Dear Todd, help us be positive about the NRL by being a strong leader

For the first two rounds of the NRL’s 2016 season there was no permanent Chief Executive Officer.

Following David Smith’s sudden departure following the end of season 2015 a worldwide search was held to find a replacement CEO.

On March 18 this year the powers that be decided the bloke who had been in the room the whole time, Todd Greenberg, would be the successor.

While a fair bit of fun was poked at the length of time that it had taken to carry out the process for that result, I was in favour of the appointment.

And after the conclusion of the season I still am.

While I have certainly been a vocal critic of a number of things that I think NRL HQ can do better, I think Greenberg is a very good person to take the game forward.

Why? Well for a starter he knows and loves the game. That is a hell of a good starting place. David Smith may have been a successful business man but rugby league is only big business because so many of us love it.

Todd is one of us in that regard and hopefully that means he won’t sell us fans out in favour of big business interests who care only about money.

At the Dally Ms, Greenberg asked us all to stop being negative about the NRL and promote what is good about the game.

Fair enough. We do often tend to go on so much about the stuff that we think is crap that we forget all the things about it that we love and that have gone right.

I think that Greenberg himself has gotten a lot of things right in his short tenure.

The Bunker

The NRL Bunker came in for masses of stick this year with a few total howlers making us all question how the hell things could be gotten so wrong. However, there is no question that the Bunker is the way forward.

When the viewers and commentators get up to 20 angles of an incident we must allow the officials the same ability to review it. If we don’t then we have to totally cede our right to criticise them and that ain’t gonna happen.

We league supporters take it as our inalienable right to lay into the people running the games and the competition. Therefore the refs have to be able to use video replays.

While there were a few decisions by the bunker that I just didn’t get, there were a few that I understood exactly why they got it wrong.

I refer to two incidents. The first was the Joe Burgess non-try in the Rabbitohs’ Round 20 match against the Sea Eagles where it was ruled he had lost control of the ball, and the second the no-try to Herman Ese’ese for the Broncos where the bunker ruled a double movement.

In both cases the video was slowed down and supported, through literal interpretation, both no try rulings.

The ball did lose contact with Burgess’ fingers for a millisecond and Ese’ese’s ball carrying arm did briefly brush the ground. However, had both been reviewed in real time I believe both could – and should – have been awarded.

The Bunker is in its infancy but consistency of personnel and technology is the right way to go. It just needs our time and patience. And real-time reviews.

And please don’t give me that crap about it all taking too long. I’ve rarely been in a hurry for a game to end. They are making sure that they’ve got it right. Checking 20 angles can take a while.

Further, the people whinging the loudest about it taking too long are often the same ones going off their brains about refs getting calls wrong. (Click to Tweet)

Hard line on misbehaving players

Greenberg this year has led an administration that has run a pretty hard and consistent line on player misbehaviour.

The suspension of Corey Norman demonstrated a firm stance of accepting no-nonsense. While he wasn’t officially in charge at that point, the eight game suspension of Mitchell Pearce told the Roosters – and every other club for that matter – that poor behaviour was not going to be tolerated.

That we are hearing that the NRL has informed the Dragons that they were unlikely to register Todd Carney demonstrates some more consistency in that regard.

While a strong stance is to be applauded, I do have some misgivings about handing out a punishment to Semi Radradra and Andrew Fifita before the investigations into their actions are actually finished. I’m also not sure why they have taken so long to complete. agree with Greenberg’s strong position in regard to the allegations against the big unit from the Sharks and the Eels electric winger.

If either or both are cleared of wrongdoing, Greenberg having acted prematurely will surely come back to haunt him. Like suspending Brett Stewart did for David Gallop.

I support Todd’s the stance, but the investigations really must speed up.

State of Origin Ticket pricing

The reduced prices for a number of categories of tickets for the State of Origin fixtures was a good thing. I have lamented that the real rugby league supporters had been priced out of attending the showpiece event.

This year, under Todd Greenberg the prices went down. As a club member I had first go at buying the tickets too. Let’s hope these trends continue.

Trialling the captain’s challenge

I am a huge fan of the captain’s challenge.

I’m very pleased Greenberg had the cojones not only to trial it but also to stoutly defend it when it faced criticism.

Once more the measure was attacked mostly by old-school commentators who no doubt want to go back to the old days of a single ref, two camera coverage, lots of fights and players getting paid in beer and pies.

The match they trialled it in deliberately held no weight and it also was devoid of contentious rulings or incidents that required challenging.

However, imagine if Nathan Friend had a challenge when James Roberts kicked one of his players, remembering that it came directly before a try. Or if Friend had a challenge when Corey Parker appeared to headbutt Ryan James.

What if Jarrod Croker had a captain’s challenge when the touch judge incorrectly ruled the pass to Edrick Lee forward, or when Matt Cecchin didn’t rule the never-on-side Sharks players who brought down Kurt Baptiste offside?

These were just some of the moments in 2016 that could have drastically effected the results of matches. A captain’s challenge would have allowed each to be scrutinised.

I hope Todd keeps going down this track.

The perennial strugglers did better

I know I’m biased, but how good was it to see a whole bunch of usually struggling clubs playing finals this season? Seeing the Titans, Raiders and Panthers at the pointy end of the season was great.

While the Wests Tigers just missed out, their late season renaissance was also enjoyable. Of course, this was all topped off by the Sharks breaking their premiership duck.

I’m not sure how Todd is responsible for this, but I’ll give him the credit anyway.

These are just the things that Todd championed that I really noticed. I’m sure there are a fair few more others can list.

However, there are still some things that our CEO needs to do to become a great NRL head honcho.

The Knights have suffered enough, it’s time to help

In the AFL when a team wins fewer than five matches in a season they are granted priority pick in the draft to help them rebuild. The Knights have come last in the last two seasons and this year only won a solitary match.

In spite of the appalling year the fans kept turning up.

The Knights had the seventh best average home crowd in 2016. While the NRL doesn’t have a draft it does have the ability to grant the Knights extra salary cap space or to use its discretionary fund to help lure top class players to the club.

I think Greenberg should do something like that to help struggling clubs.

2. Put pressure on to have an even distribution of free to air games, and for a fairer draw

In 2018 the NRL regain control of the competition draw and with that the distribution of free to air games.

However, Todd should really be pushing the point with their free to air broadcaster to start making it fairer in 2017. Just have a look at the distribution of free to air games in 2016:

As you can see the sides that finished in the top four this season had 20 games between them on free to air television. 50 per cent of those were taken by the 2015 premier the Cowboys.

Conversely, the Broncos, Rabbitohs, Bulldogs and the Roosters boasted 61 free to air games between them.

That’s just a crock of crap that has nothing to do with form or fairness and everything to do with pandering to the big boys. Hopefully Todd can make a good dent in that inequity.

3. The return of the five-minute sin bin is long overdue.

Do you know that the sin bin was only used 17 times in 2016? That was up four from 2015 too.

That means the referees found only 17 incidents in the whole year that they considered to be a professional foul. That obviously wasn’t the case. The strategic penalty has become a commonplace, if not necessary, part of the game.

This season the Raiders, Cowboys and the Sharks were three of the four most penalised sides. Andrew Fifita, Michael Ennis and James Maloney were the three most penalised players.

As I pointed out in my grand final stats preview, out of the 22 grand final spots on offer in the last eleven seasons (including this year), eight (36 per cent) have gone to one of the season’s top-two most penalised sides.

Twice we’ve seen the two most penalised sides in the same season rewarded with grand final berths (2013, 2008).

The stats are crystal clear: teams are cheating deliberately as a tactic and the referees are effectively letting them.

To stop this extremely negative trend that stops open play and scoring, the whistle blowers need to use the sin bin far more often. Most are too scared to use the ten minute bin (with the notable exception of Matt Cecchin who used it more than any other ref in 2016) because it can have too great an impact on the game and may place scrutiny upon their performance.

However, if the five minute bin was also an option we might find it being a far more frequent option and the game becoming far more free flowing and high scoring. That’s got to be a good thing.

Get the trainers off the damn field!

As we saw once again in the Rugby test the other night, trainers being tolerated on the field too much constitutes a considerable risk. These are guys who are highly invested in the results of the games. The more they are allowed to be on the park the more ownership they’ll take.

I’ve said my piece on this time and time again.

When I demanded Alfie get off the damn field, 20,500 readers came to like the article 1,500 times. It’s an issue.

How to stop it? All Todd has to do is to get his Football Operations Manager Nathan McGuirk to actually enforce the rules instead of allowing mob rule.

What I don’t understand is why Todd’s team don’t enforce them? What do they get out of being so lax on the laws of the game? The risks posed are clear and unacceptable and I can’t think of any advantage the NRL gets from allowing the trainers to pose such a danger. Send the trainers packing.

Expansion to Perth?! How about the Ipswich Jets!

This talk of expanding the NRL to have a team in Perth has me flabbergasted. If the NRL is to expand the place they must do it stands out like dogs balls: greater Brisbane.

It’s obviously greater Brisbane dummy.

It is a no-brainer. It is a rugby league heartland and yet there is only one side there. The NRL has as many teams in the Queensland capital as the AFL does. There are 2.3 million people there and just one side.

While the AFL are ploughing money into GWS to try and get a piece of the Western Sydney market, the NRL doesn’t seem to have the gumption to develop a core market.

I’ll make it easy for you Todd: bring in the Ipswich Jets.

Get the Queensland Government on board and build a stadium at the North Ipswich Reserve. It’ll bring jobs to the area and a boost to the economy. It’s near the trains, the river and the Ipswich CBD. It is hard core rugby league territory. Ipswich brought us the three Walters brothers and Alan Langer, to name just a few greats. It has its own proud identity.

I know it’s scary to try and expand north of the Tweed Todd, but if you pull it off you will surely be remembered as a great CEO.