Paul Kent column: Why the NRL is failing to save the game
THE NRL is coming up with ideas to tackle problems facing the game. The problem is all their ideas are bad ones and the game’s bosses refuse to accept outside help. The NRL’s silliest idea yet? Widen the field. Seriously.
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THE problem with the NRL is every idea is a bad idea if the governing body didn’t think of it.
It is more frightening than just arrogance. It is an attempt to hide its lack of knowledge and understanding of the game of which it is charged to take care.
It exploded gloriously over the weekend.
Unable to do something as simple as keeping correct time, all the way through to decisions that do nothing to attract new fans, the NRL responded in its usual way, by deflecting and confusing.
The uproar over the NRL’s inefficiency to properly control its own game will do more to chase away casual fans than allowing the actions it is supposed to eliminate.
If the game’s bosses can’t get their own game right, why even give it a chance?
It seems, more and more, coaches are still running the game, even if the coaches don’t feel so.
Early in this season a highly placed NRL official was in the tunnel at Brookvale Oval when he ran into a former international who now has a high-profile job in the media.
Names have been removed to protect embarrassment.
They talked about the game and how to improve it.
“If you’ve ever got any ideas,” the official said, “let me know.”
“As a matter of fact, I have,” the ex-player said. “You need to bring the interchange down. We need to bring fatigue back into the game. The players have caught up.”
It was nothing the NRL official had not heard before. Or discussed, apparently.
“How about this?” he responded. “How about we make the field wider?”
And, with that, the case is closed.
This is all kinds of stupid.
Maybe, hopefully, it was just a passing idea. If not, how did the person who first raised this inside NRL headquarters not get laughed out of the building?
And if not, how did those who heard it have so little clue themselves that they believed it would be a good idea to take it outside the room and discuss it as if was feasible?
This exposes the fundamental flaw in the NRL. It has the parts to a horse and is building a camel.
Try telling clubs they have to ask their local councils to make their stadiums wider.
The game is lost. League Central is so far removed from what it once was, it sits in a state of confusion, no longer aware what its own fans want.
The NRL has even lost the ability to make a distinction between elite sport and recreation. It launched its touch football competition before Friday’s night’s Parramatta-Warriors game. What a frightening bore that was.
Five dumps up field and then sideline to sideline as they poked and prodded before spearing through for a try. It gave me a migraine yet it now graces our television sets as a sign of the NRL’s future.
The NRL does not realise one game is a spectacle which people will pay to see and the other is a game with your mates.
I understand the philosophy to use touch football to link with junior league clubs and build grassroots. It is a solid idea and a handy ally for the game. But to be televised? On the NRL stage?
The NRL is isolating and ultimately chasing away its rusted-on fans in some misguided bid to attract a wider audience.
It is a good idea only because it is their idea. Which makes it a bad idea.
The rusted-ons are deserting the game quicker than the NRL’s new policies are attracting those new fans its controversial direction chases.
And then we get to last weekend, which showcased the game’s absence of proper leadership.
The fans were treated to nothing but a vacuum as the game’s leaders — Todd Greenberg, Brian Canavan and Jason King — remained mute.
Where were they? Telling us they are on top of the problems and they wouldn’t happen again?
Where is the ARL Commission? Why isn’t it demanding accountability from its administration? Fans need to see a way out.
They need a hope.
Instead, they get all kinds of crazy. Wider fields.
Instead of choosing to reduce interchange, Greenberg let the competition committee decide it would focus on reducing time wasting first in a bid to increase fatigue.
Why can’t the game reduce interchange and stop time wasting at the same time?
Where is the mandate they have to happen separately? They are professional athletes.
Any argument about player welfare is destroyed once the truth is established that only certain positions are rotated and the game’s best players, such as Johnathan Thurston and Cameron Smith, are never part of the interchange strategy.
No playmakers are.
A reduction in interchange has to happen for the good of the game. Yet the NRL refuses to show leadership and drive change.
It ignores last year’s improvement when interchange dropped from 10 to eight and the smart players found the tired players and the game opened up.
Now the players have got fitter and the competition committee agrees to wait some years while concentrating on reducing time wasting.
This, even as massive minutes were wasted this past weekend by teams deliberately slowing play. As referees watched on.
Here are some solutions:
● WHEN a player is sin-binned, have the linesman escort him from the field at a reasonable pace. If the player does not keep pace, the referee changes the sin bin to a send-off. He’ll keep up.
● IF a team is slow to form a scrum or take a dropout, penalise them. Slow to take a penalty, blow a scrum with the opposition to feed.
● If a dummy half passes into an opponent in the ruck who is not inferring with the play, then call a scrum and award the feed to the defence.
● THE deliberate conceding of penalties 10m from their tryline? Tell the captains at the coin toss that if the first penalty is deemed a professional foul, the player will be sin-binned first time. There’s your warning.
Give the game back to fans.
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Originally published as Paul Kent column: Why the NRL is failing to save the game
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