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While it would be remiss not to mention that there are a lot of great things that the NRL does to provide a genuinely interesting product for its spectators, it is also equally important to always be striving to get better.
While a lot of fans have gripes with aspects of the current way things are run, such as with the officiating, match review committee, salary caps and so forth, not many are thinking outwards about things the NRL could do to make itself more exciting and entertaining.
This is, after all, a fantastic sport with incredible athletes and a long and storied history, and there are ways to get fans even more involved and engaged than they currently are. Some of these ways are already being utilised by other sports, and it never hurts to poach a good idea when you see one.
NRL has, after all, taken inspiration from other sports in the past, such as the captain’s challenge mirroring the decision review system in cricket and other sports.
Adam Goodes of Australia and Graham Canty of Ireland in action during the International Rules series First Test between Ireland and Australia in 2010. (Photo by Patrick Bolger/Getty Images)
There are more great ideas out there just waiting to be translated to an NRL audience, and it would be arrogant of the sport to think it has all the answers already. Here are a few ideas that are already staples in other sporting conditions, which could work quite well in an NRL format as well.
The NFL is a sport with an insane amount of resources, and while the NRL cannot match it in that department, it could very easily copy and modify the NRL all-star weekend. In this instance, I would advise staying away from the Pro Bowl game and focusing on the actual athletic tournaments and competitions that are run during this period.
Who wouldn’t want to see a 100m race between the fastest speedsters in the game? The last time this was run was over a decade ago and was a one-off event.
Why not let the best forwards in the game run an obstacle course based on power and agility as they do in the NFL? Why not see who can kick the furthest field goal or place kick? Events could be modified each year based on popularity, and if it was run near the Dally M ceremony, then it could serve as a fun finish to the year’s regular activities.
One very fun aspect of tennis is the charitable and non-competitive matches between past greats of the game. While this does pose some issues in the NRL, as the game is a lot more dangerous and risky for older veterans to play, that does not mean a few tweaks couldn’t be made to make it more applicable.
Touch football or super touch would still be fun to watch, especially if the event was taken to smaller towns where the NRL greats wouldn’t normally visit during their career. Perhaps the greats could coach and provide a running commentary of charitable matches made up of lower-level players and some current NRL players, tackling in a reduced role and only for fun.
It may be a little hard to work out all the details, but the point here is that the NRL has such a great past catalogue of players that each previous generation has a great attachment to that it is a shame most of them fade out of prominence forever once they hang up the boots.
You might not realise it, but the AFL actually, occasionally, runs a friendly game with their cross-hemisphere friends from Ireland. This odd mishmash of a sport is a mixture of Aussie rules and Gaelic football, and while it is not that popular, it is not hard to see why this idea would work better in the NRL.
While cross-code games between rugby league and rugby union have been run sporadically in the past, it would be fun to see a more regular fixture. A lot of fans wonder how modern greats of the game like Cameron Smith, Billy Slater, Andrew Johns and others would have fared against their rivals in the 15-man game. The issue is and has always been trying to find a fair compromise. Some versions of this meeting have had the rules swapped at halftime, while others have had the two teams play one game of league and one of union.
This author does not have the answer and understands that finding a quality union side to take on the incredible athleticism of NRL players would be a challenge, but it certainly would be fun if it was a more regular competition and not something that occurs every 30 or 40 years.
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