The idea that ‘rugby league is dying’ has been rightly ridiculed in recent days as a baseless trope – and yet watching Melbourne excoriate Sydney Roosters last night still left many of us who’ve enjoyed a long relationship with the game feeling distinctly uneasy.
Yes, as commentators on podcasts and in editorials have pointed out, rugby league has been ‘dying’ since the weeks following its invention – as a breakaway competition, not a distinct sport – in 1895. It survived 13 years in complete isolation up to 1907, it survived two actual world wars and a third of its own making and it survived its parent code going openly professional, theoretically removing its very reason to exist.
It should be able to withstand a few ill-advised rule changes and the postponement of a World Cup without too much of a problem, then.
The concern felt at watching the Storm’s glorified training run last night can’t in any way, therefore, be described as an existential crisis for the sport.
Melbourne are the the first side in premiership history to clock up 40 points 10 times in a season but I’m old enough have seen live a lot of thee-point tries. The idea that the current rules devalue the achievements of the past ring a bit hollow when you consider we’ve given almost every try scored over the last four decades an extra point.
It’s always been harder to spring an upset in rugby league because you can score right across the width of the goal-line and we offer multiple ways of doing it, as opposed to the round-ball game where there are just nine metres in which you can score just one point.
It’s even harder to prevent the best team winning in league when it can dominate possession the way it can under the six-again rule and the adoption of this for the World Cup could be the biggest folly since awarding the 2025 tournament to North America (if you don’t keep track of these things …. It’s not happening).
But my work, almost at an end, on a sequel to Mike Colman’s peerless 1996 book Super League: The Inside Story has given rise to a concern a little more nuanced than ‘they’re ruining the game, these mugs!!’
Society, organically, seems to to swing like a metronome between conservatism and progressiveness. Whichever side of that divide you inhabit, you want ‘your guy’ – the agenda-setter of the age – do do as good a job as he can in pushing your ideals before the pendulum, inevitably, swings back the other way. Rugby league survives because it is connected umbilically to the communities that begot it – so it seems unable to separate itself from societal trends including his one.
(Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
The biggest ever explosion of progressiveness in rugby league was around 1995-97, when Rupert Murdoch handed the dreamers what turned out to be about half a billion dollars. Their idealism and disaffection made them putty in the hands of Old Uncle Rupert’s moolah and some of their long-cherished innovations – such as a full-scale World Club Challenge and expansion teams in Adelaide and Perth and Paris – were such flops that progressives got a REALLY bad name for the next generation.
To this day, the word “vision” cannot be uttered by the sport’s fans without irony.
What should concern rugby league progressives is that this should be ‘our time’ after a long period of consolidation and rebuilding and bringing back City-Country. Instead, we have an NRL chairman who introduces rule changes tossed up by people writing to the letters pages of tabloid newspapers, reckons suburban grounds and ‘all three grades’ are the way forward and believes players in a national competition should not be subjected to flights from one coast to another.
Expansion? That which is being discussed now isn’t really expansion at all – it’s market optimisation.
There’s an Olympics on this year, New Zealand have just won a cricket tournament in Britain, Australian sportsmen and women continue to compete globally and I’m pretty sure the Euros involve international travel … but a dispute over annual leave for NRL players looks like nobbling our World Cup.
Rugby league is not recognised by peak global bodies, or most national governments, as a sport and these signs of deep immaturity make them all look pretty smart.
In short, the concern is that Covid seems to have dampened what should have been a buoyant period for the game – Tonga’s rise, the Toronto Wolfpack, etc – and that we are headed inevitably for a period of conservatism, parochialism and myopia without having every truly emerged from the last one.
In 1997, when the Hunter Mariners and Gold Coast Chargers were in the closest they ever came to their pomp, an alternative rock band called Harvey Danger released a song called “Flagpole Sitta”, with a refrain you may remember and which fits perfectly with definitely-not-dying rugby league in 2021: “I’m not sick, but I’m not well – and I’m so hot ’cause I’m in hell”.
They also posited that ‘only stupid people are breeding’ – that’s another column.
Or maybe it’s not.
Barry lunn
Guest
AFL is killing NRL the AFL is played all over Australia in bigger better stadiums with roughly 5 million more people filling the stadiums a year than what the NRL get.. NRL is mostly played in front of empty seats no atmosphere like at the AFL
Ken
Guest
I’m being petty but seriously for years on here I’ve heard how the Storm slowing down the play the ball was killing the game , making it slow an boring , now they speed it up an the Storm adapt an smash teams an now it’s too fast and give some teams like the Storm a unfair advantage ?, honestly which is it ?.The Storm have bought in not necessarily by choice 2 hookers that tag team to attack a tiring defence , other teams have since copied , they had forwards like Nelson lose weight in the off season to handle the extra speed an have a mobile bench , instead of complaining about rules why not complain your coaches an teams didn’t adapt in the off season, the Storm aren’t supermen but they are coached to adapt an overcome , why can’t others
woodart
Guest
maybe its not the game thats the problem, its the nrl comp. when melbourne, who have been the team to beat for ten yrs, still have to go to sydney for finals day, it doesnt help the game grow. when the international game is badly compromised by a sydney centric club comp, again,its the nrl comp thats being shortsighted.
Tim Buck 3
Roar Rookie
I thought it was brought in this year but you are correct it was round 3 in 2020. I agree they went too far. Giving the defence time to set is not a bad thing but scrums reduce the defence's numbers for a while. Also it is better to penalise laying in the tackle as a two point penalty can be more important in a close game. For the same reason I believe it was wrong to make tries four points as this devalued penalties encouraging good defensive teams to lay on the tackled player.
PGNEWC
Roar Rookie
Last year League was more Exciting then AFL- The Six again rule was fairly limited last year but the cart blanche manner its been put to use this year have led to the blowouts. They tweeked it too much. I also think the Scrums give the defence time to set -even though they are one sided. - why cant referees roll the ball in scrums ? It would at least make it more of a Contest.
Brepen
Roar Rookie
Agree Dead is to harsh for the rugby game internationally , but if you wanted to live in Australia and had the chance to take a league contract or Rugby contract, there wouldn’t be a debate over which one if you wanted to get paid.
Randy
Roar Rookie
This is the first season of NRL where I am lucky to watch even 1 game a week... I can't get into AFL though, it really is tedious. It's also full of stoppages, i thought it was suppose to be "free flowing"?
zonecadet
Roar Rookie
Agree with you on most points, however, Melbourne are that good. I suggest the 'wrestle' period of the NRL actually held them back!
zonecadet
Roar Rookie
No, that's why almost every other team sport in the world alternates possession after a score. So, you're saying that there are good teams and 'bad' teams and no matter how you tinker with the rules, the good team will still win. I agree, but alternating possession at least, gives the 'bad' team a more equal share of possession in theory. What they do with it, is entirely up to them and their abilities.
clipper
Roar Rookie
You have to remember that it was the winter sport in western sydney and qld before they had much choice. Things are changing now that Sydney is an all code city
Ken
Guest
Its hilarious so many on here for years have hated the slowing down of play the storm are notorious for , the Nrl introduce rules to stop that, the storm adapt to the rule changes an now its too fast , we need to slow it down ????,
Callan Sinclair
Guest
The sport that is 10,000 times bigger than RL is dead?
Heyou
Roar Rookie
Thank you Mr Mascord for a thought provoking article. RL is not well. RL is pretty bloody crook by my reckoning - Infected by a virus that keeps mutating. I’m about crying into my porridge this fine Sunday morning, after re-reading the article and all the comments. The virus really got a hold with the restart replacing the penalty. I have no cures in mind other than to rescind that rule change. It could stem the bleeding but I’m not feeling hopeful. Salary cap equity needs to be studied in depth to see if all is as it should be. The rise of the concussive injury as of great concern is a factor in the virus mutating in unexpected ways. The ‘owners’ and their ‘experts’ are making ill-conceived changes to give the game a few ‘shots in the arm’ hoping to vaccinate but this is proving to be problematic in all sorts of scary ways. As round 16 has continued on its rolling way we saw a few games without the blow out scores. If you are a supporter of any of those teams you’d have been on the edge of your seat and the games could have swung either way at any time. But they weren’t examples of excellence in the once great game. Footy gods help us…then came 66 to nada?! 44 to 6. Next up - 22 nil at half time and I gave up looking at live scores on the NRL APP. Sad but true. Maybe something interesting happened in that game - I hope so… What will today bring? Do I really care? Big sigh.
Tyron
Roar Rookie
Agree. Not really worth watching a contest that NZ dominates and no one else really cares for. If England win the Euro and put a good side up for the world cup under Harry Kane, you will see even less interest in English Rugby.
Don
Roar Rookie
You're kidding aren't you? Crichton - Rugby League Junior until he went to Scots as a boarder and played Rugby. Murray - Rugby League Junior who went to Newington and played Rugby there Walker (Sam) - Rugby League Junior before he went to Ipswich Grammar Suaalii - Rugby League Junior until he went to Kings School Frizell - Rugby League Junior until he went to Illawarra Sports Hight and was selected as a centre in the 2009 Aus Schoolboys Rudolph - Rugby League Junior - South Eastern Seagulls Papenhuuzen - Rugby League Junior - played Aus Schoolboys RL 2015 Doueihi Rugby League junior until he went to St Patricks Strathfield Keary - Rugby League Junior in both Brisbane then Sydney until he went to Oakhill College Connor Watsoson - Rugby League junior until he went to Knox JWH - finally! You've actually named one with a RU background longer than years at high school. That's the issue with RU in Aus. Rugby considers all these kids at school as "Rugby Juniors" when, in reality, these are League juniors who have either been recruited on scholarship or sent by their parents hoping for better education and life opportunities, and usually they can't play RL whilst at school. Almost invariably, these kids all return to League once school's over...
Don
Roar Rookie
The first way to avoid restraint of trade issues is to have all players sign on and agreeing to it. It becomes part of a NRL player contract.
Ac
Guest
Nearly all games blowouts so far. Interest in league from where I stand is nearly dead. Went to the Cronulla titans game at Coffs Harbour. Cronulla thrashed Titans. People were leaving in droves by half way thru second half. Happening time and time again. You want a contest. Not happening now and games a boring. It’s getting close to RIP NRL.
Tim Buck 3
Roar Rookie
Sorry to mislead you ABRP. I meant it wasn’t Smith, the GOAT, who tackled McKinnon.
sheek
Roar Guru
JimmyWP, Has anyone mentioned interchange? By being able to rest players, they can maintain their intensity for longer. Maybe interchange is one of the worst things to happen? Reduce the amount of interchanges, make the game more gladiatorial. Force players to give up anabolic strength for aerobic strength. Administrators are trying to develop the perfect game, which is okay only up to a point. You're never going to get the perfect game. Accept sport with its faults. Minimise the faults, but don't try to eliminate them. The quiet times in a game are ironically important. It gives you an opportunity to reflect on an awesome passage that just occurred. Or it allows you to go the toilet, or grab another beer. When I think back to the great games of my youth, the great passages of play were few & far between, but I remember them. They stood out. They weren't lost in all the inane, unnecessary, clogged detail. When Murdoch was trying to takeover league, his spokesman John Ribot said every game was going to be like a grand final. That's just utter rubbish. It's wasn't going to happen, & if that's your selling point, then you simply don't understand humanity. Sometimes the best way to go progress is take a step back.
matth
Roar Guru
He was painted as the Origin winner least year. Which is true?