As season 2018 disappears further into the rearview it’s time to look ahead.
There are a lot of ways rugby league and the NRL could improve next year – on and off the field. I want to indulge in some ‘perfect world’ dreaming.
Are these wishes fanciful? Certainly. That’s the nature of a wish. Are they unlikely? Definitely. Are they deadly serious? Of course not. But that won’t stop me putting them out there into the world, floating along like a dandelion seed before lodging in a fertile place and flourishing.
Here’s my wishlist for 2019. In a perfect world, they’d all get done. What’s yours?
Halfway decent media coverage
We’ve become accustomed to rugby league being the mainstream media’s whipping boy but it’s not a stretch to say 2018 was the worst on record for quality of coverage.
The debacle of 2018 was fittingly capped this week with the sensational tale of ‘the Australian men’s and women’s teams bought all the food on the Waiheke Island ferry so the bar had to close’.
With the players behaving themselves until Mad Monday and seemingly no media interest or capability in producing analysis of what happened on the field, we had to put up with manufactured crisis after manufactured crisis.
I’m willing to write off 2018 as an aberration, overreach from certain quarters desperately looking to generate clicks and interest in ‘scandals’ when there really weren’t any.
My wish for 2019 is four words: less agendas, more love. For a group of people claiming to love rugby league, the actions of the big names in the NRL media continually demonstrate the opposite.
I especially hope someone somewhere in Fox NRL headquarters is looking in a mirror thinking “maybe we can get more viewers by not infecting our usually quality programming with staged slanging matches and crisis peddlers pushing rumours they got from NRL reddit”. But I doubt it.
I used to watch Fox’s NRL shows religiously. Now I don’t.
Cooper Cronk. A good news story. (AAP Image/Craig Golding)
A proper trade period
You might be getting sick of reading this from me, but I’ll say it again: I love players being able to move teams. There should be more and more of it.
The average NRL career is around 48 games, barely two seasons. Even that rare player who squeezes 15 years out of their body later has to transition into the real world and make a living for another 30-odd working years.
So I can’t understand why anyone would want to stand in the way of a player making the most of the limited time they have playing rugby league.
JT is one recent retiree. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
My wish is so simple most of it could be done overnight: any player can move to any team at any time until June 30. And long as the receiving club has the salary space to get them, they leave as soon as the papers are approved.
Let teams ‘officially’ trade players during a two-week trade period at the end of the year. Let teams buy out a player’s contract (within the cap) if they want them badly. If a player has the means, let him or her buy out their own contract to become a free agent.
Reform the player agent accreditation system. Oh, and publish third-party payments. That’s pretty important for this to work.
Like I said, simple.
A genuine, supported push into the USA
I’ve written before about how rugby league should be planning to attack the United States market. It’s a no-brainer to promote the game and get a foothold, however small, in the world’s biggest sports market.
The Denver Test this season worked well on the field but was a debacle off it, with the promoter not paying the teams and a stack of vested interests leading a campaign against the game from day one.
The 2025 World Cup is supposed to be in the USA but already people are writing it off rather than trying to make sure it’s the best possible advertisement for the sport.
Rugby league is the perfect sport for the USA. Major physical contact, lots of action, plenty of advertising opportunities in a perfect television product.
Literally thousands of ready-made athletes come out of the college systems every year and hundreds leave NFL teams every year. At the very least I’d want my club sending someone over there to size up a few possible recruits.
Play an NRL match, play an international game, hold a talent camp for prospective players. Just get something going. And guess what? It’ll probably cost money. Money that will come back hundred-fold if you get things right.
The game needs to move beyond Australia, New Zealand, England and the Pacific Islands, and the opportunity to make noise in the USA is massive.
My wish for 2019 is that the pissing contest between small-minded patch defenders doesn’t win out again.
Joshua Rice of USA at the 2017 Rugby League World Cup. (NRLPhotos/Scott Davis)
Better match analysis before, during and after games
Channel Nine’s NRL match coverage runs thusly: spend three minutes introducing the teams, spend 80 minutes bagging the refs, give the man of the match award to the winning team’s halfback, bag the refs some more, then go home.
Fans want more and fans deserve more. There’s so much strategy and on-the-fly adjustments happening in a game of rugby league but TV watchers wouldn’t know because it’s never explained to them.
A few weeks ago, Matthew Johns did a short piece breaking down halfback play and people are still talking about it. That’s how rare it is to have it explained how a position should be played, how a set play worked, how teams develop and adjust their match tactics for their opposition.
The game needs to open up. My wish for 2019 is that someone out there realises that there’s a huge thirst for data, analytics, decent statistics (because the NRL’s official offering is absolutely disgusting) and sets about expanding our minds about rugby league.
Channel 9 commentators Andrew Johns and Brad Fittler. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
No blue stripes on the Raiders jersey
It’s a well-held belief in fashion circles that ‘blue and green should never be seen’ and I’m 100 per cent on board with that. The Raiders are the Green Machine. Not the Green and Blue Stripes Machine.
Nick Cotric of the Raiders, in green – and blue. (Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
I want my men creating fear and discomfort in the hearts of their opponent and I want them doing so wearing a proper green jersey (sponsor logos don’t count, but, for the record, I’d make them shades of green too).
I hear you now – great, another Canberra whinger who wants to blame everything but the team for the NRL’s second-longest premiership drought. I get that. But there’s hard data to support the curse of the blue stripes.
In their last fully green jersey, the Raiders went 37-34 in three seasons including the 2016 run to the preliminary final. That’s not a massive winning percentage, but us fans will take any positive winning percentage.
With the blue stripes added, they’re 21-27 in two seasons and they look lost, listless, unable to hold leads or fight back when they’re in a hole.
My wish for 2019 is the only solution – get rid of the blue and fill it with green again. You’ll see the difference!
blood
Guest
not not have players go out on loan like in proper football, from what i understand the yorkshire i mean english rugby league competition has a loan system in place, why not have the ability to loan players to other nrl clubs, nsw/qld comps or even over in england across the 3 divisions over in mostly yorkshire?
steveng
Roar Rookie
Easts junior comp, died a long time ago, I played in that comp since I was 10yrs old to A grade and 'Jersey Flegg', it began to dye in the late 80's and by the mid 90's it combined with the Souths comp. The Souths junior comp has always had better players, if the chooks ever relied on their juniors they would be none existent as a RL club, hence, their multi million dollar(s) buying budget. The demographics of that area changed tremendously and that is why RL became a minority sport.
westernred
A genuine push nto anywhere would be great. When the World Cup in US and Canada was said to be a goer, I dared to believe for a little while. A year or more has passed and all we have had from the game is the NRL undermining the Eng v NZ test, the NRL fartarsing about whether to start 2019 in New York or not and then being scared of putting up half a million and thus giving up and RFL in England messing around a consortium wanting to put a team in New York. Union are watching and must be counting their blessings that RL admin down not have faith in the game or those wanting to grow the game with their money. Bewildering. And then to look and see the same thing happening here.
Superspud
Roar Rookie
Yeah I don't know if Major League Rugby League is a goer.
Adam
Roar Guru
Correct me if I'm wrong but the white blue and yellow are the colours of almost all ACT teams. So if anything shouldn't the green go? On the USA side of things, you make the assumption that they like high energy fast sport. But the three biggest professional leagues in the US is NFL. NBA and MLB. NFL and MLB in particular are slower nuanced games with plenty of stoppages. If anything I'd say the sports market in the US is much closer to a slow burn rather than fast paced action. Let alone competing with union which is at least established in some corners of the country. I support expanding rugby league but it wouldn't hurt looking at the southern states, I mean rugby league is currently played at all in Tasmania. Not even a 2 or 3 team comp. Nada, nothing, zilch.
Superspud
Roar Rookie
The media produce what consumers want. Like it or not we all love a gossip column and I bet that the people here complaining about individual journalists open the papers straight to that column every Sunday to read the "rubbish". Tell me this you see two papers one with a picture of a footballer dancing naked on a balcony and one with a player doing drills with junior players - hand on heart which one are you drawn to? It does frustrate me that people who make a living off the game do all they can to bring it down but negativity sells more papers so that's what we get. The best analysis pieces I think are on NRL.com. Matty Elliott does the coaches corner but I think it needs to be expanded.
The Barry
Roar Guru
My kids love it. We keep an eye out for random Souths guy.
Birdy
Roar Rookie
The thing is Con, how long can the NRL ignore 40k every week at Suncorp? Bring on Brisbane 2. (But not the bombers)
Rob
Guest
Souths have actually taken 75% of the roosters junior area
Rob
Guest
Thinking that taking blue away from Canberra's jersey will help them perform better as long as Ricky is coach it doesn't matter what u do with the jersey Canberra will always fail.They still have the same problems as when Ricky started Ricky has no idea how to fix them.
AWin
Guest
It was choice - 1990s jockeying to get ahead of the game if there were forced consolidations. Peter Moore had the same genius idea at the same time so for one (I think only one) season we had the Sydney Roosters and the Sydney Bulldogs. Which was fairly cringe-worthy. Glad the Dogs gave up on that quickly & focussed on ballsing everything else up.
Don
Roar Rookie
Forget Central QLD There’s not the money, infrastructure nor corporate pull for that one. Despite the media mentioning it as an option when expansion is discussed. It’s just to divert attention from Brisbane 2.0. Forget PNG Plenty of desire but no local money. If we do A 2nd Vic side it needs to be in Melbourne. The NRL gets economies of scale in marketing, stadium deals, sponsorships etc with a 2nd side in Melbourne.
Riley Pettigrew
Roar Guru
The good thing about Brothers is that it will be embraced by all of Queensland. From what I have heard, the plan is eight games at Suncorp plus one at each of Cairns, Mackay, Toowoomba and either Rockhampton, Bundaberg, Wagga Wagga or Darwin. Perth and Queensland 4 have to be the next two clubs in the NRL. Beyond that, the expansion plan should probably be, in order: 1. New Zealand 2 (South Pacific Cyclones - Christchurch/Wellington combined) 2. Central Coast 3. Papua New Guinea 4. Central Queensland 5. Adelaide 6. Victoria 2 (Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo combined) 7. Brisbane 3 and 4 (Redcliffe Dolphins/Jagera Jets)
Don
Roar Rookie
You won’t hear any push for a 2nd Brisbane side in the papers nor on Fox. They have an interest in the Broncos monopoly given News Ltd still owns 69% of the club. A 2nd side is an absolute no brainer.
Matt H
Roar Guru
My wishlist: 1. Fox bring in a stats and analysis weekly show. And that's all they do on that show. If they need to align it with supercoach to get it running, so be it. Bring in smart players - Kimmorley, Johns, get Cronk in as a special guest. And include a current or former coach. Have Andrew Voss host. 2. Phil Rothfield gets a 10 month case of laryngitis. He passes it on to Ray Hadley. 3. Phil Gould is fitted with a buzzer that delivers an electric shock every time he says "let the game flow" or advocates ignoring the rules because "it wasn't that bad". 4. Announce Brisbane 2 and Perth and get on with it. 5. The Gold Coast Titans come of age and Ash Taylor wins the Dally M.
BA Sports
Roar Guru
I agree with most of your comments on the pre/post game analysis to what degree I can. Unless the post game can tell me something I wouldn't have picked up myself, or challenege an analysis I had of the game, why watch it? I rarely watch pre game on Ch 9 and never watch post game. They have turned out the same cliché rhetoric from Lewis and co for years and it just ads no value to the coverage (apart from being able to sell more ads obviously) and doesn't challenge the viewer. So when full time is blown these days, I usually change the channel pretty much straight away.
Con Scortis
Roar Guru
I agree 100% about a second Brisbane side. The problem is that there are so many rugby league people including commentators (like Wendell Sailor) who keep rubishing the idea of a second side as they want to protect the Broncos patch. There are too many people in the game that care more about their little patch than about the good of the game. I would love to see it though and consider it a "no-brainer".
Con Scortis
Roar Guru
I'm with The Barry on that. After the ball-tampering fiasco this year I was watching a really good doco on ABC about it and it had highlights of an Australia v New Zealand test match at Bellerive Oval from a few years ago and there was a random Souths guy in the crowd. I see a random Souths guy at least a few times a week. We're everywhere!
AJ Mithen
Expert
Thanks Paul - the consistency is key. How good would it be if head office supported the refs rather than hanging them (more than once) when things get too hot.
Nat
Roar Guru
That's a special kind of wishlist there AJ but I doubt anything bar your 'blue stripe' has any chance of coming to fruition (BTW, I'm with you, it is Blue and Green...) Yeah, I read the article yesterday about Ferry Bar closure and of course that's the way it was titled. Reading it I was thinking it would have been a more interesting title to say "Aust footy team pound down 20kg of meat" but such is the click bait nature we have today... On the analysis, sometimes A Johns can put together a quality observation and Locky makes some brief but astute observations during the game but it is a 3sec bit then moved on. In the 45mins after the game they have it would be good to have them expand on a few of those plays with slow-mo breakdowns. The opportunity to have an Immortal and a great analyzing plays, showing what the playmakers saw would be phenomenal for young players and viewers. They barely even do this on the Sunday Footy Show and they got 2 hrs to kill there.