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This week’s Roar and Against debate is about golden point in the NRL and whether it makes rugby league an exciting product or not.
Each week two writers will go head-to-head, and will only have 250 words to get their point across on one of the big sporting issues of the week.
It will be up to you, in the comments section, to decide the winner. That winner will stay on and take on a new challenger and new topic. That challenger can be anyone, including any commenters who throw their hat in the ring.
To debate this week’s topic, Roar Pro Lachlan Jeffery steps up as challenger to take on Roar editor Patrick Effeney who successfully argued against TV ratings proving rugby league is a better game to watch at home than union.
More golden point:
» Golden point has lost its gleam
» What’s the point of golden point?
» NRL to consider scrapping golden point for finals
This week’s topic comes after the NRL continues to review scrapping golden point for the finals series.
AGREE
Lachlan Jeffery (Roar Guru)
When golden point was introduced in 2003, it was seen as a thrilling way to decide a winner. However, it quickly descended into farce with both sides just working the ball into good field position to take a shot at field goal. This is evidenced by the fact that in 94 golden point matches since 2003, 53 have been decided by a drop kick.
Teams don’t attack the opposition defence in golden point like they do in regular time. Games become boring as teams play conservative and don’t try anything. They just pass, run hard and take the ball inside the opposition half and take a predictable shot at field goal. Instead of being exciting, this extra time period becomes boring and repetitive.
There have been five finals decided in golden point, four of which finished with a field goal. The only one that didn’t was the 2010 qualifying final between Sydney Roosters and Wests Tigers. In that game, 19 minutes of shocking field goal attempts took place until Shaun Kenny-Dowall took an intercept and ran 65-metres to score the match winner. This created a level of excitement that wasn’t even matched by the match winning play in the 2015 grand final.
There are no words for how bad the Broncos players felt following their heart-breaking loss in the decider. They were beaten because the ball was turned over to the Cowboys 10-metres from the posts. All the Cowboys had to do was not lose possession and they had an easy attempt at field goal. How terrible a way to decide a premiership. There has to be a better way.
DISAGREE
Patrick Effeney (Roar Editor)
Golden point makes every single part of my body tighten up watching a rugby league game. That’s a great thing.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s my team or a random game; the concept makes the contest that much more exciting for me as a fan of the sport, and every play in the last ten minutes of a close one that much more important.
It’s those moments where big game players step up, and those not up to the task that day fall away.
Johnathan Thurston’s Cowboys took the 2015 NRL Grand Final into golden point through a sheer bit of brilliance (with a dash of luck) after Ben Hunt’s Broncos had looked like controlling the game to its conclusion.
Golden point would decide the fate of the premiership that year.
Ben Hunt dropped the kickoff, and Johnathan Thurston snapped the decisive field goal. It was the premiership that Thurston deserved, and the one that Hunt didn’t. Golden point sorted the men from the boys that day.
I, a Broncos fan, was shattered. It was the cruelest way to see your team go down after a season of toil.
But it wasn’t unfair. It wasn’t to either team’s advantage. It was simultaneously crippling and exhilirating. It was the best of sport.
Even regular season games that go to golden point take on increased significance, increased epicness. The ones that last past golden point even moreso. The Knights-Raiders game earlier this year was a belter, and wouldn’t have been a ‘well-earned draw’ without golden point.
Anything that takes spectator shivers away from a sporting contest is a bad idea. Removing golden point would do exactly that.
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