Wishing for a return to league's golden era

Mate I agree on some things like Golden point and Loyalty but you have missed what i consider a mayor flaw with promoting of the game why cant the NSW or Qld Cup games be played prior to the Toyota Cup games this would give the patrons more games for their money and give the youger players a bit more of a crowd to play in front of. This could also change the way the interchange is used by way of making only two fresh reserves allowed and the other two come from Toyota Cup or Q Cup or NSW cup which the case may be. This coulsd have a flow on affect for the salary cap. it could allow some players to remain at the club. It could release some players to seek other teams and it also release enough players to form other teams so that we can really become a national sport again. This will rely on the commission being able to do its job properly.Back in my day you coukld go to the footy at 9.30am to watch reserve graders and the first graders come on at 1.30pm and 3.00pm. Good value for money . Now what do you get for your money? Our local league has three grade games when they play. Our Qld Cup side Plays at 7.30pm and the hour and half before hand are Cheer girls or under bloody nines. No offence to the kids but why don'tt they organise the senior local league to play a first grade game before the Q Cup. This would help to get a crowd at the game. Or is it totally about revenue. .

FYI Rebel ranger there is a little company called Valimanda that own the storm's rugby league license and are structured in such a way that their accounts do not have to be disclosed but what is disclosed is that they are owned by NEWS and they have given the storm on average $17m a year. Add this to the $5m publicly given by NEWS directly and then the standard $3.2m that the NRL give each club and you have one rich club that does nothing to raise sponsorship Money. Could you imagine if that Money had gone to the Bears instead of a club that stole 3 premierships won one has the 2nd largest city in Australia all to themselves and still struggle to get over 5,000 members. The Bears do not even have a club and they have over 7,000 members whilst the Storm just waste the talent of other potential clubs like North Brisbane. Come on Storm fans lets talk about Valimanda (that dirty secret you hate to hear mentioned in a public forum)

Some pretty pendantic points Win Field, you can miss parts of an era without wishing for the whole lot. I do miss the brawls - funnily enough I caught up with some Origin stinks and the Newtown v Manly brawl from 91 last night on You Tube. Not sure how or why ? Thing about those fights is that not many people got hurt (Mark Broadhust excepted) because not that many punches landed. The Chris Close v Ray Price Origin stoush had more windmills than a field in Holland. I miss the media keeping off field incidents out of the paper, I'd much rather read about the game and the players than who Todd Carney went and had a beer with on a saturday night. I'm interested in footy reporting not a male version of New Idea.

This pretty much sums it up. For all the good quality arguments here, ultimately you can't help but throw the baby out with the bath water (still looking for a comparible analogy for us non-parents ;) ) if you're going to take this path...or is it lane? Things aren't just forgotten about the past, they're conflated which is far...FAR worse! That's to say we make it seem better than it could ever have really been, which is something of a selling out your history to something like Disneyfication, but I'll get to that a bit later. But this is part of the letting-go process: enjoying, but not being fooled into thinking memories are both arenas for our desires as well as sources of motivation/inspiration. Apart from the Bears and contested scrums (both of which were integral parts of the code for a hundred years, giving Rugby League it's much needed legitimacy in the face of both Rugby Union and Australian Football) everything else is just fruitless and one could never find any concurrence among enough people, much like history itself seems to be viewed these days! But just to elaborate on what is lacking, which is integral. The contested scrum was once thought to be so indispensable that Rugby League didn't touch it (it being sacred) until well after the limited tackles and consequent tactics were brought into play in the code. To get rid of it is to disrespect one's ancestors. Pure and simple. And on Northern Sydney...well as a foundation club there's obviously much nostalgia. But there's also the fact that there was a natural order: in North's vs Manly (and as a Manly fan I'd have to say it gave Manly much of its reason for being and since Manly's been guilty as sin and paying the price for wiping its hands clean...tormented over whether the past will come back and actually haunt them or whether they will go looking for it, be ambushed by it)... But also in the sporting marketplace of Sydney...which like Los Angeles does best when it has at least one team who is really struggling while another is going great guns: LA Lakers vs LA Clippers anyone...one's on the down the other's on the up = even greater rivalries (and by the way I don't really count Penrith as a Sydney team, but then again I'm not a local!) or LA Rams and LA Raiders for that short period of nirvana in LA American Football History. Eventually what goes around comes around. But without the Bears, you're left with most Sydney teams going alright...and not much hope of any of the others rising to the challenge ie Parramatta. Otherwise the old days was a time when the club was more important than the code, which by and large denied the greater choice we now have. Though Channel 9 probably needs to stop living in the past themselves and start being more pan-Sydney about their telecasts, while there are so many Sydney teams.

Wasn't there an unlimited interchange system in the league in 1994?

I remember going to ANZ Stadium (now QSAC) to watch the Broncos thump the Roosters, Sharks, Tigers, Magpies and Rabbitohs in 1994. The Broncos would score upwards of 50 or 60 points on some occasions. That seemed to be the norm. The only close game I attended was between the Broncos and the Steelers. The Broncos are still a glamour club, but they no longer flog their opponents by 40 or more points. I've been watching some of the Chooseday Night Football matches on Foxtel from the NSWRL and ARL. The standard back then wasn't that good. The line speed was much, much slower, the passing skills weren't as sharp, the players weren't as powerful and the tackling wasn't anywhere as complex. If you were to put the likes of Thurston, Cronk, Farah, Smith, Norman, Wallace, Campese, Widdop, etc up a side from 1994 then they would blow them away because the line speed and tackling back then was not up to scratch. The game is much better today than it was in 1994.

Wynnum-Manly Seagulls play an old-fashioned team song on the PA system after they win. I really enjoy listening to it.

bring back the rake in the play-the-ball..

Good read. I hope the new commission is keen to be inovative. It is necessary. Reducing interchange is number one.

i miss cigarette sponsorship of the comp and awards nights i miss leagues clubs that fund certain clubs so those clubs didn't have to worry i miss only 5 or 6 teams out of 20 being competitive each year i miss players having easy games during the year because of the above i miss league being able to simply raid junior rugby representative teams i miss only being able to watch 2 games a weekend on TV i miss regular crowds of 5000 i miss blokes knocking each others heads off, off the ball and all in brawls. i miss seriously incompetent refeeering, not being able to count to 6, seeing balls bounced over the goal line i miss grand finals with scorelines of 4-2 i miss media that would keep stories of players having a drink and having a wee against a wall out of the papers. I miss the great characters of the game (see above) I miss the same clubs being at the bottom of the comp year in, year out.

It was 20 years ago that Bon Jovi was 30!

Baa is god! Fun fact. Over the whole period of the Winfield Cuo, the 1995 grand final between the Bulldogs and Manly decided who had won more games over the period of the Winfield Cup's existence. Best team won on the day!

I do like being able to see players take a rest. Needs to go half way though, 2 can be interchanged, 2 are only direct replacements. 6 Interchanges all up. You would see different bench makeup's than you do now.

Probably going to stir up a few people here but... I think we're in the Golden Age of Rugby League right now. The game is fantastic to watch. It rockets along and leaves Rugby Union in the dust. You can play $ 20 and go see some WORLD CLASS athletes playing for Aussie clubs every weekend. What's not to love? Golden Point games are awesome... I love the way they build and build the tension. Drawn games are nothing but a disappointment for the whole audience. The Salary Cap has worked wonders. If you want to know what it would be like without it, rent Moneyball with Brad Pitt. It's about a baseball team trying to compete with teams that have 3 times their budget to spend on players. Watch it and rejoice in the fact that League is so evenly spread. The interchange system keeps the players on the field week after week. They're human after all. Look at the likes of Sam Burgess and Terry Campese - knocked out by season ending injuries. Now multiply that number of players by ten if the interchange system was reduced. Remember - back in the 70's the level of athleticism and length of the season wasn't the same as today.

There is a salary cap for Under 20's too.

Oikee's comments are the most entertaining on this forum. I care not that his grammar goes astray or sometimes his comments make no sense at all, I for one look forward to reading hid 'Jibberish'. To quote my Ozzy mates "Goodonya Oiks"!

As a boy ("When I was young"), I stood freezing on the terraces at Central Park Wigan and watched our Great team flop about in eight inches of mud, on the wings there was a bit of grass, but with a team able to hold the ball for as long as they could, the wingers only saw the ball now and then. It was nothing short of a slow painful slugfest, which, I for one am glad to see GONE!. Promotions -- NRL will not prigress until Oikee has this portfolio!. Long service allowances.. best thing I have heard for years. -- Keep moving NRL there are lots of ways to improve what we are doing!.

No worries Tim. I will keep a eye out for a 70's corner post for ya. Oh the memories.

Half of them are runaways. The defense up front these days is more organised but I reckon there isn't as much cover.

:) I dont even know what Tim is crying about, he said he loves the past, well we are still living in the past in Rugby League. We have not joined the future yet. This game is run by dinosaurs, how much more of the past can we put up with. It really has not moved forward for 17 years. The only change of significence in this time was some bright spark saying, "hey, i know what, let's take the corner post out of play". ? This is after we all argued the point about this corner post being a blight on the game for 3 years, yes 3 years on this very blog. That was rugby league "big day out". Oh i cheered, i still talk about it today, oh the memories. ;(