There should be a requirement that all of the admins involved in doing the draw need to complete a 10km run at 3pm in the summer before in every city they are thinking of holding a 3pm kick off, watch how quickly they disappear after that.

I’ve never really been a fan of the double headers, and this round did show that they don’t seem to benefit the ALW either, with fantastic crowds in the round 1 stand alone fixtures there was a significant drop off particularly for the double headers.

On the brightside, was a generally pretty good week of football though for the games I have watched, although I will have to go back and watch the Roar ALM game as I missed it while I was at the ALW game.

From my point of view there are a few reasons why One failed. The first and probably most important is that the anti-siphoning list meant that the parent channel 10 had to broadcast the AFL against One which surely would have affected the viewership.
The second is that One didn’t have the exclusive rights to anything that could be considered a major draw card other than Formula 1 mainly because the rights weren’t up.
The third thing and probably the most important is the real lack of any midweek live sport that would draw viewers, apart from international cricket not much in terms of sport is on midweek which means that it is going to be harder to draw viewers during what is in truth the majority of the week.
And finally One made some poor decision in regards to programming, I’m not sure what they were thinking with Bull Riding and High Stake hoops as examples, but that would have cost them money for bugger all return.
All of this is unfortunate because I felt they were starting to get the balance right and and some of the issue’s above were about to be resolved (anti-siphoning and rights), so it will be interesting to see what happens and whether they will continue to offer “premium sport” or whether Murdoch and Packer are going to move to protect Fox Sports.

I would be happy if they had tried some traditional promotion before doing this, as it currently stands they simply havent.

As my mother used to say, if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all. However when Hockey Australia sent a survey out about this last year (about this time) I couldn’t help myself and gave them a serve, for the exact reasons that you gave Ben.

One point that I will make is that 20/20 cricket works because it take 3 hours compared to 8 for a One dayer and up to 5 days for a test match. In comparison a Hockey game will take around 85 minutes from start to finish, surely the general public can focus for an hour and a half (we don’t all have ADD).

The other point that I will make is that Hockey is already a fast, open and high scoring game. The Kookaburra’s beat India 8 nil in the commonwealth gold last in a fast, open and high scoring game. But if that was all sport was about we would all watch basketball or netball I know I love sport because of teh contest between the attack and defence .

That was an incredible game, apparently while the bloke sitting next me has been at a roar game we have never scored after he left we scored 2, thanks for taking one for the team mate.

Can’t believe Theo didn’t get the Joh Marsten medal, Ryan wasn’t bad but he wasn’t best on the field.

I’m a fan of a second division for the NRL for a number of reasons, first and foremost amongst them it does make expansion easier and allows new areas to enter teams inot the national competitions starting with a lower expenses bill.

I think ideally it would be 10 or 12 team competition, which allows for a proper home and away (18 or 22 games) season without the extra cost impost. I would imagine that the comp would have a lower salary cap and smaller playing squads to further reduce the ongoing costs.

Ideally I would have the teams as;
Central Coast
Newtown / Wollongong (or another NSW team)
Perth
PNG
Northern Pride (Cairns)
Mackay Cutters
Central Comets (Rockhampton)
Sunshine Coast
Ipswich Jets
Redcliffe Dolphins / Norths Devils
Easts Tigers / Wynumm Manly / Souths Logan
Tweed Heads / Burliegh

With the teasm seperated by a “/” as an either or.

I don’t think that it would add much to the travel costs as many of the Queensland teasm already travel those distances, and if they can do it on a semi-professional basis any team aiming for the NRL should be able to afford it.

In terms of promotion and relegation there would need to be some strict criteria to allow entry into the NRL and an NRL team would have to perform well below par to be relegated (the sharks jump out for this). This would give the NRL teasm some certainty whilst encouraging the 2nd division side to work hard and aim for the NRL

It is a shame that the Commonwealth Games have become such a political thing.

If I remeber correctly Barcelona was completing the athletes village as the athletes were moving in, Atlanta was still building in the week before the games, and there were massive questions over Beejing. The only games that didn’t seem to have a massive question hanging over them were the Sydney Olympics and Melbourne Commonwealth games. It just seems like the media looking for stories rather than reporting them

Wow seems like everyone is missing the point took from the article, and Adrian probably shouldn’t have referenced politics (always a short cut to getting off topic).

I think what Adrian was trying to say was that most australian sports fans a stuck in thier ways and unwilling to give anything else a go. Generally speaking this is considered to be a conservative attitude, and therefore the claim is that Australia is a conservative spoting nation.

The point being try something new, you may or may not like it but at least you’ve broadened your point of view. Oh and by the way Australia is a conservative country politically because not enough of us play hockey.

Good points Mike, I see it as a bit of a chicken and egg issue. Good players wont stay in the A League until the standard improves, The standard wont improve without good players.

I guess what it comes down to for players transferring is that if they are going to Europe to get better then you need to at least be in the first team (including the bench), and you probably need to avoid Eastern Europe and try for the larger Western Leagues. If they are going for coin then good luck, doesn’t matter where you go (as long as it’s not Romania).

This season will be key for the A League, it has reached a plateau and needs to start improving again

Not a bad idea, the only major change I would suggest is to change it to four pools of 3, less travel means less financial stress on the clubs and the ARU.

Some good points in there Adrian, I don’t think we are going to miss Bogut as much if Patty Mills can play to his potential for the entire tournament. It’s a big if and it is always dangerous relying on one player to carry a team but we definitely have a shot at the top 4.

I think you are wrong though when you say a good result here will help the NBL, the Hockey results have taught us that international success doesn’t necessarily translate to domestic success. And Soccer has taught us that doing well with the majority of your players coming from overseas (particularly the stars) reflects poorly with the general population.

I don’t want Ric to take over the Australian cricket team, not because he wouldn’t be good at it he’d be probably the best man for the job, but because Hockey needs him more.

You could probably put him in charge of a rugby league team and he would do brilliantly.

It was a great effort by the kooka’s, they have absolutely dominated the sport this year and I for one can’t wait for the commonwealth games.

If you missed the match you can see it here: http://www.laola1.tv/en/int/field-hockey/international-hockey-federation/australia-england/video/206-1053-29088.html

I like it, just a couple of points though.

1. I wouldn’t have Logan and Ipswich in, either or would suit just promote the relevant Q Cup side and Adelaide instead

2. I also wouldn’t have Redcliffe and Sunshine coast, either or should do with teh remaining team coming from toowomba or NZ.

Doesn’t look to bad to my eyes Dave there are only 2 things I would add.

1. There needs to be a national second division, this will allow new clubs to build while they are new and once established then push for the NRL. Just imagine how strong the Western Reds or the Central coast Bears would be now if they had had a national stage to compete on before they have to make thier pitch to join the NRL.

2. There are too many clubs in Sydney, there needs to be relocation (or relegation to the Natioanl second division) of at least 2 teams to allow for national expansion without to much cannibalisation of support.

Sheek, just on your point about Horses not being able to jump.

I remember a program last year or early this year about the jumps industry (4 corners I think), and the gist of it was the reason the the Australina Jumps had so many fatalaties compared to say the English jumps is that in England the horses are bread to be jumpers. In Australia any broken down old nag who would normally only be fit for the glue/pet food factory is bought to be a jumps horse.

And apart from taht what KR is saying about the so called safety changes making the race more dangerous is true.

I don’t think clubs even need home and away jerseys, just normal and clash jerseys.

It would keep life simple, and it at least would be easy to figure out who is playing at any one time.

The ACL has the potential to be a great thing for football in Australia, it’s just a pity that most clubs (read all except Adelaide) don’t sem to want to embrace it.

The reason that I say this is that myself and my mates would be considered casual football fans, but when Brisbane was making thier run to finish third, the talk wasn’t we will go to all of the finals, but we will go to all of the ACL matches in Brisbane

Well, I’m convinced. Although you didn’t mention the role that social media will play and I’m sure that this will play a key part of any bandwagoneers support.

I think you are getting a bit ahead of yourself Spiro, as a long suffering Red’s supporter I don’t think they deserve to win the comp yet, Our boys can still win it and I am hoping that they do but they still have a lot to prove.

Far more important in my view is that they are still in this position next year.

Simon, I don’t think the Reds are winning fans yet, they are winning back the supporters who had become inactive after a decade of suffering and hope.

Sheek I have to say that I would do pretty much everythin that Gallop has done, The storm delibrately breached the cap over a number of years they deserve to have thier premiership’s removed. The only thing I would change would be to make the points deduction a set number (say 20), and if ned be give them a further deduction the following year, this is just to make sure that there is some certainty about the penalties.

In terms of the salary cap I would favour a Bundesliga or NBA model mainly because it will reward clubs doing well and not allow them to overspend. The only other rule I would put in place would be to have a “tipping point”, the aim would be to have a dollar figure say 4.25mill where if clubs spend over it the NRL will get forensic accountants into look at the clubs books at the clubs expense. The fact is that our salary cap auditing system is not as rigourus as it should be.

Excellent points Steve, I have a funny feeling they may be missed by most though which is a shame.

I think the most important point that we need to take out of this is teh first one that you make. What were the people whio were supposed to monitor the salary cap doing for the last 5 years? Realistically if we are going to have the salary cap set at a low level (which it is), then there does need to be an incredibly in depth audit undertaken at the vast majority of clubs every year, otherwise the comp will start to lose credibility with questions raised about every strong team.

The problem is Kurt that we all felt that all clubs would be on notice after the bulldogs in 2002, turns out they weren’t.

Have to say I am feeling pretty jaded with the game at the moment, I don’t know about anyone else but the last couple of years in league have hurt more than the decade of mediocraty by the Reds, because at least with the Reds I felt every year that they were about to turn the corner and come good. I just can’t believe that about Rugby League anymore.

Sorry Springs I thought kick would have been self explanitory, and with the ball getting kicked into the players back he is actually offside so it can’t be a knock-on. With the falcon example, if it goes forward it’s a knock on, if not then play on, simple really and the only way of avoiding an idiotic try like the one on the weekend where it has hit teh player in the chest bounced to behind the defensive line and has had a try scored off it.

I don’t think we can hawk all of the blame onto the refs, lets face it the laws of the game are getting rediculous. For example

1. since when would a forward pass need to be determined on where a players hands are facing, if the ball travels forward of where the player released then it is a forward pass.

2. The seperation rule is absolutely stupid, the player keeps his fingernail on the ball because he hasn’t cut them in 3months it is a try, bring back control of the ball.

3. If it comes off your body and goes forward its a knock-on, not if it only comes off the lower part of your arm.

At the end of the day these couple of rediculous interpretations are the fault of the coaches and administrators, not the refs. Apart from that look at what MattRusty has said.

You make some good points in that article Terry, pretty most people minds will still be too clouded by choclate to make sense of it.

A certain amount of historical context needs to be taken when looking at the names and reasons why certain sports are played the way they are.