Following on from yesterday’s article on how to avoid lopsided matches during the representative rugby league season I have a solution that would give the NRL a fair draw and actually reduce the amount of matches played each year.
Not much has been said recently about player welfare, but when we have a season that starts in February and ends for internationals as late as November, it will come up at some stage again – as it does every year.
Also, we have a situation in the NRL at the moment where a club’s schedule is deciding capriciously year-in, year-out. Some teams you play twice, some once, according to the whims of HQ.
At the moment the NRL Premiership consists of 26 rounds, with each club having two byes. My system contains 22 rounds, plus four weekends for State of Origin and the NRL Cup, as detailed yesterday.
My proposal is to divide the league into two conferences, like so:
Conference A Conference B
North Queensland Manly
Brisbane Easts
Gold Coast Souths
Newcastle Cronulla
Penrith New Zealand
Parramatta St George Illawarra
Wests Tigers Canberra
Canterbury Melbourne
We could name in the Australian and National Conferences, or name them after stars of the past. In short, a team would play the other clubs in their conference home and away (14 games) and the outfits from the other conference one time (8 games) with an even split of home and away games. The conferences would stay the same every year. This would preserve existing rivalries and create new ones.
In short:
Intra conference: (7 x 1 home) + (7 x 1 away) = 14 games
Out of conference: (4 x 1 home) + (4 x 1 away) = 8 games
Total: = 22 games
With the aforementioned four Cup weekends, you’d still have 26 rounds of action before the finals. Although, keep the McIntyre System.
So the season would look like this:
Week Round
1 NRL Round 1
2 NRL Round 2
3 NRL Round 3
4 NRL Round 4
5 NRL Round 5
6 NRL Round 6
7 NRL Round 7
8 NRL Round 8
9 NRL Round 9
10 NRL Round 10
11 Cup Round 1 and State of Origin
12 NRL Round 11
13 NRL Round 12
14 Cup Round 2 and State of Origin
15 NRL Round 13
16 NRL Round 14
17 Cup Semi Finals and State of Origin
18 NRL Round 15
19 NRL Round 16
20 NRL Round 17
21 NRL Round 18
22 NRL Round 19
23 NRL Round 20
24 NRL Round 21
25 NRL Round 22
26 Cup Final – Stand Alone Event
27 Qualifying Finals
28 Semi Finals
29 Prem Finals
30 Grand Final
All over in less than seven months – plus another comp into the bargain.
Now, there’s something missing … international football! I thought long and hard about that but I am against the midseason Test matches – they are often lop-sided and look crazy in the program, being played before State of Origin.
That’s not to say I’m all for abolishing international rugby league – far from it. I just believe it should be played in its out discreet window after the grand final – that way it has its own presence and you get players picked on form (most often out of grand final winning sides).
I believe in the Four Nations Tournament and would be happy to see it continue in its current format, or expanded to include a Pacific Nations team and France along with the usual three suspects and PNG.
In fact, I feel a whole different article about that coming on … watch this space.
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