Another week, another flurry of questions for Dr Sportz. Well, just the one in fact, but who doesn’t want quality over quantity. We’ll offer neither, but feel free to keep reading on regardless.
Are there any lessons from the Auckland Nines we can bring into the NRL season?
B.Tessman, Kingaroy, QLD
Yes, I believe some of the little changes and the overall concept can be used in the NRL proper.
As stated last week, and merely confirmed by the attendance and the level of effort into the dressing up, the Auckland Nines shows that the NRL could easily host an Australian version of the Magic Weekend that has happened in the UK Super League for years.
Looking more like the annual Darts Championship than a regular League game in Auckland, the Nines had all the same vibe and good time feeling of the UK weekend, and surely it could be replicated on a larger scale at a ground big enough to share the revenues amongst the teams. A full house at the Olympic stadium would surely go close to matching a pitiful 4 round origin split or an 8 game all Sydney round.
It would be ground breaking and forward thinking, a sure-fire winner for the fans. A guarantee that the NRL and Channel 9 wouldn’t be interested.
On the subject of the little things, two things stood out for me. The shot-clock is a welcome addition to both kicks at goal and drop outs. I don’t believe I’m in the minority when I say that as a fan I don’t enjoy seeing sides that are supposed to drop out kicking the ball away and milling around for another 30 seconds just because they can. Same goes for kicking goals, surely with all the practice there’s a limited amount of time needed. I know there currently is a maximum time, but whatever it is, it’s too long and the added excitement of counting it down and seeing the teams rushing to meet the limit adds a small ticked box to the game.
Another thing was the reduced amount of tackles from 6 to 5. It may also be argued that the reduced numbers made the play more open, but the one less tackle seemed to spark teams into action that little bit earlier into the set than normal games.
To be honest, who wouldn’t love one less one pass off the ruck trucked directly towards the big H every set. Unless it is done by Goerge Burgess I guess.
Both of these rules would be easier to implement and police than the proposed way of clearing the ruck that the powers that be have proposed to speed up play, that will be enforced ridiculously in the first 3 week of the season and slowly ignored from there after.
There’s plenty more things that could improve the show, but we’ll discuss those closer to the season launch. For now it’s over to the supercoach study.
