Agreed - RU's style is becoming like RL but with significantly more money to back it up

Nines has the potential to be to RL what T20 is to cricket - an exciting concept that lets the flair players show off their skills and appeals to a brand new audience that isn't necessarily interested in the hard graft and the nuances of forward play that the purists enjoy. If I were Elstone, some kind of Nines event would be one of the first things I'd be looking at introducing. Create the event, hype it and sell it to whatever city is willing to bid for it.

But knowing RL, we'd host it on a Tuesday night in Leigh, pack the teams with academy players and then dismiss the idea as a failure.

I had in mind ditching the loop games and the Magic weekend and having a series of weekend knock out competitions at different venues in a separate NINES championship so that SL players could be available.

As you say this could like T20 in cricket and I believe it would catch on with the public, TV and sponsors for the overall good of the game.

It would be a great opportunity for youngster and could bring back the smaller faster backs with skills who would also play alongside the better SL players who would relish playing on TV in front of large crowds. In turn it could improve the standard of SL

Using 9s as a replacement for Loop fixtures is a good shout (although I'd keep MW). Host almost a second league, with rounds inserted at various points in the season, played at a football venue (say, six rounds, each team plays two games on Sat and two on Sun?). It would need a serious prize money incentive for the clubs to buy into it though.

Yes this is the sort of thing I had in mind and it would soon draw in the crowds and money from TV and sponsorship.

With SL dying before our eyes the game needs some out of the box thinking and I believe that in Nines we have a better product than the very successful 7s in Union. So some serious investment and promotion is required and like T20 in cricket it could go International as countries like PNG and Figi and dare I say England who could compete on equal terms with the Ossies.