Re: Has this been the best super league season ever? : Thu Oct 12, 2023 1:10 pm  

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.

Agree, the game wont surive with 4 or 5 clubs with wealthy backers playing each other in repeated loop games. Scottish football is also on a long decline largely due to repetitve fixtures.

I didnt mind the Catalan-Saints game too much as I like an arm wrestle game but agree it wasnt a patch on the quality of years past. SKYs coverage was their weakest for a while, the cameraman looked like he'd been on the french vino, interviews cut off sharpky etc. I know its not easy to do a broadcast from France at a weeks notice but theyd have pulled it off better if it was football.

Re: Has this been the best super league season ever? : Sat Oct 14, 2023 7:05 pm  

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

Re: Has this been the best super league season ever? : Sat Oct 14, 2023 7:09 pm  

Nothing changes. Everything stays the same.

Re: Has this been the best super league season ever? : Sat Oct 14, 2023 7:25 pm  

FlexWheeler wrote:

Nothing changes. Everything stays the same.

Status Quo

[Pumpetypump]

Re: Has this been the best super league season ever? : Sat Oct 14, 2023 9:36 pm  

rollin thunder wrote:

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

Absolutely dreadful. A family member said "ooh I bet that was gripping" when I sent them the score. About as gripping as olive oil on a waterslide.

Re: Has this been the best super league season ever? : Sun Oct 15, 2023 1:57 pm  

Wigoons very much deserved the win but it was a very poor game and could be one of the worse Grand Finals so far. It will be a struggle to give us a 5 mins of match highlights.

Re: Has this been the best super league season ever? : Sun Oct 15, 2023 2:37 pm  

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.

Re: Has this been the best super league season ever? : Sun Oct 15, 2023 3:10 pm  

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.

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

Re: Has this been the best super league season ever? : Sun Oct 15, 2023 3:18 pm  

--[ 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

The 2008 world cup was the turning point. The consensus was that the speed of the ruck in SL resulted in England not being able to handle the wrestling tactics of the southern hemisphere teams. Of course, having the likes of Paul Sykes, Lee Smith and Rob Purdham in the starting line up had nothing to do with it
Despite the wrestling, the NRL seem to have got the balance right, but it seems we're not even trying to improve it over here.

Re: Has this been the best super league season ever? : Sun Oct 15, 2023 4:33 pm  

The truth is there is no best season ever. Can only really talk in eras. The first decade or so of super league was the best IMO, in terms entertainment, quality of play, there were more good imports then, and the individual quality of British players was exceptional. Think Farrell, Sculthorpe, Cunningham, Harris, Robinson etc. I’m not talking how England did internationally, or comparisons with the far superior Aussie game, I just mean for fans of super league as its own entity, that was the best IMO. There was also a sense of optimism, that things were growing, getting better, developing.

In general, it’s so so stale now. IMO. Everything is so non-descript, this years grand final a prime example.