Roar Rookie
Joined February 2012
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Born and raised rugby league fan. Love MLB baseball. Also a fan of sport genreally such as tennis, AFL, cricket, etc. It's not whether you win or lose but how much money you made betting on the other team.
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As the meaningless NRL pre-season rolls on, many of us wonder what can be done for excitement. The answer would be some kind of…
Some more follow-ups:
4. This would be so easy to implement so why not give it a go. It won’t increase the number of trials – teams won’t trials to prepare for the preaseon cups cos’ frankly they won’t care enough to bother- AFL teams don’t play trials to prepare for the NAB Cup.
5. Some commentors have mentioned the old Sevens comp and I think that’s a good idea too. Especially if they could get it on TV like it used to be – a good way to launch the comp. But the All-Stars game kinda fills that slot. If they scrapped the All-Stars Game or move it Grand Final Week (as others have suggested) then the Sevens would be great to bring back. It wouldn’t eliminate the needfor other trial matches though since it’s not ‘real’ football and wouldn’t help teams prepare for the NRL season. But it as a good comp and I have fond memories of it (remember the USA team).
Boring NRL pre-season needs spicing up
This would be played when we would normally have the other trials -it would replace the other trials (although the Charity Shield would still be there)- so it would in February like the current trials are. This way you don’t add tio the number of games or the length of the preseason.
Boring NRL pre-season needs spicing up
A couple of follow-up comments:
1. Many other people (such as Brad Fittler) have called for some kind of preseason comp. The main reason they don’t have one now is because it would take 4 weeks at least and no team want to have to play 4 preseason matches. This way you get some slightly more meaningful games but don’t increase the length of the preseason.
2. The Charity Shield is about the only preseason trial that anyone cares about and this way maybe you get a few more matches (the 4 cup finals) of a Charity Shield level of interest – which you could put on Foxtel.
3. I don’t think many teams would take it that seriously but it would be nice to try to get some more excitement in the preseason. Most, if not all, teams would still treat them as trial matches. Look at the NAB Cup in the AFL – most teams don’t care too much. You could also keep some of the trial match aspects such as unlimited interchange and 6 or 7 man benches. If you’re worried teams are taking it too seriously and it might impact the actual NRL season then you could just lower the prizemoney anyway.
Boring NRL pre-season needs spicing up
While the idea of each country macth being an event in a country town, maybe we could get the same effect by getting NRL clubs to take regualr season games to country areas (and also to places like Perth, Wellington, Hobart, etc). Each club can play a game in one of these neutral areas (except maybe for Wests and Dragons, who have split home grounds). that’d be 14 games in country or non-NRL areas. Surely Penrith could play one of their lower drawing matches in Dubbo or Bathurst or Lithgow as an exmaple.
What about the bush for NRL expansion?
Teams and players are porbably going to talk to each other before. But I agree about MLB – this is a sport where players sign 9-figure contracts and they have no problem in stopping deals being done during the season. At least at some level they the NRL should make a rule that you can’t sign anything binding until after the season – that way you can talk and do handshake agreeements and all that but nothing is binding.
Actually, NRL is in the shape of its life