Saddened! wrote:I think we're on the cusp of a very worrying period for rugby league. The finances at most clubs are a massive concern, even the smug 'big' clubs are unsustainable as businesses in their current format and rely entirely on the input of a wealthy owner. I think we're about to start losing teams quite regularly from the lower leagues as the central funding drops and costs keep increasing. Salford worry me a lot as well, as do both of the clubs who could potentially come up. Neither have anything like a squad capable of being competitive in Super League and do either of them have the money to sign players of sufficient quality in such a short period of time?

The quality of the product on the field is at it's lowest point ever as well. The semi finals were so, so bad as entertainment spectacles. Tomkins knocking Saints out will have brought great joy to most RL fans in this country, but the game itself was turgid, anyone watching as a casual sports fan or a potential fan of Rugby League would have been turned away. There was no attempt to score points or attack, just Catalans desperately searching for penalties all game and Saints lacking any attacking quality at all. When they are two of the best three teams in the competition it's very worrying. In a way I hope Wigan win the title by scoring a few tries and it encourages more sides to play the game a bit more rather than obsessing over diving and cheating their way to six agains and penalties like most of them do.

Then you look at the Young Player of the Year award nominee list. It's gone from Jack Welsby, Harry Smith, Morgan Gannon to Jack Welsby, Mikey Lewis, Jarrad O'Connor to Thewlis, O'Neill and Nicholson. The winner of the award is a winger from a mid table side that had a terrible season for their level of ambition who has 8 tries in 21 games, no assists, misses 25%+ of his tackles and makes errors on more than 10% of his carries. He's a player with decent potential, but if he's the best young player this season, it's a worrying sign as well. I'm sure he'd admit himself he's got way more to give than he's shown this season.

FlexWheeler wrote:Nothing changes. Everything stays the same.

rollin thunder wrote:Struggling to think of a more monotonous GF than this year.
Definition of 5 drives and a kick

Jack Burton wrote:We can talk about funding, league structure, salary caps, or whatever, but the best (and easiest) thing the game here can do to improve itself is to fix the ruck and the play the ball. Honestly, the wrestling and constant slowing the game down is killing the spectacle.
Refs think being lenient and 'letting the game flow' is the way to go, but it clearly isn't working. They introduced the 6 again to speed the game up, but they never use it.

--[ WW ]-- wrote:There's no happy medium with ruck speed. I can remember threads on here 15-20 years ago bemoaning the scootathon nature of games. If you had a hooker who was quick out of play the ball you could march up the field really quickly and easily and people would complain that we weren't getting to see any classy halfback play, no structured attacks to overcome well set defenses.

Fast forward to today and it's the opposite. Dummy half scoots are far less common, and most of the game is attackers running at a set defensive line that is well organised and difficult to get past