The 22 protected players equaled a first pick team, which was how many players there were in a match day squad in around 2007, which was when protected players/draft was last applied. AB rugby at least had its greatest period of success after that, and in reality there was a decline in NZ SR rugby only because the Crusaders weren’t winning and other than the Chiefs the rest couldn’t take up the slack. Not that there is a direct causal relationship between these changes and the results. NZ SR teams wanted an end to the draft. They got it. Some made the most of it, some didn’t.

You’re right that there is a major discrepancy between the player bases of the teams, the Highlanders area is for example a quarter of the size of the Blues. But the Crusaders are only half the size of the Blues and they outnumber them in championships 14 to 3. The Highlanders have for decades operated on the principle that they could just pick up players in their early twenties. Now they have finally realised that they need to recruit from 18, when the players have left school, from their own patch first [Which they’ve failed to do. Damian McKenzie being the most prominent example] and then throughout teh country. They’ve finally realised that they cant expect SR ready players to be handed to them, that they have got to grow their own. And they are. They’ve got a very talented bunch coming through.

“Maybe NZR should buy the Rebels licence for a couple of bucks. I bet if they did it would be a success.”

I wonder….

They certainly tried something like that in a few years ago

Nope. The old NZ draft system was an abject failure, one that was ditched at the same time as SR in NZ went to open contracting for all fully contracted players, in 2007 if memory serves. The good thing is that all NZ’s teams seem to have got the message and are focusing in their own as a way of building winning teams. Getting rid of draft players has been essential for the Highlanders. They need to make it extremely clear to young players that committing fully to Otago/Southland rugby will give you a slot in the Highlanders, that you wont get gazumped by some bright young thing coming through from up north. Its the only way they will get off teh floor.

The Chiefs might actually be ahead of the Crusaders, the Blues aren’t that far behind either team, and the Hurricanes and Highlanders are starting to come right. I’m expecting NZ SR teams to pull further ahead of Aussie SR teams over the next 5 years, not come back to the pack.

NZ has already pulled well ahead of Aussie in PD despite running the same system, which says clearly its not the system but the content of it that is the problem in Aussie. Aussie used to be the best at PD, now its the worst. That’s what needs to be fixed. There is no alternative. Everything else, NRL players, drafts, restructuring etc, is just a distraction.

It is difficult to unpack all the errors of fact and logic you have shoved into those few paragraphs, so I’ll just address the principal one. The majority of the six development player contracts given out each year by NZ SR teams are given to that SR teams own development players. The players come from within their own system. They are therefore not draft players. This is a trend that is only acclerating, with the Highlanders having no draft players this year. The whole point is that the draft has failed to deliver the results for the SR teams, even in the much more limited role it has now. There is virtually no regulated redistribution of talent in NZ SR any more, and therefore no meaningful draft.

Aussie desperately needs to improve its player development. You have suggested an NZ style draft without knowing what it was [most dont] and refuse to accept that it is now a very minor part of NZ’s SR PD scene, about 10 players a year out of 190. Aussie needs to focus on what does work, what is effective in a significant way. A draft will not do anything for Aussie rugby. Getting much better talent identification and training will. Which is why you have got Nucifora back, to advise on what you should have been doing twenty years ago.

And as for NZR, that useless collection of fish-heads, all the PD work is done by the SR teams and the NPC teams. NZ rugby as a whole has succeeded despite, not because, of NZR.

Like so many on this forum you’re not the sort who can be told you’re wrong, are you?

Again, the number players potentially subject to a draft per year is 6 out of 38, not 15, and the players are not on full contracts. This is radically different from the old SR draft system in NZ, or any other draft system of any consequence. The numbers are small, operate only at the edges, and are in decline.

Contrary ot your view, the Crusaders are entirely typical of the use of the draft. For example Sione Ahio and Wallace Sititi are the only players in the Chiefs 2024 who could be draft players from outside the Chiefs development system.

The Highlanders, who are the smallest and weakest of the franchises, have not recruited a single player in 2024 through the draft from outside their own development system. They instead have gone whole hog on growing their own. Which they should have done 20 years ago, but there you go.

The system is also being used less and less, with the Highlanders are typical of the way things are going in NZ. There is now a massive emphasis on retaining players from within your own development system. Listen to the master.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/super-rugby/300796610/webb-of-intrigue-the-man-behind-the-crusaders-production-line

Its never been explicitly stated but I dont think the “retain your own trend” is to do with loyalty as such. It seems to be all about success. Though I haven’t been properly through the stats, the retention rate of draft players seems to be a lot higher when they have come through the SR teams own development system. Pulling in junior players from outside the region at SR level rather than academy level is much more likely to result in that player then reverting back to their original SR team if they succeed or, more concerningly, fail altogther. The reason is fairly obvious. They’re young men who would prefer to be somewhere they have grown up with, or has fully committed to them. Drafts of any sort, as NZ has discovered, are of very little value, and can ber very destructive.

What you have got there Kingplayer is a big red herring. You can continue to try and land it, insist it’s a prize winner, or you can cut the line, walk away. This is not the solution you are looking for.

There is no draft of any consequence in NZ SR.

https://www.nzrpa.co.nz/news/new-collective-employment-agreement-for-new-zealand-rugby

The first 32 players in each squad are all freely contracted.

The closest there is to a draft is that the 6 development players [Lowest paid] the SR teams can include in the squad [Inexperienced players without a history in SR] are in principal subject to a NZ wide draft, meaning they can be picked up from anyhere in NZ rugby, and there does seem to be some sort of meeting where the players are distributed according to SR team need.

In reality development players from within the SR team dominate the development positions. For example, from what I can tell, in the past 2 years the Crusaders have only picked up Taha Kemara, Heremiah Murray, Ioane Moananu and Rivez Reihana thorugh the draft. The other eight development players have been through the Crusaders academy. This sort of weighting is quite typical, and where it wasn’t, with the Highlanders, its now changed.

The small role that the draft has played since NZ went to open contracting is contracting. Teams need to look after themselves, and not look for others to do their development work. Even the Highlanders seemed to have finally worked that out.

Be interesting to see how the politics of this plays out. RA won’t want to leave SRP, NZR wont want them to leave but won’t want to pay more than $8M, NZ SRP teams don’t want them to leave for commercial reasons [sponsorship] and because they don’t want to be playing high intensity matches every round, and WR wont want Aussie running their own comp any more than they want Wales/Scotland/Italy/Ireland running their own comp. But if Aussie’s performance continues to decline against NZ even after losing a team, and if they go below 50% against Drua and what seems to be the imminent revival of the Jaguares, both of which are distinct possibilities, NZR restructures MP to make it more competitive [which it will have to], then RA might be forced out of SRP.

You have to wonder how much longer NZR will watch the death spiral of professional rugby in Australia and when they will move to protect the game in NZ from that failure. There doesn’t seem to be any enthusiasm in NZR for allowing open contracting in SR, [all players eligible for their national teams irrespective of where they play in SR], which is the only means in the short term of significantly improving Aussies SR performance. This suggests the obvious, that NZR doesn’t trust AU SR player development/coaching.

There’s good reason for that. While cutting the Rebels will help improve AU SR performance, all AU’s SR teams outside the Brumbies are right at the beginning of understanding how to develop/coach SR grade players. Whether centralisation will make any difference to the performance of those teams is doubtful. SR AU will spend years bedding in new processes, squabbling over roles, etc, etc. Again, NZR doesn’t seem to want to encourage NZ players into that environment, particularly not ABs.

There are also two changes in NZ rugby that will almost certainly make AU SR performance problems even worse. First, there is strong evidence that NZ SR clubs are generally improving their player development/coaching. The Crusaders have been the best run rugby club in the world, with an unmatched ability to produce international and world class talent, but after the Chiefs decided five seasons ago to invest in long term development they are very near that standard. They badly botched the final in 2023, but because they are fundamentally sound they will learn from it and progress. And their selections for this year show they remain committed to bringing new players through. The Blues, gifted the biggest player pool in the country, one twice the size of the Crusaders, haven’t reached that standard yet, but they made a lot of progress under McDonald, Cotter should take them further, and again they are committed to bringing teh right sort of players through.

What’s really interesting though are the Hurricanes and Highlanders. The Hurricanes have always been very badly run, with seemingly no ability at all to produce the props, locks and first five eighths which are the foundation of long term success in SR, and of course test rugby. Again, look at the Crusaders. They seem now to be building a new group of players in exactly those positions, have dumped a number of players who were worthwhile but not championship winners. It’ll be interesting to see if they try to play a properly structured game this season. The most radical change though is the Highlanders. They seem to have finally realised that they need to look after/appeal to the players from Otago and Southland first, that the time to recruit players is when they are 18, not 23, and that they can’t behave the way they have for all of SR and simply expect SR capable players to simply be gifted to them by the draft or by late recruitment. In short, the sort of improvement you would expect from the Blues, Hurricanes and Highlanders over the next few years should make it much more difficult for the Crusaders or Chiefs to dominate the competition, but should also drive down Aussie SR’s win percentage, further undermining their willingness to stay in the comp and as well as their commercial credibility.

And the second reason? The long brewing fight between NPC and SR in NZ is finally happening, and SR will win. NZ’s SR teams will push towards twenty or so scheduled games a season, either inside SRP or outside it, will accrue all the benefits from that in terms of onfield coherence and player depth, the advantage all the club teams in the northern hemisphere have, as well as of course the much better financial rewards [sponsorship etc], and Aussie SR will fall even further behind. Aussie has at most half the playing talent, distinctly worse player development, obviously inferior coaches, and will soon only be playing two-thirds of the scheduled games. It simply cant complete.

Rugby in Australia can’t restructure its way to success. Talk to cutting an Aussie team [NZR’s preference] or two Aussie two teams [NZR’s fundamental desire] is not going to make any long term [five plus years] difference if Australian player development/coaching continues to be crap. Which, outside the Brumbies, it is. If four of the five individual divisions within a company are very badly run closing two of them still leaves the company with two thirds of the company in an appalling state and the whole of it on its way to failure.

It is possible that cutting the Rebels will marginally improve the performance of Aussie’s SR teams for a couple of years. In 2018 and 2019, after cutting the Force, Aussie SR teams won 8, lost 24 against NZ SR teams, which was only slightly better than the ratio in 2016 and 2017. Irrespective, if the player development/coaching process remains as defective as it has been in the Waratahs, Queensland and the Force, then all cutting the Rebels will be by the five year mark is just another sugar hit, to which Aussie rugby has become addicted.

Yeah, it is a bit bob both ways from RA, isn’t it.

Aussie rugby politics. No surprises there.

TBH, yeah. But Joe is a big boy. Deans and Rennie effectively destroyed their careers as international coaches by going with Toxic Aussie. I get the feeling it’s Joe’s last chance to dance.

Nice of Joe to come to the rescue of the Wallabies. Fair response to Aussie league coaches coming to the rescue that similar train wreck, the Warriors. Who knows, it might even stop the bleeding.

What most have missed the point that if Schmidt was available RA didn’t really have a choice. They are desperate to put up a credible showing in 2025 against the Lions. No one, other than Gatland, has a better understanding of British and Irish international rugby than Schmidt. With him in charge it is now possible that the tour will be a success on the field and off. Put in a novice coach and a three nil defeat is near certain, and just as damagingly will be seen to be near certain, which will effect crowds and tourists and therefore the money RA is relying on. At that point RA’s buisiness plan will be undermined and Aussie’s place on the Lions roster will come under threat.

Finally, a smart decision from RA. Hopefully the first of many.

Drua managed to win 2018 NRC with locals only, they’re already mid-table in SRP after only two seasons, so I don’t think they would be a burden on the comp.
Thing is, I don’t think SRAU could be described as T3, given that the teams will be the same as SRP except without Wallabies and other internationals, which describes the playing rosters of all the major Nth Hemi competitions in a big chunk of their games. Local international players are regularly rested and rotated throughout the URC, Top 14 and English Premiership. With SRAU it would just be more defined.
I want SR Aotearoa for NZ in the same slot, and I get the feeling that if one country goes the other will as well.

Within a few years, yes. If they gave open contracting in SRP.

This year and until then RA needs to run SR Aussie with Drua as 6th team after SRP. Double round robin and final. The only difference between that and an 8 team NRC with Drua as 8th team is that the NRC would be more expensive, of lower quality and remove the opportunity for greater cohesion in Aussie SRP teams.

SRP has only 14 scheduled games per season, and so Aussie is in even worse situation than that. Aussie needs, like NZ needs, 20 to 25 guaranteed T2 games each year. T3/NRC is a canard until T2 properly sorted. T2 comes first.

“Rest and Rotation” has been spectacularly mishandled ever since 2007 when Graeme Henry nuked that years SR and his own RWC campaign with the withdrawal of twenty something ABs from the first half of SR. He wanted them out of the whole comp, BTW.

Last year RA screwed up and yet again damaged SR with an exaggerated withdrawal policy. NZR screwed up as well, though not as badly. Billy Harmon getting pulled from the Highlanders because he had trained the ABs was ludicrous. NZR annd RA are doing a more restrained policy this year thankfully. It’s no surprise that good things happen when competent people are in charge.

Sorry to burst your bubble Aussie, but Super Rugby hasn’t failed you. You’ve failed Super Rugby. Have been for the last decade.

As a NZer, listening to Ockers blaming Kiwis for their abject failure over the last decade is exactly the same as being a Canatabrian listening to the rest of the country blaming Canterbury for their abject failure over the last seven years. You blame the winners for winning instead of blaming the losers for their poor player development, poor recruitment, poor coaching, poor tactics, poor execution, etc, etc, etc.

The honorable exception? The Brumbies. Like the Crusaders, they rate fourth out of five in their country for resources. But like the Crusaders they make so much more of what they’ve got. No wonder the rest of the country hate them so much.

Ntamack’s complaint is the first sign that France are going to struggle with the new nations championship.

France haven’t taken their southern tours seriously in more than twenty years, ever since their top tier club comp began to eat their sport. Players being rested for tours, players turning up late to tour as their club finals drift into the middle of June, players on tour being exhausted. They’ve tried to control their club’s domination of their sport but the 10 month soap opera is still running, with 26 round games in Top 14 every year, plus another 4 European games. URC is 18 and 4 over with their season a month shorter. Much more sensible, and from what I can see the ideal balance.

That dilettante attitude from France was alright when the tours were near meaningless, but now the tours will have meaning. Now the points on those tours will be vital to get France to the top of the European conference and a place in the big final every two years. And they’ll fail. Again and again and again, just like they have at the world cup. They might win the 6N, they might even Grand Slam, but every year they will do worse than they should in their mandated 3 game tour because the Soap Opera will have left their players exhausted. And they’ll be facing 2 Southern hemisphere tourists every heel bent on extracting maximum points from them in order to boost their position in the Pacific/Africa conference.

The French will have to ask themselves how much their soap opera is worth if they are missing out on the final three years out of four instead of just once out of four. And four out of four once Lions tours are eventually abandoned. Oh, the humiliation. A Fronde is on the way.

New Zealand remains what it has been for the last sixty years, the country that produces more international grade rugby players and international grade coaches than any other. And that despite the fact it has a domestic playing structure stuck in amateurism and 4 out of 5 professional teams which since 1996 have, in general, done a dismal job developing players. Fix that and the beautiful, high pitched whining that came from overseas when the All Blacks were winning 90% plus of their games will come back. Now they have a real coach, all things are possible.

I know its Christmas, but do you have to cherry pick all your facts? The Drua [your spelling is as defective as your logic as your ability to assess evidence] is a single team based on a nation that is now in the top ten. It is unsurprising it has done so well in such a short period, particularly at the expense of Aussie. Japan has less native talent spread over twelve teams that rely on foreign recruits to give them a backbone. The idea that those relatively small number of players would be able to stop their teams being utterly humiliated by full noise, top tier SRP teams is absurd. The only way League One teams will be competitive with SRP teams in the next decade is if they recruit 90% of their players from overseas. That aint gonna happen.

And as for these so called deals your offering, why the hell would NZR want 33% ownership of something that was worthless? The club world championship is even worse. This mythical beast has already been pushed out to 2028 at the earliest. Otherwise known as never, given the political, logistical and financial issues involved. As I’ve said elsewhere, NZR and and RA need to concentrate on getting SRP right by cutting the Rebels, reinventing MP, getting the Jaguares in again, tightening up the playoffs and putting on a full season of games. And all the time doing the real work, which is not restructuring competitions but doing Crusader grade player development instead of Aussie grade player development.

Effectively your argument is that in 2019 League One teams would have lost by an average of 60 points, but now they will only lose by an average of 30 points, rather evades the point that they will still lose by an average of thirty points. SR has been poisoned by introducing weak teams. It doesn’t need to alienate its fan base and most of its commercial partners yet again by indulging a competition based around teams who at best are as strong as bottom of the table NPC teams.

This is not to say it wont happen. NZR and RA have been incompetent in competition development for more than two decades, and while times are changing I have no confidence in either of them. You may get what you want, but it will all end in tears.

And as for France ruling the world with a bunch of hot housed teenage tight forwards, let us know when that actually happens. I dont think we’ll hear anything from you. England won three U20’s between 2013 and 2016. Fat lot of good its done them. South Africa have only ever won one U20 championship, nothing since 2012, have made 3rd place in the comp their own, getting the bronze 9 times out 13 tournaments, yet they are double world champs. Teenage champions dont win world cups. Adults do.

New Zealand will however continue on the path it has been following for decades, and allow those sort of players to develop in a more considered, long term, productive way, which is why Newell and Williams and Lord and Vaai are already in the AB’s, all of which are technically U23, with another quality group coming through fast. The Highlanders, Hurricanes and Blues seem to be coming round to the reality that they need to produce properly balanced teams, so who knows, maybe the AB’s will be able to recruit its tight five from five teams rather than just rely on the Crusaders and the Chiefs. Wouldnt that be nice.

Still pedalling the same old fictions.

Your whole approach to analysing rugby is based on the idea that resources equal results. If that was true then France would be perennial world cup champions. Instead its ten failures and counting, a team that, bizarrely enough, has never won a world cup playoff game in France itself. If your ideas had any merit then France’s principal competition would be England. Yet England is another perennial loser, a nation whose colossal resources have not given it success, outside its one moment of glory in 2003. Both nations test records overall reflect that level of performance. Great in Europe, crap aginst real competition.

The idea that resources equals results also the basis of your derogatory categorisation of SR as a 2nd Tier club competition. Had the SR champions ever played the European champions in a global club championship, as they should have done, then there would be decades of evidence showing the superiority of SR clubs, the same sort of advantage SH teams have at test and WC level. Resources do not equal results. Excellence equals results. Just ask the Crusaders. Just ask the All Blacks. Just ask the Springboks in RWC. None of them have more money or players that their rivals. They’re just radically better at using what they do have.

As for the idea that Japan is the wolf that eventually eat NZ and Aussie rugby, the only relevance of that is the ongoing reality that League One is just another no SR comp that recruits heavily outside its own catchment in order to make up for its own lack of talent. SH talent in general seems to have adapted well to Japanese conditions, so will become more of a target as League One evolves.

But the idea that League One will ever be competitive with SR without a massive influx of foreign talent, something that would take a decade to build up even if they did commit to it, is laughable. Japan as a test nation is, as stated, operating at the same level as Italy. Yet even then the talent that sustains that mediocrity is distributed amongst twelve club teams, not two. League One teams are full of Japanese players who wouldn’t be good enough to play in senior club rugby in NZ. Until that changes, and it would take decades, League One teams will be roadkill when facing SR teams. No competition between the two will survive that level of Japanese failure for more than a couple of years.

Aussie interest in SR has collapsed because of the ongoing incompetence of its SR teams. NZ itself has become frustrated with Aussie because of that incompetence, with real concerns about the value of the competition and its effect on the AB’s. Configuring the expansion of SR around games against one of rugby’s lightweights would be a disaster.

But then, given your obvious animosity to NZ and Aussie rugby, that’s what you want.

Again, consistent with the article, its difficult to know exactly what you mean, but if you are suggesting a champions league style competition with 4 teams from NZ, OZ and Japan, [where exactly MP and Drua fit into that, who knows] it would be a train wreck and be gone within a couple of years. Most NZ teams would beat their Japanese opponents by fifty points. Even the Ockers would win every game against them. Unless you are talking about playoff slots for losers, there would be three or four NZ teams in the semis every year. That’s not a champions league.

What you seem to be advocating is precisely the sort of “just look at the money” disaster that has done so much damage to SR over the last fifteen or so years. A non-competitive non-event that would lead only to alienation and failure. Japan is a rugby lightweight, no better than Italy. It will remain that way. It doesn’t matter how much money they throw at the sport. Opening the doors to unlimited overseas recruitment might solve the problem, but then what would the point of their rugby be?

The problem with this theory, and the others floating around, is that if it was ever tried it would get obliterated by the fact of what would happen on the playing field.

The reality is that Japanese club teams are rubbish. Even a team as mediocre as the Reds, who only scraped into the SRP playoffs last year after it was given a loser slot, a team that lost twice as many games as it won, still managed to beat the Crusaders of Japanese club rugby, the Saitama Panasonic Wild Knights, when the Reds put on a scratch team after the end of the season and the Wild Knights used their full squad in a pre-season game. I dread to think what the Chiefs and the Blues will do to their victims next year. Probably the NZ thing, get two or three sent players off and keep it close that way.

If you think that is an exaggeration, match the SRP teams 1 to 12 against the League One teams, 1 to 12 in their respective positions. Does anyone think any of the Japanese teams would get within twenty of their opponents in a fully competitive game, let alone get a win? Reverse it, have 12 v 1, 11 v 2 etc, etc, to give the Japanese a chance of getting a win. SRP’s worst, Moana Pasifika, would still have a fify-fifty chance of beating League One’s best, the Wild Knights, in a fully competitive game.

A combined, champions league cup type competition would, on merit [you know, that thing Southern Hemisphere rugby has lost acquaintance with recently] have at least 10 SRP teams against at most 2 League One teams. Or 7 and 1. At which point it’s not a champions league. If such a champions league is tried, for political reasons it will be 8 and 4. And none of the League One teams will make the playoffs, with most having been curb-stomped in the group games. Japan will then lose interest, leave, and everything will go back to square one.

My advice to NZR and RA? Consign the Rebels to the dustbin of history, get the Jaguares back [They were really growing and will be backed by WR] turn Moana Pasifika into a 2nd Auckland team, go for open contracting within SRP [Any player can qualify for their own test team from any SRP team], go for a season long, double round robin with top 4 playoffs a grand final in a neutral venue in early September [TRC will have to be moved a bit later. Saffers will be happy] and watch the wins roll in.

Money follows performance, not the other way around.

Good to see that RA and NZR remain as oblivious as they have been for the last ten years about what is really the problem with SRP. What they are too spineless to confront are

1. The pathetically weak standard of Australia’s teams. The grim reality is without a kiwi invasion, players and coaches, there is no prospect of Australia SRP teams improving any time soon, which will lead only to a continued decline in the competition. Ocker’s keep blaming the competition itself for the gross inadequacy of their teams. Or they used to. Now, in the last year, even the most “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi” types seem to have finally realised that the state of their SR teams and the Wallabies is a direct product of, with the honourable exception of the Brumbies, the dismal standard of player development in Oz. This has led to not just the feeble Aussie win percentage in SRP, but a distorted draw to give Aussie teams more wins, as well as loser slots in the playoffs to accomodate their teams. Just being part of a competition does not do the work. Work does the work. Aussies just need to get it into their heads that they have declined not because of SR, but despite being a part of it.

This leads onto…

2. The failure of all NZ’s SR teams, other than the Crusaders, to develop into genuine professional organisations capable of winning championships, which in turn has damaged the comp. The success of the Crusaders has to a large degree masked how weak the other NZ SR teams have been when it comes to actually getting over the line, which is in turn a function of those teams failure to develop the sort of players that win championships. Every year its all about the flash new outside back or the block busting centre or the fullback who is going to be the next Christian Cullen or the next Michael Jones in the loose forwards. Where are the international or world class props, locks and 1st five eighths in the Blues or the Chiefs or the Hurricanes or the Highlanders? They are few and far between. The Chiefs are getting there, the Blues are starting and should get better with Cotter in charge, but the Hurricanes and the Highlanders are pretty much at year zero.

Which then results in…

3. The Crusaders. They are a problem. Their professional standards have been so much better than the rest of the comp for so long it is damaging the credibility of the comp. People keep talking about drafts, but an open market operates in NZ, and the Crusaders still have twice the number of SR championships as the rest of NZ’s teams have put together. And this despite the fact that the Crusaders are by some distance fourth of those five NZ teams in terms of demographics/playing numbers/finances/NPC teams. The Crusaders make so much more out of so much less than almost all of the rest, [and that’s just in NZ] and yet only now are that rest finally starting to realise you have to grow your own, produce balanced teams and play a tactically balanced game. Only now are they realising that you can’t draft excellence.

Fiddling with the rules or a clever promo wont solve these problems. Only a radical improvement in player development in almost every team will solve the playing imbalance, which is the root of SRP’s problems. Its easy not to do the stupid stuff, like conferences and playoff slots for losers. Its rather harder to do the real work, which is player/team development.