what I was trying to get at is that for all of the codes the mantra is all about "expansion", increasing the number of games, increasing the number of rounds, increasing the length of season, increasing the amount of talk in the off season. No sport in Australia is going for the less is more approach of having a shortened season in which they absolutely dominate like the NFL does, and no sport seems to be considering it as a valid option. Would State of Origin be what it is if a game was played every 3rd or 4th week for a season? Does cricket hold the same appeal now tht it is played constatntly? Do we as sport fans feel the absolute desire to be at every game we can be if we could go to one every second week for 7 or 8 months of the year? Is the quantity of matches more important to us than the quality of the matches? These are all things that I believe no sporting body has taken a serious look at given the current desire to expand.

Wasn't there 24 rounds last year

European comps have upto 20 teams, that's the difference, not even mentioning the quality of football.